Liar
now with 17% more class
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Health Care
- Thread starter R. Richard
- Start date
jomar
chillin
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- Nov 7, 2006
- Posts
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Is anyone afraid the national health card is a backdoor to tracking everyone? 
When not covered by a employer policy I searched around and chose my own high deductible policy. It was not particularity flexible. Then managed care came in and was supposed to save money and cut costs but all it did was drive down the docs reimbursement rates, restrict freedom of choice (who you can see) and make some savvy people rich. Now I have United HealthCare and they've been fine, even great in some aspects, but they make the decisions, you know?
Insurance is a for profit business and the first line order of business is to deny claims to the insured and to create as many payment barriers as possible to providers. It's pretty a fucked up system already. I'm not afraid of a government option becoming available.
When not covered by a employer policy I searched around and chose my own high deductible policy. It was not particularity flexible. Then managed care came in and was supposed to save money and cut costs but all it did was drive down the docs reimbursement rates, restrict freedom of choice (who you can see) and make some savvy people rich. Now I have United HealthCare and they've been fine, even great in some aspects, but they make the decisions, you know?
Insurance is a for profit business and the first line order of business is to deny claims to the insured and to create as many payment barriers as possible to providers. It's pretty a fucked up system already. I'm not afraid of a government option becoming available.
Austin8
Literotica Guru
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well Jo
yeah I am, I'm a small business owner, and before I started my own business I depended on my employer to provide the healthcare options, some plans were expensive and offered very little. A couple were exceptional.
Now that I am self employed there's not a lot out there for me. I don't want the govment telling me what I can and cannot have, but I would appreciate a reasonable rate from the private insurance companies so I could offer something to employees, and at the same time insure my family, but as it stands now, and seems the future, not happenin.
Everbody in washington is talkin about mainstreet and small business, they're full of shit! not holding my breath, thats for sure.
yeah I am, I'm a small business owner, and before I started my own business I depended on my employer to provide the healthcare options, some plans were expensive and offered very little. A couple were exceptional.
Now that I am self employed there's not a lot out there for me. I don't want the govment telling me what I can and cannot have, but I would appreciate a reasonable rate from the private insurance companies so I could offer something to employees, and at the same time insure my family, but as it stands now, and seems the future, not happenin.
Everbody in washington is talkin about mainstreet and small business, they're full of shit! not holding my breath, thats for sure.
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john-the-author
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Sorry, you're right, RR; I should've said "Any transaction that involves a bank such as a credit card or a check." (What on earth do you do, if you don't mind me asking?)
john-the-author
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Is anyone afraid the national health card is a backdoor to tracking everyone?
Given that there's not a lot of difference to what's currently available to them now and is used for other things, no, not a bit. I don't see any signficant differences at all.
Me, neither. I currently have great insurance and my wife, as a judge, has okay insurance (mine's a lot better). When I go back to freelance next year, I'll be using her insurance again. It's certainly better than nothing at all, but it's not stunning. Without health insurance, I'd be in seriously bad shape.
jomar
chillin
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I'm a small business owner too with a handful of employees. I've talked with my employees about them having a heath insurance plan, but they don't want want to take the pay pinch it would require to have one (I pay them as much as I can so I don't' have a revolving door). I don't see having the headroom to give them insurance unless the pay structure changes, which it will if the government forces something on my level of operation, and which I am opposed to. We'll see.
R. Richard
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If you don't pay the man what you owe him, he sends in a couple of 300 pound goons to collect. If they fail you get me. Actually, I'm not a nice person.
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J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
According to game theory, within a healthcare system where no one has control of the money, every participant will attempt to maximize his share of the benefits. There will be little or no cooperation and the system will fail. That is, patients will attempt to obtain more services than they normally would, MDs and hospitals will commit fraud, and the government will reduce authorized treatments. Because the government is the most powerful player it will gradually accrue the lion's share of the money.
jomar
chillin
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Shh. I'm trying to stir it...
As much as I hate insurance I have all bases covered. And I'm currently pissed at the thought of paying out of pocket for a fender bender so my rates won't go up.
