I’ve had other experiences with my local Senators regarding the HC legislation. I’ll be happy to share it here or directly. The more we relate to each other on a person-to-person basis the better it is to understand what needs to be done and what ideas our fellow citizens have done. We need to interface with each other and not through radio talk shows and TV programs.

What is most frightening to me is the way a local Senator changed face shortly after her appointment to the post and came back like a firebrand for the Senate bill all the while being brusque and what I see as disrespectful of our Governor who appointed her in the first place. If you’re interested I’ll provide details.

You’re a great daughter and a truly fine person to be helping her out at your own expense, and I’m glad that you have a support network that you can rely on.

Please take care and keep your spirits up — good things have a habit of happening to good people.

All the best …

To A Student: I’m really sorry to learn about what happened to your father. And yes, you’re right that access to affordable care and treatment may prevent a descent into serious illness.

However, the purpose of my post was to offer another point of view on the immediate hardship an individual mandate will cause, especially when living on a limited income. One may indeed get a subsidy and have insurance but with the monthly budget being minus the money paid to the premium a big concern becomes how will a person get the money to see the doctor?

I’ve had a chance to review the Bronze Plan offered by Massachusetts Commonwealth Care and the deductible is $2000. That’s quite a layout for some people.

So what’s the difference between a Bronze Plan and a high deductible plan with a Health Savings Account? All I’ve been able to learn is that if the HC Reform as it exists in the Senate bill goes into law HSA holders will be very limited in how much money they can put into an account.

Personally speaking I would prefer the $2500 tax credit to buy a basic policy and then bank my money into a HSA. Since my salary varies each month there wouldn’t be any pressure to deposit a fixed amount each time.

The reason why I can’t leave New York is that my Mother is in the intermediate stages of Parkinsonism and I am her only child nearby. She’s living in a residence hear where I live. Most of our family has passed on and I want to be with her for as long as necessary.

Things for me are very difficult but I’ve got a good support network and if the recession has taught me anything it’s just how valuable friends and neighbors are. My Landlord gives me a break on the rent because I help him with cleaning, shopping, and cooking.

I don’t think America should copy a European style system of socialized medicine because we are much bigger than any such country. We are so diverse and each region has it’s own culture and needs. That is why I still think we need to go on a state by state basis and let the citizens decide.

I have been trying for months to learn more about what people in Massachusetts really experience with the mandated coverage. Yet there is little I’ve found that brings the experience home in terms I can understand. There are economic studies and insurance industry studies but what will let the rest of us know what the experience like is to have the voices of the people tell us their stories. Why hasn’t the media provided this?

I previously worked at jobs that provided very good benefits. When I became unemployed I was referred to a social worker for Medicaid. This was my first experience with socialized medicine and it was part good and part not-very-good.

I only had a $5 co-pay for basic doctor visits. The processing time for my application was six weeks. I was treated better as a Medicaid patient than when I was a private paying patient. The Medicaid HMO (HIP of NY) would call me up to give me healthcare tips and recommend dentists, for example. The representative was reading off a script as if I was a child and I got annoyed after awhile so I usually told them that it wasn’t necessary to encourage me to floss my teeth, for example. I kid you not. I was talked to as if I was a child.

My Medicaid PCP (primary care physician) then referred me for a mammogram and sonogram. When I visited him for the results he told me I was in very good health. He then went on to lecture me about the need to take precautions when I was “sexually active”. He assumed I actually had the time and was of the mind to be so. He wanted to give me a series of shots for the Hepatitus B Vaccine so I wouldn’t have to worry about contracting that disease while being sexually active.

I told the Doctor that I’m much too busy with my job and other duties around the building to be sexually active and that I prefer to abstain for now. I’m just not of that mindset right now.

He shook my hand and hustled me out of the office!

The reason I’d gone to see this Doctor was to get a cyst on my scalp removed. He said it was too small to worry about. I also called HIP of New York to ask them why I couldn’t get surgery for the cyst.

The answer I got was that Medicaid considers this type of surgery Cosmetic and wouldn’t pay for it. They also wouldn’t cover my dermatologist visits because it’s considered cosmetic.

I’m prone to flare-ups of cystic acne and know it’s not cosmetic. I put the Medicaid card in the drawer. I put aside money from the tax refund to pay for the dermatologist each year. The cyst eventually drained but if it were infected I’d end up in the ER to get an incision and drainage.

So yes, I see the need for reform and support it, but not in the way it’s currently proposed. My non-support for the Senate Bill is not because I don’t want people to have treatment, but because I think that we are being forced into buying private insurance and being forced to buy the kind of policy the government wants us to.

There is an assumption, as I see it, that the Government is trying to protect us by mandating what type of product we buy. But I’m still not at all convinced that the coverage will stay affordable and that it will be sustainable.

I’ve read that Tennessee had mandated coverage back in the 1990s and that the state almost went bankrupt. It didn’t work then and I don’t believe this way of providing health insurance will work again.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/02/01/nl-williams-heart-201.html

Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien took his own family to private health clinics. In fact, he didn’t just use U.S.-style private clinics, he actually went to private clinics in the U.S. Robert Bourassa, the late Quebec premier, flew to the U.S. for cancer treatment. Joe Clark, the leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives, paid cash for a suite at Toronto’s private Shouldice Hospital, where he had a hernia operation in the late 1980s. Belinda Stronach, another politician, headed to the US for treatment a few years back.

tp://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/256600

And that’s just Canada. British and European politicians do exactly the same thing. Nothing is free, and the best way in which to judge who has the best system and the finest quality of care in the world is to look where people with money and power go when they, or their family members are sick.

I’m sorry to hear about your Dad’s illness. Certainly it would have been better for him to access treatment of some kind when he needed it.

But that is not the question at hand. Mr. Nahmias is suggesting that the Democratic House and Senate throw caution to the wind and try to ram through a sick puppy hybrid of the two Frankensteinian health care bills they have before them in order to pass something — anything.

Those of us that disagree point out that there are many ways to improve healthcare access and enact basic reform for uninsured folks like your father and others like him without having the federal government take over the entire system that the other 85% of the country is happy with.

It’s not a zero sum game here. And despite what some desperately claim, the choices we face are neither cut and dried, nor binary.