A couple of questions Gary

Yes the system is screwed here in America. The biggest customer is Medicare/Madicaid. They are so large they distort the free market.

Could this be because so many uninsured people are relying on Medicare/Medicaid for their health services? Figures I've seen say that half the population do not have insurance. That's an awful lot of potential patients therefore it's natural government paid health care would be a big user of hospital facilities. Fifty percent of the population equals 50% of the patients.
edit: That's not "distorting the free market", that is the Free Market.

They pay for stuff no sane person would, like those heroic three weeks on a ventilator for a 90 year old who has no chance of recovery. If the family had to pay ... sorry Gramps.

Could this be because the hospital was afraid of being sued if they turned the respirator off? More details are needed on this to get a true idea of the circumstances. Did the lady's family refuse permission for the respirator to be turned off?

It slightly raises the price to Medicare and thus everyone else every time it gives me some. Also it gets to declare the difference in price between the full retail price and the cash price I pay as a charitable deduction on their income taxes. A real win-win for them. But if you have insurance you can't be a charity case.

Does this mean you are working a lurk? What happens if your blood sugar goes out of control and you need to spend time in hospital to get it restabilised?

You as the patient have surrendered control of your treatment to a faceless nameless bureaucrat. Your Doctor can't override it no matter what. Assembly line medicine. It is what America wants and it is what America gets. Everyone treated identically.

As I understand it Obamacare is nothing like the original proposal that the President put to Congress. It is a bastardised, emasculated, compromise version that was all that could be gotten through. I remember reading that there were more health industry/AMA lobbyists in Washington at the time than there were members of congress and I bet every one of them had a load of brown paper bags in the boot when they arrived in Washington, and then there is the Republican party.

I doubt very much that such a system "is what America wants", it's the system forced on them by vested interests.

T.A.

...I remember reading that there were more health industry/AMA lobbyists in Washington at the time than there were members of congress...

I'm sure that's a fact. That's how we do things here. It's P A T H E T I C


It should be illegal to pay people to lobby. If you want to be heard, you go as citizen and lobby, and be heard.

---

#resist

If you want to be heard, you go as citizen and lobby, and be heard.

No one is stopping You And Others Of Your Ilk, to do the above quoted. Love to see how you all could Network It Out so as it would be a Free Trip To Washington and Be Heard.

Go Ahead. Start the Citizen Lobbying Movement. It won't Cost A Dime. Model it after Unions. You know DEM Union Bosses ain't gots no 6 figure salary. Do they?
All done For The People, For Free. Time is Free. Right? Right.

GoingUniversalFreeHealthCoverageFourthAngel

---

May we All have a METAMORPHOSIS. REASON. GOoD JUDGEMENT and LOVE and ORDER!!!!!

Yes, I know -- I've seen the traffic on flight review sites.

Then again, you folks have Qantas.....

Which is currently being run into the ground by an Irishman interested only in his mega dollar bonus. :(

T.A.

T.A. Gary has some good points regarding Medicare/Medicaid.

Heroic intervention is a flaw -- in that the default is 'on' rather than 'is this the right thing'. And the hospitals engage in it in part because they get paid for it -- it generates profits.

That is probably the largest distortion seen in Medicare. As to Medicaid, it matters which state of the country you are in -- it is administered by the individual states. That means in some cases it is decent, in other states, not so much.

By being the largest single 'insurance' entity (that is not combining the massive for profit insurance companies into a comparative 'entity') there is one thing that Medicare could do -- which is rationalize compensation for actions (ie deal with the 'default on' for heroic interventions, and stop over compensating some specialties and under compensating others).

Gary seems to believe in some variant of the Ryan plan of privatizing health insurance -- eliminating Medicare insurance and replacing it with for profit insurance. I think that is the wrong way to go -- given how much my wife and I pay for high deductible insurance, that might be a personal experience. I think that a rationalized single payer system would yield far better results.

"The move comes as such tax-exempt groups - many of which have better-known sister organizations known as "Super PACs," or political action committees - are under criticism from Democrats and some Republicans for using money from anonymous sources to try to influence elections."

