This is rather long, so I apologized in advance…

I have experienced a single payer system. Italy. Two years ago, my wife was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer after a five year remission (three mets so it was pretty advanced). This was ten days before a planed two week Med cruise. In a “fuck it all moment,” we decided to go ahead with the trip- Italy was was lifetime dream destination for my wife. She was symptomatic but seemingly healthy enough to travel. We kept our bad news from family (the plan was to tell them upon our return) and flew to Barcelona to embark on the ship.

About half way through the cruise, my wife started deteriorating. Once I convinced her to see the ship’s doctor, her liver started to fail and we were fairly kicked off the ship in Venice and transported by ambulance (with full siren) to Ospidale del Angelo in Mestre, Venice. It was a clean, modern facility. Unfortunately, very few English speakers. I was unable to communicate to them what I knew of my wife’s condition. After tests, she was admitted to what I now know was a hospice ward. Due to her condition, her doctor would not allow her to fly on less than an air ambulance. I tried to arrange this through my insurance provider (Kaiser Permanente) and actually had an aircraft and medical staff on standby to get my wife home. However, after a conference call between the Italian docs and Kaiser docs in Sacramento, Ca. (Kaiser provided the translator), it was determined she would not survive the flight (this was a business jet and would take 16 hours and four refueling stops). “No hope.” That’s what her doctor told me in his limited English. My wife passed seven days after being admitted.

Those seven days: I was trying to communicate with staff- only one nurse spoke passable English and he was either busy or off duty 16 out of 24 hours so I couldn’t get through to them to call my wife’s oncological team in CA so they could coordinate treatment. Actually, none of the staff even tried to talk to me, although I did attempt to use Google translate on an Ipad. One did loan me a power converter so I could keep my smart phones and Ipad charged up and was able to keep my family updated, not to mention communicating with Kaiser’s liaison. Thinking back now that I can think and remember more clearly, the only treatment they administered was a hydrating drip and vitamin K for the liver. As far as I can tell, they made no attempt to at the very least stabilize her for the trip back the states. I mentioned earlier that she was admitted to a hospice ward. I came to that conclusion due to watching five people die on that ward during the stay, the fifth being my wife. To this day, I am convinced she was “death paneled.” They did request a PET scan, which I refused as she had undergone one the day before we departed. They did a CT scan instead. I practically begged them to contact her oncologist in California, which was met with mute stares.I’m pretty sure the doctors and staff were not accustomed to a very involved care-giver husband. So for seven days treatment consisted of water administered by me, Vitamin K drip and in the end, morphine. No food to speak of -she stopped eating after day one, but they did feed me (lived in the hospital until my kids arrived, when I rented a B&B close by the hospital).

I received the bill via registered mail after my return to the states. 4000 Euros. A bargain, I suppose, when compared to the $75000 bill for my wife’s prophylactic bi-lateral mastectomy back in 2010. I don’t know what her eight rounds of chemo and 25 rounds or radiotherapy was. My laundry bill in Venice was 30 euros, kindly arranged by the two Foreign Patient Liaison staffers assigned to us. They also found the B&B for me. They were very nice to me. Wish they could have had some medical training to help me communicate, though.

So you must wonder what my opinion is via the single payer…nice if you have broken arm. But serious illness? I’m not so sure. And from what I know of the Canadian system, which is the system most Americans point to in this debate, the wait times for non-emergency appointments are astronomical. And it’s not “free” anywhere. I was in BC Canada a few years ago and paid a VAT tax of 14% on some gift items. In Ireland, there just last week, it’s 23% on taxable items. I know this to be true because I’m in the process of filling out the Irish paperwork to be reimbursed from the receipts I saved from the trip.

I the US will adopt the single payer system. It’s inevitable, really. But I don’t think we’re going to like it very much and God help you if you find yourself in a dire medical predicament…there are no “heroic measures” in this system.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Ozoneranger.

Billy_T wrote:

Very true about those narrow roads. I was warned, and made sure I rented a very small car. Was also warned about the tour buses, and that if you want to drive the Ring of Kerry — one of the most beautiful places on earth — you should always make sure you go in the same direction as those tour buses. I elected instead to get on one of those buses, temporarily stopping my self-drive travel.

It was a great idea, leaving the driving to others, and being much higher up in the bus meant I could see over the stone walls which are everywhere.

Also learned that you can’t really depend on maps to get from A to B. You need nearly play by play directions, because there are so many road digressions — which kinda fits in with Irish Story-telling itself.

Yep, it takes time to get your Guinness. Mostly, because of pride. They want it to look as good as it tastes, I’m guessing.

Also, I stayed in B and B’s too, except in Dublin. And they were almost all working farms. I had the best breakfast of my entire life at one in Grange, near Ardmore. Everything was home-made and beyond “locally sourced” as is the current rage (luckily) in America now. It was sourced from the working farm itself. The bread, the bacon, the milk, the yogurt, the pancakes. Nothing could have been “fresher” there.

