There's no way I'm going to go through and quote everyone, but Ken, Der affe, and Hallen all make very excellent points.
On Ken's first point, being one of those people considered in the "poor" column (I made 18k last year, and 12k the year before). If I can find a way to keep myself healthy (which is 75% of my job as an opera singer) everyone else can, sure mom and dad help out buying me a plane ticket back for Thanksgiving but that's an irrelevant issue. I make my $300 monthly payment for great coverage, $600 for rent and utilities in a nice house, and then have just enough left for a social life, food, travel and the e30, not to mention keeping myself healthy. Having lived in New Orleans and DC, I can personally say that the MAJORITY of the low income population is the medical burden because of their personal irresponsibility and not because they are incapable by any means of keeping themselves healthy.
I'll have to find the med report I read about Medicare's spending but here's my story on another side of der affe's. I used to work for a doctor in Houston, my entire job was to make collection calls to insurance companies (yeah it was fun, i know,
). Medicare and Medicaid were the absolute WORST companies I have very had to deal with, between the mountains of paperwork to the bullshit run around and them literally not wanting to pay for anything whatsoever, it would take 3-4 months just to get reimbursments compared to 3-4 weeks with private companies. Then on top of all that, when medications or equipment was necessary for a patient we had to order it through their suppliers or it wouldn't be covered. If you want to know why both Medicare and Medicaid are the two highest dropped coverages with doctors (ie docs don't accept them) combine all the bullshit run around with equipment, like say an oxygen tank, that costs medicare $1900 while the open market sells the exact same tank for $400. It happens with the private sector too, but not nearly to the extent that it is with the government run programs, it's one of the main reasons Medicare was projected to cost 1 billion by 1990 and ended up costing 109 Billion, and why in 2008 alone it cost 508 Billion!! $7500 for those sleeves is highway robbery and we all know it. If you got rid of the insurance-supplier bullshit and let doctors purchase whatever they needed on the open market then I guarantee that overall care cost would be cut in half, no more of this bullshit "bulk-rate" crap.
Right on the money! Sprint actually has a program that creates a medical savings account that does roll over, on top of the insurance coverage packages that they offer. Every paycheck I would have a certain percentage of my earnings put into the account and I could use it for whatever I needed: prescriptions, co-pay, didn't matter and i still had full insurance coverage. Creating savings accounts like those are the absolute best way, much the same way you can use Escrow accounts instead of auto insurance (which I am considering switching to btw)
Totally agree with all of y'all that no way in hell do I want this to turn into anything remotely close to a factory system, and it is extremely complicated on the patient care side of it which of course will always demand a higher cost.
Dead on, 100% my point exactly!
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On another note, I would like to mention, that for those who have not heard, the LONE Republican Congressman who voted FOR the Bill (who I'm sad to admit I have met in person), had been called into several meetings with Pelosi and Obama and was promised 108 Billion dollars of "recovery aid" for his district in New Orleans. Now I'm glad for any aid that can be brought into NOLA because I love that city but it is absolutely despicable that the President of the United States is BRIBING the Congressman into order to ram a bill through. I don't care if this bill was the most perfect piece of legislation in the history of the world, there is NO EXCUSE whatsoever for the President to be committing these crimes (well it would be a crime if he was an ordinary citizen). He LITERALLY is BUYING Votes for the bill!!!!!!! This isn't Lobbying, it's BRIBING!!!!
He also gave a Californian Rep 164 million for the Cal Medical School in exchange for a YES vote!!!!
I don't understand how anyone, Democrat, Republican, Liberal or Conservative can not be outraged by these actions, it's one thing to lobby and campaign for legislation, it's a whole other thing to be bribing people for votes!!!
On Ken's first point, being one of those people considered in the "poor" column (I made 18k last year, and 12k the year before). If I can find a way to keep myself healthy (which is 75% of my job as an opera singer) everyone else can, sure mom and dad help out buying me a plane ticket back for Thanksgiving but that's an irrelevant issue. I make my $300 monthly payment for great coverage, $600 for rent and utilities in a nice house, and then have just enough left for a social life, food, travel and the e30, not to mention keeping myself healthy. Having lived in New Orleans and DC, I can personally say that the MAJORITY of the low income population is the medical burden because of their personal irresponsibility and not because they are incapable by any means of keeping themselves healthy.
I'll have to find the med report I read about Medicare's spending but here's my story on another side of der affe's. I used to work for a doctor in Houston, my entire job was to make collection calls to insurance companies (yeah it was fun, i know,
). Medicare and Medicaid were the absolute WORST companies I have very had to deal with, between the mountains of paperwork to the bullshit run around and them literally not wanting to pay for anything whatsoever, it would take 3-4 months just to get reimbursments compared to 3-4 weeks with private companies. Then on top of all that, when medications or equipment was necessary for a patient we had to order it through their suppliers or it wouldn't be covered. If you want to know why both Medicare and Medicaid are the two highest dropped coverages with doctors (ie docs don't accept them) combine all the bullshit run around with equipment, like say an oxygen tank, that costs medicare $1900 while the open market sells the exact same tank for $400. It happens with the private sector too, but not nearly to the extent that it is with the government run programs, it's one of the main reasons Medicare was projected to cost 1 billion by 1990 and ended up costing 109 Billion, and why in 2008 alone it cost 508 Billion!! $7500 for those sleeves is highway robbery and we all know it. If you got rid of the insurance-supplier bullshit and let doctors purchase whatever they needed on the open market then I guarantee that overall care cost would be cut in half, no more of this bullshit "bulk-rate" crap.
Originally posted by Hallen
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Originally posted by Hallen
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Originally posted by Hallen
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On another note, I would like to mention, that for those who have not heard, the LONE Republican Congressman who voted FOR the Bill (who I'm sad to admit I have met in person), had been called into several meetings with Pelosi and Obama and was promised 108 Billion dollars of "recovery aid" for his district in New Orleans. Now I'm glad for any aid that can be brought into NOLA because I love that city but it is absolutely despicable that the President of the United States is BRIBING the Congressman into order to ram a bill through. I don't care if this bill was the most perfect piece of legislation in the history of the world, there is NO EXCUSE whatsoever for the President to be committing these crimes (well it would be a crime if he was an ordinary citizen). He LITERALLY is BUYING Votes for the bill!!!!!!! This isn't Lobbying, it's BRIBING!!!!
He also gave a Californian Rep 164 million for the Cal Medical School in exchange for a YES vote!!!!
I don't understand how anyone, Democrat, Republican, Liberal or Conservative can not be outraged by these actions, it's one thing to lobby and campaign for legislation, it's a whole other thing to be bribing people for votes!!!
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