What to say to my Dad?

[gorfle]

So, as usual, I go round and round with my conservative family members.

The other day my Dad posts on my Facebook wall an article about how a public option was slipped into the health care reform bill.

I said, "Great! I support a public option!"

His brother says, "Yeah, you'll love it until you get it and then you'll want the old system back."

I said, "Seems to work well for the Canadians."

My Dad said, "That's why you wait 6 months to see a doctor there."

I said, "Beats waiting forever if you're poor."

He said, "Well they just go to the ER and get treated for free".

I'm inclined to say, "Well, if you're paying for it anyway, why wait for it to be a crisis before you pay?"

What do you think I should say?

[leftstreet]

1. You should say: 'Why do they fortify cereal with vitamins, but not beer?'

There is no point in arguing with these guys.

[T Wolf]

7. It is not logical to try and argue logically with someone who does not "do" logic.

Facts will not convince them (the waiting time BS).

Appealing to their humanity or compassion will not convince them (for they have none).

It is a waste of time and will only piss you off. Either ignore it (if possible) or remove it (if necessary).

[Lone_Star_Dem]

14. I'm using that the next time I'm up against one of these types.

I agree there's no point in arguing with certain people. I've been there, done it, and wasted enough of my life on people who simply refuse to see things from any angle other than their own. From now on I'll simply say, why do they fortify cereal with vitamins, but not beer?

I'm almost looking forward to my next one now. :P

[DURHAM D]

2. ER is not free for the user. nt

[graywarrior]

3. No kidding.

[maxsolomon]

5. the ER is free? wish i'd known...

i got an $800 ambulance ride and Xray back in my grad school days after getting t-boned on my bike - the driver didn't get cited because it was dusk by the time the cops got there, i got a broken collarbone, a sling, and had to pay it off with student loans, and ate ramen for 6 months.

anyway, just put your Dad on "hide" for awhile. you can only lose by arguing with relatives on FB.

[havocmom]

11. Correct. They will hound, attach wages, threaten until paid

And hospital services tend to be overcharged, ESPECIALLY for the uninsured.

[DURHAM D]

13. I think the OP knows this.

Believe he is just having fun.

[gorfle]

18. No, I did not know this.

I had always heard that there are hospitals that cannot turn you away because you can't pay.

Is this not true?

[maxsolomon]

22. perhaps they won't turn you away at the desk

but that doesn't mean they won't hound you through eternity to work out a payment plan.

[havocmom]

25. BINGO!

They don't want you dying at their door and your kin suing their asses. But they will spend a fortune on paperwork and labor hours trying to squeeze money you do not, and never will, have out of you or your family.

[KansDem]

21. Ain't that the case!

Years ago, my sister started working as a dental assistant and then moved into the "front office" doing clerical work like handling phone calls, making appointments, insurance billing, etc.

She once told me you can only trust about 10% of the dentists not to overcharge (She had worked for more than one when she made this statement so I'm not sure how she came by her statistic).

Anyway, the dentist would bill based on the patients' financial situation. This is how it broke down:

1) Patient paid out of their own pockets would get a fairer rate (office would charge for what the service/product it provided)
2) Dental insurance might get fair treatment, but:
3) Patients who received state assistance would get ripped off! She explained the dentist would preform a procedure but tell her he did a procedure that costs a lot more (use an alloy for a crown but told my sister he used gold, etc).

I don't know if the dentists knew my sister knew what they were doing since she used to work alongside of them, but they would tell her one thing when billing and she would think "No, I don't think so..."

[liberal N proud]

4. They always bring up the waiting for service

It's no different here, Emergency Rooms advertise that they only have a 30 minute wait. 30 minutes does not cover an emergency.

[Barack_America]

8. Which actually rarely happens in Canada.

My brother in-law rupture a tendon in his finger last year, saw a hand specialist and had surgery within 5 days. You don't get much more specialized than hand plastics, most big US hospitals will have one hand plastic surgeon, if that.

[havocmom]

12. Takes me 3 -6 months to get in to see a doctor here in the USA

And I have some of the better insurance coverage available.

