Daily Prompt: Right to Health

Is access to medical care something that governments should provide, or is it better left to the private sector? Are there drawbacks to your choice?

Universal health care. A hot topic these days, especially after Obamacare passed recently. Free healthcare for everyone sounds too good to be true and it probably is. More taxes will already be taken from us working class individuals just to provide medical insurance for every American out there. I can’t imagine what the cost would be to have free insurance for everyone. Probably a lot!

Currently I pay about $90 a month for basic coverage – preventative tests/procedures, two doctors office visits a year, and an annual physical. There is emergency room/urgent care coverage but only after a large deductible. For $30 a month I have basic dental coverage – two teeth cleanings a year and the occasional x-ray and fillings. Fortunately my rates haven’t increased in the three years that I’ve had this insurance but I feel like I’m still paying a lot out of pocket whenever I do anything. It also doesn’t have very good prescription coverage so I only do over-the-counter meds as much as possible.

Starting around 2006 (while in Maryland), I began feeling a fluttering in my chest. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was but I knew it had to be my heart. At the time I was on my parents’ insurance so I started to get tested and see what was going on. I had to wear a holter monitor and get stress tests, and each time they tried to read my monitor results something went wrong. They broke the first one by accident, changed monitor brands and couldn’t read it the second time, and then they accidentally erased it the third time. After the last time I finally just stopped. The insurance probably got charged for each time I wore it but I never asked about it.

Then in 2009 when I moved to Michigan, my first physical with my new doctor (I hadn’t been to one in over two years) had her putting me on another monitor. At this point I was paying for my own insurance so most of the test costs were paid out of pocket. After the first one she had a diagnosis for me: Pre-Atrial Contractions (PACs).

Having been through nursing school I had an idea of what they were but didn’t know the background of them whatsoever – etiology, exacerbations, treatments, etc. They are basically a benign heart dysrhythmia in which the atriums (top chambers of the heart) contract too early and the heart has to pause and reset itself. It feels to me like my heart actually stops, and when I had an echo you could see in the picture the heart stopping, then it beats extra hard to start over. It’s kinda crazy! They can be induced by stimulants (which my stress test up here told me) such as caffeine, certain medications, stress, etc. I feel several of them a day because, let’s face it, I’m addicted to caffeine, Mt. Dew in particular. There is no treatment except to cut out the stimulants. It can resolve on its own as I have no structural abnormalities.

All-in-all, very expensive testing but now I know and can put it behind me. Sure it would have been nice to have it all payed for by the government, but if I can pay for it now and it won’t cause me lasting future harm, I don’t have a problem paying for it now. Maybe in the future once things change for me universal health care would be good (I definitely need to research the pros and cons a LOT more) but at this point in my life I’m okay.

Daily Prompt: Right to Health.

Check out these other great bloggers:

On Health Care (fishofgold.wordpress.com)
The Evolution of Medicine (theseeker57.wordpress.com)
Daily Prompt: Right to Health (daddysnaughtylittlegirl.wordpress.com)
A nurses perspective on why I think healthcare should be universally awesome! (kulworlddailydrivel.com)

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