Michael Jackson has died, but he will forever be the King of Pop. 

 

Michael, may your soul find the rest it deserves in heaven, after having lived a tumultuous life here on earth.  I loved your music from the early Jackson Five to everything that happened after.  My daughter became a fan of your music as well and at the age of five, she called you Jakle Mikeson. 

 

Rest in Peace Michael.

 

 

I just read that Farrah Fawcett has died.  May she rest in peace.

 

She was the talk of Mather Air Force Base as she all over in the United States in the 1970's.  Every man wanted her or a woman who resembled her, and every woman wanted to look like her.  Her face or body was seen everywhere in television, magazines, newpapers in advertisements, movies, television series and so on.  She was the epitome of what men thought women should be like, beautiful, pleasant and intelligent.  Her career had it ups and downs, but I enjoyed seeing her in all her endeavors.

 

My sympathies are with her family and loved ones in this time of their loss.

Obamacare is already available.  Just ask any Native American or Native Alaskan, they will tell exactly what it is like to live with government healthcare.  If you don't want to believe them then ask any veteran what it is like to have to go to any VA clinic or hospital.  If the beauracracy doesn't kill you, then the substandard care provided by some of the medical staff found at these facilities will.  If the IHS and the VA isn't enough for you, then go to any Public Health Service clinic or hospital, you will find the same level of care being provided there as in the other two mentioned services.

 

As a veteran who also happens to be part Native Alaskan, I have access to care at the VA or IHS.  I have have received good care through the IHS when that care could be provided at the clinic or hospital.  However, when it was necessary to see a specialist outside of the IHS, I had to wait a very long time to get an appointment.  The process of going through what is called "contract care" can be a terrible experience.  When I had insurance provided by my employer, I get a referral a little quicker through the IHS.  For those Native people who have no outside income and no other insurance, then a committee decides who gets contract care and who doesn't.  This is usually based on the severity of the disease and whether it is emergent or not.  Services that many who have health insurance take for granted are often not available to the Native population.

 

As a former medical provider who has worked with the IHS and outside of the IHS, I have often felt terrible when I couldn't get a patient the care that was needed through "contract health".  I have also seen deaths occur because of long waits, where a stable problem becomes unstable and emergent.  The outside providers are also not always willing to work with IHS patients for many reasons requiring patients to travel hundreds of miles to larger cities.

 

This is the healthcare that you have to look forward to if the government takes over the healthcare in America. 

After a long break, I am ready to begin writing again.  My family suffered back to back deaths in December and January.   My brother Joseph, died December 12, 2008 after a long and hard battle against AIDS.  In January, my Uncle Ronald died suddenly through the night of January 17, 2009.  I had a long problem with writer's block and I have now conquered that block and am in a writing mood.

 

I keep reading postings in blogs and in news articles where the health insurance or healthcare in Europe is free.  This is not true at all, in all countries, those who work pay for their health insurance.  I and my employer pay 500 Euros for my health insurance.  My wife has to pay for her health insurance just under 500 Euros per month, and she has a high deductible to keep her costs down.  I have the German government mandated health insurance and my wife has a private policy.  

With my policy, I have to wait for months to see a specialist, I have to pay a deductible for my prescriptions and I have to go to a University hospital to receive care for my chronic illness.  Under the reimbursement system, when I am hospitalized, the hospital gets about 2000 Euros for my 7 - 10 day stay.  I have to pay a 10 Euro deductible for each day as well.  However the treatment I need, costs the hospital  7500 Euros, that covers only the 4 (four) small vials of a substance called heme.  I have been refused treatment at one hospital in my city because I am a "strain" on the healthcare system.

 

I hope you will all wake up and realize that there are no such things as a free lunch (TANSTAAFL).  Don't fall for the Health reform in America.  You will never have good healthcare again.

Healthcare in Germany has a two tier system, even when the official government position denies this fact. The first tier is the government mandated health insurance that all workers paricipate in.  The second tier and most prized by those who can afford to buy it and by the doctors, is the private insurance.  Those who can afford it, buy a policy that upgrades their government insurance to the private insurance level, have a better chance at receiving better treatment and respectful treatment.  People with "private" insurance get appointments faster, often on the same day or within a week at the most.  Their poorer cousins however, have to wait sometimes months or even years for appointments.  This is due to the fact that the private insurance reimburses the doctors at a higher rate than what they would receive from the government program.  As a result those who are not privately insured suffer longer and receive second class care all around.  As a foreigner who is employed, I have the government insurance.  So far, I have had to wait for over two years to get the proper evaluation and treatment of an unstable spine problem in my neck, that was eventually corrected with a titanium plate and screws. 

Rather than do the surgery early, I was placed on long acting morphine tablets and placed on a long waiting list.  When my appointment date finally came up, I was told on the day before that there was an emergency that came to the hospital and I would have to go to the back of the list again, for my problem wasn't acute enough, even though I could hardly walk and had electric shock like feelings in my body and had lost the feeling in my arms and hands.  Luckily, I had a contact at a different hospital who arranged a visit with their neurosurgeons and within two weeks was evaluated and placed on the surgery schedule for the following Monday.  I have been left with a permanent feeling of tingling in my fingertips and a feeling of weakness in my arms as well as chronic neck pain.

 

I also suffer from a rare disease called Porphyria.  The surgery for my neck caused an acute attack of this disease which required hospital treatment.  The treatment plan is rather simple for this very rare disease.  I needed either a 10% or 20% solution of glucose by IV and pain medicine, nausea medicine and within 48 hours, treatment with a blood product know as "heme".  The doctors who took care of me decided to wait three weeks before ordering the heme because of the cost.  They said "the cost would be around 7,500 Euros for four 250 ml bottles".  This attack was the worst attack I have ever had.  I did not eat or drink anything for 21 days which only made things worse.  They finally started the "heme" and I started to respond a little by the third dose.  As a result of delaying treatment, I now have chronic, severe pain in my stomach, the food I eat doesn't digest well and I have severe diarrhea and gas.

