It’s not rocket surgery
on 06/16/2011 at 03:00 PM
Oh Im sorry I thought the idea of obamacare was to break America!!
Posted by Chris Edwards
06/16/2011 at 08:57 PM
,expectation of coverage is no longer merely to protect against catastrophic expenses, but to cover absolutely everything: simple office visits, sore throat, chest cold, minor cuts requiring stitches
Ah ha, so you are opposed to the system here in the UK. lol
heck even setting a broken bone or arthroscopically working on a torn ligament in a knee.
However ..... some many years ago the wife had a fall tore ligs and broke bones. This was in the bleacher section at the Grand Ole Opry, on stage but behind the performers.
Took a very long time for all to mend and even then, not all did.
First thing they asked at the hosp. the Opry ambulance took us to was, is there a law suit here? Hell NO! Sue the Opry? Bite ur tongue. At that time, 1980, she had no ins. but the costs were manageable.
But if the same thing happened today, I dread to think of all the charges we’d get hit with.
They make em up as they go along I think.btw ... one time I was in the hosp. for surgery. When we got the bill for our share of the payment, I noticed that the hosp. charged my ins. company for medication I never got.
And what was so maddening about it was that I knew the hosp. got it free or at a very deep discount. But here they were charging the ins.and at an inflated price far above even the Rx cost in a store. So I called the ins. ppl and told em they shouldn’t pay that small part of the bill. But they said it was easier to pay then to argue with the hosp.
And I’m just one person. Multiply my experience by many times as I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to catch that, and one can see how the screwing of the public takes place. Very quietly. Or it was once.I’m thinking her idea is sound, but might be a little too Draconian. Granted that a true “major medical” policy would be the least expensive. And I’m not sure how her idea is any different from the HMOs that don’t kick in until you’ve spent X dollars for the year.
But I think her main point is valid: if we have insurance that covers absolutely everything, then it is going to be used constantly, and that destroys the definition of what insurance really is: risk management. In other words, it’s a bet. I pay my small amount monthly, on the bet that if something terrible happens, I “win”. The insurance company takes my bet, knowing that my number will rarely if ever come up on the roulette wheel of misfortune. If you change the rules so that my policy allows me to play both red and black, odd and even, and covers numbers 1 to 36, then the “house” is going to have to pay me every time the wheel is spun. But I’ll have to put money down on every number and on all the bars. In other words, the cost for me skyrockets, and with odds strongly against them, the “house” will at first find ways to minimize payouts, and eventually go out of business.
Lesser coverage and a malpractice cap would also alleviate the “send granny for a test” situations quite a bit. I know plenty of post-retirement people, and it seems their world revolves around the medical field. They go to one specialist after another, and are forever being sent to yet another one for some esoteric and expensive test. A lot of it comes up negative, which gives the appearance that a) doctors are playing CYA to avoid lawsuits, and b) doctors have learned how to game the system.
And the whole thing is political suicide. The first politician to suggest cutting back on this often highly excessive practice will be branded “message to seniors: die quickly”. Oh wait, that’s already happened hasn’t it, and been applied - for several decades now - to an entire political party. So the voices calling for reasonable insurance coverage at a reasonable price are drowned out by the baying of the nanny state hounds, and nobody seems to notice that Big Health and Big Pharma are holding their leashes.
Seen this from the other side - the (now under Uncle Obama) evil side - I come from a family of Doctors. My dad, his dad & his brother - took anything (including farm animals) in payment (well actually it would be in trade and/or barter) for medical services. Our homes were supplied with the usual paintings, rugs to be expected but also an organ (huge church type) and a fighting cock (which in thinking back, my Dad probably rescued). Food was a biggy barter item for house calls - one family kept us in homemade pies, another homemade doll clothes for the 15 minute visit from Doctor Bill. But it worked - they had people coming in from all over the country (and my Dad had a guy fly in from Rome every year for his checkup since my Dad found the tumor no one else could). And then in the mid-60s when it was my Dad & his two young Docs (GrandDad & brother had died) - Uncle Sam stepped in and told him - Insurance or cash - no ‘goodies’. Well I know his bookkeeper wasn’t all that happy through the years of registering an account paid for a box of pies or a rug. But it worked - the family was considered one of the ‘pillars’ of the community, my Grandfather bought 4 farms on the outskirts of the city during the depression & they ended up selling 3 of them for developments, we were all considered rich by everyone else. My dad & his father did a lot of free medical work in KY which got my dad a Honorary Kentucky Colonel award. And he charged an average of about $8.00 for a visit. Uncle Sam changed all that. Insurance is just another hand in the pot which demands it’s payment and is usually non-medical and more interested in their bottom line - and then Uncle Sam started paying for a bigger and bigger percentage of people - once again, another hand in the pot, demanding it’s payment and looking toward a two-fold end game - everyone on a single gov system and undercutting the ‘competition’ until the gov ‘support’ of medical care became ‘unsustainable’ - when the only solution becomes a single payer (gov) system.
The solution is simple - get Insurance, get the Legal Lotto and most importantly (and first) get Uncle Sam out - and then refuse to treat illegal aliens for anything - and the system will heal itself. Do I feel for people who really need medical help but have little money - Yes, but to do the stupid things (attempting to get my son into a prosthetic group but they ‘don’t fix prostheses they don’t make - so what we have to travel to TEXAS to get the thing fixed?!?) just to get a refferal (which as I said, isn’t looking all that good) - not to mention the 2 MD letters and a letter from SS to get his ID card/medical insurance reapproved (3rd time since he was 18). It is all unnecessary and simply make work for gov beauacrats. And costing the taxpayers terribly.
Look at anything that the gov regulates, subsidizes and/or pays for, controls - Other than the military (which has it’s joke problems of $400 toilet seats) - it is financial disaster and ends up costing tax payers billions (Congress itself being a prime case in point).
CUT, CUT, REPEAL, IMPEACH - and then maybe we can Restore the Constitution and America to it’s rightful place. Or at least get a start back on the road of medical/financial sanity.
06/17/2011 at 07:09 AM