R. Richard
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OK Literotica people, let's see how government health plans really work. In any case,I don't think that prescribing death drugs is the answer. We have enough drug problems as is. No, the real solution is togive the terminally ill person a handgun with one round loaded. You say, "Wait a damn minute,no one is going to do that." My point exactly. Comment?
Death Drugs Cause Uproar in Oregon
Terminally Ill Denied Drugs for Life, But Can Opt for Suicide
The news from Barbara Wagner's doctor was bad, but the rejection letter from her insurance company was crushing.
(Paul Carter/Register-Guard)The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay.
What the state-run Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.
"It was horrible," Wagner told ABCNews.com. "I got a letter in the mail that basically said if you want to take the pills, we will help you get that from the doctor and we will stand there and watch you die. But we won't give you the medication to live."
Critics of Oregon's decade-old Death With Dignity Law -- the only one of its kind in the nation -- have been up in arms over the indignity of her unsigned rejection letter. Even those who support Oregon's liberal law were upset.
The incident has spilled over the state border into Washington, where advocacy groups are pushing for enactment of Initiative 1000 in November, legalizing a similar assisted-death law.
Death Tourism: Journey to Gentle SuicideWATCH: 'Dr. Death's' New MissionOpponents say the law presents all involved with an "unacceptable conflict" and the impression that insurance companies see dying as a cost-saving measure. They say it steers those with limited finances toward assisted death.
"News of payment denial is tough enough for a terminally ill person to bear," said Steve Hopcraft, a spokesman for Compassion and Choices, a group that supports coverage of physician-assisted death.
Letter's Impact 'Devastating'
"Imagine if the recipient had pinned his hope for survival on an unproven treatment, or if this were the first time he understood the disease had entered the terminal phase. The impact of such a letter would be devastating," he told ABCNews.com.
Wagner, who had worked as a home health care worker, a waitress and a school bus driver, is divorced and lives in a low-income apartment. She said she could not afford to pay for the medication herself.
"I'm not too good today," said Wagner, a Springfield great-grandmother. "But I'm opposed to the [assisted suicide] law. I haven't considered it, even at my lowest point."
A lifelong smoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2005 and quit. The state-run Oregon Health Plan generously paid for thousands of dollars worth of chemotherapy, radiation, a special bed and a wheelchair, according to Wagner.
The cancer went into remission, but in May, Wagner found it had returned. Her oncologist prescribed the drug Tarceva to slow its growth, giving her another four to six months to live.
But under the insurance plan, she can the only receive "palliative" or comfort care, because the drug does not meet the "five-year, 5 percent rule" -- that is, a 5 percent survival rate after five years.
A 2005 New England Journal of Medicine study found the drug erlotinib, marketed as Tarceva, does marginally improve survival for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who had completed standard chemotherapy.
The median survival among patients who took erlotinib was 6.7 months compared to 4.7 months for those on placebo. At one year, 31 percent of the patients taking erlotinib were still alive compared to 22 percent of those taking the placebo.
"It's been tough," said her daughter, Susie May, who burst into tears while talking to ABCNews.com. "I was the first person my mom called when she got the letter," said May, 42. "While I was telling her, 'Mom, it will be ok,' I was crying, but trying to stay brave for her."
"I've talked to so many people who have gone through the same problems with the state-run Oregon Health Plan," she said.
Indeed, Randy Stroup, a 53-year-old Dexter resident with terminal prostate cancer, learned recently that his doctor's request for the drug mitoxantrone had been rejected. The treatment, while not a cure, could ease Stroup's pain and extend his life by six months.
Playing With 'My Life'
"What is six months of life worth?" he asked in a report in the Eugene Register-Guard. "To me it's worth a lot. This is my life they're playing with."
The state-run Oregon Health Plan was established in 1994 and the physician-assisted death law was enacted in 1997. The state was recently hailed by a University of Wisconsin study as having one of the nation's top pain-management policies.
