Health Care

[Heavens_Myst]

EAR INFECTION??? HOLY SHIT CALL THE BATPHONE

[Suineg]

Originally Posted by Sunder

My grandmother was an RN for years. You can NOT be turned away from an ER room until you are seen by either a physician or an RN. Both require time and money no matter if they "take our temperature" or provide "top-tier" medical care. They both cost the hospital money. Yet you are too fucking dumb to even know what the fuck you're talking about.

No one said anything about turning away. Check again brosephus.

Sorry I didn't point out the second half of that quote as the important part. That 'we conservatives' just make shit up....

And also are you kidding about bringing in your GRANDmother to the conversation? Back when they wore the hats as nurses still? You are comparing now and the grand age of the HMO to your grandmother in a white hat and starched uniform???

[Sunder]

Originally Posted by Suineg

No one said anything about turning away. Check again brosephus.

Originally Posted by Suineg

The issue is the fact that government health care can turn no one away.

The issue is that this will bankrupt the government.

Originally Posted by Suineg

None of these poor people that come into the hospital pay a dime. They can't afford it but they aren't turned away.

Foot, mouth, you know the rest.

[xelnix]

Originally Posted by Zhaun's_Shade

That is why you're supposed to bring her to the normal doktor for a $15-$50 co-pay instead of the ER. People with sense and health insurance do this type of thing and save themselves hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year. Part of the problem with our system is people using the ER for non-emergancy stuff.

Let me call my doctor at 2am fuckhead. No late night clinics near me either, I checked. A 2 year old running a 104 fever for 4+ hours isn't an emergency? JFC what a cocksucker.

@ Heavensmyst: when you have a child you may understand. We didn't know what it was. Turned out to be an ear infection, but you're a shithead so you just flame. Thanks for throwing your retardation my way!!

[Zhaun's_Shade]

Originally Posted by xelnix

Let me call my doctor at 2am fuckhead. No late night clinics near me either, I checked. A 2 year old running a 104 fever for 4+ hours isn't an emergency? JFC what a cocksucker.

A 2 year old with a fever? WTF, give it an asprin and toss it in the fridge for 5-6 hours until the normal doctor opens.

[xelnix]

Originally Posted by Zhaun's_Shade

A 2 year old with a fever? WTF, give it an asprin and toss it in the fridge for 5-6 hours until the normal doctor opens.

Tried that... Aspirin didn't work and the ice cream melted... so on to the ER...

[whatsamattau]

Originally Posted by xelnix

Tried that... Aspirin didn't work and the ice cream melted... so on to the ER...

Your anti-douchebag-fu is impressive.

To whoever was touting the greatness of "Top tier" private health insurance:
Owners of "top tier" health insurance find themselves knee deep in shit every day due to medical problems and bills despite their ownership of a "top tier" private health insurance plan. You have to understand that these companies exist to make a profit and will do anything not to write you a check when it comes their time to pay a claim.

You can imagine how that works, and there are thousands if not millions of testimonials. Procedure isn't covered, filing errors, procedure wasn't medically necessary, referral wasn't obtained from doctor, and the list goes on and on. THEN you have to realize that many/most "top tier" plans have a lifetime maximum, so hey, hope you don't get cancer at 40, we're trying to make a profit here.

There there is the fact that no insurance company (even the "top tier" ones) is going to cover a preexisting condition. What kind of health Care system is that?!?!

Lastly, to whoever loses sleep at night fearing the "government run" hospitals: That is never going to happen, and no one is asking for it to happen. It's all crazy shit that conservative mouth-pieces cook up to scare you and keep you listening. Stop being Naive asshats and think for once in your miserable little lives.

[Etoille]

Originally Posted by whatsamattau

Lastly, to whoever loses sleep at night fearing the "government run" hospitals: That is never going to happen, and no one is asking for it to happen. It's all crazy shit that conservative mouth-pieces cook up to scare you and keep you listening. Stop being Naive asshats and think for once in your miserable little lives.

This.

I know someone explained that the overlords are doing a fantastic job of confusing the issue but seriously are some of you so fucking dense that you cant distinguish between government sponsored insurance and government run hospitals?

Really? If this is what makes me an 'intellectual elitist' then I'm fucking embarrassed that the bar is set that low in this country.

You RAIL against government control and socialism and yet you take the rhetoric they (the leaders YOU want) spoon feed you without so much as a second independent thought?

God some of you are seriously fucking retarded.

[Arative]

This might help some of you

Side-by-Side Comparison of Major Health Care Reform Proposals

The link doesn't have any info on the co-op introduced by Sen. Kent Conrad.
It is looking increasingly likely that any type of public option health insurance plan is not going to happen but rather a co-op system owned by groups of residents and small businesses, similar to how electric or other cooperatives operate. They'd be nonprofit, and without the government involvement that troubles Republicans and business groups about the public plan options.

Republicans seem to like the co-op idea and it would get bipartisan support, which is a major hurdle to overcome in healthcare reform.

[chaos]

You're probably right that it will never happen, I like to bet the long shot. What really gets me is that we already pay for it an then some. Is everyone just ok with that? We're overpaying by a huge amount for the service that we receive. I guess you can always reframe the argument into some kind of nanny state bullshit though.

[Sunder]

Originally Posted by chaos

You're probably right that it will never happen, I like to bet the long shot. What really gets me is that we already pay for it an then some. Is everyone just ok with that? We're overpaying by a huge amount for the service that we receive. I guess you can always reframe the argument into some kind of nanny state bullshit though.

