I should have it by now, right? Wrong! It took me two days to reach the doctor’s office; the first day I kept getting busy signals or no one answered. Weird. Then I heard nothing for three days. Last night I went over to the pharmacy. Yes, they had filled the prescription: 10 pills out of the 90 I was supposed to receive. They would get the remainder today, maybe. And they apologized for not notifying me. I left the ten pills and told them I would come back when they had the entire order. I don’t want to start taking this stuff and find out I can’t keep going. I hate to think how I would feel if this was urgent.

It is now seven (7) full days since I brought in the prescription and I still haven’t heard from them. Just wanted to keep you updated.

Last week I went to the dermatologist for one of those full body scans for skin cancer. I was given a clean bill of health and a prescription for something to clear up a condition I’ve had for years but only bothers me occasionally. This also required a blood test that I took and passed. Wanting to be a good, knowledgeable patient I looked up the drug in the formulary my insurance company sent me and it said I needed pre-approval. I called them; they gave me an 800 number to give to the doctor to call. I called the Dr’s office this morning and was told I should go ahead and submit the prescription to the pharmacy where it would be denied, and then the doctor could go ahead and fight the insurance company. This could take two or three days and I should call the office again if I don’t hear from them in that time. I’m glad this isn’t an emergency, but what if it was?

This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder how our healthcare system functions, at all. My time making all those calls doesn’t count, after all, I’m retired. But what about the pharmacist, the doctor’s office, and the insurance company? Surely this cannot be cost effective. This is why doctors need such large support staffs. They aren’t there for you; they are there to deal with the nonsensical rules set up by the insurance companies.

This is a nasty game that puts your life in the control of an insurance clerk following rules set up by a high priced accountant.

I began working on this post on July 10, inspired by a post on Wintersong, written more beautifully and  coherently than anything I produce. Today is July 16 and I haven’t heard from either the doctor or the pharmacy. I’m certainly glad my life doesn’t depend on this medication.

Critics of single-payer universal healthcare call it socialism and say it is not compatible with the capitalist system. I think the system we have in place now is a form of totalitarianism. I have no control over my healthcare, and worse yet, my doctor seems to have little or no control over my healthcare. Someone is certainly making money out of all of this, but I’m sure it’s not my doctor or any other health provider.

Every time I have dealings with the healthcare system I come away deeply aggravated. Whether it is just irritation at the amazing amounts of paper having no perceptible benefit to me; or the fact that my doctor’s recommendations have more to do with covering her ass than benefitting mine; or the additional fact that some new museums and art collections have been provided to us by the CEO of a healthcare organization, my annoyance knows no bounds. With all of the recent interest in universal health care I was beginning to feel some hope I might live long enough to see the mess straightened out. Today, this appeared in my email:

Dear Healthcare-NOW Network:  This is
where we are after three years of work. Steffie Woolhandler of PNHP and a
Member of the Board of Healthcare-NOW speaks the truth in the article below. We
have to work in a very focused way now. The presidential
candidates need to hear from us. The newspapers can be challenged.
I received a very supportive response from one newspaper writer after he failed
to mention single payer in his sweeping story about all of the corporate plans
for enriching the insurance companies and the rest of the industry. The
voters need to be loud and clear about single payer. And Congress needs
to hear that we want them to hold hearings
on single payer, H.R. 676. They need to hear it NOW during this small
window of opportunity . Don’t put it off. Here is a free
number you can use to call your Member and to call quite a few of the
presidential candidates who are in Congress. 1-866-338-1015

The majority of the
American people want a single-payer health care system ­ Medicare for all.

The majority of doctors want it.

A good chunk of hospital CEOs want it.

But what they want doesn’t appear to matter.

Why?

Because a single-payer health care plan would mean the death
of the private health insurance industry and reduced profits for the
pharmaceutical industry.

Presidential candidates John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary
Clinton, Mitt Romney and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger talk a lot
about universal health care.

But not one of them advocates for single-payer ­ because
single-payer too directly confronts the big corporate interests profiting off
the miserable health care system we are currently saddled with.

"Currently, we are spending almost a third of every health
care dollar on administration and paperwork generated by the private health
insurance industry," said Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, an Associate
Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians
for a National Health Program. "Countries like Canada spend about half that much
on the billing and paperwork side of medicine. If we go to a single-payer
system and are able to cut the billing and paperwork costs of health care, that
frees up about $300 billion per year. That’s the money we need to cover the
uninsured and then improve the coverage for those who have private insurance
but are under-insured."

There was a lot more in that email. If you want more information go to the Healthcare Now website: www.healthcare-now.org
or call 1-800-453-1305.

Let’s ask Hillary and Barak and John to prove to us they are not in the pockets of the healthcare industry by working for a single payer system.