The health plan, for those whose incomes fall under the poverty level, prioritizes coverage -- from prevention first, to chronic disease management, treatment of mental health, heart and cancer treatment.
"It's challenging because health care is very expensive, but that's not the real essence of our priority list," said Dr. Jeanene Smith, administrator for the Office of for Oregon's Health Policy and Research staff.
"We need evidence to say it is a good use of taxpayer's dollars," she said. "It may be expensive, but if it does wonders, we cover it."
The state also regularly evaluates and updates approvals for cancer treatments. "We look as exhaustively as we can with good peer review evidence," she said.
The health plan takes "no position" on the physician-assisted suicide law, according to spokesman Jim Sellers.
The terminally ill who qualify can receive pain medication, comfort and hospice care, "no matter what the cost," he said.
But Sellers acknowledged the letter to Wagner was a public relations blunder and something the state is "working on."
"Now we have to review to ensure sensitivity and clarity," Sellers told ABCNews.com "Not only is the patient receiving had news, but insensitivity on top of that. This is something that requires the human touch."
Sellers said that from now on insurance officials will likely "pick up the phone and have a conversation," he said.
But a 1998 study from Georgetown University's Center for Clinical Bioethics found a strong link between cost-cutting pressures on physicians and their willingness to prescribe lethal drugs to patients -- were it legal to do so.
The study warns that there must be "a sobering degree of caution in legalizing [assisted death] in a medical care environment that is characterized by increasing pressure on physicians to control the cost of care."
Cancer drugs can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $6,000 a month. The cost of lethal medication, on the other hand, is about $35 to $50.
Advocates for the proposed Washington law say that while offering death benefits but not health care can be perceived as a cost-cutting, "respectable studies" say otherwise.
"The reason is that hospice care, where most patients are at the end of life is relatively inexpensive," Anne Martens, spokesman for Washington's Death With Dignity Initiative, told ABCNews.com.
But even those who support liberal death laws say Wagner's predicament is reflective of insurance attitudes nationwide.
Case Is Not Unique
"Her case is hardly unique," said Michigan lawyer Geoffrey Fieger, who defended Dr. Jack Kevorkian's crusade to legalize physician-assisted deaths. "In the rest of the country insurance companies are making these decisions and are not paying for suicide," Fieger told ABCNews.com. "Involuntary choices are foisted on people all the time by virtue of denials."
"I am surprised there hasn't been a revolt in this country," he said. "It happens every day and people are helpless."
Indeed, one executive suffering from a rare and potentially fatal form of liver cancer is fighting his insurance company for coverage. Oncologists from a major teaching hospital in New York City have prescribed Sutent -- a medication that costs about $4,000 a month and could extend his life expectancy.
"Most of my objections are that some second rate guy on the staff of the insurance company is second-guessing one of the foremost authorities and trumping his judgment," said the 57-year-old executive, who didn't want his name used to protect his privacy.
"I am fortunate to have the financial resources and the ability to fight these people who would rather these you die," he told ABCNews.com.
Dr. Jonathan Groner, clinical professor of surgery at OSU College of Medicine and Public Health in Columbus, Ohio, said some patients may want to prolong their lives for a life-cycle event, like a birth or wedding.
"A course of chemo would not cure, but would subdue the cancer long enough to be meaningful," he told ABCNEWS.com. "There are many people with slow-growing but nonetheless metastatic cancer for whom death, while inevitable, is many years away."
"The problem with the Oregon plan is it sounds like administrators, not physicians, are making treatment decisions," he said. "And if a patient can get assisted death paid for but not cancer treatment, the choice is obvious."
Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society and author of "Final Exit," who helped write the Oregon Death With Dignity Law, said only about 30 people a year choose an assisted death, which must be approved by two doctors.
"It's purely optional and the patient and doctor can walk away from it," the 78-year-old told ABCNEWS.com. "It's not the mad rush our enemies predicted and for our residents it has worked out well."
His own wife, Jean, was diagnosed with fast-growing breast cancer in 1975 and asked him to help find drugs to help her die. At 42, she chose to take them and ended her life.