Gee, no Canadian posts. Up here our health care has problems; there are things that could be improved. What we should remember is that at the end of the arguments there is still health care, and it works well enough to keep me alive. I was never so sick as an adult that I had to go bankrupt. Now as I think of it I can’t recall ever hearing about anyone else having to lose everything because they too were sick. Oh about the free grass, you have to sign up for free beer, free whiskey, and a new Skidoo as well to get the free dope.

Too late. The next number in the U.S. code is #52. It'll be called "Title 52 - National Health Care" or something like that. Ten's of thousands of new pages added to the USC to be created (maybe even starting off with over 100,000 pages) from a 2,800 page law that was just upheld by the SCOTUS. The people want government to take care of their health care, and it's now a done deal. We still have a few years before we find out what's in it. Nancy Pelosi said we'd have to pass it to find out what's in it. And now that's going to come true. No more profit from health care beginning soon. But those folks on all those boards are going to have to be fairly compensated for managing such a huge program. And there's going to be a set of "oversite" committees that will have to be fairly compenstated also, to make sure everything is on the "up and up." And when we run out of money every year, there will be folks asking questions like, "why am I not getting the medicine or the treatment for my condition any more?" And those questions will be answered. And the solution will be more emphasis on "preventive medicine." Preventive medicine will promise to lower health care costs thereby enabling more folks to get what they need. And numbers and statistics will start flowing. And when people see the numbers and statistics on smokers, obesity, and high risk acitivities the people will demand we do something about it. And we will.

This is what we wanted! We're finally going to get it! Shouldn't we all be happy? I mean, look how long it took to do. We've been trying to do this for how long now? Several decades? And President Obama finally figured out a way to do it. Yeah! Time to celebrate!

And don't worry, President Obama is taking my advice to do something about out-of-control 501(c)(3)'s.

IRS steps up scrutiny of tax-exempt political groups

Dems have been trying since Roosevelt to get healthcare for all

---

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

A couple of questions Gary

Yes the system is screwed here in America. The biggest customer is Medicare/Madicaid. They are so large they distort the free market.

Could this be because so many uninsured people are relying on Medicare/Medicaid for their health services? Figures I've seen say that half the population do not have insurance. That's an awful lot of potential patients therefore it's natural government paid health care would be a big user of hospital facilities. Fifty percent of the population equals 50% of the patients.
edit: That's not "distorting the free market", that is the Free Market.

Prior to 1965 and President LBJ's "New Society" program which created Medicare, medical costs were quite low. Medical insurance was all of the "traditional" kind. You pick your Doctor, he bills what he feels is right, the insurance company pays its part and the Doc might forgive the deductible, especially if the insurance paid PDQ. Or if you were a cash patient and the Doc knew it, you paid what you could and everyone was happy. There weren't "free clinics" then because they were not needed! After LBJ we got this mess called Medicare and it violently distorted the market. So much so that few people even realize that the market isn't free anymore.

They pay for stuff no sane person would, like those heroic three weeks on a ventilator for a 90 year old who has no chance of recovery. If the family had to pay ... sorry Gramps.

Could this be because the hospital was afraid of being sued if they turned the respirator off? More details are needed on this to get a true idea of the circumstances. Did the lady's family refuse permission for the respirator to be turned off?

Today, the hospital can bill someone for the ventilator, even if it is the government. It is a very large profit center for them. No way will they turn it off, sometimes even with written instructions to do just that. Costs them far too much money to have a patient die before the insurance and government free care is exhausted. (It is a bean counter thing.) So the family gets sucked into this because it doesn't cost them a dime to keep Gramps in terrible pain and drugged up for a few weeks until even modern medicine can't keep his organs going any more. (It ain't life.)

If however the family had to pay to keep him hooked up, sign over title to the house, cars, bank accounts and garnish the paycheck, Gramps would be allowed to pass with dignity. Ask any health care professional if they have a directive in place.

It slightly raises the price to Medicare and thus everyone else every time it gives me some. Also it gets to declare the difference in price between the full retail price and the cash price I pay as a charitable deduction on their income taxes. A real win-win for them. But if you have insurance you can't be a charity case.

Does this mean you are working a lurk? What happens if your blood sugar goes out of control and you need to spend time in hospital to get it restabilised?

Wow, learn something about the disease first.

You as the patient have surrendered control of your treatment to a faceless nameless bureaucrat. Your Doctor can't override it no matter what. Assembly line medicine. It is what America wants and it is what America gets. Everyone treated identically.

