government healthcare - great idea?

There's been a bit of discussion lately about government healthcare reform, and I have to admit that my initial impressions are favorable. I know that it would level the playing field for medical professionals and that some of the insurance and prescription companies would probably be left wondering how they are going to survive any more, since they won't have as much of an opportunity to rip off the American public, but I think that the fact that the healthcare system has left out so many individuals is a testament to the fact that leaving it in the hands of private corporations doesn't work.

What really bothers me is the service to pay ratio in the healthcare system. Think of your typical visit to the doctor's office. You schedule weeks in advance to get an appointment when it is convenient *for them*. When you do arrive on time as scheduled, they have you sit for an extra thirty minutes in a waiting room. It makes you wonder what the point of making appointments is. Then when you are finally called, a nurse does most of the work. She takes your blood pressure, checks your height and weight, asks some questions and writes it all down. Then they stick you in another room to wait another thirty minutes for the doctor to come in. When the doctor finally arrives, he/she then proceeds to ask you the same questions that the nurse asked, spends about five minutes "diagnosing" your illness, and then sends you off with some overpriced "cure-all" prescription for cases that couldn't be definitively diagnosed.

And I paid how much for this service? Imagine if we received this same shoddy treatment in any other industry and then speculate how long that business would last. My sister works in the medical field, and she told me that they overbook by 10-20% at times, full well knowing that there is always the chance that all of their patients will show up on that day.

To make matters worse, you get to deal with the insurance companies and their incompetent billing systems and specialists. You can follow your policy guidelines to the "t" and it won't matter - you'll still be billed for something as if it wasn't covered. Then it will take six months to a year before you finally convince someone at the insurance company to pay for the service that you paid your premiums to cover. Then you're sitting pretty, feeling smug that after spending so much of your time on the phone with these morons you finally got what you paid for, only to be contacted a year later by a commercial collection agency asking you to pay the very same bill that you thought had been taken care of. Again, we pay how much for this shoddy service?

So when it comes down to it, the idea of government healthcare for all is very attractive to me. Sure, it may end up operating like a big mismanaged HMO, but at least as citizens we have some power to change the way things are done with a vote. As opposed to our current privatized healthcare system, in which all we can do is stick out our tongue, say "ahhhh", and swallow that bitter pill every month.