Humphry says the state-run Oregon Health Plan's approach to coverage is sound.
"People cling to life and look for every sort of crazy cure to keep alive and usually they are better off not to have done it," he said. [I can't find it in writing,but I undestand he also volunteers to be God.]
Meanwhile Wagner has faith in her medicine, not assisted death. Now, at the request of her doctor, the pharmaceutical company Genentech is giving her Tarceva free of charge for one year.
"The doctor did say it would put a lid on the cancer and I am hopeful," she said.
Wagner's daughter Susie May says her mother is a fighter. "I think we all knew that this is her last hope," she said.
Even Wagner's ex-husband, Dennis Wagner of Springfield, has weighed in on the ethical dilemma.
"My reaction is pretty typical," he told ABCNews.com. "I am sick and tired of the dollar being the bottom line of everything. We need to put human life above the dollar."
Death Drugs Cause Uproar in Oregon
Terminally Ill Denied Drugs for Life, But Can Opt for Suicide
The news from Barbara Wagner's doctor was bad, but the rejection letter from her insurance company was crushing.
(Paul Carter/Register-Guard)The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay.
What the state-run Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.
"It was horrible," Wagner told ABCNews.com. "I got a letter in the mail that basically said if you want to take the pills, we will help you get that from the doctor and we will stand there and watch you die. But we won't give you the medication to live."
Critics of Oregon's decade-old Death With Dignity Law -- the only one of its kind in the nation -- have been up in arms over the indignity of her unsigned rejection letter. Even those who support Oregon's liberal law were upset.
The incident has spilled over the state border into Washington, where advocacy groups are pushing for enactment of Initiative 1000 in November, legalizing a similar assisted-death law.
Death Tourism: Journey to Gentle SuicideWATCH: 'Dr. Death's' New MissionOpponents say the law presents all involved with an "unacceptable conflict" and the impression that insurance companies see dying as a cost-saving measure. They say it steers those with limited finances toward assisted death.
"News of payment denial is tough enough for a terminally ill person to bear," said Steve Hopcraft, a spokesman for Compassion and Choices, a group that supports coverage of physician-assisted death.
Letter's Impact 'Devastating'
"Imagine if the recipient had pinned his hope for survival on an unproven treatment, or if this were the first time he understood the disease had entered the terminal phase. The impact of such a letter would be devastating," he told ABCNews.com.
Wagner, who had worked as a home health care worker, a waitress and a school bus driver, is divorced and lives in a low-income apartment. She said she could not afford to pay for the medication herself.
"I'm not too good today," said Wagner, a Springfield great-grandmother. "But I'm opposed to the [assisted suicide] law. I haven't considered it, even at my lowest point."
A lifelong smoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2005 and quit. The state-run Oregon Health Plan generously paid for thousands of dollars worth of chemotherapy, radiation, a special bed and a wheelchair, according to Wagner.
The cancer went into remission, but in May, Wagner found it had returned. Her oncologist prescribed the drug Tarceva to slow its growth, giving her another four to six months to live.
But under the insurance plan, she can the only receive "palliative" or comfort care, because the drug does not meet the "five-year, 5 percent rule" -- that is, a 5 percent survival rate after five years.
A 2005 New England Journal of Medicine study found the drug erlotinib, marketed as Tarceva, does marginally improve survival for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who had completed standard chemotherapy.
The median survival among patients who took erlotinib was 6.7 months compared to 4.7 months for those on placebo. At one year, 31 percent of the patients taking erlotinib were still alive compared to 22 percent of those taking the placebo.
"It's been tough," said her daughter, Susie May, who burst into tears while talking to ABCNews.com. "I was the first person my mom called when she got the letter," said May, 42. "While I was telling her, 'Mom, it will be ok,' I was crying, but trying to stay brave for her."
"I've talked to so many people who have gone through the same problems with the state-run Oregon Health Plan," she said.
Indeed, Randy Stroup, a 53-year-old Dexter resident with terminal prostate cancer, learned recently that his doctor's request for the drug mitoxantrone had been rejected. The treatment, while not a cure, could ease Stroup's pain and extend his life by six months.
