Keith Palmer and ObamaCare

   
     Well, there are lots of good topics out there but I have just not been invested in any of them to start up an entry.  Good thing I know a few people who know more about the world than me and who take the initiative to write it up.  This entry is from our newest blogger, our friend from America's frozen top hat, The Arctic Char.  Before you read on, here is a Canadian Joke.  Read it out loud in your best Canadian accent and see if you can figure it out.  At the bottom of the entry I will have the American translation.

M R DUCKS
M R KNOT
M R SEW
CEDAR WINGS?
WHALE OIL BEEF HOOKED!
M R DUCKS
 
He writes. . .

Back longer ago than I care to admit, I was in the wedding party for Keith Palmer's first marriage and he was in mine. The weddings took place about two months apart, the same difference as we were in age. We both worked at the same company and married women who also worked there. We were both immigrants to the country just north of here that I mentioned in my previous guest blog. Our parents came to give us a better life, his from the Republic of South Africa and mine from Scotland.

I moved and remarried, he remarried and moved, the years passed and we lost touch with each other, until his second-wife called me a few months back.

About two years ago, I could feel a lump on my neck about the size of a second Adam's apple. I was sent to an Ear. Nose and Throat doctor who drew a sample. The biopsy result was cancer. That was on a Friday. Six days later, on Thursday, I was being seen by an Otolaryngologist at a respected hospital in a nearby major city who determined that the primary source of the cancer was in my tonsil. Five days later, on Tuesday, I was under the knife, having a tonsillectomy. Last week, I went for a CatScan at eighteen months after that operation: N.E.D.... No .Evidence of Disease.

My first hint that the medical industry had gone awry in my former homeland was when I found a "poor me" online forum for adults who had had their tonsils removed. Having your tonsils out at any age must be painful. But as an adult it is a killer. Swallowing is very, very painful and you don't realize how many times you swallow at non-meal times until every time it happens, it hurts. Buying into the ice-cream fallacy, I had stocked up. One helping was enough to cure me of that. All dairy products leave an unpleasant film in your mouth that only swallowing will allay. But every time I swallowed, it hurt.

The forum's contributors were at various stages of preparation and recovery and I learned that at about day eight the pain subsided enough that it was safe to wince down some vegetable soup. One contributor was a woman from the socialist enclave just north of here; she had waited six months for her day of surgery to arrive. Astounded, I contacted still-trapped family members to see if this was typical. Yes, they replied, we've just gotten used to it.

Keith Palmer, living not in a remote perma-frost region of the country but in a suburb of the largest English-speaking city, also developed a lump on his neck about two years ago. The doctors hummed and hawed and had it biopsied and sent for tests. Then, unsure, they sent him to a different group of hummers and hawers who had the lump biopsied. They concluded that it was a lump. After three months, when the lump had grown from the size of his Adam's apple to the size of an orange, they concluded that maybe they should try radiation and chemotherapy.

Too late, they began treatment. As I was going for my one-year, so-far-so-good, clean bill of health, Keith Palmer died the day after his birthday in the summer of this year.

My medical treatment has run about $60,000. My share, between deductibles and premiums has been about $6,000. Keith Palmer's medical treatment was "free", through the country's socialized medical plan.

Obamacare is not simply the fallacy that medical attention will be "free". It will still cost a million dollars a day to run a hospital. Doctor's will still earn well-deserved, comfortable livings and the drug companies will prosper. Who covers these "free" costs? You and I, the average tax-paying citizen.

However as yet, the un-realized consequence of Obamacare will be the quality of medical service. Maybe not in the short term, but eventually. Many Americans, after learning where I came from, would talk about the long waits to get questionable medical coverage. I listened and didn't argue, but didn't really think it true. It wasn't that way twenty years ago when I left. But it is now.

Ask Keith Palmer's widow.

     Well, on that sad yet scary note, first I'd like to say sorry boot your friend Char.  Did I use that term correctly? Boot, as when a Canadian says I'm oot n a boot? Crazy Canucks!  And people say Yankees talk funny?
Anyway, I think the average American with health insurance that can afford it now realizes how bad it could get.  But the average American with NO insurance, no way of getting insurance or the even harder working American who works 3 jobs but none of the jobs offers insurance see this as a way to get free insurance as compared to NO free insurance.  The sad part is there are more of the non-insured Americans than the insured Americans.  To think about it, my 4 closest friends, one falls into the first category with insurance but the other three fall into the no insurance group. 
    By that type of thinking, at least for me, that is a 2 to 3 ratio.  If all 5 of us went out and voted to keep Obama in office and push forward with the Obamacare Health Plan, it looks like I will be taking more vitamins and exercising more cause I won't be getting any medical attention. 
     Maybe if we are lucky, TCY will be in inspiring mood and will bless us with a reply?

Canadian Joke Translation
M R DUCKS - There are the ducks.
M R KNOT - They are not.
M R SEW - They are so.
CEDAR WINGS? - See their wings?
WHALE OIL BEEF HOOKED! - Well I'll be fucked!
M R DUCKS - They are ducks.

Yeah, it took me a while to figure out what the fuck WHALE OIL BEEF HOOKED  was.  But I will got a good chuckle out of it.