 

These two examples of how the German medical system worked for me, and demonstrates how any government mandated health system works.  You might say, Why don't you buy the private insurance?, my answer is I can't buy the insurance because I have an inherited disease and the spine problem, both of which are pre-existing conditions that disqualify me from any private insurance coverage.  I can't buy the insurance at any price. 

 

Prior to moving to Germany, I worked as a Physician Assistant with experience in Family Medicine, Orthopedic and Neurosurgery.  In my experience, not one person was ever turned away from the practices I worked at because of a lack of insurance.  Their evaluation and treatment didn't depend on what kind of insurance they had, every person received the same level and expertise in their treatment plan.  For two years, I worked and ran a clinic for the homeless, nobody was turned away for care, I was able to arrange specialist appointments for my patients as well without cost to them and arranged for medication from the the local pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies again at no cost or very low cost.   I prefer the system as it is in the United States far more than that here in Germany.  I have had family and friends in the US say to me, well at least it is free for you.  I hate to burst your bubble I said to them, but despite what you hear from those politicians who want a European style healthcare system and they often quote it as a free system for all Europeans, this is not true.  Between what I pay and my employer, the cost is over 500 Euros per month just for me.  My wife has her own insurance, there really are not any family plans like in the US.  Each individual has his or her own policy and it is never free for anyone who works.  For those people who are unemployed they may qualify for insurance and in some cases it is very low cost or free sometimes based on ability to pay.  For some people I know here, they have no health insurance at all and can't get any.  So the myth of free universal health coverage in Europe is just that, a myth.

 

I hope and pray that the good people of the United States never fall victim to a healthcare delivery system such as I have to suffer with.  The system in the USA is far from being the perfect system, but the systems in Europe are much worse in so many ways. Perhaps someday I can return to the USA and not have to fear for my life when it comes to healthcare.  The doctors in Germany are not aw well trained as those in the USA and from my experience here, they don't really give damn about their patients even if they have the Gold Card or private insurance.  That I will leave to another post regarding the doctors in Germany.   

Hello dear readers, in this blog I will try to bring to you what it is like to live in Europe and how this compares to South Dakota life.  First of all, Baerchen means little bear in German.  This is one of the terms of endearment that my wife uses when she talks to me.  Some of the others are Schatz, Liebling, Maus.  You have most likely noticed that the words have been capitalized, this is how they are written according to the German language.

 

I am an English teacher who was originally employed in the healthcare business in the United States.  I teach mainly at businesses and occasionally have private students.  I also do proofreading, German to English translations.  I frequently have to defend the United States and provide my students with correct information regarding the USA and its history.  The German media demonizes everything it can about "Amerika" on television, in newspapers/magazines and on the radio.  In their schools they are frequently provided with a Germanized version of the history of the United States. 

 

In the first sentence, I stated that I lived in Europe, specifically I live in Germany.  It has been eight years since I left everything behind in South Dakota and relocated to the Ruhr area of Germany.  It was a drastic change to say the least.  South Dakota has around 700,000 people living there and here in the Ruhr area are around 25 milion.  Despite being known as the industrial area of Germany, the region is very green and beautiful.  The foods are similar but at the same time very different, some of my favorite food items are not available in the supermarkets but can be special ordered through online shops at hefty prices.  Driving here is also similar to driving in the USA but again oh so very different.  One example of this is, that on streets that are not marked otherwise, when you come up to an intersection, cars coming on the street to your right have the right of way.  They drive right through the intersection with very little regard for the safety of others.  It is their divine right to drive through, and God forbid if you challenge them.  Television is very interesting as well, talk shows of every variety rule the airwaves here.  It is truly a culture of discussion, discussion, discussion.  The guests on these shows are often politicians, who are pitted against celebrities such as singers or actors, and last but not least someone who is a mere mortal a person who works in the branch of business that they are discussing.  Other programs include "Wetten Das" where people demonstrate some strange and unusual talent they have developed only to appear on this program.  These talents include being able to identfiy any pacifer that is one the market while blindfolded and sucking on it, stacking beer cases or breaking apples with one hand.  European, American celebrities are invited on the show and bet that the person can succeed with their talent or not and if they lose, they have to perform some strange act on the stage.  A lot of television shows are from the USA some from the 1970s, 80s, 90s and are shown over and over again.  There are a lot of programs that people love and some that they hate here.

 

Over the last eight years, I have had to deal with anti-Americanism.  I have heard it all, that Americans are terrible people because there are so many guns in America, that American is a terrorist country and that America has no culture of its own.  Americans can only speak English, due to the fact that there are no foreign languages offered in schools.  Americans killed off the Indians, Americans still enslave black people and Americans want to rule the world with its large military might forcing little countries to become little American satellite countries forming an empire.  40,000,000 people in America have no health insurance. After hearing this as the first thing some people here say to me, the very next thing they say without missing a beat, is that they want to be like Americans.  American fashion, music, television programs, movies and everything else are worshipped and copied.  It truly amazes me that people can hate the USA and then say, yeah, I want to be like an American.

 

In future posts, I will try to cover in a lot more detail some of the similarites and differences between Europe and America.  Everything is indeed similar and so vastly different at the same time.  I hope that you will all enjoy what I have to write about and if you have comments or questions please do so in the comment section.