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3 Out Of 4 Gottliebs Have the H1N1 Vaccine

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Today I got a glimpse of State Run Healthcare.

It was horrifying.

15 thoughts on “3 Out Of 4 Gottliebs Have the H1N1 Vaccine”

  1. So it would be better to simply let the vaccine go to the highest bidding clinics, practices and hospitals and screw all those uninsured people because they don’t matter anyway?

    People moan about nationalized health care precisely because it equalizes everyone and puts them in line with the unwashed. It’s easy to feel badly for the uninsured but no one wants to line up with them.

    The real problem is that the government didn’t grow a set of balls and organize immunizations through schools for children and their families (to hit part of the targeted at risk group) and ob-gyn practices. They also didn’t anticipate that their dire warnings would be heeded, so they weren’t expecting a lot of people from the lower risk groups to be lining up and therefore didn’t tell them to stay home and wait til the women and children, essentially, were served. And before you say this is another example of incompetence – had they done this, the right would have screamed about Hitler and other nonsense. Lose/lose for the current admin all the way around.

    H1N1 is just flu that none of us has had. Happens. We can’t protect ourselves from everything and if people had more access to health care down there, maybe getting flu wouldn’t be so scary.

  2. Whoah! You are both way off base.

    This is a totally unacceptable way to administer healthcare. I’m part of the right, though they’re losing me fast, and I have to tell you that only a few losers are invoking Hitler, sadly they get camera time.

    Rich or poor, today was shocking. Los Angeles is seeing third world healthcare. Can we admit a few things?

    1. Doctors are almost always smarter than politicians
    2. Doctors are always wiser than bureaucrats
    3. Waiting for 3-4 hours in the hot sun, for a flu shot is totally unacceptable

    And yes, much can be said for capitalism. If an insurance company could get the vaccine don’t you think they’d get it out there very quickly?

    Life isn’t fair, it never has been, and it never will be.

    1. A few points . . .

      I have had to wait nearly an hour for a doctor’s appointment before, when I had called way in advance and SCHEDULED an appointment. There’s no reason for me to believe that doctors will be any more efficient when dealing with the vaccine for a potential pandemic.

      If insurance companies got the vaccine, who could afford it? I can take my daughter to the health department here and pay $5 for her baby shots. I made the DRASTIC mistake of asking her doctor to administer the shots once, because I was there for a well visit anyway, and I ended up being billed $155 dollars.

      $155? Is the stuff given by the doctor’s office magic or something? If you want to pay that much more for your vaccines, you could have waited, Jessica, for your doctor’s office to get them, instead of trying to be in that first wave of people receiving the vaccine. You chose to engage in the game of “first come, first served,” and there were a TON of other players, so you had to wait.

      Life isn’t fair, as you said, and sometimes, you have to wait your turn. But if you had to make an appointment for the shot, with everyone else wanting the exact same thing, you would still be waiting.

      I’m guessing that you also support tort reform, from your apparent reliance and endorsement of the superiority of doctors and insurance companies.

  3. Insurance companies? You mean health care providers who are largely fee for service. 2004 and 2005 I had a terminally ill husband, a baby and a pre-existing condition (asthma) for myself and couldn’t find a flu shot anywhere. Every clinic I called said, nope and I had great health insurance. This is not about one system being superior to another and that’s why the whole thing needs to be overhauled, but when it is (finally), there will be waits because there simply isn’t as much healthcare to go around as those of us with insurance have been led to believe.

  4. 1. Doctors are almost always smarter than politicians
    There are LOTS of Doctors that support Health Care Reform, including Single Payer.

    2. Doctors are always wiser than bureaucrats
    Including the insurance bureaucrats that currently run the health care system but Doctors have to spend their time fighting with ridiculous policies instead of treating the patient.

    3. Waiting for 3-4 hours in the hot sun, for a flu shot is totally unacceptable
    So if the organizers of the event had provided shade it would have been totally acceptable!

    1. Re: #3 No, shade would not have been adequate, but little fruity cocktails with paper umbrellas would have made it just fine.

  5. In our area, the school districts did set up vaccination clinics. However, due to production issues, their was a shortage, and the clinics were canceled. Unfortunately this same area has already had to close two districts due to H1N1. The Friday our health department received the vaccination, one of my kids came home sick with it. By Monday another had it. Fortunatley for us, that is where it stopped.

  6. This is awesome that you show this Jessica because too often people in their suburban homes with their employer health coverage do not get to see inside the nasty real world of public healthcare such as this. I hear that LA has an emergency clinic setup (I cannot recall where I do remember seeing a stint about this) where this clinic generally sets up shop in third world countries, not in the US. Sad that if you don’t have the money you don’t really get the care and if you don’t have the money and have what little care is offered you basically stand in a daily line in hopes your number is next for that day. Sad we cannot all be on the same playing field for wellness care in this country.

  7. At least you were able to get the H1N1 vax! I am the mom of a 2.5 year old boy, who will be getting the vax at his pediatrician’s office when they get it in on Wednesday. I live in CT and my mom works at a Dr.’s office in NY – there is such a shortage here that both the CT and NY governments have such severe restrictions on who can receive the vax that none of me, my husband or our nanny qualify. And after many phone calls, it’s pretty clear that there will be only one more shipment of the vax – we won’t be able to qualify later in the season, either. So we just have to wash our hands a lot and hope that we don’t get sick. It matters not around here whether you go to a public clinic or a private doctor’s office (I do have insurance and I’d be willing to do either) – no matter what, due to the shortage, no one in our household (other than our son) will be eligible to receive the vaccine anytime this flu season. Not to mention my parents, who aren’t eligible to receive it because they’re both over 50 (even though my dad is immuno-suppressed – no dice).

    Health Care Reform aside, it seems to me a terrible mistake was made on part of the government – they severely misjudged how potent both the seasonal flu and H1N1 strains would be this year, and didn’t intervene in time to ensure that enough vaccine would be available to go around. I just hope that vaxing our 2.5 year old is enough. And I pray that my father doesn’t get sick.

  8. The vaccine is not a cure all. It is important for those who have health issues that have compromised their immune systems. But even then it is not a guarantee.

    From the CDC

    Vaccination is especially important for people at high risk of serious flu complications, including young children, pregnant women, people with chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes or heart and lung disease and people 65 years and older.

  9. Sherri – don’t blame the government for the lack of H1N1 vaccine, lay that one directly at the feet of big pharma. They knew it would be an egg grown vaccine and those take time. As far as regular flu vaccine goes, there is no shortage.
    The lines for H1N1 are not representative of a “state run health care”. This is mass immunization, and it’s an effective way to efficiently and fairly distribute a scarce resource. If left to private enterprise, the scarce resource would end up at the doctors’ offices for the well to do, and not available to the most vulnerable. I am old enough to remember standing in line for polio vaccine, long lines. We were so very grateful that the next summer there would not be the specter of iron lungs and being crippled. It’s interesting how our culture has lost the ability to be thankful and to complain about waiting. Americans are among the luckiest people on earth, we should stop whining.

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