For all of you out there who think socialized medicine, run by our lovely government would be a good thing, and for those of you who think it will be the answer to many Americans who don’t have insurance, let me tell you about what happened to a woman in Oregon. This woman, who is 64, lives in a low-income apartment in Springfield, Oregon and she has lung cancer and is on the Oregon Health Plan which is state financed though it is run by a company called LIPA in that particular part of Oregon.
Now, I know you are thinking that it is a good thing for this woman to have insurance in a time of medical need such as being diagnosed with cancer. But is it really? For her it hasn’t been as they refused to cover the chemotherapy, in the form of Tarceva which her doctor prescribed. Instead they offered to pay for her assisted suicide, or in their term “palliative or comfort care measure”.
Luckily for this woman she will get the treatment she needs as the pharmaceutical company is going to supply it for at least the first year. Hopefully that will be long enough for her to get well or for her cancer to go into remission because if not she may not be able to get the medical care she needs and may once again be faced with the only option the state run health care has given her—to die.
You see, that is what you get when you get government run medical care. You get a situation where the financial side outweighs the human side, not to mention the slow pace at which government bureaucracy moves.
So, if you are over 50 and not independently wealthy, or have any health issue which they might deem too expensive to treat, you need to vote to keep our medical system in the private sector rather than to have the government being in charge of whether you get treated or not. In other words, vote for Senator John McCain for President so he can keep this kind of atrocity from happening to you or a beloved family member.
After all, how could you look your child in the eye and tell them that their grandmother will be put to sleep like a dog rather than get the treatment she needs because the President you voted for took away her choice?