Just been dealing with the pharmacy and our health insurance

[xiphias]

Can anyone give me an example of ANY problem that we'd have with socialized medicine that we don't have right now with our current health care system?

I mean, if I'm going to have to go through byzantine, bizzare, arbitrary bureaucracy and have to bang my head against walls and argue with people to have simple, commonsense health care taken care of, I'd like to at least know that it was available to everyone.

Comments

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's because you instinctually realize that whoever pays for your medical care gets to know the details of your medical record, in order to verify correct billing and payments. Do you really want the government to be able to poke around in your medical details, including psychiatric issues? Granted folks on Medicare have this going on now, but would you want the government to have this access life-long?

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I come from a country with socialised medicine and _that doesn't happen here_. It's against the law.

The laws defining who can have access to medical records are very strongly worded and very strongly enforced. No government agent or agency may have access to a medical record without the patient's permission. Full stop. End of story.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I do have sympathy for felis_sidus's point here, though. In the United States, we've discovered that our government is perfectly willing to ignore its own laws protecting privacy.

I was an area lead in the 2000 US Census. We all had to take oaths that we would not misuse any information we discovered. There were laws in place that made certain that, for instance, Immigration couldn't use the raw data gathered to find illegal immigrants.

It was decided that the importance of the census was such that this was worthwhile. Getting an honest and accurate picture of who was in the United States was important; therefore, we could agree to NOT use the gathered information for law enforcement, so that the people we talked to would be able to trust us.

This trust was backed up by law, and by our personal oaths. I stressed in training what a personal oath meant -- that this was putting our own personal honor, and even our immortal souls, on the line saying that we would never use this information to harm the people we were talking to. Ever. Everyone who worked for the census had to take these oaths. (Or affirmations, if you didn't believe in taking oaths -- an affirmation is taken on your own honor.)

As soon as the census data was compiled, it was turned over to Immigration, the way that we had all taken oaths that it would not be. I told people that I PERSONALLY had pledged my own honor to protect their information -- and the government broke my pledge.

So felis_sidus is right. We cannot trust our government with any information. Our goverment -- at least, the Bush administration -- has already proven taht they aren't worthy of our trust.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

That has to suck. In fact, that has to suck asteroids through nanotubes. I'm very sorry you are all in this situation, and I hope you get a trustworthy administration soon.

(Please note, it would be easy to read the above as sarcasm. It isn't. I really, genuinely mean it.)