Why would universal health care really not work?

A debate in a mom's group I am in has sparked some MEAN thoughts in my head. I guess becasue I am in a more "medically needy" portion than all of them combined. It also comes at a BAD time when I am fighting with an insurance company to pay for a 200 dollar item that I have allready volunteered cash for.

So... let me back up....

The insurance/walker problem:

Before Christmas our doctor had written a letter of necessity for Tyler walker. It was faxed into the home health company that they used called Preferred home health. I let it go for a 3 weeks then I started calling.

I started by calling my ped's office and asking for an update. She would call the home health company and they said they were waiting on insurance. So I would make a call to the insurance and they have not "gotten anything yet." So here we waited. I really figured it would come through with no fight. Boy... I was way wrong.

So one month into above waiting I call home health myself. Come to find out they lost it. They have three Tyler Browns in their system and no one cared enough to go through HIPPA and get his birthdate. So after one month of waiting and getting no where we were not even ON square one. So we were starting OVER!! AGAIN!!

I called the peds office got another paper faxed and it got "rushed" through the process that should take "three weeks." Not sure why it should take three weeks but whatever. That was the end of January.

Here we are. The first of March. NO WALKER. I am livid at this point. Ty has allready crawled a hole in a pair of shorts and he is outside all day "crawling" He is 2 years old and doesn't need to crawl but can't get the medical things he needs to "help" him.

This is where mean mom comes in. I yell at the home health company. I volunteer to give them a check. I tell them that I will pay cash. I just want the walker. The Lady at the office proceeds to tell me that because they know that Tyler is on ACCESS ( a state run program like medicaid.) that they can't take money from me. "Most people" are poor and they can't afford anything like that. Most people are poor that are on it. I was LIVID. We make good money. We can pay cash for it. It just so happens that Tyler is considered disabled right now. We have private insurance for him.

Preferred sure got a ear full. So much that she called the warehouse and tried to find a walker but was not successfull so she decided that she would just order his and we would work out the payments or whatever later with the insurance.

Then the insurance got a ear full. They told me they had 14 days to approve it. Then another 14 days to order the equipment. I said no. You can go and approve it and in a few days we could order the walker. I can order the same walker on freaking ebay and it would get here in 24 hours. I told them I was angry and felt that they were denying him what he needed to have in order to live a respectable life. I was one angry mom. At one point I started bawling and Ty got upset.

Anyway... to make a long story short.... The insurance hurried throug his papers and they are officially back to the home health company. The home health company had allready ordered his walker and it should be here by Tuesday.

Is it a good idea to have universal health care? I have NO IDEA. but what we have now is NOT working. I am sorry that those who are in the medical field think it would be bad to have the governement have a say in what you do but what is happeneing right now is awful. It is NOT working. No 2 year old should be told that we woudl rather you be in a wheelchair because we are to cheap to give you a piece of equipment that give him independence.

I dont' have the answers. BUT by Tuesday we should have a little more freedom.