Around here where I live, people have begun discovering what a racket this public health care can be.
At the outer edges of the “low income health care delivery system” is a host of little clinics which sometimes actually do some good. However, that good is always cloaked in a particular religion, as it were, of Women’s Health Services. Since women have been so horribly oppressed over the centuries, it’s necessary to ensure they don’t suffer and die from all these horrific health threats peculiar to women. Yes, that’s sarcasm.
They offer this free screening for things like breast cancer, cervical cancer, AIDS, etc. Now, that in itself is a good thing. People who can’t afford treatment and want it find relief that way. However, when the folks who actually worry about such needs have all been through the system, it stands to die or lose some of its fund-raising clout when they can’t find enough clients. You see, too often the folks in these clinics aren’t the best at what they do, and they might not have a job if the “free clinics” were shut down for lack of clients.
So the screening is extended, and more and more women are roped in, even to the point of phone-banking the numbers of anyone who ever had any connection at all with anyone who was once served at the clinic. They collect numbers of all breathing humans they can talk to just for this purpose, even if it’s just grandma watching the baby while a low-income mother applies for WIC or something. When the clinic traffic gets slow, they pull up these numbers and pester folks with free screening of this or that, getting pushy with those who profess no interest or need.
Once they get you into the clinic, they tell you repeatedly, “It’s free!” They always find something on that first mammogram, of course, and make a referral for further examination. The bigger clinics often sponsor the screening to get new patients. Naturally, you are sent through some long intrusive application for some kind of welfare assistance. With enough fudging and so forth, they can usually get you something to cover that next exam. It’s their job to make sure they qualify you for this stuff, so you can bet they’ll look for any opening they can exploit.
So you get sent to this expensive MRI clinic, and they treat you really nice. These are good, high-class people, but that clinic has to turn a profit. So you get that MRI, and …. they find nothing. Absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, the original “low income clinic” somehow manages to find a way to charge you for two visits. While it may be at their low rate fee, it’s still not the “free” they promised. You may spend the rest of your life trying to argue with them, because it’s these low-income clinics that are staffed with some of the meanest people I’ve ever met sitting behind a clinic desk. Naturally, who’s going to listen if you talk about these wonderful people who work so hard to serve the under-served poor of the community?
It’s a racket.
