Can't believe this...
My and the girls' medical bills have come in at something like $400,000. We can't get ANY government assistance in paying them because Eric makes $38,000 a year. Trust me, I've tried every social services program area I can think of. And I know the DSS commissioner, and even HE said there was nothing. (Of course if the twins had been LOWER
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Rounding up illegal immigrants won't change the amount or quality of health care that the U.S. government gives its citizens. The government does not wish to be in the business of making sure its citizens have adequate access to resources. If it did, we would all have adequate resources. Why they shower resources on illegal aliens I'm not sure, but you can bet your diaper bag that if every illegal alien were to disappear overnight, the funds earmarked for them would not be spent on you and your family.
Our government operates under the guise of not wanting to mollycoddle its citizens, and does this by refusing to make even the most minor intervention in a privatized health-care system that is clearly broken. It has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with a pan-governmental refusal to accept its responsibility for caring for the people who trust it.
As for Europe -- you hear lots of different things about socialized medicine, and my guess is that its quality and effectiveness differs from country to country. There are brilliant, compassionate doctors and total duds in all systems. I think, though, that under a socialized system, people get better health care on average than on our system.
If you don't have to worry about having insurance, or what your insurance will cover, or what your treatment will cost, you will go for preventative care more often. This means that you'll be less likely to wait to go to the doctor until you're seriously sick and in need of more expensive treatment. The society also doesn't see the wide disparity of rich people getting all the treatment they want and need while the poor crowd into emergency rooms for routine care. I'd say that the quality of average health care in Europe is no worse than it is in America, overall. What you may have to wait in line for are quasi-elective, expensive special procedures.
I did have one rather nice encounter with socialized medicine in Germany when I was eighteen. I was living in a quasi-abusive situation with the Wicked Bitch of the West, and was on her insurance plan, much though she begrudged it. She'd made it clear that my marching orders were to remain healthy so as to cause her as little insurance trouble as possible. For Easter vacation, I had made plans to take the train to another state to visit some old family friends. Yay!
Well, whaddaya know, the night before the trip, I developed an ear infection. I couldn't tell the WBotW, because she'd cancel my trip, bitch me out for daring to get sick, and pack me off to a doctor who would take five minutes, look in my ear, and prescribe antibiotics -- and then I'd have to come home and spend the whole week with this sullen, resentful, awful woman. I made a clandestine collect international phone call to the Pony Parents late that night, and they contacted the friends I was going to visit to warn them of the situation (both the ear infection and the reason it couldn't be treated normally in Darmstadt).
The friends sprang into action. When the daughter picked me up at the train station, she whisked me straight to a doctor, whose office was still open, even that late in the day. We explained to the doctor that I needed an exam, and that there would be no private insurance to cover it.
In America, this would have resulted in masses of paperwork, and the shelling out of a ridiculously high office-visit fee, even before the cost of the antibiotics. In Germany, this resulted in an "Okay, sit down and let me look in your ear. Yup, it's infected." No fuss. I was astonished. Government-funded health care saves the day.
For the record, although I was prepared to spend up to DM200 on the antibiotics, I didn't have to. The doctor just happened to have enough of the proper antibiotic lying around in her office that she reached into her desk, casually pulled out a week's course of the drug, and handed it over as a "sample." I don't think that that little miracle can be laid at the feet of government-funded health care, though. I think it's more likely the result of lots of drug companies being based in Germany and handing out samples like whoa.
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I think no matter where you go it will depend on the doctors you go to, so yes, in Europe you might HAVE coverage, but coverage is only as good as the provider you are going to!
I had MVP insurance, so yes they paid a huge chunkload of our medical bills. They left us with about $10,000 though. Which, for us, is a huge amount of money. We CAN and will use that on our taxes next year, but it still comes out of our pockets, which are virtually empty at the moment. And the girls' formula needs are escalating faster than we can keep up with. At this point, we're looking at selling as much as we can to keep in the green.
I.E. Eric's vehicle, leaving us with ONE we can put the girls in, his coin collection he took 20 years to collect, the guitars we love and cherish, but know aren't as important as the girls' food...it's just a shame that the country will do nothing to help us when we have contributed every week to it. I don't know, some people might disagree with me, but I fully believe if you pay into the system, it ought to help you out in times of great need. I don't mean help me pay for that annual physical...I can afford that $200 or so...but for extensive medical needs, they should do SOMETHING. Weigh your income against your expenditures and THEN decide if you need help. Don't just look at income and assume that you have enough to live on!
As I said, if your NECESSARY expenditures *not your cell phones, computer access fees etc etc* are way up there, and your income is so-so, they should help you! That's just my opinion.
My mother is disabled and my father is a veteran and they are living day to day afraid they won't be able to keep their house because her Social Security payments and his IBM pension aren't enough to keep them afloat most months. And they don't have any "extras" to speak of. It's sad, so very sad, when a vet can't live his life in retirement comfortable and safe in the knowledge he will always have a roof over his head.
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That right there is the description of the need for socialized medicine. That's exactly what our government is unwilling to do, illegal immigrants or no. If the illegal immigrants weren't there, and the resources weren't needed, they'd go to a tax cut for the rich.
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