I spend a lot of time on twitter's C-SPAN Washington Journal feed. There I joust with Conservatives and Libertarians over the understanding of what reality is and what a fact in proper context is. Sometimes the Cons and I actually discuss current events if and when we can conjoin universes.
When the subject is health care I constantly run into the meme, more implied than argued outright, that there is NO healthcare rationing in the good ole USA.
Follow me below the Orange Integral Sign Lovers where I call bullshit on the no rationing meme with a personal experience & unintentionally unearth tragedy.
I am, unfortunately, a typical sedentary American with a couch, TV and Netflix at home, a PC and very comfortable desk chair at work and a retro meat & taters dietary orientation. The upshot is that I have, among other maladies, high blood pressure. I am also some decades distant from being a kid; such that I am potential prey for strokes and heart-attacks on the prowl. So managing that BP is a real deal for me.
My Physician's Assistant (PA) recently put me on a new blood pressure medication called Edarbyclor. I started out with PA supplied samples (courtesy of Big Pharma ) and was taking and spread-sheeting my BP; the numbers were looking very good. So out came the prescription pad and off I went to Kroger's.
The folks at the Kroger pharmacy were as sympathetic as lowly paid retail workers can afford to be when they told me that my health insurance provider: United Profit Care (a pseudonym but I'm sure you know them), took one look at the PA's prescription and with raised blood pressure (remember Corps are people now) screamed NO, NO WAY, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN .
As soon as United Profit Care stormed off I was looking at a payment of $179 instead of the expected co-pay of around $30 for a month's pills. I voice-mailed my PA about United Profit Care's rationing move and asked her to find a medication the UPC rat bastards would co-pay for. But life is life and communications get muddled and unintended consequences sometimes forge reality.
So a few days later I get a call from Kroger saying my prescription was ready. I think, "Oh good my PA got a substitute lined up Unite Profit Care will accept." So off to the Kroger I go. Whereupon I am told that "No its the same $179 Edarbyclor prescription." I was low on the sample so I did what a lot of Americans do, I succumbed to the extortion of Big Pharma that happens when insurance companies fail in their duty to insure their clients. That's right I forked the $179 over as my blood pressure rose.
I was shell-shocked and bumbling in the checkout line and apologetically mentioned that the $179 prescription had disoriented me. The guy behind me said he understood but that I was lucky. "I have a cancer medication that costs me $7000/month," he said, "I cannot get any help for the cost and I'm a few months away from bankruptcy."
So I call BULLSHIT on the LIE that there is no rationing of healthcare in the good ole USA even among people who are clinging to the middle class with pretty decent employer sponsored health insurance.