Oped News adds the single payer option to the mix, but, of course, that's "off the table".
Something else is so far off the table, it's out of the room. That is the deliberate rationing of medical school training to keep the supply of doctors low and the salaries high.
My parents live in the capital city of the most populous state in this country, the best country in all the world, with the best health care in all the world. (According to the screamers).
They are not uninsured. They have Medicare and Cigna. Two insurance companies, which should ensure prompt and proper care, right?
Wrong. My Mom's cough was treated as pneumonia for a year, after which she was told that she probably had lung cancer and needed a bronchoscopy by a pulmonologist. She was given an appointment - four months later!
There's a delay in care in Canada? That's nothing compared to four months of believing that you have cancer before you can be seen!
And my Dad's cardiologist lives in San Francisco and only comes to Sacramento once a week. This is insane.
The AMA has a stranglehold on medical schools. For all the right wing screaming about free market medical care, you only hear a debate on whether someone having a heart attack should shop around or not.
What about supply and demand, the Holy Duo to the free market true believers?
With millions unemployed, and health care costs rising through the roof, and the only answer ever given to unemployment is "go back to school", why are there still so few medical schools that 1/3 of our doctors are imported and Americans who want to be doctors frequently have to resort to joining the military in order to be trained?
We should have a doctor on every corner, competing with each other.
Can you imagine the advertisements? "Special on colds today!" "Appendectomies on sale" "Buy a cardiac cath, get one stent free!"
Now that's free market competition!
Seriously, though, until we have more doctors the cost will not come down and it won't matter if everyone is covered when you have to wait months to be seen.
Let's insist that more medical schools training at reasonable cost be added to the debate.
