Health Care 1

I'm still sifting though numerous articles about the Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare. I will post a blog once I think I have done enough research to form an intelligent opinion on the subject. That being said, I do think that we are heading eventually to a government run, single payer system.

Who would lose out  in a  single payer system? Lawyers. If the government ever took over health care in this country for everyone, you can bet that the government would make sure that the government could never be sued. OK, here is the fly in the ointment: A single payer, government run, health care system will not be implemented for a long time, because most of the idiots that we idiots vote into office are lawyers. Consequently, the lawyer lobby has a lot of influence keeping the lawyer idiots that we idiots vote into office, are beholden to the whims of the legal profession,  no matter how much they screw the American people. Once a single payer system is put into place, the malpractice legal industry collapses, followed by the insurance industry, that feeds off of the legal industry. Gee, that might not be a bad thing.

Here is my opinion on a single payer system. I use one, and have access to another one. I am retired military, and continue to use the government run, single payer, military medical system for my medical needs. I have NEVER had a problem with military medicine. I have used the system for everything from emergency room care, gastroenterology, cardiology, primary care, chiropractic, physical therapy, major surgery, and then some. I have never used the Veterans Administration system myself, except for disability evaluations, but I know several veterans who do, and I hear nothing but good things. The only criticisms I hear about the VA system come from Liberals who claim that the VA system is shit. Of course, they would never use such a system themselves, which is ironic, since they are the ones that are pushing for single payer, universal healthcare for all. I guess what they really mean is this: Substandard single payer healthcare for the masses, and a discrete private system for themselves, open only to themselves. If it looks like this is going to occur, the masses have to rise up and make sure it doesn't happen. In the  spirit of fairness, upper middle class, educated, elitist, snobbish liberals have to be forced on the same system that they want to force onto everyone else. If that is the case, a single payer system could work.

Like I said, I use a single payer system, and it works fine. Yes, there are some glitches. 1. You have little say in who your providers are. However, I have never had a bad military medical provider. 2. There is sometimes a fairly long wait in order to see your primary care manager. The work around for this, is you go to the emergency room, and they give you a referral. You then have to see ANY primary care provider in ANY hospital or clinic within a certain time frame. Usually, that is 24 to 48 hours. They will make the appointment for you in the emergency room when they discharge you. In addition, if you can't get in to see your PCM for routine care, you can make an appointment to be seen by any provider in your primary care facility. All your records are electronic, and can be viewed by any medical provider in any government run medical facility, military or civilian, anywhere in the world.

One thing I have noticed over the past 10 years has been the number of contract civilian doctors and nurses working in the military hospitals. This is significant if you think about it, and the fact that eventually, we are going to have a government run, single payer system. Doctors are becoming government employees, so they can avoid paying a staff, and most importantly, they can avoid having to pay outrageous malpractice insurance premiums, driven by greedy lawyers and insurance companies trying to keep ahead of the greedy lawyers. If enough doctors do this, the legal and insurance industries will no longer be able to sustain themselves financially. Like they say, paybacks are hell. Along with this, the ultimate payback is hell, would be "our betters" having to use the same system we "little people" have to use. I can hear the whine and cheese party now.

I see many articles that have come out since the Obamacare decision claiming that this country has now gone past the tipping point, where it will be impossible to prevent us from turning into a Socialist dictatorship. I'm still skeptical about that, but I can see the argument. I do know this, however, if we ever became a top-down Socialist style dictatorship, it would end up being a lot like the military, and military style life is one thing that few Lefties could handle. They would go ballistic when they found out that a vast majority of them would not be part of the ruling class. Hmmm......Maybe something really IS in the works...