Socialized Medicine?

[Lanore]

'Socialized Medicine? Bring It On

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
When I was in the Army and known to my friends as "Combat Cohen," I
could not get over the fact that, during an era of almost universal
military service, the American public supported high Pentagon spending
despite firsthand knowledge of astounding waste and theft. I cite, for
instance, the well-known and frequently witnessed pillaging of food by
mess sergeants. From tasting their stuff, I can say that theft is what
they did best.
Now I am similarly perplexed. Many, if not most, Americans have some
experience with our nation's mostly private health-care system. Yet
they still fall prey to the scare tactic that nothing -- but nothing
-- could be worse than a government takeover of the system. How things
could be worse than they are now, I cannot imagine.
In the past two months, I have spent many hours accompanying a loved
one to hospital emergency rooms -- all of them privately operated. The
rap on what is sometimes called socialized medicine is that if the
government ran the system, the wait would be interminable. Well, I am
here to tell you that even when the government does not run the
system, the wait can be interminable.
And uncomfortable. In one hospital there was not enough space in the
emergency room for all those seeking treatment. My friend got moved
from a bed -- where she was relatively comfortable -- to a wheelchair
in the hallway. There she sat, in agony, for about six hours.
Something similar happened at another emergency room, though this time
she was given a cot. The wait, though, was just as long.

The emergency room has become the equivalent of the family doctor. It
is where you go if you don't have a family doctor or if you do have a
family doctor -- and it's after hours or the weekend. It is also where
you sometimes have to go in order to be admitted to a hospital. The
staff is mostly courteous, sometimes wonderfully solicitous, but the
constant triaging of new people can put you on a treadmill to nowhere.
The emergency room is the great leveler of American life. Everyone
gets miserable treatment.
On Friday, Bill Moyers interviewed Wendell Potter about health care
and such matters. Potter is the former head of corporate
communications for Cigna, the nation's fourth-largest health insurer.
By his own characterization, he is one of those insurance executives
who flew from meeting to meeting in private planes and hardly ever
touched ground to meet real people. One day he did. He went to an
outdoor health clinic over the Virginia border from his home town in
Tennessee. This is what he told Moyers:
"What I saw were doctors who were set up to provide care in animal
stalls. Or they'd erected tents to care for people. . . . And I saw
people lined up, standing in line or sitting in these long, long
lines, waiting to get care. People drove from South Carolina and
Georgia and Kentucky, Tennessee -- all over the region."
Thank God we don't have socialized medicine.
Into this debate about the role of government in medical care, I come
jaded by experience. In addition to having been Combat Cohen, I was
also Cohen of Claims when I worked for an insurance company. This
means that whenever someone says something about "government
bureaucrats," I smile because I was once a non-government bureaucrat.
It is not government bureaucrats who say that certain treatments will
not be covered, and it is not the government that purges insurance
rolls of the sick or the old, and it is not the government that makes
money -- lots of money -- on health insurance. It is private
enterprise.
But as Potter points out, the insurance industry sets out to spook the
public with talk of "socialized medicine," "government bureaucrats"
and "government-run health care." My loved one recently had to return
to the emergency room because she was dehydrated. Her insurance
company listed the reasons someone could return, and dehydration was
one of them. They still denied her claim. The government had nothing
to do with it.
The ongoing health-care debate is complex -- not as interesting as
Michael Jackson or Sarah Palin. But in deciding what to do and who to
support in the current attempt to reform health care, don't rely on
insurance industry propaganda, but on your own experience. Recall the
last time you went to the emergency room and ask yourself whether the
government could possibly do a worse job. If the answer is yes, you
might need medical attention more than you realize.
coh...@washpost.com