"Socialist" Health Care

I am truly puzzled by the pseudo-discussions raging in the US about "sozialized" health care and "death panels". I was born American, but have lived in Germany for over 30 years.

Sure, our health care system could be better. But compared with the US, it is indeed one of the great things our civilization has brought fourth! An American in France has blogged about this as well, and she explains what the medical panels are for. Not for determining who dies, but for seeing how severe your sickness is, and whether you get to go on sick leave!

As it stands in the US, so many are without insurance! They doctor themselves, only going to seek medical care when a condition has turned severe. My aunt in the US - with no health insurance - called a friend to take her to the hospital when she felt heart pains instead of an ambulance. The friend called the ambulance, but it was too late, she was dead on arrival.

Here in Germany we have multiple schemes, and we bitch and moan about the costs and the waiting times and the co-payments on medicine and whatnot. And sure - the more advanced (= more costly) procedures are perhaps only done on people with private insurance.

But if you are sick, even deathly sick, you don't have to worry about your family having to sell all your assets just to pay the nurse. And that is a big, big advantage.

There was a post in the US in Twitter, supposedly by Sarah Palin but arguably done by someone else, concerning these so-called "death panels". What it appears to be, is that there are provisions for people to be informed about end-of-life choices. Do they want palliative medicine, do they want to be at home, CHOICES. Palin (or her ghostwriter) was concerned that people would be coerced into choosing a convienent death. What is this woman's take on the world?

Of course we have things like Living Wills - when you are still able to decide what you want, you write it down and then caretakers have to abide by that!

Why doesn't the American public and media *inform* themselves before they write such nonsense?