[haele]

34. 30 minute wait in the ER? maybe to check in and tell them you need help -

But the soonest I or anyone I know has ever been seen by a doctor on a walk-in - which always requires a check-in process and initial triage was at least an hour and a half after the triage. And it usually took a half hour of check-in process (including financial questions...) after you walked in the door and spoke to the lady at the desk to just get to triage - be it a private (institutional) or public ER. No, they can't "deny" you care, but they can sure delay the process of getting help until they know who's going to pay.
You basically have to be passed out or suffering massive trauma to be seen quickly. Even if you were brought in an ambulance, your wait can be over an hour.
When Laz had a bout of chest pains and difficulty breathing, they brought him into the ER from Urgent Care late on a "slow" night (nearly empty waiting room when I came in behind the ambulance Urgent Care ordered him to be transported in), it still took almost an hour before the shift ER doctor come to the ward and start assessing him.
The nurses, bless them, hooked him up to monitors and made sure he was as stable as possible when they brought him in since he had already spent time at Urgent Care and there were already signed papers, approvals from Aetna and triage info and pre-assessment orders from the clinic doctor they could use to bypass the whole check-in process.
Urgent Care clinics are usually quicker ( 10 - 40 minutes depending on how many people are there before you), but they're very limited in the ability to provide service and they aren't always open when you need them. And like ER's, you have to have money upfront or insurance coverage - or some sort of promissory to pay - before they will actually let you see a doctor or PA.

As for the common comparison of the "wait" to see a specialist in the US and the wait in Canada - the difference to be negligible for the most part - except here in the US, it can be affected by either your ability to pay out of pocket costs or the willingness of your insurance company to send you.
In Canada, the wait time only depends on the availability of your specialist or his/her equipment and/or the criticality of need.

Haele

[Warpy]

6. There is nothing you can do about a belief

and the loonier that belief is, the more firmly the believer clings to it. In other words, you are not going to change his belief, it's rock solid. Only being buried in adverse events will do it.

My own dad and I agreed on an armed truce when I was 20, never discussing politics or religion. It was the only way we could keep talking, at all.

To his credit, he never got sucked into Pox News. To mine, I never ranted in return during his mercifully brief Limbaugh infatuation, just left the room and came back half an hour later and asked if he was done. He got the point.

Imagine my shock when he announced in 2004 he was voting for Kerry, his first vote for a Democrat since Adlai Stevenson. He mentioned the Swift Boat boys as one of the reasons, said it was unconscionable for war vets to do that to one of their brethren. I was too busy picking my lower jaw off the floor to comment.

Your dad might come around eventually, but arguing with him will only solidify his silly belief system, giving him a reason to cling to it even more strongly. I would suggest pointing out that he's wrong, that he doesn't know what he thinks he does, and that he needs to research away from conservative websites and leave it at that. Then change the subject. If he continues to use your site as a place to rant, then defriend him, telling him you both need a break. Just keep in contact by phone or in person.

He can use you as a political punching bag only with your permission.

[pinboy3niner]

23. About your dad

I had the exact same reaction he did to the swiftboat liars. Moreover, the fact that Kerry's men stood behind him left no doubt in my mind as to who was telling the truth. I knew that if the swiftboaters' claims--that Kerry risked his men's lives to rack up fraudulent purple hearts and compile a war hero record to serve his political ambition--had ANY merit at all, those combat vets who served with him would NEVER have backed him. I was so outraged that I drove from CA to OH to volunteer the final two months of the campaign in Columbus.

Pardon me for going OT. I'm not a Kerry fanatic, but it still infuriates me that those cretins were rewarded with success for what was a dirty, slimy smear campaign of the most brazen lies.

[Warpy]

32. Thanks. My dad was wrong about politcs but he was one of the good guys

which is something I'd never have known had we continued to harangue each other.

It's also nice to know there was likely some blowback among other vets to those disgusting ads.

It was stomach turning enough for me, and the closest I got to combat was a head injury unit in a VA hospital.

[Greyhound]

9. You can't win a debate if you accept the false premises your opponent's

argument is based on.

Canadians do not wait 6 months to see a doctor except in rare, non-life threatening cases. Further, if you compare those cases with similar cases you will find the waits are comparable and the Canadian doesn't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars out of pocket.

ER treatment is not free, far from it, and the patient is billed for those services. They have no means to pay, but they still suffer the consequences for not being able to fork over the bucks.

[gorfle]

19. I know all about Canadian health care.

My wife is from Canada, as is her whole family.

