(Or Curtis Sliwa for Mayor Part III)

PART I:  The Origins of the Medical System Disaster

I have been independently paying for my own medical insurance since 1975 and I have a great memory.

The ‘narrative’ begins over 45 years ago when I spent 10 days at Lenox Hill Hospital on Park Avenue for a very major operation.  Just like most New Yorkers, my medical insurance was Blue Cross/Blue Shield which cost me far far less than $1,000 per year until the early 1980s and the politicization of the system really took off (for the AIDS epidemic).  In those days, a $12,000 annual gross income was comfortable middle-class – you could even afford to live in Manhattan as I did.  When I left the hospital, I paid $500 because I had indulged myself with a private room at $50/day.  Doctors’ bills included the following:  my surgeon received $1,000 (a part of which I paid) and the anesthesiologist received $600.  Many follow-up visits to my surgeon were cost-free.  No specialist doctor ever charged more than $100 (and only that much for an initial visit).  Most orthopedists had their own x-ray machines in the office making them cost-free to the patient.

In those days and for decades thereafter, there were so many hospitals with emergency rooms that, even in outer Brooklyn and Queens, no one was very far away from emergency care.  Since the insanity of bicycle lanes slowing traffic to a crawl is only a 10-15 year phenomenon, ambulances were faster then.  (Has no one else noticed that the appearance of bicycle lanes required the removal of emergency lanes?)

Although (being old) I have Medicare today, I still pay over $500/month and eternally rising for Supplemental Insurance and Prescription Plan in order to avoid personal bankruptcy.  Days before COVID was identified, I spent two nights in NYU Langone Hospital between Christmas and New Years in 2019.  The hospital charged Medicare over $10,000/night.  Medicare paid 80% of the Medicare-approved amount.  This left 20% to be covered by the individual or the overpriced supplemental insurance.  And, difficult though it is to believe, private hospitals like NYU do NOT profiteer.  Private hospitals in NYC are repeatedly funded with multiple $Billion (100% non-political unpublicized) philanthropy grants from super-rich business people like Ken Langone, Lawrence Tish, Carl Icahn, etc.  Even with Supplemental Prescription Insurance, prescriptions easily run into the hundreds of dollars with co-pays – if those prescriptions are even ‘covered.’

[Fifteen years ago, at the private Hospital for Special Surgery, the waiting rooms had informational signs instructing Canadians on how to get a knee replacement for cash payments rather than go back to Socialized Medicine Canada and wait in line forever.  I have been informed, by very knowledgeable people that, if you were not insured, you could pay cash at the Medicare reimbursement rate of several hundred dollars for an MRI.  Depending on the insurance that you do have, your insurance company pays more than that but not the top rate – with one exception.  (Co-pays will probably be required.)  HOWEVER, if you had the Celebrity A$$hole elite insurance coverage, many thousands of dollars would be the top charge.  Of course, you would not have to pay.  Someday, I would like to enter a facility that, on the wall, told me exactly how much money the MRI would cost under each and every one of the different insurance contracts.]

The preponderance of people do not obsessively look at their medical billing the way that I have for half a century now.

Just before I turned 65 and qualified for Medicare, I was paying over $1,100/month for managed care with necessary pre-approvals and lots of co-pays.  My wife also paid that rate until we both got on Medicare.

It was fifteen years ago that we were sitting in an MRI facility waiting room when we met a young man from the privileged Ruling Class.  He was the senior aide to a big-shot City Councilman and about to ‘move up’ to that job for two terms before becoming a big-shot in management of a government promoted (useless and wasteful) ‘renewable energy’ hoax company.  He was there for a CAT Scan because his nose was running.  I was there for multiple MRIs trying to defer major surgery for a little while longer.  While my insurance required that I obtain referrals and pre-authorization, I cannot believe that this was the case with him.

When the topic of the growing cost of medical treatment and insurance came up, he was seriously bothered by the highly publicized New York Times story of how retired auto worker families had to pay all of $250 more per year for total coverage for the entire family.  (Oh, by the way, this was the era of saving the medical system with the creation of OBAMA CARE – which Speaker Nancy Pelosi told us needed to be passed before we could find out what was in it.!)

