Sometimes it's just not worth trying to explain

[rymenhild]

My grandmother (step-grandmother, really) on the health insurance debate: "I just don't know. I don't like socialized medicine."

Me: "Um, [M], do you know where your insurance comes from?"

My grandmother: "I don't have to pay a thing now. But it's good I got all my limbs replaced before this all started. They wouldn't do that after they change things."

Me: *sigh*

My step-grandmother, who has no resources other than her stepsons' support and her social security payment, is insured through Medicare. I tried repeatedly to explain to her that she already has government-sponsored insurance, and that health care reform means expanding government-sponsored insurance, but I think she's taken too many doses of Fox News to understand me.

Comments

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Oh, how frustrating!! THEY JUST WANT TO TAKE WHAT YOU HAVE AND LET OTHER PEOPLE HAVE IT TOO. Ugh.

[zdenka]

I agree that your grandmother is not clear on the concept. But it's not like the money in government programs comes from nowhere. Government paying for something = tax money paying for it = you and me and everyone in the country paying for it. So I think it's reasonable to want to know who is going to pay what and what we are going to get for it.

And it seems like no one knows what all is in the bill, which worries me.

[flintknappy.livejournal.com]

I agree. I think there are definitely some good points to the idea of reforming health care, but I am wary of some of what I keep hearing about it and generally wary about some of what's still unanswered, like you pointed out.

[flintknappy.livejournal.com]

I like the part about having had all her limbs replaced before this. It was just knees, right? I think that problem exists with anyone who watches too much fox news and believes it, it's very hard to talk them out of what they've been mistold.

[tempestsarekind.livejournal.com]

Didn't someone just do that at one of the town hall meetings? Asking people who disagreed with the idea of "government-run" health care to raise their hands, and then the people who had Medicare? There was a *lot* of overlap. And I don't understand the cause of the disconnect. It's one thing to say "I don't think the government knows how it's going to pay for this" or "I don't agree with the way it's being handled"--another thing to say "the government shouldn't be in the business of health care," when we already have Medicare and the VA.

[cursor-mundi.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine is very into socialized healthcare--socialized government and economics in general--and has always had trouble understanding this sort of disconnection. I keep telling her that she needs to go out and get elected and keep on explaining this stuff, because America's resistance to all things "socialism" and "communism" isn't rational. We can present all the facts and figures we want, but until we get around the gut-reaction of "OH NOES, FEELTHY COMMIES/SOCIALISTS/ETCS." that every good (in the sense of successful; definitely not in the sense of morality!) politician and media outlet and cultural tidbit seize upon and use, we're not going to stand a chance. And we have to change a lot about our society from the ground up before we'll stop bashing our heads against these sorts of walls.

And in the mean time, I'm going to quietly lol at the idea of your step-grandmother as the Bionic Granny--we have the technology, we can rebuild her...for free! (Snerk.)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

All the bionic jokes have totally been made. I learned the word "bionic" when she got her knees replaced.

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

As a Brit this whole debacle has been making my blood boil... I think someone should pay for an ad to run on US TV that explains what socialism actually is, and also why Europe actually isn't socialist! Oh conservative media, you so crazy.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

Socialism, as many other things, comes in degrees. In comparison to the USA many European countries do have socialist economic structures. Those countries aren't at all socialist compared to, say, Cuba, but what the word means depends in part on where you're sitting.

That's also only part of the issue. The main problem, as I see it, is that many Americans haven't even got an inaccurate idea of what socialism is, and know only that it's something from the USSR. If socialism meant everyone gets a free fluffy bunny,* it would still rankle people because it's a word that belongs to a (defunct) enemy.

* I guess that would be a form of socialism, albeit a quirky one bogged down in rabbit poop.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Did you see this article? Who is this Investors Business Daily who is trying to get Americans to believe that Stephen Hawkings is American? The mad thing is that yes, we have problems with waiting lists on the NHS, but most of the time it's not a big deal. When it does matter, you have the option to go private. The service you get privately will probably be a lot better than American healthcare, and it will still be cheaper (if for no other reason than you don't have to pay huge insurance costs every month). My parents do this: NHS by default, but if it's something important and the waiting list is dicey, such as one of the things they had to do for my stepfather's heart condition, they'll go private.

It's not just the financial side of it that horrifies us in Europe about American healthcare, it's the appalling anti-sexuality prejudice that means that getting contraception is an expensive nightmare. I still can't believe that in a supposedly civilised country, children go to school and can be taught abstinence instead of sex education (if they're lucky, along with creationism), and then when they become sexually active, be denied contraception, and then subjected to harassment and even attack if they end up having to go for an abortion.

And no, of course we're not socialists. The main political worry around here is that the British Nationalist Party has been gaining support. They make the crazy "death panel" people look sane.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

Did you see this article? Who is this Investors Business Daily who is trying to get Americans to believe that Stephen Hawkings is American?

I don't think the author is trying to convince Americans that Dr. Hawking is American; I think the author is just unaware that he is English. That's not dishonest marketing, it's stupidity. Anyway, I'm not sure what relevance it has to anything I've said.

I suppose I have to make the standard disclaimer now, since people seem to be making baseless assumptions about my political views: I am in favor of healthcare reform, and I would like to see a government-funded option available to everyone here.

The abstinence-only stupidity is a regional matter here, not a national one. State legislatures, not the federal government, make those decisions, and the previous president did all he could to encourage them to go that route. Hopefully new leadership and the Bristol Palin factor will turn people around. As for contraception, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Any store in any state is allowed to sell condoms, and many organizations all over the country distribute them for free. The same goes, with the obvious practical limitations, for other forms of contraception.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was pointing out further stupidity. Obviously it isn't certain whether it's genuine ignorance or deliberate misinformation, but I think quite a lot of people were concluding that it was more likely the latter.

