Ray,
It's not the "market" as you call it. In the medical field we don't
have a free market. All professions try it on in order to magnify
their fees (and this includes opera singers and performers) but not
all are as successful as the medics in obtaining full
governmental-sanctification behind their qualifications and ability
to practice. The medical professions rule the roost in all health
schemes whether in "free enterprise" countries like America or in
countries like the UK with its notional "national health service".
Dentistry, being a cruder form of surgery than most, is allowed into
the medical fold on sufferance -- so long as dentists don't get too
uppity and charge fees which anywhere near approach those that
doctors and surgeons can charge.
As to the Supreme Court, it doesn't really matter what they might
decide about Obamacare. The medics will still prosper and control
their own field whichever way it goes.
Keith
At 07:06 29/03/2012, Ray wrote:
Last week I was brushing my teeth and found a peanut size abscess
above my molar on the right side. I know how dangerous an abscess
can be, especially for someone my age so I got immediately to my
Dentist who took x-rays and there was an abscess where my father had
one and which had broken into his sinus and caused him misery during
my high school years. An abscess also killed the composer Alban
Berg. So my dentist sent me to a specialist for a root
canal. He told me she would give me a good deal because I have no
dental plan. Can't buy one on my social security. Now I had a
root canal a couple of years ago and then the whole process was
$1500 for the tooth and the cap and everything. This root canal
today was different and cost as much as my going to and attending a
week long master class with the greatest voice teacher in the world
at Greve, Italy last summer. Well, no more of that
foolishness. No going to Oklahoma for family funerals either.
The difference is that I am now seventy and on social security.
As I got to the dentist this morning she was wonderful and killed
the nerve and gave me her special deal. $1700. Not bad for me
with $600 in the bank and my credit card maxed out. I just
laughed, then she told me that I needed to get the cap pronto
because the tooth was fragile and could split at any time just from
chewing. I called my dentist and asked the cost for his service
and the cap. $1500. Humm! That's the private market. What
the market can bear.
The Supreme Court is going to turn us back into this market because
the market knows best. But my root canal and cap has doubled in
the last two years. What was $1500 is now $3200 for one root
canal and cap. That same Supreme Court gave us the Iraq War and
hundreds of thousands of people dead. Maybe my $3200 is not as bad
as being dead. Some would disagree. They just don't see the point anymore.
I was told today by a relative that a short time before I had my
other root canal she could buy an implant to replace a lost tooth
for not much more than that $3200. I would look great with no
tooth and teaching all of these people looking like a thief or a
homeless person. In a world where image is crucial, that would
be a bummer.
Add that sad tale to this one. A new healthcare center opened
across the street from me. I needed a healthcare service close by
for Strep tests. The VA is too far away and the transportation too
expensive. l need strep medical tests for me and my
students. The tests four years ago with another Doctor, now
closed, was $35 for the test. This new doctor said that my
Medicaid would take care of it for a co pay of $35. "Great" and I
will send my students since strep is always a problem for
singers. Except two weeks later I get a bill for $190 through
the mail for the test. He claimed Medicaid wouldn't pay and so I
had to make up the difference. Actually, I paid the co pay and he
accepted it so I don't have to pay but he tried. That's the
market. Most people would just pay up and blame the
government. I checked. No students of mine are going there and
neither will I.
I used to watch the vultures around my Mom and Dad as they came with
every kind of scam imaginable to get the old folk's money. From
Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker to that fat preacher with his own
"Liberty" university in Virginia where they "liberated" old folks
from their money and then there was Oral, the old faker cry baby,
that I had experience with in college and the Flint Ridge land
people who took ten grand from my parents for 3 acres that then had
rent every year as a community fee on nothing and there were taxes
as well.
Meanwhile for brief moment I thought we could cut through all of
this and get a decent healthcare plan. Solve the expensive drug
problem and release us from having to spend all of our time just
managing our own health and accomplishing nothing except survival.
That's a really good use of Elders who have a lifetime of experience
that could contribute to the community. For a brief moment I
thought I could do my work, get by on Social Security, help the
young great voices born into homes with no resources for the
development of that talent for the good of the nation and the future
of our art. For a brief moment I thought we were going to have a
health care plan. Not a perfect one. We still had to kiss the
butts of the insurance companies and pay for their Mercedes but we
would have a health care plan and my wife would have decent coverage
instead of paying a hell of lot for junk and I could get my teeth
taken care of for a reasonable amount.
Meanwhile we have "Christians" on the Supreme Court doing away with
that again. The brigade of Opus Dei sitting on their little
punishment thigh chains to make sure they feel nothing compassionate
for anyone. But what's the excuse for the others? Those Attorney
Generals from states filled with people who just love to gamble and
make other people pay if they get sick. No pulling together as a
nation, a people to help the bulk of the poorly born but talented
population develop their lives. Now we know the wealthy are the
owners of the classical arts. You should have told that to Bela
Rozsa or his daughter Roxanna Lorton before they built that big
beautiful music school at TU. Graduates to nothing. No
jobs. No work. Just take another degree, but this is about
healthcare not education. Don't want to get distracted by my passion.
Doesn't it make anyone feel guilty that the serfs of China and
Russia have benefitted from group social help? Yes
socialism. While the average people here are no smarter, no more
sophisticated, nor more enterprising than they were when I was
growing up in 1950. That they haven't and won't come as far from
their beginnings as did their parents and their children will be
even more angry and impotent than they are but with their guns
hunting black hoodies to fill the holes in their own understanding,
self-worth and lost talent. Many of those people have great
talents, great voices, music in their souls but it will be
lost. They will never know the pleasure of Beethoven that my
grandson felt the other day at his last lesson as he explored the
Moonlight Sonata's obsession with tone, rhythm and sublime
beauty. Something that made Beethoven's life significant even as
he lost his hearing. They will never know that because this
system removes their ability to do the work and puts them in the
chains of drudgery, the worship of money and grinding poverty so
that a few can have everything.
I think we should organize a peeing brigade. Go to Washington and
pee on the steps of the Supreme Court for all of these Papists who
want to support the wealthy and large corporations and condemn women
to the whims of nature and genetics. Yes we would go to jail but
a thousand men peeing on the steps of the court would make Guinness
and would be in the history books for all time. Of course we have
that old saying from home that I should probably consider. Never
get into a peeing contest with a skunk. You'll lose
everytime. And it's too late to immigrate.
That's what I think as I meditate on the quality of this nation and
it's lost souls. What good is heaven if you never lived here in
the first place?
REH
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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