The LOLs just keep on comin!

[oselle]

Today's LOL! will really crack your shit up!

Remote Area Medical is a non-profit volunteer organization that brings healthcare and dentistry to people who normally have no access to it. Considering that the Republicans have told me that Canada and England have such bad healthcare, I thought most of RAM's work would be in Canada and England. Strangely enough, here's their 2009 schedule:

Jan. 31-Feb 1 Jacobs Building at Chilhowee Park, Knoxville, TN
March 14-15 Pigeon Forge H.S. Sevier County, TN
April 18-19 Van Buren County, TN
May 2-3 Cleveland, Ohio POSTPONED
May 30-31 Tex Turner Arena at Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, TN
June 27-28 Pike County Central H.S. Pike Co.KY
July 18-19 Cocke County
July 24-25-26 Wise County Fairgrounds, Wise, VA
August 11-18 RAM-LA, at The Forum in Inglewood, CA
August 22-26 RAM Utah in Fort Duchesne, UT, Northern Ute Tribes Reservation
Sept. 19-20 Roane County, TN
Sept 26-27 Letcher County Central H.S. KY
Oct 3-4 Grundy, Virginia at Riverview Elementary School
Oct. 17-18 Franklin County H.S.

Hmmm...Tennessee...California...Virginia....what? No Liverpool? No Winnipeg?

Could it be possible that America is the only developed nation where people have to line up to get health care and dentistry IN TENTS LIKE REFUGEES OF SOME GODDAMN THIRD-WORLD DISASTER? Would anyone care to explain how this is acceptable in the richest and supposedly the greatest nation on earth? People -- citizens of America, working people, relying on volunteer MASH units for their healthcare needs. This is acceptable?

In case you're not LOLing, yet, you should read The HILARIOUS story of Wendell Potter, a former executive with insurance giant Cigna, who had a genuine Road to Damascus moment at just one of these traveling "health fairs" when he saw what his fellow Americans had been reduced to by the brutal, unchecked greed of his own industry. This guy testified before Congress but you'd hardly know it from the media attention he's gotten. Guess it's just not sexy enough for the news. Sweaty poor people getting their teeth pulled in nasty smelly tents...ick!

LOL!

Comments

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had not heard about Wendell Potter (of course not!). :-(

And that crazy Obama, with his daft notions of health care for all! What a loon. LOL!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I don't think Obama's crazy enough. I want universal, European-style healthcare but that's off the table. Ooh, we don't want to offend the Republicans! Don't dare offer that!

LOL!

[vshendria.livejournal.com]

I assume you've seen Michael Moore's Sicko? It's packed to bursting with lols. One of the most striking things about it, to me (as one of those dumb Canadians), was how Americans are taught to believe they live in a country where they have the best of everything and for so many of them life is clearly one endless struggle to survive. Meanwhile they are encouraged to look down their noses at places like England and France and Canada because we have somehow got it wrong and do not have the same "freedoms" because of things like public health care and supposedly excessive taxation.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I never saw Sicko because I knew I'd just BUST A GUT laughing! LOL!

Seriously though, few things amaze me as much as the fact that some Americans are so desperate to believe this is the NUMBER ONE COUNTRY IN THE WHOLE WORLD that they gladly believe the rest of the world is some shithole. Of course our media is wholly complicit in enforcing our ignorance. How many time have I heard some Republican official blast England or Canada -- in the most uncertain terms -- with no pushback or questioning whatsoever from the reporter. None. And as to this issue of "freedom" I literally, LITERALLY, have no idea what people here mean when they associate our form of "healthcare" with "freedom." Exactly what sort of freedom is this? The freedom to live in pain? To be chronically ill? To die?

The other funny thing is that if you actually ask a Republican or conservative about this, they don't have any answers. And NO ONE CARES. We just let these people blather their nonsense and their lies and their jingoistic claptrap about "freedom" and the system gets worse and worse and there's nothing at all we can do about it.

LOL!

[vshendria.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're willing to risk dying of laughter, Moore does an excellent job of teasing out that "freedom" issue. He deals with ideologies around doctors supposedly not having the freedom to treat their patients and patients not having the freedom to choose their doctors or doctors not having the freedom to live like maharajahs.

I will tell you honestly what is wrong with our system here, and it nothing to do with "socialism" per se. I won't go opinions about adequate taxation of the wealthy. The major problem that causes some people to go without adequate care, though, is caused by a tension between urban and more "remote" spaces. I live in one of those more remote spaces (a city of 100,000 people, but it is 1800 km from the provincial capital) and we simply don't have enough doctors here. There are many people here who don't have a family doctor.

If this were a real socialist dictatorship we could force doctors to go where they are needed, but we can't. You may hear Canadians bitching about "our system" but they may be mistaking a problem caused by demographics (or inadequate taxation) for a flaw in public health care. And that drives me to...lol.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

That is a geographic problem that's going to happen in any country as large as Canada, especially when so many of the remote areas can have pretty harsh weather. I have heard, however, that Canada does have a program to fly remote patients to more populated areas for medical care if they need it -- and of course the patient doesn't have to pay for it. Is that true?

A lot of the places on the RAM list are rural but none of them are as isolated as those parts of Canada that probably have the least medical coverage. And places like Knoxville, TN and Inglewood, CA could hardly be classed as "remote" under any definition. RAM has to bring what is basically emergency field medicine to these places because the people who live there just can't afford to go to a doctor. And that is a goddamn inhuman disgrace.

[vshendria.livejournal.com]

It is true that transportation is covered, yeah, but I won't guarantee you that 100% of expenses in 100% of circumstances. If it's for open heart surgery...hell yeah. Plastic surgery... A little more doubtful.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

You don't know how mad that attitude drives me. It drives me to LOL!!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

All you can do is LOL! these days.

[sixth-queen.livejournal.com]

The big LOL would have been if McCain had been elected.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and that Sarah would have really kept us in stitches...but only the folks who had insurance for stitches! LOL!

[merylmarie.livejournal.com]

One of the bright spots in my week was seeing Wendell Potter interviewed by Howard Dean on MSNBC. He's my new hero. Interview on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTv_BBpp3zs

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Wendell Potter is not getting nearly the media coverage he should be. Meanwhile, lunatic "birthers" like Orly Taitz are all over the place. And mark my words, if Potter really were getting some media attention, the right wing would do everything possible to smear him as nothing more than a "disgruntled employee" who wasn't even that high up at Cigna and was probably real lousy at his job to boot. Mark my words, that is what would happen. The situation in this country is out of fucking control.