From their descriptions, there is a longer wait there for non-emergency care than you have here in the US. I say it is a small price to pay for people not having to go bankrupt for medical care or for people not getting care because they can't afford it.

[crazyjoe]

10. your father is a racist, why do you associate wth racists?

[kenny blankenship]

15. Ask him why Canadians and the French live longer than we do, if their health systems are so bad

[gorfle]

20. I have had that discussion with him before.

I have had this discussion with my family before. The US does not have the best health care in the world, by many metrics (longevity, infant mortality, and more), and we pay more per capita than every other nation in the world except the Marshal Islands.

They don't get it. My uncle continues to say, "Yeah, well then why do Canadians and others come here for health care?!" To which I have replied that it's not that you CAN'T get the best health care in the world here, it's that you can't get it UNLESS YOU ARE RICH. They seem to be unable to grasp the difference between what the average person gets and what a rich person gets.

[kenny blankenship]

24. If you couldn't make him think with that one then he is perfectly defended against reason

It happens in some cases. Probably there is no cure.

You could ask him what he's so afraid of - not being able to choose his own Dr., government mandated prostate exams, living longer than his parents, etc. It's not really debatable whether our system is inferior on aggregate - it just overwhelmingly sucks on the numbers, especially on the dollars. So he might very well have some mostly unspoken, deeply buried fear that the new system will do something to him specifically - something that he doesn't want to "lose control over". And thus he's willing to throw his fellow Americans to the dogs to keep the status quo. If you can get him to say what it is he's most afraid of, then you may be able to dispel his fear with anecdotal descriptions of how it actually works in other countries. For example, Canadians and French people do choose their own Doctors, contrary to AMA/Republican/Conservadem propaganda. Maybe Uncle thinks they are told who their Doctor will be by the government. Maybe he's worried that the Doctor assigned to him under a new Socialist Medicine system will be a woman or someone of a different race. In America, people who belong to an HMO typically will have a limited choice of Doctors, or no choice at all. If this is the nature of his resistance to health care in the Canadian model, then he has got his perceptions and fears all switched around. It's still possible, of course, that dispelling his misperceptions about Canadian style medicine won't do any good. One false source of resistance might be beaten down, only to be replaced by another, and another, in circular succession until you come around to the original argument which you have to disprove all over again. That would be a terminal case.

[NNN0LHI]

16. Don't say nothing. Just humor him

Then when he is gone spend his money partying like its 1999.

Thats the way I would handle this.

Don

[undeterred]

17. People in Canada don't wait 6 months.

People in the USA who don't have insurance wait until a little problem turns into a big one, and thousands are dying every year from no care. If you don't have insurance and you go to the emergency room you will be "stablized" and you will get a bill that gives you a heart attack. ERs can turn you away or make you wait for days if you do not have a true emergency. And its the most expensive way there is to get routine care.

[Jkid]

26. Ask your father if he has real health insurance

If he doesn't, ask him "why you don't support a public option then?"

[damntexdem]

27. It would be an OPTION.

If you don't want it, don't opt for it.

Of course, single-payer would be better; but that's not an issue with that discussion.

[leftynyc]

28. I guess I'd start by asking

him to prove there's a public option. You can't carry on a substantive conversation based on a false premise.

[gorfle]

35. Here was the link he provided

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-35976-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m5d17-Stealth-public-option-slipped-into-ObamaCare

[treestar]

29. That's how conservatives make themselves comfortable

With the status quo - if the poor can just go to the ER, everyone has health care - dismissed in their minds. But it isn't free - the person may be hard to collect the bill from, but they will owe it - it will be on the credit report - and if the person ever does make money their wages can be attached - and if they want to borrow to buy a car or house, it will be in the way.

[applegrove]

30. Tell him that in Canada we pay about $4000 per person

for healthcare. In the USA you pay $9000. Your system give you less and costs more than the canadian one.

[hugo_from_TN]

31. Talk about something else.

Sports, hobbies, family members, vacations. Something you are both interested in.

When he is gone, you'll regret spending so much time arguing about politics.

[distantearlywarning]

33. I have some of the best insurance money can buy.

And *I* wait six fucking months to see a fucking doctor in the good old US of A. At least in Canada my insurance would be free while I sat around for six months. Tell him that!