As I understand it Obamacare is nothing like the original proposal that the President put to Congress. It is a bastardised, emasculated, compromise version that was all that could be gotten through. I remember reading that there were more health industry/AMA lobbyists in Washington at the time than there were members of congress and I bet every one of them had a load of brown paper bags in the boot when they arrived in Washington, and then there is the Republican party.

I doubt very much that such a system "is what America wants", it's the system forced on them by vested interests.

T.A.

It must be exactly the system America wants. It passed the Legislature and the President signed it. They wouldn't do that if it was against what America wants or they wouldn't get re-elected now would they?

---

Skil, wrong Roosevelt:

http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2009/08/national_health_care_debate_ha.html

Gary, you might be right about Medicare being the root of all evil -- without it in place, we'd not have a deficit from that program AND we'd not have the sort of life expectancy which is causing problems for Social Security.

One thing my wife noted -- which might be attributed to Medicare -- by introducing the CPT codes and then constraining things, it to a degree trained the private insurance companies -- and then the health care professionals into how to split codes to maximize payments.

My wife doesn't play that game - she only uses a total of about 4 codes (90801, 90806, 90807 primarily and one or two others). Then again, in psychiatry the number of codes are quite limited.

End of life care and intervention is something you and I do agree on though.

I found it really curious that so many on the right jumped on the 'death panels' mantra of the Palinites -- as the plans they all advocate will surely push even further than today the idea of health care rationing.

I think one of the 'free market uber alles' folks miss is that, unlike most commodities -- health care has a large component of personal irrationality attached to it. You don't see ads on TV to 'extend the life of your comatose father'. You see ads for drugs though.

..What happens if your blood sugar goes out of control and you need to spend time in hospital to get it restabilised?

Wow, learn something about the disease first.

Gary if you read my first post you will see that I mention my brother has 3 diabetic children (actually teenagers) so I'm not totally ignorant about diabetes.

The reason I asked that question is because every now and again one of them requires hospitalisation for diabetes related problems such as dehydration due to a gastric attack, sugar level problems etc. They are very particular about their management and their mother watches them like a hawk but trips to the hospital are still sometimes required.

This is why I asked the question.

T.A.

..What happens if your blood sugar goes out of control and you need to spend time in hospital to get it restabilised?

Wow, learn something about the disease first.

Gary if you read my first post you will see that I mention my brother has 3 diabetic children (actually teenagers) so I'm not totally ignorant about diabetes.

The reason I asked that question is because every now and again one of them requires hospitalisation for diabetes related problems such as dehydration due to a gastric attack, sugar level problems etc. They are very particular about their management and their mother watches them like a hawk but trips to the hospital are still sometimes required.

This is why I asked the question.

T.A.

You do seem to be ignorant that there are two types of diabetes, Type 1 and Type 2. Your brothers kids have type 1. I have type 2.

No disrespect, you only know what people have told you.

I'm not taking insulin so I'm very unlikely to need hospitalization.

---

Gary, as someone a bit older than you and from a medical family {more MDs than not}, I feel you are rewriting history, The story you portray is not what I remember.

---

You do seem to be ignorant that there are two types of diabetes, Type 1 and Type 2. Your brothers kids have type 1. I have type 2.

Not ignorant, I just assumed (incorrectly) you had type 1.

T.A.

You do seem to be ignorant that there are two types of diabetes, Type 1 and Type 2. Your brothers kids have type 1. I have type 2.

Not ignorant, I just assumed (incorrectly) you had type 1.

T.A.

As my doctor puts it, if they live long enough everyone will get type 2.

---

What you all seem to forget is that SS started out as 16 workers for 1 person retired at age 65.

What we have now is about, just close, 1 worker [alot underemployed] per 1 person on some kind of federal aid. If you like, 1 worker for .80 taking aid.

Basic math tells us this so called pyramid scheme no longer has a pyramid to work from.

Perhaps, just perhaps this is why the borders are left open, real reason anyhow?

20 Hidden Tax Hikes in Obamacare

---

me@rescam.org

Ponzi scheme to be sure. Was meant to be temporary just like the barracks i stayed in when i was in the Army. Give me my money back with 6% interest and I will call it even.