Playing With 'My Life'
"What is six months of life worth?" he asked in a report in the Eugene Register-Guard. "To me it's worth a lot. This is my life they're playing with."
The state-run Oregon Health Plan was established in 1994 and the physician-assisted death law was enacted in 1997. The state was recently hailed by a University of Wisconsin study as having one of the nation's top pain-management policies.
The health plan, for those whose incomes fall under the poverty level, prioritizes coverage -- from prevention first, to chronic disease management, treatment of mental health, heart and cancer treatment.
"It's challenging because health care is very expensive, but that's not the real essence of our priority list," said Dr. Jeanene Smith, administrator for the Office of for Oregon's Health Policy and Research staff.
"We need evidence to say it is a good use of taxpayer's dollars," she said. "It may be expensive, but if it does wonders, we cover it."
The state also regularly evaluates and updates approvals for cancer treatments. "We look as exhaustively as we can with good peer review evidence," she said.
The health plan takes "no position" on the physician-assisted suicide law, according to spokesman Jim Sellers.
The terminally ill who qualify can receive pain medication, comfort and hospice care, "no matter what the cost," he said.
But Sellers acknowledged the letter to Wagner was a public relations blunder and something the state is "working on."
"Now we have to review to ensure sensitivity and clarity," Sellers told ABCNews.com "Not only is the patient receiving had news, but insensitivity on top of that. This is something that requires the human touch."
Sellers said that from now on insurance officials will likely "pick up the phone and have a conversation," he said.
But a 1998 study from Georgetown University's Center for Clinical Bioethics found a strong link between cost-cutting pressures on physicians and their willingness to prescribe lethal drugs to patients -- were it legal to do so.
The study warns that there must be "a sobering degree of caution in legalizing [assisted death] in a medical care environment that is characterized by increasing pressure on physicians to control the cost of care."
Cancer drugs can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $6,000 a month. The cost of lethal medication, on the other hand, is about $35 to $50.
Advocates for the proposed Washington law say that while offering death benefits but not health care can be perceived as a cost-cutting, "respectable studies" say otherwise.
"The reason is that hospice care, where most patients are at the end of life is relatively inexpensive," Anne Martens, spokesman for Washington's Death With Dignity Initiative, told ABCNews.com.
But even those who support liberal death laws say Wagner's predicament is reflective of insurance attitudes nationwide.
Case Is Not Unique
"Her case is hardly unique," said Michigan lawyer Geoffrey Fieger, who defended Dr. Jack Kevorkian's crusade to legalize physician-assisted deaths. "In the rest of the country insurance companies are making these decisions and are not paying for suicide," Fieger told ABCNews.com. "Involuntary choices are foisted on people all the time by virtue of denials."
"I am surprised there hasn't been a revolt in this country," he said. "It happens every day and people are helpless."
Indeed, one executive suffering from a rare and potentially fatal form of liver cancer is fighting his insurance company for coverage. Oncologists from a major teaching hospital in New York City have prescribed Sutent -- a medication that costs about $4,000 a month and could extend his life expectancy.
"Most of my objections are that some second rate guy on the staff of the insurance company is second-guessing one of the foremost authorities and trumping his judgment," said the 57-year-old executive, who didn't want his name used to protect his privacy.
"I am fortunate to have the financial resources and the ability to fight these people who would rather these you die," he told ABCNews.com.
Dr. Jonathan Groner, clinical professor of surgery at OSU College of Medicine and Public Health in Columbus, Ohio, said some patients may want to prolong their lives for a life-cycle event, like a birth or wedding.
"A course of chemo would not cure, but would subdue the cancer long enough to be meaningful," he told ABCNEWS.com. "There are many people with slow-growing but nonetheless metastatic cancer for whom death, while inevitable, is many years away."
"The problem with the Oregon plan is it sounds like administrators, not physicians, are making treatment decisions," he said. "And if a patient can get assisted death paid for but not cancer treatment, the choice is obvious."
Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society and author of "Final Exit," who helped write the Oregon Death With Dignity Law, said only about 30 people a year choose an assisted death, which must be approved by two doctors.
"It's purely optional and the patient and doctor can walk away from it," the 78-year-old told ABCNEWS.com. "It's not the mad rush our enemies predicted and for our residents it has worked out well."
His own wife, Jean, was diagnosed with fast-growing breast cancer in 1975 and asked him to help find drugs to help her die. At 42, she chose to take them and ended her life.
Humphry says the state-run Oregon Health Plan's approach to coverage is sound.
"People cling to life and look for every sort of crazy cure to keep alive and usually they are better off not to have done it," he said. [I can't find it in writing,but I undestand he also volunteers to be God.]
Meanwhile Wagner has faith in her medicine, not assisted death. Now, at the request of her doctor, the pharmaceutical company Genentech is giving her Tarceva free of charge for one year.
"The doctor did say it would put a lid on the cancer and I am hopeful," she said.
Wagner's daughter Susie May says her mother is a fighter. "I think we all knew that this is her last hope," she said.
Even Wagner's ex-husband, Dennis Wagner of Springfield, has weighed in on the ethical dilemma.
"My reaction is pretty typical," he told ABCNews.com. "I am sick and tired of the dollar being the bottom line of everything. We need to put human life above the dollar."
Liar
now with 17% more class
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2003
- Posts
- 43,715
Warning: Late night meanderings below...
The way I see it, there are only two systems that can provide good health care for the broad masses, and at the same time keep the total costs down. A singular and heavily regulated system, or true competition.
You have neither right now. Right now, there's no incentive for insurers, drug companies and even hospitals and clinics to excel and provide the best possible VFM. Because they are not directly competing for the good grace of the consumer. The consumer can't make fast and informed choices, when faced with having to buy a health care service or even coverage.
A singular system, like British NHS, isn't perfect, but generally works. Because there are laws in place for government run organisations designed to cut the overhead. Madating among other things that all aquesitions are made by rulebook. All providers of (for instance) wheelchairs are allowed to compete for the contract, and the buyer (the guv'ment) must choose the lowest bidder among those that meets the buyer's wheelchair spec. A singular system (single payer and/or single provider) has a political incentive to provide VFM. Botch health care, and it's nobody's fault but the elected and replaceable politicion. Run the cost high, and other parts of the budget will suffer.
True Competition is not the same a free market. On a free market, companies can choose to not compete, or to use other strategies to gain market shares than making a better product for a lower price. Companies can choose to pay inflated prices and pass the cost on to consumers, which in the case of health care means passing it on to insurers who then take it out on consumers in new and inventive ways. True Competition would be heavily enforced competition boosting and cartel killing legislation and regulation. Active pitching of would-be competitors against each other, so that the consumer always have viable options to choose between and the opportunity to do so.
Now, that won't be a perfect system either, because there are simply health care services that are too damn expensive to ever be profitable. Treatments so expensive that normal people couldn't afford them if they sold their house, car and kids. Those could probably be dealt with through tax finianced subsidizing. But the main point is, I find it more appealing to combine regulation that drive prices down on the basic stuff (treat fractures, infections and common diseases), and "socialize" the rarer stuff on a need basis, rather than to treat "health care" as one product with one solution.
The way I see it, there are only two systems that can provide good health care for the broad masses, and at the same time keep the total costs down. A singular and heavily regulated system, or true competition.
You have neither right now. Right now, there's no incentive for insurers, drug companies and even hospitals and clinics to excel and provide the best possible VFM. Because they are not directly competing for the good grace of the consumer. The consumer can't make fast and informed choices, when faced with having to buy a health care service or even coverage.
A singular system, like British NHS, isn't perfect, but generally works. Because there are laws in place for government run organisations designed to cut the overhead. Madating among other things that all aquesitions are made by rulebook. All providers of (for instance) wheelchairs are allowed to compete for the contract, and the buyer (the guv'ment) must choose the lowest bidder among those that meets the buyer's wheelchair spec. A singular system (single payer and/or single provider) has a political incentive to provide VFM. Botch health care, and it's nobody's fault but the elected and replaceable politicion. Run the cost high, and other parts of the budget will suffer.
