I want to know what nurses think about socialized medicine.

While I respect your views, there are so many variables here. I, like you, was the first to graduate from college. I have worked to pay my own way since I was 12-years old (so yes, I have paid my taxes). I then worked 3 jobs to put myself through college to become a nurse, while raising a child and having another.

I always thought that if you worked hard, you could make it here in America. Always. I have never received nor asked for a 'hand out'...until now. You see, while I am a nurse, I quit to care for my terminally ill mother. I had saved enough to keep my family going (I am now a single mother of 3), never dreaming the economy would take a dive forcing all the retired nurses back into the field ending the 'nurse shortage'.

I have had cancer myself 3 times in my life. I always was fortunate to have both health insurance, as well as disability insurance to get my little family through. However, right now, it has come back again and I cannot get any healthcare. I can't get PA because I can't 'prove' that I don't work. I also cannot get any foodstamps. I have never had to use the sytem before, but it seems that after going back to the PA offices and being turned down the 7th time, I would be able to get some assistance...but I can't.

I just wonder, after working all the years that I have. Helping/donating whatever I could...now I am so scared that I may not make it and then I will leave my children here alone...with nobody to help them and with so much debt (and quite honestlly, the thought of dying in pain doesn't thrill me much either). I tried to go to the health clinic but they won't do any necessary tests...I suppose if it gets bad enough, I could go to the ER, but this cost would just go to my estate ie, my children, or to all of you, the taxpayers. Prevention or even tx at the clinic is minimal at best.

Over the past 2 years I have had to watch my aunt die of breat cancer (insurance), my uncle die of brain CA with mets to his bones (no insurance-thus no treatment til it was to late), another uncle passed with skin melanoma 11 1/2 months later(on SS with limited insurance), and my mother with lung CA 2 weeks after him (insurance).
This said not to illicit pity but to get to some of you that maybe thinking that it is only those that don't want to work that may somehow just be trying to get something else for free, just isn't so. At this point I'm probably just too tired of 'trying' ... to get a job when there isn't one...to get treatment...to save my house etc.

I don't know the answer to our delemma in healthcare. But I do think that there is a better way. I don't think I have the 'right' to take from you what you have worked hard to have. I don't even think that I have the 'right' to healthcare at the expense of others. I don't want to be a leech in society. I think.. I just want to live. I think I just don't want to leave my children here alone...with nothing and nobody to help them. If I don't make it, there will be more humans that WILL need government assistance. I just have to wonder, what would you do? When all avenues for you are used up? When you have sold all you can sell because you are too ill to work. You're savings are gone. You have to sell your life insurance policy. What would you (readers) do?

Instead of bickering here, pointing fingers or being angry, perhaps we as a collective group of nurses, should come together to offer a workable solution. LOOK at the truth (not spoken by the media or elected government officials or by knee jerk reactions of people who are to afraid of change to even hear what this change may entail) but at the facts as so many nurses here have given us all links to among many others not posted here. We have faught too long against each other...can't we at least be open enough to try and understand. This is our future. This is the future of nursing. If you keep fighting, we will get whatever the govenment wants to give us, not what WE decide.

Sorry this was so long, besides the fact that I am long-winded, reading the nurse-against-nurse comments has me feeling so sad. We are such a compassionate, intelligent group of people I just don't understand.

It is sad.

I respect those who, I think, don't understand.

Many of us have been working together for decades with other healthcare workers, clergy, and people with experience to try to figure out the beat way to promote health.

While happy to learn I and many thousands of others have come to think improving Medicare and making it available to all is best for our health and for the economy.

http://www.guaranteedhealthcare.org/facts

Instead of forcing socialized health care into our already over burdened system, why not create a parallel system, kind of like how the VA does things?

1) This will keep those who worry that this will collapse our current system happy while also making those who want universal coverage happy

2) This will gradually implement the change instead of jamming 47 million more people into a system that is ill equipped to handle it.

3) This will gradually introduce cost as well so that our economy will be able to adapt

4) This will keep the additional influx from diminishing the quality of care.

5) This will keep the gov'ts paws off of our current system so that they can implement all of their ideas on cost controlling measures on their own program, that way when it fails or messes up, it wont influence the whole system.

Everyone pays 1.5% medicare levy with their tax return, plus a further 1% if you earn over a certain amount and do NOT take out private health cover. Private cover, top of the range, for me at around 30yo and healthy was $85/month.

When you have to start footing the lions share of the bills you will come to understand. I for one believe the ER overcrowding situtation will worsen several hundred percent when people find out they can be seen for free. there is no incentive to not use the ER just like there is no incentive for Physicians to see medicaid and medicare patients due to the low reimbursements. It's like getting a mechanic to rebuld your engine and he charges you $50/hr and when you send him the payment you only give him $10/hr as payment. I remeber several years ago a retiree wrote a letter to the editor in the Sacramento Bee whining about greedy doctors. He was retired and had tricare and was complaining that he had guaranteed health insurance from the government and couldn't understand why no one would take him on as a patient and assumed doctors were just greedy. I asked our ICU medical director about the article and he flat out stated the reimbursement from tricare was horrible and it wasn't worth his time to see a patient with tricare. Whether you like it or not providers need to be compensated accordingly and someone who puts in 8-12 years of schooling and takes on the risk as a physician should make several hundred thousand a year. anything else will have good people choosing other career paths. this is what Obama and most liberals do not get. If you contain costs by cutting physician salaries you will have a mass exodus from health care.