Socialized Medicine Just Makes More Sense

[dreamingfifi]

 I’m pretty conservative. Especially about money. All of us Albini kids are. I was raised to be thrifty, and I watch my finances like a hawk. And, I’ve come to a realization.

Socialized medicine isn’t just cheaper for the patients, it’s cheaper for the entire country.

I’ll show you my conclusion by going over a common scenario, a personal anecdote, and a metaphor.

We’ve all gone to work and met a coworker who was miserably sick, but couldn’t go home because they can’t afford it. Their work suffers. They make mistakes. Next thing you know, you and everyone else they’ve been in contact with is also sick and in the same pickle. Everyone’s work suffers. The company loses precious time and money. More and more people get sick. If that first person could have afforded to take the time off and go to the doctor – this common scenario could be avoided. Now imagine that the sick person works at a fast food restaurant or as a cashier or any of the many jobs that involve dealing with hundreds of people everyday – they’re passing on that illness to all of those people and also not doing their job as well. The company may lose customers literally – to disgust, illness, or in worse cases - death.

In 2010, my foot hurt so bad I could hardly walk. I went to the clinic, they wanted to run a bunch of tests that I couldn’t afford even with insurance, so I took the $80 walking cast instead and waited for it to get better. It did after a couple weeks. But, the pain kept coming back. That cast got a lot of use. After walking a couple miles, my knees and hips would ache, and I started finding any excuse to not walk places because it hurt too much. Every finals week, after typing furiously on papers, my wrists and shoulders and elbows would ache, and I’d be all wrapped up in ace bandages trying to treat my painful joints. I became very sedentary, because moving HURT. Then in 2015 I tried to hold down a job, wrapping meat at a local supermarket. This is when the problem became obvious to me. The first week, I thought that the pain I felt in every single joint was because I’d been sedentary for so long. So I pushed through it. I moved more and more slowly, and by the time I got home from work, I’d be in such intense pain that I’d reach the couch and not move again if I could help it. After 2 months of this, I finally quit the job. With that, I qualified for Medicaid, and I went in to find out what was wrong with me. The government had to pay for the many expensive tests and hospital visits. They tested me for all kinds of joint-related illnesses, focusing mainly on the pain in my hands and wrists, which turned out to be a red-herring. Turns out, I had a simple vitamin D deficiency, known by the colloquial name of “rickets,” which is because of my lactose intolerance (which turned out to be a full-blown allergy, and leaving it untreated for most of my 20’s meant that it had the opportunity to get much MUCH worse), the fact that I couldn’t go outside very much, and the higher longitude means less sunlight over-all. Back in 2010, if I could have afforded those tests, (hundreds of dollars instead of the thousands later) I would have started taking vitamin D supplements and been spared years of pain and probably could have kept that well-paying job too, and we wouldn’t have had to rely on foodstamps for the year that Sophie was looking for a new job. All in all – we ended up costing the government a lot more money because the early tests and treatment were beyond our reach. If we had had Medicaid back in 2010, then all of this could have been avoided.

What do these stories have in common? They both involve short term expenses that were avoided that caused much more expensive consequences down the line. The reason that I didn’t get those tests done and that you or a fellow coworker doesn’t take time off to go to the doctor is the same reason – doing the prudent thing, the thing that saves more money in the long run, in our current system, is punished. You only get help when the problem is so out of control that it costs thousands of dollars and is an emergency. Or you die. Whichever comes first.

Since getting on Medicaid, I got the first dentist check-up in 6 years. I got my eyes checked and a new pair of glasses. My health is finally improving, and I’m finding out about all of the health problems that were slowly spiraling out of control in my 20’s because I couldn’t afford to go to the doctor. And I can’t help but think about how much better my life would have been and how much cheaper treatment would be if the first time I noticed symptoms I went in and got it dealt with instead of ignoring it and hoping that it would go away on its own because I couldn’t afford to go to the doctor.

So, I think that giving everyone cheap, easy access to medical help would be less expensive for the government, and in turn, the taxpayers in the long-run. Also, with more people healthy and able to hold down jobs, we’d have more people buying and selling services, making a healthier economy, and more people able to pay taxes.

Here’s a metaphor that makes it pretty clear. You give your car regular tune-ups, oil changes, go to the mechanic any time your car makes a funny noise. Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes it’s not, but the problem was caught early so fixing it isn’t a big deal. Barring an accident, it runs for you like a dream for 30 years. If you didn’t do that, within a couple years your car’s engine seizes and self-destructs. You’re faced with a terrible decision – pay to replace the motor (thousands of dollars) or pay for a new car (also thousands of dollars). The American people are the car. How should we be treated, to make us less expensive and more useful?