My Experience with Private Health Care

This was my experience with private health care. Bear in mind I am a middle-class working stiff.

When I suffered a herniated disc, I was told by the clinic to just walk on in! It was like Jesus telling the cripple to get up and walk. The clinic lacked the mojo of Jesus. I had a better chance of sprouting wings and flying to Russia than standing up, let alone walk anywhere. You know there is something wrong with a clinic that does not understand the ramifications of severe lower back pain. To tell a patient, get up and walk, when he says he cannot get up, shows a lack of competence with communication, language, medicine, anatomy, and physics.

It was not possible to get up and research on the Internet to diagnose my condition myself. I was only able to do that much later, and in my opinion I have made a 100% accurate diagnosis--after the fact. Herniated disc, generic variety, nothing special, and simple to treat--if only the doctor had bothered to treat it or at a minimum, told me how.

There was no advice, no counseling, nobody came to see me, and I suffered alone in agony all night long. Sleeping was impossible. Like clockwork, every ten to twenty minutes, my lower back muscles would spasm. Waves of agony would radiate from my lower back to every cell of my body. The pain was like an insane monkey beating a drum right next to my ears all night long. There was no end to it in sight. This is when the air conditioning decided to fail in my house as well, so the temperature climbed up to 99 F.

After several days of intense suffering, when I was well enough to inch my way to the clinic, taking tiny steps and walking like the cripple I was, the doctor saw me for two minutes, gave me a prescription for Naproxin and offered to write me a script for opiates so that I could forget about the experience. I turned her down, because I'd rather blog about my suffering than forget about it.

I'm reminded of my experience as I read articles about the so-called teabagger movement. They claim to be concerned about the national deficit. Why were these vampires silent while the wars drained hundreds of billions from our nation's treasury? National deficit, my foot. They just don't like having a black man lead the country. That's the long and short of it. For my part, I could care less what skin color Obama has. I just want him to do a good job. I want him to succeed. That is the definition of patriotism. A traitor is someone who says he wants our President to fail. If our President fails, the whole country fails. You can guess where this logic places Rush Limbaugh.

The only reason I can see that people would oppose socialized medicine is a desire to see some people suffer, particularly people of a different race. Our neighbors, Mexico, Canada and Cuba all have socialized medicine and they love it. In France, the doctors come to you when you have a medical condition. I don't know why the mainstream media tries to cover up all the good things that happen in other countries. I watched Michael Moore's film, "Sicko," and it made up my mind that socialized medicine is the way to go. Some people have made up their mind to refuse to admit to any problems in society. They stick their head in the sand like an ostrich. They call themselves patriots. That is not the definition of patriotism. That is the definition of intellectual laziness. Real patriots like Benjamin Franklin were not lazy. "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" was his proverb. He established the nation's first paper mill manufacturing paper out of marijuana, which fools of the modern era have banned for no particular reason.

I am aware of England's recent regime change. The Conservative Party over there has swept into power through a strange alliance with the Liberal Democrats. I wonder how many Republicans in the U.S. realize that English conservatives have absolutely no intention of eliminating socialized medicine, that they indeed love their country's socialized medicine. Around the world, socialized medicine is not a football thrown between political parties of left and right. Instead, both sides embrace it, and why? Because it is good for everyone and to oppose it would be political suicide.