As you probably would guess by my being just to the right of Newt Gingrich politically, I am generally opposed to socialized medicine in the United States. Basically, that’s because I am opposed to socialism period. It’s been proven to fail everywhere it’s been tried, and I just don’t like the idea of people who don’t work getting the benefits of people who do.
But this isn’t a column on socialism, per se. This is a column about one semi-creaky old turkey’s actual real-life experience with socialized medicine. And you might just be surprised at my conclusions.
In a recent column I told you about my being taken off a cruise ship in New Zealand with some heart problems. (I had the heart problems. New Zealand’s heart is fine.) And, although I know you want to hear even more about my medical condition, I am not going to go there. Children may be reading this column.
What I am going to tell you about is my treatment in a hospital in Christchurch, New Zealand. And obviously, New Zealand is a socialized medicine country. Nobody pays for medical care over there. It is free to everyone. You just go in, get your appendix snipped out, and you leave. No invoice. No itemization. No wallet-whining. No nothing.
So I get hauled into the hospital and they drop me off at the emergency place. The care was great. A doctor and nurses were right there. They were terrific. Very attentive and friendly and fast, and more importantly, seemed to be very competent and professional. And there was no paperwork for insurance or any of that. Couldn’t have been better.
Then, because I had been on the cruise ship, they took me to their anti-contagion unit. I am not kidding. If you come from a foreign country, they stick you here first. Not that it was a bad place. Au contraire (that’s French for something commie), it was a great room. And it was a private room. No other socialist sucking people to bother me. Even had a nice view. I had no complaints. I wanted to complain. I enjoy complaining. But I couldn’t. So I didn’t.
I stayed in this private room for five days. I guess I had a particularly scary brand of cooties. I didn’t feel contagious. I don’t think I looked contagious. And, as far as I know, they never specifically looked for evidence of my contagion. But it did take them five days to not find anything. But hey, I had a private room, so me and my heart weren’t in any hurry to move.
And because I am a journalist, I want to report to you that the rooms in this socialistic country were pretty good. They weren’t all high-teched out with modern equipment, and there were no TVs. But they were very homey. Homey is the right word, I think. I thought I was back in the 1950s. The room just had a nice warm feeling about it. Very comfortable, country pictures on the walls, other pictures drawn with crayons by kids. They had none of that overly clean and antiseptic look that we have over here.
And the nurses were just fabulous. They were friendly and they joked with me about my hairy chest (oh, the fun we had). They thought I was trying to smuggle in chimpanzees under the covers. They were kidders (the nurses, not the damn chimps). And one of the nurses helped me get extra food to maintain my lanky body requirements. OK, it was just some kind of pissy yogurt or a box of corn flakes, but I appreciated the collusion. One time I got two desserts and tried to jump out of bed to hug my nurse and I pulled all my heart wires out. She said, “Oh, just lie down. I’ll put the wires back in the chimpanzee.” And we laughed. Oh, how we laughed.
And while I was there for the five days I got all the modern tests — I had an MRI and EKGs and this procedure where they put this mini camera up a vein in your thigh and it takes little photos of your heart and puts them on You Tube or something, and all the other tests that heart guys get. The doctor came by twice a day. I thought I had great care. What can I say? I wanted to not like the socialistic system of medical care, but I liked it. I’m not saying I’m voting for Hillary, but the system worked pretty well, I have to admit.
Then after five days, they determined I was contagion-free, so they shipped me off to the riff raff room. I was now in the kind of room that the regular Kiwi people had. It was an OK room, but it had eight guys in there. All heart patients. And I asked them all how they liked their medical system, and they basically said it was pretty good. Except that they had to wait for long periods of time to have operations. Months. And then they would have to come into the hospital early and stay, maybe three weeks, before the actual operation. If they left, they would lose their place. That didn’t sound good to this old non-commie cowboy.
And, of course, New Zealand only has four million people. That’s like the population of the city of Los Angeles. What’s our population now in the US? More than 300 million? So, maybe their system is a little more workable, eh? (I thought I’d add a little Canadian socialized medical commentary.)
And finally, although the care was great for me, it was not free for me. Because I was a foreigner, and not a Kiwi, I had to pay the full, excuse the expression, boat. Yes, they would not pay for any alien medical care — legal or illegal.
My conclusion: I’m just grateful they didn’t find any cooties. I hear the wait for cooties removal is three months.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
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