Daily Rant: Medicare
Originally posted on Facebook:
So, I get paid by the goverment for disability for my Arthritis (or trust me, I’d be at McDonalds or Blockbuster right now standing for 30 hours per week for minimum wage) and about 1/5 of that (around 80-100 dollars) automatically goes to Medicare.
So, you would think if I pay $100 per month, that it would cover a routine eye exam. WRONG! You think it would cover frames or lenses if I was nearsighted so I could drive and work. WRONG!
No, none of that. So, poor little me has to become poorer and ask family (who needs money) for help. I should be helping them out, not them helping me!
However, my money goes to the smoker who should have quit 20 years ago when the doctor put a hole in his neck to breathe. It goes to the car accident victim who lied and said he wasn’t drunk and normally speeds at 25 mph over the speed limit. It goes to someone who is on 10 prescriptions per day, half of which is to alleviate the side effects of the other half. It goes to cancer patients who may only have cancer because a vaccine wasn’t tested enough to see long term effects. It goes to the drug user who goes out of their house and does stupid things under the influence and then tells the doctors, “I’ve never done drugs.”
I’m sorry, but I really don’t care if someone smokes, does drugs (in their home), takes medicine, gets vaccines, drives recklessly, etc. What I can’t understand is why I’m paying for it and why a lot of people can’t learn from others’ mistakes before repeating it themselves.
I swear. The healthcare industry is just that: an industry. It seems to be controlled a lot by profits rather than really helping those in need and trying to prevent the need for healthcare in healthy people.
That’s why I wouldn’t vote for universal healthcare unless our healthcare system is overhauled.
:: First of all, I would like to be able to choose what the money I spend goes to.
It say, 50% of what I pay for medicare went into an account that I could access if I decide I wanna pay for my eye exam. I understand that I would have that less money go to me if I were in an accident or get sick.
I would also like that money to be able to go to over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines and other health related stuff, including condoms.
Then, if I have some money left over, I’d like to be able to give it away to a family member or friend in need. Such as for my grandpa’s Ensure which medicare won’t normal pay for and would rather let my grandpa die of starvation before he dies of cancer.
:: I would like to see people get treated for underlying causes with non-medicine treatments if possible, not just alleviating the symptoms.
Nowadays, if someone has a headache, they pop a pill. If they think they twisted their ankle, even when it’s broken, they pop a pill. Etc etc. Sometimes later when at the doctor’s office, they mention blurry vision, it might be written off as a side effect of a medicine when it could be something worse and can maybe be cured if caught early.
Why can’t more emphasis be put on fixing and ending problems rather than getting people hooked on expensive medicine?
:: I would like to see people not having to take expensive medicine to help with the side effects of other expensive medicine.
(this is a whole other tangent below, but oh well)
I was doing research on birth control a while back and someone had done a study to see the correllation between depression and the pill. They found out that the risk for depression was higher if there was a history of depression in their past or in their family. However, many of the patients weren’t told this. People were allowed to comment on the study and there were hundreds of posts with many saying their doctor didn’t tell them there were any risks, they were put on the pill to take care of acne problems, etc. Many of the women who said they became depressed after being on the pill said their doctor prescribed an antidespressant. Many just stopped taking the pill and were back to “normal” some didn’t find the correlation until they started it again and became depressed again.
Although the pill is not as expensive as say, heart medication, over time, it adds up and these women lost that time period of when they were depressed and can’t get it back.
This kind of stuff happens with other diseases, too. I always hear old folks in my hometown run down a list of medicines and what they are for and most are to take care of the last one’s side effects.
:: I would like to see more propaganda about not doing risky behavior and having better health.
I cheer on non-smoking ads, patch ads, the “don’t do things while drunk or under the enfluence” ads, condom ads, “get your kids outside to play instead of watch tv” ads, etc.
Propaganda is powerful. It should be used to get and keep people healthy. It should make us wanna go to the gym or go jogging. There should be a “jogging is sexy” ad from a shoe company. There should be ads that make fruits and veggies look delicious and again, relate it to sex somehow because sex sells.
However, propaganda has been selling the HPV vaccine and it’s driving me nuts! It MAY protect you from something you may never get if you practive safe sex and only 70-some percent of what it may prevent could lead to cancer. But they market it like a cancer cure or that you absolutely won’t get the STD or cervical cancer. Long term studies have not been done with the vaccine and who knows, it may lead to cancer, a shorter life span, infertility, etc.
Yet. governments are requiring the vaccine. Hmm…remember the movie “Children of Men”? “Why don’t women have babies anymore?” Maybe it’s from the government forcing experimental vaccines on children who have no say in the matter.
Which brings me to…
:: I would like to see vaccines tested more and see how interactions with medicines and genetic makeup may make certain vaccines unneccesary or, sometimes, deadly.
My Juvenile Ruematoid Arthritis might have been caused by a vaccine. 1 out of every 116 children is diagnosed with Autism and certain regular vaccines are know to cause side effects in up to 10% (I think) of the children who get them, one of the side effects was autism.
Hmm…I think someone out there was like, “10% isn’t much, and it might not be that high in the general population.” and then, governments and propaganda led to the normal routine of getting kids their shots. However, imagine if 10% of the paitents didn’t have just mild sickness or headache or pain at the injection site. That’s alot of side effects to “treat” and not cure when I believe they should find a way to test kids first and prevent side effects rather than cross their fingers or pray.
The MMR shot was forced on me (or I wouldn’t be allowed into 7th grade). I was seriously sick for a week and almost went to the emergency room.
Yeah, I hope to find out early enough whether my future kids will have a reaction like me before they get their shots. If they have the same reaction, I’m playing the religion card and telling the school it’s against my religion to vaccinate my kids. When they are older and know the risks, they can decide to have the vaccines if they want. But with the love of vaccines out there, they might someday be giving experimental AIDS vaccines, cancer vaccines, anthrax vaccines, etc. when most people can avoid getting AIDS and anthrax and do things to lower the risk of cancer (e.g. live a healthy lifestyle, avoid cancer causing agents, etc.). They already require chicken pox vaccines! I’m like, if one kid has it, put the other kids with them. That, to me, is a better why to build antibodies against the disease. Same with colds. The more you keep away from germs, the harder your body will have to work to kill them. As you get older, it gets even harder, so build antibodies when you are growing, not when you are deteriorating.
There’s other crap, but this note is long enough…
October 12th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Isn’t it Medicaid? I thought Medicare was for people sixty five or older.
October 12th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Nope. I think it’s because of the Social Security benefits.