First-Hand Accounts On The Effects Of Socialized Medicine
My grandmother, at 90 years old, is a cancer survivor. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 80′s, was treated for it and is now in remission. It was a difficult and trying time for my family.
One way in which she copes with her illness, and helps other cope now that she’s beaten it, is through a local cancer survivor’s group. My mother went to a recent meeting of the group with my grandmother and said that a new member, a woman from Great Britain, was there and made a statement that my mom thought she had to share with me.
“The worst mistake America could make would be universal health care.”
This woman spoke of people at risk for, or in the early stages of, cancer being made to wait until the cancer was “more serious” before they received care. She also spoke of people being classified as “not worth saving” because they were too old, or considered too unhealthy, to be worth the time of government doctors implying that my grandmother, in her late eighties, wouldn’t have received care in Great Britain because she’s near the end of her life anyway.
My grandmother who still lives on her own, cooks for herself and her family and plays with her great-grandchildren.
My mother said a nurse at the meeting then spoke up and said that many of our communities’ clinics are inundated with Canadians (we live very close to the border) who come here for care because they either need it in a more timely manner than their government can provide it or because their government simply doesn’t think they need it.
This is a pretty stark perspective on life in a universal health care system. The examples of why that sort of system doesn’t work are all around us, yet some keep pushing it as though it were a good idea.
