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The Health Care Dilemma

Fighting to Stay Alive - The Health Care Dilemma
The two of you walk through the door into a stark white, sterile environment. Everything looks and feels cold. You are ushered to chairs in front of a massive oak desk. You sit. Then you wait, and wait for this person, this god to predict her future. As you wait, you reach out and take hold of her hands, now so small, the hands that picked you up when you fell. These same hands cooled your feverous brow in the middle of the night. You wait. Finally, this god, this doctor, comes into the office carrying a mountain of papers. He sits, drawing his chair in, then he speaks. “You have metastatic (stage IV) colorectal carcinoma. There are treatment options; surgery, followed by chemotherapy treatment, then radiation therapy. However, with your advanced age, these treatments are not an option for you.” You wonder, are you dreaming, is this real? This is your mother, she has cancer, and she is being denied health care that could prolong her life. How can something like this happen in a first world country?
To answer this question, I will explore first world countries and their health care systems. While our (the United States) government pushes for a Universal Health care System, other countries are realizing that this type of health care is not working. The American citizens do not need a health care system that allows doctors to deny medical treatment, is riddled with failures, and makes their citizens pay high taxes. The United States health care system is lauded for its excellence in care, i.e., cancer survival rates. Other countries are denying health care to the elderly, mentally ill, learning disabled and deaf. Doctors in first world countries are taking patients’ lives into their hands and deciding who received health care and who does not.
Whether it is called National Health, Socialized Medicine or Universal Health Care, it is the same health care system, and that system is broken....