Should Hospitals be NATIONALIZED?

The symbol of medicine comes from a small town located on the Peloponnese in Greece known as Epidaurus. People would travel there to pray for their health to Asclepius (Greek: Ἀσκληπιός) who was the god of medicine in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Asclepius represented the healing aspect of the medical arts. They would pray to his daughter Hygieia who was the goddess of the community and was the personification of health, cleanliness, and sanitation. The symbol of the staff and the serpent held by Asclepius became the medical symbol we still use today and his daughter’s name lives on as maintaining good hygiene.

Yet something is seriously wrong in medicine today. Hospitals are more interested in making money than helping people. My mother had an issue with her back last year. The hospital released her only to rehab. At rehab, the doctor changed all her medicine without asking and created all sorts of problems. They change medicines based on how to up the bill to the government. When we tried to take her out, they said we could not or else Medicare would not pay for anything. Her regular doctor said he had no authority to overrule them.

This time, we rejected rehab and the hospital refused to release her because there was no money in that. The social worker came and tried to push us into that and my sister asked her if she were your mother, would you do that? The social worker did not say anything but shook her head no. Again, the hospital refused to release her claiming they found something else endlessly. When she entered, she could walk. After four weeks of keeping her in bed and on her back, she became weaker and weaker all because they gave her the wrong antibiotic, to begin with. They refused to let her go unless we agreed to something that allowed them to still make money.

Medicine has degenerated into a business. Hospitals are desperate to put private practice out of business and absorb all the money for themselves. The Democrats keep pushing for universal healthcare without addressing the very reasons this entire system is out of control and the cost of healthcare is the fastest rising sector of the economy for the past two decades. My insurance doubled after Obamacare. I had to pay for little children I did not have. Obamacare has been a complete disaster reflecting that the cost of healthcare has continued to rise faster than inflation.

Bernie Sander’s proposals were really absurd. Even Hillary Clinton dismissed Bernie’s push on “Medicare for All” as politically unrealistic. Now the Democrats have silently admitted that Obamacare is a disaster. Privately, they say the experience of trying to make private markets work in ObamaCare and its total failure has changed their perspective completely realizing that the likelihood of achieving universal coverage is far more difficult.

The Democrats are now backing the Center for American Progress (CAP) plan, which they call Medicare Extra for All. This is now a proposed government-run health insurance for everyone. They will allow people to still have the option of obtaining coverage from an employer.

This new government system is being backed by the three main probable candidates for the 2020 Presidential Election – Senators Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). All three are backing this new push Medicare for All bill by Bernie Sanders simply because it sounds good on the surface and none of them really care about the people or they would truly investigate why healthcare costs rise faster than anything else in the economy instead of subsidizing this uncontrollable industry.

While this all sounds very nice, many doctors refuse to take Medicare patients because of the reduced fees and wait long periods to get paid. The only possible way to address the problem is to NATIONALIZE hospitals. All the other nations who have free healthcare as in Britain, overlook the fact that the hospitals are NOT private. As long as hospitals get paid whatever they demand and there are no checks and balances even as we have on Utilities, then any attempt to create universal healthcare will fail.

Either the government NATIONALIZES all hospitals or it treats them as monopolies and they must be regulated and no prices may be increased without proving just cause the same as utilities.