When we told him that we each paid $1,100/month for ‘managed care,’ he had nothing more to say.  Of course, being a (very young) big-shot is politics, his cost was negligible or even free.

Part II:  The Recent Medical System Disaster

I have only learned in the last few years that, when COVID hit, Governor Andrew ‘Killer’ Cuomo was winning an Emmy Award for his performances as the biggest phony hypocrite in New York State political history.  His daily performances frequently harped on his demand for more and more ‘ventilators.’  Public hospitals and his huge political donor friends at Northwell could collect from our FUBAR government an additional $10,000/day for putting a patient on a ventilator.

Honest doctors have told me that 80% of such patients inevitably died.  I knew a woman of my age who got COVID in early 2020, went to the hospital and was healthy enough to complain about the food.  After they put her on a ventilator, she died.

Nursing home patients on Medicaid in the ‘Killer’ Cuomo administration had half their cost paid for by the New York State budget.  (That cost disappeared from the New York State budget when they died, of course.)

In recent years, probably because Curtis Sliwa was a Canarsie Brooklyn boy, I have heard him on the radio decry how very many hospitals were closed by our FUBAR NYS and NYC governments – usually sold to Real Estate Moguls who are very generous political donors.

In the late 1970s, I had a minor operation in a public hospital – Roosevelt.  I spent one night and paid less than $100 for everything.  Back then, with Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the medical system worked very well for me.  That hospital was almost as first-rate as private Lenox Hill hospital was a few years later.

Nowadays, I would be terrified if I went to a FUBAR public hospital for any emergency.

Part III:  OBAMA CARE

I recently learned that before the Socialized Medicine creating Obama Care, 60% of American physicians were in private practice and the rest were hospital employed.  Today, at most, only 30% are in private practice.  I would bet that the preponderance of private practice doctors are in rural areas.  Very few are functioning in big cities like NYC.  The new hospital standard has the doctor spend 20 minutes with the patient – mostly interacting with the computer.  They rarely even touch the patient.  Their job is now to strictly follow MEDICAL PROTOCOLS regardless of the UNIQUENESS of each patient.  Such behavior is ‘safe’ for the doctor but not necessarily for the patient.  I would not be surprised if, in 5-10 years, with the use of Artificial Intelligence and with a friendly computer technician, the doctor can be dispensed with and the time could be cut in half.

Part IV:  My Political (Medical) Fantasy

The perfect ‘Social Justice’ fantasy is for the entire NY Privileged Celebrity A$$hole Political Class (and a huge supply of their EVIL SCUMBAG PRESS supporters not just the New York Times and every Celebrity A$$hole in the Entertainment Industry) are at a great big celebratory get-together in Canarsie, Brooklyn.  It would, of course, include Andrew ‘Killer’ Cuomo, about-to-be Mayor racist anti-Semite Zoran Mamdani, former Mayor Bill DeBlasio (who teamed up with Governor ‘Killer’ Cuomo to close a vast number of hospitals), present (grifter) Governor ‘Hokum’ and every other political BIG-SHOT and they all get food poisoning.  First the ambulances have to get there and then they have to transport these Privileged Moral Pariahs to an emergency room without breaking the laws of bicycle paths and exclusive bus lanes.

In my fantasy, half die because there are not enough ambulances and the other half die in those ambulances before they can arrive at the few remaining emergency rooms.

Maybe then we can (in Lincoln’s historic words) truly “…have a new birth of Freedom” for Common People.  (Social Equality used to be the standard and Politicians and Journalists and Entertainment Industry Celebrity A$$holes were no better than the rest of us.)

I have a backup fantasy.  That would be that, after the racist anti-Semite Zoran Mamdani becomes Mayor of New York City, Senator John Fetterman and every other normal Democrat Party politician leave the Hard-Left – Muslim Brotherhood Alliance (HL-MBA)-controlled Democrat Party and become Republicans.