True Competition is not the same a free market. On a free market, companies can choose to not compete, or to use other strategies to gain market shares than making a better product for a lower price. Companies can choose to pay inflated prices and pass the cost on to consumers, which in the case of health care means passing it on to insurers who then take it out on consumers in new and inventive ways. True Competition would be heavily enforced competition boosting and cartel killing legislation and regulation. Active pitching of would-be competitors against each other, so that the consumer always have viable options to choose between and the opportunity to do so.
Now, that won't be a perfect system either, because there are simply health care services that are too damn expensive to ever be profitable. Treatments so expensive that normal people couldn't afford them if they sold their house, car and kids. Those could probably be dealt with through tax finianced subsidizing. But the main point is, I find it more appealing to combine regulation that drive prices down on the basic stuff (treat fractures, infections and common diseases), and "socialize" the rarer stuff on a need basis, rather than to treat "health care" as one product with one solution.
Last edited:
john-the-author
Literotica Guru
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Gotcha. I've known bill collectors in the past; they actually tend to be rather calm folks off the job.
john-the-author
Literotica Guru
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I've never seen why it was a problem to have basic medical care available for everyone and then additional "better" insurance for the more catastrophic stuff where you might want to improve your odds. For example, if you have only a given chance of, say, private room or a heart transplant or something on the basic insurance, then you can buy a policy to get better coverage over and above the basic. Something like that.
I'm still trying to figure out what the eeee-villlls of "socialism" are that people keep getting their assholes to flutter about. Some day, someone will explain it to me, I'm sure.
john-the-author
Literotica Guru
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The short version is most things the government messes with turns out to be a monolithic, bureaucratic nightmare that does more harm than good. War on Poverty, public housing, Department of Energy, Department of Education; the list goes on.
When all is said and done, taxes will increase, services will decrease, the fit will be kept fit. The chronically ill, the physically damaged, the elderly and anyone else who is of no use to the state will be given narcotics and sent home to die.
No one has read these bills and yet the full court press is on to pass them. The analysis presented here may be biased, but then ANY analysis of a social program contains bias. If by chance an objective analysis was prepared, most people wouldn't believe it due to their biases or preconceived notions.
This whole idea needs more study. If it began tomorrow, it couldn't be fully implemented for years...plus Congress and the bureaucrats would be tinkering with it incessantly as one by one the special interest groups went before committees with their various tales of woe.
Just remember: A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
I have. I like it. It beats the heck out of no insurance for a lot of people, too.
Liar
now with 17% more class
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That was an image I reallt didn't want in my head when heading off to bed.
Oh well, I'll try not shut it out of my dreams.
G'night, Hangouters.
john-the-author
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J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
The evil of socialism is NO ONE TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE COMMON WEAL and the socialist elites use the citizens like any resource.
My son-in-law was born and raised in Romania when it was socialist. They had a local store that sold them bags of corn meal, soup bones, and gray veggies/fruit in leaking glass jars. The store sold plastic shoes and thin fabric. You were rationed one litre of gasoline per month, and if you wanted a car you saved your money and got on a waiting list for a used one. His family lived in a 4 room apartment. The state kicked him out of school when he was 12, to go to work as a laborer.
The local Party Leader lived much better. She drove a Mercedes, lived in a villa, her kids went to college, and she shopped in restricted Party stores. She got all the gasoline she wanted. She didnt sign up to wait to see the circuit-riding MD.
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
Some of the experts I read suggest that ObamaCare is designed to close small business competition of the mega-corp chains. If Mel's Hash House cant pay the healthcare premiums for Alice, Flo, and Velma, then Mel closes and the customers eat at Mickey D's or Chili's or Outback. Ditto for the local garage and hardware store. ObamaCare is designed to destroy the middle-class. The Democrats want Perfumed Princes, Bureaucrats, and Peasants. Killing the middle-class destroys the GOP base.
john-the-author
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- May 6, 2004
- Posts
- 1,845
You just can't make this shit up!