I know you're a smarter guy than this. Are you just willfully missing the part of Obama's speeches where he says we have to get health care costs under control also?

[Simas]

My bad if this was already posted, havent peeped the last couple pages.

Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Originally Posted by Gawande

It is spring in McAllen, Texas. The morning sun is warm. The streets are lined with palm trees and pickup trucks. McAllen is in Hidalgo County, which has the lowest household income in the country, but it’s a border town, and a thriving foreign-trade zone has kept the unemployment rate below ten per cent. McAllen calls itself the Square Dance Capital of the World. “Lonesome Dove” was set around here.

McAllen has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miami—which has much higher labor and living costs—spends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns...

...Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coördination. Imagine that, instead of paying a contractor to pull a team together and keep them on track, you paid an electrician for every outlet he recommends, a plumber for every faucet, and a carpenter for every cabinet. Would you be surprised if you got a house with a thousand outlets, faucets, and cabinets, at three times the cost you expected, and the whole thing fell apart a couple of years later? Getting the country’s best electrician on the job (he trained at Harvard, somebody tells you) isn’t going to solve this problem. Nor will changing the person who writes him the check.

This last point is vital. Activists and policymakers spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about whether the solution to high medical costs is to have government or private insurance companies write the checks. Here’s how this whole debate goes. Advocates of a public option say government financing would save the most money by having leaner administrative costs and forcing doctors and hospitals to take lower payments than they get from private insurance. Opponents say doctors would skimp, quit, or game the system, and make us wait in line for our care; they maintain that private insurers are better at policing doctors. No, the skeptics say: all insurance companies do is reject applicants who need health care and stall on paying their bills. Then we have the economists who say that the people who should pay the doctors are the ones who use them. Have consumers pay with their own dollars, make sure that they have some “skin in the game,” and then they’ll get the care they deserve. These arguments miss the main issue...

Either side of the aisle stuff like this is a problem. Its 8 pages long but its worth the read.

[Suineg]

Originally Posted by Arative

This might help some of you

Side-by-Side Comparison of Major Health Care Reform Proposals

The link doesn't have any info on the co-op introduced by Sen. Kent Conrad.
It is looking increasingly likely that any type of public option health insurance plan is not going to happen but rather a co-op system owned by groups of residents and small businesses, similar to how electric or other cooperatives operate. They'd be nonprofit, and without the government involvement that troubles Republicans and business groups about the public plan options.

Republicans seem to like the co-op idea and it would get bipartisan support, which is a major hurdle to overcome in healthcare reform.

Wow Obama doesn't have much of anything to say according to that site.

[MrSpitz]

Health care just needs to be rationed.

The retirement age needs to be increased by five years, combined with a tax on health insurance benefits, and there needs to be less care.

Health care is a right, but not everything we do is health care. You can walk in to a cancer hospital and have your life extended for a few months at the cost of maybe 40-50,000 dollars with a combination of drugs and palliative surgeries that you would not get in any other system unless you pay out of pocket.

You can live your whole life treating your body like shit, and expect a combination of pills to control your cholesterol, regular extra tests on your heart, type II diabetes control, and balk at having to pay extra. You can walk into an ER, get a diagnosis of a herniated disc, then three weeks later go to a specialist who does a scan and shows you actually have a small growth, then hire a lawyer to sue the original ER doctor/hospital and have a good shot at winning a settlement. Why? Well there is no recognized standard of care, so even if the ER doc isn't trained in oncology and is just their to triage, you can find a consultant nurse who may interpret the original tests as 'suspicious' and then color that to 'negligent' in your initial lawsuit filing.

You can go on Medicaid to have your first child, go off, have another child, go back on, and then when you pull yourself together enough to have insurance for your children you can willingly forgo insurance for yourself and just go to the ER and dodge bills.


Meanwhile, our system is so great at fostering compassion in the doctors themselves, that they make them slog through four years of undergraduate (at cost), four years of medical school (at cost) and while they dangle those hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts over the head of the overworked doctor-trainees they get to have the interest accumulate for about four more years as the trainee's go through residency. So you produce an individual whose psychology in terms of financial dealings is so bleak, before they even have an apartment or car (or gasp, a mortgage!) that they are in the mindset of being trapped and want desperately to get out from under the rock.


And at the end of all this, you have huge companies who make a profit while providing no care at all. And, of course, the malpractice pool of expenses.

And then people complain about hospitals, mostly non-profit, who have to charge outrageous fees to cover their legal asses and make up for all the money they lose on the ER.


My point is this, the system is a clusterfuck. Govt this, private that, it's not going to change it.
People need to retire later, people need to have their health insurance taxed so they ration it, there needs to be incentives or penalties for health choices that lead to greater costs, and finally health care must be rationed. We can't be keeping people alive, who most likely should be dead and would be in every other health care system, using a pool of public money for everyone's care. And the public has to make that choice and draw the line.

Edit: And we can't produce doctors who have more debt than a small business and be surprised when they op for higher paying specialties or worry about their finances.

[Arative]

Obama ousts AmeriCorps' IG who investigated friend

This will be interesting if the Republicans can gain traction with it.

Edit to add link about health care tax surchage
House health panel chair: Tax surcharge likely

So more than likely to pay for the health care fix, our income taxes are going to go up.