I’ve just been swamped and haven’t had the time or the desire to write… and I’m recovering from surgery at the moment.<\/p>\n
I swear the next person who tells me how awful our health care system is is going to get slapped… Like most people I try to avoid doctors and hospitals as much as possible, but I couldn’t escape them this time. Everyone I dealt with from my doctor to the nurses aids in the hospital were top notch!<\/p>\n
Anyway here’s the short version of the story… I started feeling a little queasy while celebrating my birthday with friends earlier this month… That was Wednesday night, by Thursday morning I was miserable enough to know something wasn’t right so I called my doctor’s office and made an appointment see him that afternoon. Roughly 2 hours later was having CT scan to confirm what training and experience told him was appendicitis… A little more than an hour later is was in the emergency room getting IV antibiotics and waiting for surgery. Truth be told that was the longest and most annoying part of the whole process, I spent about 5 hours in the ER before I was taken up for surgery at around 10:00 p.m.<\/p>\n
There was no fighting with insurance companies or trivial bullshit of any kind… The system simply worked just as it does for vast majority of Americans everyday. There is a fundamental difference between access to health care and access to health insurance… that’s something that’s been lost in the debate on health care reform. Our health care system is not broken, it has faults, but the issue is not access to health care… It’s access to affordable health insurance and there are ways of providing affordable health insurance coverage to those who want it without effectively blowing up our entire health care system.<\/p>\n
Oh and for the record… Nothing says Happy Birthday like appendicitis!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve just been swamped and haven’t had the time or the desire to write… and I’m recovering from surgery at the moment. I swear the next person who tells me how awful our health care system is is going to get slapped… Like most people I try to avoid doctors and hospitals as much as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,43],"tags":[297,781],"class_list":{"0":"post-3370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-announcements","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-administrivia","9":"tag-health-care-reform","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfpI7-Sm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2869,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/21\/fact-check-the-u-s-ranks-37th-in-the-world-in-health-care\/","url_meta":{"origin":3370,"position":0},"title":"Fact Check: The U.S. Ranks 37th in the World in Health Care.","author":"Jeff","date":"October 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Health care reform advocates love to quote the World Health Organization report that claims the U.S. ranks 37th in the world in health care. That study is as Carl Bialik, the Wall Street Journal's numbers guy, explains in today's edition is nearly a decade old and relies on statistics that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Health Care"","block_context":{"text":"Health Care","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/health-care\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2790,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/30\/gallup-61-of-americans-see-health-insurance-as-personal-responsibility\/","url_meta":{"origin":3370,"position":1},"title":"Gallup: 61% of Americans See Health Insurance as Personal Responsibility","author":"Jeff","date":"September 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The results of this new Gallup poll aren't really surprising, this is still a center right country that believes in traditional principles like limited government and individual responsibility... that more more than anything is what dogs Democrats in the health care debate: In a recent Gallup survey, 89% of Republicans,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Health Care"","block_context":{"text":"Health Care","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/health-care\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":858,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/27\/wall-street-journal-almost-everyone-would-do-better-under-the-mccain-health-plan\/","url_meta":{"origin":3370,"position":2},"title":"Wall Street Journal: Almost Everyone Would Do Better Under the McCain Health Plan","author":"Jeff","date":"October 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Carroll has a must read Op Ed on John McCain's health care plan in today's Wall Street Journal. Carroll does and excellent job of explaining what may be the single most misunderstood and misrepresented proposal of this election... The bottom line is most of us would do better under\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Health Care"","block_context":{"text":"Health Care","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/health-care\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1325,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/08\/the-politics-of-health-care\/","url_meta":{"origin":3370,"position":3},"title":"The Politics of Health care","author":"Jeff","date":"January 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the more important battles of the next few years is going to be health care reform. I've mentioned before I'm opposed to any kind of government run socialized health care system. I have relatives in Canada so my perspective on socialized medicine is a little more direct than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Medicine"","block_context":{"text":"Medicine","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/medicine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2340,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/12\/bloomberg-com-house-health-care-bill-to-include-600-billion-in-tax-increases\/","url_meta":{"origin":3370,"position":4},"title":"Bloomberg.com: House Health-Care Bill to Include $600 Billion in Tax Increases","author":"Jeff","date":"June 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Bloomberg.com is reporting that the health care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid: June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/economy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1536,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/18\/healthcare-provisions-of-stimulus-law-not-well-understood\/","url_meta":{"origin":3370,"position":5},"title":"Healthcare Provisions of Stimulus Law Not Well Understood","author":"Jeff","date":"February 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"CNSNews.com has two must read pieces on the stimulus laws healthcare provisions... The first deals with the plans National Medical Records System provisions: Stimulus Law Does Not Require All Americans to Enter Their Medical Records into National System, Dems Say By Josiah Ryan, Staff Writer, CNSNews.com, Tuesday, February 17, 2009\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Health Care"","block_context":{"text":"Health Care","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/health-care\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}