I was talking about the way that contraception is limited: often not covered by insurance, or certain options not covered by insurance; often wildly expensive (does it normally cost hundreds of dollars for a fifteen minute procedure that involves an item costing about $20, or is that just for IUDs?), and it can be a lot harder to be "permitted" certain forms of contraception, either due to medically disproven myths (IUDs again) or due to some doctors or pharmacists refusing to dispense contraception. I'm not sure how common the last is, we hear scare stories about women living in the middle of nowhere whose pharmacist refuses to dispense the pill which are presumably the exception rather than the rule (though they seem to be common enough to be worrying), but I've heard again and again from women wanting contraception in the US, particularly long-term contraception, who have been refused, or who are unable to afford contraception because their insurance won't cover it. Sterilisation gets even harder. I've been talking to a woman online who is desperate to get sterilised because she has a medical condition which means that a pregnancy would kill her, and she can't find anywhere that will do it, not because the sterilisation would cause any risk at all, but because she's in her early twenties and they won't discuss sterilisation in a woman under 35. As far as I can tell, this is a combination of fear of lawsuits, occasional outdated medical information, and the strong influence of the religious right.

For comparison, contraception in the UK is free, it's not subject to the standard prescription charge (which I think is being phased out anyway, certainly lowered). Not everyone realises that condoms can be obtained free, I personally feel that they should be available from more outlets (e.g. the Edinburgh University health centre doesn't supply them, on the grounds that they can be obtained from other uni departments), and the choice of condoms may not be enough for some tastes. Waiting lists occasionally come into play, e.g. having to wait a few weeks for an IUD insertion. Women over 16 should be able to access contraception pretty easily and without running into problems from religious influence amongst medical professionals. It's more controversial for kids under 16, and I'm not sure of the exact position at the moment, I think it's that they can get contraception but it's complicated and/or awkward. Likewise, I can't remember the exact status of the morning-after pill at the moment, which may be different in England from Scotland. It's certainly fairly easy to get hold of. I've a feeling it can be obtained from pharmacists now, without having to go to a doctor. I know they were trialling a scheme where women could get a supply of the morning-after pill and keep it at home in case of emergencies, I can't remember what happened after that. With regard to sex education in schools and teenage pregnancy rates, we're doing poorly compared to the rest of Europe but still a lot better than America. The age of consent is 16 for all gender combinations, and oral and anal sex are both legal. Some doctors and the Family Planning Association are calling for greater uptake of long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), since they are more effective and correlate with lower rates of accidental pregnancy, but as I'm sure you're aware, it takes a long time to improve contraception patterns in a country.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

I'll try to address the issues you raise one at a time.

The cost of IUDs: That's actually not atyical of the American healthcare system at large, and isn't something that only applies to contraception. I'm sure the foreign press have devoted most of their attention in this debate to the question of national health coverage, but another important topic of healthcare reform is that medical treatment is just unbelievably expensive in this country. There's a whole slew of reasons for this, some of which are obvious, while others remain (at least to me) mysterious. But anyway, were a doctor here to tell me that I needed a $500.00 procedure to insert a $20.00 medical device, I would be dismayed but not surprised.

Limited access to contraception in general sounds as if it's something that has been exaggerated in reporting. Yes, there are doctors and pharmacists who won't prescribe or provide certain treatments based on their religious beliefs; it has made the news here too, which it would not have done were it considered normal. The question of the legality of these approaches is under discussion. As for insurance companies failing to cover contraception, I think you're conflating two very different motivations. As with most other businesses, insurance companies are motivated by money above all else. If they thought that denying contraception would be more expensive than covering it, they would cover it. Probably the single biggest problem with the system as it stands is that healthcare decisions such as these are made in the interest of profit, not public health.

Much (but not all) of what you describe in your second paragraph is true in the USA as well. Most forms of contraception here are not typically free, but Planned Parenthood does provide most methods at reduced cost or free of charge depending on the circumstances. If I were to set out to find a source of free condoms I think it would take me all of ten minutes, starting from a state of ignorance. Emergency contraception (i.e., the morning after pill) is available without prescription to women aged 17 or older. There are no sexual acts that are illegal when performed in private by two consenting adults, the definition of the latter varying from state to state: all states have a standard age of consent somewhere between 16 and 18, and many have "close in age exemptions."

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you! The UK can be considered to have socialist tendencies only if we take a very catholic approach to what socialism means, which is not the way I think conservative American detractors who describe the UK as socialist are meaning it. Perhaps the argument would have carried more weight at the birth of the welfare state in the UK with the emergence of the NHS and the nationalisation of public utilities. But Thatcher's Conservative government changed a lot of that, and the rise of New Labour under Tony Blair saw a move toward the right from the Labour party, a privatisation of public services, and an emphasis on a free market economy. Labour still described itself as a socialist party in the 1990s, but it had already moved far away from its left-wing roots.

I think one of the strange things to Brits is that we're still perceived by the US as being quite a left-wing country, when a lot of people here actually lament the movement toward the centre-right that has characterised British politics in the last couple of decades! :)

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

While on a broader scale I accept what you're saying about privatization in UK, the simple fact is that you have the NHS and we don't have an equivalent. Since the topic of discussion is the economics of healthcare, is it not fair to say that the UK's system is more socialist than America's?

[ajodasso.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*