Only had one tricky moment where I forgot to drive on the left side of the road, pulling out of the small “mall.” The driver on the other end of my goof was decent, after slamming on his horn. He must have thought, “stupid Americans.” But he was decent and I didn’t make that mistake again. Ireland was so beautiful and the people were amazing. In shape, too. They walk or bike everywhere, it seems. You rarely run into “obese” Irish.

Great minds think alike, Billy. We did the Ring in a tour bus, also. That drive would have been just too much.

For navigation, we used a Garmin-type GPS and our phones…very handy for the upcoming roundabouts…and I had a great navigator in the left seat. I adjusted to driving on the left fairly quickly after hitting two curbs and hitting the wrong motorway in the first 20 minutes. Really, you situational awareness is razor-edged. More often than not, I was drifting to the left side….

Guinness…been drinking that for a couple of decades. I was aware of the nitrogen waiting thing. The only problem with that brew is being too filling for meals. Two is the limit for me. And speaking of food, the best meal I experienced was a Guinness stew in Sligo…

Oh, apologies to WV and Waterfield…my replies above are to you guys.

We did the self drive, too. My favorite was the Ring of Kerry. Absolutely spectacular. We also spent two days at Ashford Castle, next to Cong. “The Quiet Man” with John Wayne was filmed there.

Some Irish folk will take Trump expats, too. I just got back from there two days ago.

Epic vacation, great people, great beer…even the driving on the left from the right seat was enjoyable…

http://evoke.ie/news/irish-news/inishturk-island-welcomes-donald-trump-exiles

wv wrote:

Ozoneranger wrote:

As for the influence of money on elections..Naw. Coporations, unions and PACS (Soros and Koch Brother types) do try, but on the whole, fail miserably….

Where money has huge influence is AFTER the elections are over- when the winners take office. That’s when the bribery, er, lobbying truly begins.

Well, i disagree on the pre-election money thing. I think money rules American elections. Obama, Clinton, Bush, all had the backing of huge corporations, Banks, etc. Subtract that money and they lose.

But on the part we agree on “money has a huge influence AFTER the elections” — Do you agree that is the PRIVATE SECTOR bribing (lobbying) the Government politicians?

PS — We both know (from ye olde political battles on destroyed boards of yore) that we have fundamental differences, Ozone. You are a person of the Right, and I’m a person of the Left. And i dont want to re-argue old stuff. I am interested in somethin different though. I been trying to figure out where the differences between leftists and rightists really start. I bin tryin to trace things back to the roots. Where do things really start to branch away. In that light, let me ask you this fundamental question — Why is it ok to even HAVE terribly-poor people and super-rich people? How do you justify a system that permits/encourages that outcome? Why dont you think a system that allows that is evil ?

w
v
Louis Brandeis: “We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

Your first question…yes, the private sector does bribe politicians. Absolutely. I’ve seen it (or it was described to me in detail by a real estate mogul I was doing IT work for). But I’ll expand on that…anyone who has ANY political agenda contributes to the gravy train.

Second question…I need to think about that in order to give you an intelligent answer. But I’ll give you a morsel to start. First off, I don’t see it as evil. It’s amoral. Another way I look at it is to compare the poor in this country to say, the poor in Africa, Central/South America (seen it up close there and it is grinding) and some places in Asia. I mean, the poverty level isn’t even close. I look at things from that perspective and conclude that I just don’t envy the rich or pity the working poor. My pity is reserved to the sick, those destroyed by illness, alcohol and drug abuse. And especially the children who are stuck in those horrid situations.

I’ll expand on this when I have more time.

PS You’re a good guy, WV. It would be fun to quaff a few with you.

I’ll chime in here.

If you told me six months ago that Trump would be the GOP nominee, I would have laughed in your face. Which is something I never, ever do to anyone. It’s just bad form. The thought of him as the face of the nation makes me want to puke.

Still, I’m astonished he’s come some far, given how clueless he is on most things (defense, foreign policy, trade). I’m equally surprised how Bernie has lasted so long considering his cluelessness on banking and the economy. That was made abundantly clear in his Daily News interview. I almost felt sorry for the old sod as he repeatedly whiffed at the softballs he was thrown. Hillary? The Power-Hungry Pandering One? To be honest, she would be the safest bet to keep the ship at an even keel for four years until someone better comes along in 20.

That said, I think anyone who thinks our election process is rigged, as Bernie claims, is dead wrong. He’s a walking contradiction of his own claims. It’s all about anger and frustration on both the left (with Millennials and old lefties like WV and Zooey, haha!) and the right (older white middle-class voters and my Dad). In the long haul, I think this is a good thing for our democracy. People reconnecting with the political process…misguided as the are.

This election cycle has been truly bizarre, and in a macabre way, entertaining. I think there’s an old Chinese saying: May you live in interesting times.

We certainly do.