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Right Wing’s Anti-Health Care Icon Is Uninsured, Seeking Donations To Pay For Care
Last week, during a scuffle between health care town hall protesters and SEIU members at a town hall hosted by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO), anti-health care reform protester Kenneth Gladney was injured and required hospitalization:
Among the injured was Kenneth Gladney, 38, of St. Louis. He said he was with the Tea Party, handing out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them, when he was assaulted. He said he sought hospital treatment for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face.
“I was attacked for something I believe in,” he said.
Since then, conservatives have been using Gladney’s case as a cause célèbre to claim that “union thugs” are being used to silence dissent at health care town halls and have turned him into a hero of their movement.
<click here for the whole article>
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I don't know about the assault, but as described, I think it's deplorable. But the article later states that, because he was uninsured, I'm not sure if he should be relying on his position of visibility to pimp for donations to cover his medical expenses. I think he should fucking suck it up like he's expecting everyone else to if he gets his way. It'd be the manly thing to do.
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Right Wing’s Anti-Health Care Icon Is Uninsured, Seeking Donations To Pay For Care
Last week, during a scuffle between health care town hall protesters and SEIU members at a town hall hosted by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO), anti-health care reform protester Kenneth Gladney was injured and required hospitalization:
Among the injured was Kenneth Gladney, 38, of St. Louis. He said he was with the Tea Party, handing out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them, when he was assaulted. He said he sought hospital treatment for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face.
“I was attacked for something I believe in,” he said.
Since then, conservatives have been using Gladney’s case as a cause célèbre to claim that “union thugs” are being used to silence dissent at health care town halls and have turned him into a hero of their movement.
<click here for the whole article>
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I don't know about the assault, but as described, I think it's deplorable. But the article later states that, because he was uninsured, I'm not sure if he should be relying on his position of visibility to pimp for donations to cover his medical expenses. I think he should fucking suck it up like he's expecting everyone else to if he gets his way. It'd be the manly thing to do.
Liar
now with 17% more class
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2003
- Posts
- 43,715
Kind of says it all about the climate of the debate doesn't it?
The Right have loud, disorderly, and on occasion even violent people show up and disrupt the civil discourse at town hall meetings (organized or not, that's what they do, kill constructive dialog by yelling).
When the Left complain about it and question the motives of the protestors and the methods in which they protest, suggesting it's mostly lobbyist astro-turf, the reaction is "how DARE you try to stifle dissent, they're CITIZENS, why do you HATE DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM OF SPEECH?!" Instead of maybe, just maybe, admitting that it could be wise for people to dial it down a notch.
When the same kind of disorderly conduct happens in the other direction, it is instantly blamed not on angry and upset citizens getting over the line, but on "union thugs", organized brownshirt mobs working directly for the new Evil Socialist Empire.
And at the same time, the left is doing little to nothing to complain about holliganism on their side ("What? Oh, do you have monopoly on anger now?"). And so, the trench war continues.
It's splendid drama. Just sucks that it's not fiction.
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
Like I keep sayin, the time for talking is over, its time to boogie with pistols.
DesertPirate
Sailing from the desert
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2006
- Posts
- 20,432
Except for the fact that the people arrested for assaulting Gladney were SEIU union thugs?
Respectable union thugs only work for the Democratic hand that feeds them, ie, all the union payoffs in the Spendulous bill.
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Not that I think it will change anything, but you might want to look at video of the "attack" before you solidify your opinions. It looks like something from Cops, with a whole bunch of people shouting at each other.
To save on confusion, Gladney's the guy in the tan shirt who's being kept away from the guy already rolling around on the ground. He and a third guy go down at about the same time and pop up again promptly. He was clearly striding around and chatting with the camera man afterward. Looked awfully spry for someone who needed a wheelchair the next day. Does anyone else think that the pain in his knee was directly related to the publicity potential?
So who do organized Republican thugs work for?
