Ummm.. No, we didn't.

Katz, please understand that the anger you're going to hear is not directed at you but at the system that did what I'm about to describe.

I was in the room with my grandmother while she was having a heart attack that literally lasted hours. I wasn't the only one there. My adoptive mother and a few other family members were there. My grandmother signed DNR papers IN FRONT OF ALL OF US - and we all agreed with her decision. She was in unbelievable amounts of pain.

We were told by her doctor that she was in no condition for a bypass operation. They simply couldn't put her under anesthesia because her circulation was so bad and they couldn't "harvest" any donor blood vessels from her legs.

We said our goodbyes. It was painful but we felt lucky that we were able to do what so many people never get to do - say those last words.

What happened next is something I *wish* I was making up.

We all left the hospital. We basically went home and waited for 'the call'. For a couple of days we heard nothing. Calls to the hospital resulted in "she's resting and under sedation for the pain".

Then we discovered she was on her way to surgery. They took an unconscious woman with NO family agreement and put her into surgery that would cripple her for the rest of her life (long story but she'd never get out of the hospital until winter which meant she couldn't walk, was too cold to get outside and was bedridden for the next several years as stroke after stroke continued to assault her).

The god-cursed pathetic excuse of a doctor made a claim that he was seeking additional DRG days so that she could stay in the hospital. What this scum-sucking doctor did NOT know what that my adoptive mother knew something about Medicare. She went off on him like a nuke and laid out several other diagnosis codes that could have given her the DRG days she needed. So why the surgery? Because that's what made him the most money. You know what they say - ALWAYS follow the money when you're trying to figure out why something is done.

My point is that you can find individual examples of ANYTHING going wrong with ANY system. Indeed it's a LOT easier to find someone in this country screwed over by 'the system' of private insurance we have. Don't want to look hard for that? Just google "medical bankruptcy" and read a few stories. Try "medical tourism" to see how 10 times as many people go from the US to other countries for medical treatment than do the other way around.

NOT A SINGLE ONE OF *ANY* PROPOSAL that has YET to come down the pike - even Obama's original Blue Sky Public Option plan has shown ANY way of fighting the single-biggest problem with our "system" - the fact that we pay more than TWICE as much, per capita, than ANY OTHER COUNTRY for our health care 'system'.