I take voting seriously. So I’ll probably sit out the presidential and concentrate on local and state.

bnw wrote:

wv wrote:

Well, ironically, i don’t see any ‘evidence’ to back
up any of those claims. Where is the actual evidence
to back up those claims?

w
v

I only posted the opinion portion of his column. The first part that set the stage for his opinion I did not post. Sorry about that. If you didn’t read it he gave examples leading up to his opinion piece.

In my opinion Gobry nailed it. Self interest whether from money or politics has corrupted science. We see examples of it all the time. Two of the most recent are the DeNiro film pulled from the Tribeca Film festival in which a government scientists participated in the destruction of data concerning vaccine safety to publish a fraudulent narrative. The data showed the multiple vaccine shot MMR (Measels, Mumps, Rubella) caused unquestionable harm to boys and negroes ranging from a lowering of IQ scores to severe physical disability. One scientist involved kept his copy of the data and documents and went public. Another example is a study from 50 years ago involving thousands of people in mental institutions and nursing homes placed on restrictive diets to see the effects of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oil. The study was of the gold standard variety due to the huge number of participants and the restrictive nature of their meals and the duration of the study being 5 years. The study was to prove the health benefits of vegetable oil and was undertaken by a friend and colleague of the saturated fat is bad for you guru Ancel Keys. What became quite apparent was the vegetable oil diet increased the death rate of the participants from causes other than heart disease and significantly overall compared to those not on a diet using vegetable oil. Since the data was irrefutable the study was purged and only became known due to the son of the lead researcher combing through the contents of his deceased fathers home to find the data in a dusty box in the basement. The study concluded in the early ’70s as the saturated fat is bad for you fad began to be saturated throughout our culture.

BNW…You referred to “Vaxxed”. Are you saying the message in the film has validity?

This is looking like “Draft Day.”

wv wrote:

Zooey wrote:

They just gave up three starters, though.

I dunno. I was warming up to Lynch at 15.

In any event, this tells us that they aren’t in love with Mannion.

Do they cut Mannion? Trade him?

What if Mannion outplays the rookie QB
in preseason?

I really hope that happens…just to make Snisher look like idiots…

I, too, vote on policy first. Then electibility (did I just invent a word?).

And so I’m astonished at the rise of Trump and Sanders. I mean, Trump seems to have convinced his followers that he could just wave his magic Trump wand, add a few crumbs of his power of personality, and poof! All of our problems are solved. None of those voters seem to understand civics, the three branches of government and how they (sometimes) work in concert. Sanders has the same problem. If elected, he has a rats chance in hell of getting 10 percent of his agenda passed, even with a Democrat-controlled congress. And his crew, mainly the young ones, are every bit as clueless as Trump’s are about how a republic works versus Scandinavia, of all places.

I think you’re right; it’s emotion born of anger. And that’s a scary thing.

wv wrote:

I get the “want to download?…are u feelin lucky punk?” messages
every day.

So far, i have resisted.

w
v

Resistance is futile.

sdram wrote:

I had windows 7 previously. I got tired of the download messages too so just finally did it. My wife had done it on her machine about three months ago.

It took forever to download and then download the updates. And the download didn’t work correctly the first time so two evenings just to download. Once I got it downloaded The installation and transition was pretty painless from Win 7.

BNW – So you’re saying even though I downloaded their free W10 version, I’m only getting it for a finite time period?

Bad advice. Microsoft support for XP ended a couple of years ago. That makes your PC vulnerable to all kinds malware\spyware.

I rather like Win10 and it was easy to install. Very little user intervention. I recommend to my clients (been in IT for 15 years) to upgrade. Beats the hell out of 8\8.1. Marginally beats 7.

Living in Cali, we don’t get any snow here. Just boring rain and boring sunshine. Not much in between.

I’ve always thought being snowed in would be a good reason to drink a lot and have lots of sex.

Johnson, despite his horrible game in my presence at the Niner game.

I think the Rams MUST sign one of them before the start of FA. Jenkins, I’ve heard, is determined to test the market no matter what.

I’ll chime in here, sitting on my perch in the BA. When the smoke started about a possible return to LA, I was skeptical, to say the least. I mean, the Lou was a pretty damned good football town- supporting a ghastly product for years. The lease was ridiculous. I also thought the draconian consequences of going rogue would work against SK. And then the relocation fee. I sure was wrong on that.

But in the end, the Rams are a corporation. Amoral. As. Hell. And corporations will do what corporations do. I think once the CB rejected the Rams upgrade plan for the EJD, it was game over. SK found a way to solve the NFL’s LA problem and at least double the value of his investment. I get that. I understand that.

But I still have a lot of empathy for the St.Louis Rams fans. They got fucked over on a business deal.

One last note- I don’t spend much on NFL (or any other sports team) products outside of The Ticket. Maybe a new hat every five years. Most of the gear I have for the Rams, Giants and Sharks were given to me as gifts. That won’t change any time soon.