I returned from 89 days away from Sweden, going through Estonia, to find my friend, George, just had his cancer operation.  He had put off the operation, despite recommendations from his doctors, dreading the procedure, which would remove a portion of his intestines. I felt deeply for him, because I'd had an operation similar to it when I was just a little girl, and the pain was horrendous. I was able to see what a hospital room was like in Sweden.  It's worth describing.  There were four beds in the large, very clean room. There was a big table and four lounge chairs for visitors.  There were bright pictures on the walls.  Though everybody had radios, there were no TV sets.  "If you're well enough to watch TV," a nurse told me, "you can go watch TV in the lounge."  No TV sets keeps the costs down.  They didn't allow flowers, either. Bacteria live in watered flowers.  Swedish hospitals are squeaky clean and that includes no flowers! 
George had his own self-medicating medication bag to push if he felt he needed more pain-killer. It was a powerful opiate, and he was smiling.  A few days later, the bag would be taken away and the smile would go, too.  But he had his telephone, radio, newspapers, and, I might add, fantastic choices for food, considering the fact that he could only eat liquids at this time.
   The menu choices in a Swedish hospital show the calories and portion size.  Hospital food in Sweden is incredibly good.  Think SMORGASBORD. 
    I'd been in hospital in the US a couple of years ago, and at that time received excellent care, although it wasn't until I went to Hungary that I was properly diagnosed.  The food was  overcooked---rather than say anymore, it was "hospital food."  The TV was there for me, but I was in pain, and the TV set of the other person in my room seemed unending day and night.   There was a chair for my friends to sit in, and my service dog was allowed to be with me, with her very own soft chair, and a nurse to take her outside four times a day.  One thing that was very unpleasant: the cost.  My insurance had been expensive, but it was a good, decent insurance company that paid all 80% of the bill--leaving me with 20% to pay (and I received 50% pay from my job while hospitalized).  The true horror was that 20%. 
    The bill was $240,000 for one week in the hospital and eleven days in rehabilitation therapy to learn to walk again.  When all the dust settled, my life's savings were wiped out and I still couldn't work.  I received a settlement that paid off the rest of the bills and gave me enough money to go to Hungary for more therapy. A few months later, I began teaching again in Greece, where man-made fires, deliberately set to destroy forests and groves so developments could be built, burned down my school.  I obtained a job in Hungary and began teaching there, when threats, due to my past, forced me into exile -- and here I'd left most of my possessions in the USA, thinking I'd be returning for several summers in a row! Instead, I had to apply for political asylum protection until the threat subsided.
   You can go to http://www.judythvarybaker.com  or to http://www.doctormarysmonkey.com to understand why threats have occurred in my life.
   Now for the big surprise.  How much did George's operation cost, his MRI's, his hospital stay?
    "Well, it's true it's not free," he replied. "As you know, we pay taxes."
     Yes!  Taxes! Enough to ruin your life, those taxes for government-run medical care, right?
     Wrong.  His health taxes cost less than my insurance! yes, he had other taxes, too.  Higher than what we pay. But his country had no homeless.  That's right, no homeless (unless you count foreigners who are passing through, I suppose), and really, all things considered, nobody is living in the kind of poverty that I saw rampant in my country. What happened to the American dream? Have we always had so many homeless, so many poverty-stricken people?  The middle class is disappearing, and there's one big reason: medical bills eventually kill them off, or losing a longtime job (no loyalty to employees) does them in, because their age is against them when they try to start over. 
     "Okay, how many hundred thousands of kroner is this week-long stay going to cost you?"  
I asked George, after our hello's and how are you's...
     "I have to pay 80 kroner a day," he replied.
     That's about $11.50 a day.
      "Did I hear you right?"  I asked.  "80 kroner?"
       That's when I finally understood what US health insurance companies were doing to us.  We were paying THEM 'taxes.'  And that is only if it isn;t a 're-existing condition' AND if they 'approve' the treatment/tests.  Even then, they only had to shell out 80% if anything bad happened--IF after all the paperwork, you could get them to really pay for everything you thought was covered, that is.  And they tod me where to go to get treatment--a hospital  that mad eme wait four miserable days in a hotel because they didn't have a bed!   Yes, they paid for the motel room -- er, 80% of the costs of the motel room, I should amend....finally, I was able to go for tests and the care I needed.  Here I couldn't feel my hands and feet and had excruciating pain in my back and neck  (having been assaulted by a student on drugs).
    Well, waiting happens in government-run systems, too, we're told.  But far from having to wait, as I'd heard my friends say was surely the case for government-run health care programs,  George had been begged to get his operation a month before he finally agreed.  Then he had the operation within days.  THE TRUTH: Your health insurance is a tax, my American friends.  Only, since it's there to make money, it's YOU who will, on top of those taxes, likely lose your life savings when one of the big three gets you--heart attack, cancer, or final, long illness.  Destroying any inheritance for your kids. Maybe taking your home away.  Ruining your future.  Causing you to file for bankruptcy. Only, it's now too expensive in the USA to file for bankruptcy. 
    And yet the selfish insurance companies scare my countrymen to death.  Heck, I got diagnosed in Hungary because MY health insurance company only allowed a certain kind of MRI. When a dye was added, the problem showed up and the diagnosis was made. Something my insurance company would not allow -- that extra step in the MRI.
    Here's the rule:  if it's private, it's there to make the most money for the least service possible. If it's givernment-run, you can keep improving the health care by getting new bikls introduced by your VOTED IN congressmen,  But you have to get the program in place, first. rather than lose all those billions of dollars (and you STILL have to pay LOTS MORE than anybody i know in the EU), American sheeple are being scared silly and led by the nose into compromise AGAIN.  Yes, there will be taxes to pay for government-run health care. But the good news is, we can see how they do it in places like sweden where they live longer than Americans, have excellent health care, and indeed, in cancer research and many other areas, happen to lead the world in medical advances. The givernment pays for these medical advances to help lower health care costs. WHY do 300 thyroid tablets cost $20 in Sweden, and would be free if I were Swedish, when in the US they cost me $300? -- and cost $7 each when i was in the hospital?  What a rip-off!    I pray that my fellow Americans will wake up and stop paying taxes to rich health insurance companies. Pay it into your own government-sponsored health system that your congressmen rely upon, and at least you have a chance to vote out anybody abusing the system.  That is, if you insist on paper ballots and get rid of those rigged voting machines..........