A Militant Health Care System

The more I need, experience, and observe America's health care network, the more my jaw drops to the ground. I can think of only one word to describe the clunky, over-burdened, and corrupt system. MIDDLEMEN, or should I say middle-groups, middle-communes, middle-companies, middle-corporations, middle institutions, whatever entity you can think of that has their fingers in the health care pie. You see the rich get rich in America on health care. Ever increasingly it seems like doctors are just punching the clock, drawing that paycheck, and going home to phat lives. Everyone in benefiting, except the patients in dire need of expert services. Recently I visited Carolina Eye Associates in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Now I don't like Pinehurst anyway. Although golf is a relaxing game, people that walk around in pink and green Izods, hitting a little white ball, and forging business deals in my eyes are rich. Not many people can afford to play golf. There are public courses, but you have to admit golf is attached at the hip to the country club, and the country club is a thing of the privilidged. Most folks can not afford to join a country club. I did enjoy watching a golf tournament in Pinehurst years ago, but for me it is not a lifestyle. Judging from that big, white, house in the middle of green fields, it reminds me too much of a plantation. There are still African-American 'slaves' toting barges and lifting bales, albeit in the hotel dining room. If you shuck and jive enough and can fetch mint juleps, you could work there too. Not me. That is why I left the South to go to the Midwest to work on my DMA degree in music composition. Seems 500 miles and stretching the Macon County Line, all that old south horse shit just kind of dries up. It took a few years to acclimate to a land locked existence known as the testing ground of commercial America, but I did.
Anyway, I don't like Pinehurst. It represents something to me I have always rebelled against, rule by the rich. My father successfully had his cataracts removed at this clinic, so I decided I would give it a try. I have no health coverage, because my cruise ship gig is in the waiting. As soon as you walk off the ship, you have no coverage. It is difficult to get specialty eye care on a cruise ship, so I had to come home for a while. It has been a long journey, but I ended up back at Duke, where I was diagnosed and treated for keratoconus when I was seventeen. I couldn't get in to see the doc there it seems, because my 20 or so odd years of medical records including cornea transplant surgery didn't suffice. The lady at the desk where I repeatedly tried to schedule an appointment kept telling me I needed a referral. Since I have been going to Duke since I was 17, this pissed me off. That is why I tried Carolina Eye Associates. $350.00 later I was in no better shape. The initial visit with all the tests cost that, and I walked out with no solution. They wanted to fit me with contact lenses, but they repeatedly told me they could not guarantee they would help. That would cost another $400.00. I opted out. I went back out on ships with a bum eye to save some scratch. When I came back I got in my truck and drove 1,200 miles to Louisville, Kentucky to see my old eye surgeon. With his referral I got into Contact Lens at Duke. Kind of a long way to drive for a referral! Well, I did it to assure if and when the contacts don't work, he could give me another cornea transplant. Mission accomplished.
Anyway having no health coverage is a blaring reality, one which seems to surprise and even stump the medical system. How can something get so far out of whack? Here is a specialty service you need. Here is the cost of the service. Pay for the service. Insurance. Oh, surgery. Big dollars. HMO's that, like a militant government, tell you who can be your surgeon. We the people are entitled by our Constitution to freedom and the pursuit of happiness. Although our current regime has moved us further and further away from these ideals, they are still the law. Our health care system is an atrocity. The big super-power of the US of A is floundering like a dying fish in full view of a burgeoning world. People are flying all over the world to find the health care they need at an affordable price rendered by professionals that actually care about their field and the patients.