Another spike in rate- Blue Shield of California, upto 59%!

[theeedude]

How can we achieve this salvation of which you speak? Should we pray to Jerusalem or Washington. Show us miracles that we might believe.


Seriously, you act as if government was all wise. No understanding, no explanation of how the authoritarian magic works, just faith.

Yet if someone were to be harmed you would write it off as the price we pay to our masters. You've said you would support the state over doing what is good medicine if it comes down to it. Why should we be slaves again?

Just like you write off the people hurt by the current system as the price we pay for private insurance.

 

[bfdd]

Yeah, we, the US citizens, have been successful reworking it so far

We have done a terrible job because idiots have let themselves become bigger idiots by following party lines. No matter what payment system you want to switch to ultimately the money comes out of yours and my pockets.

 

[theeedude]

We have done a terrible job because idiots have let themselves become bigger idiots by following party lines. No matter what payment system you want to switch to ultimately the money comes out of yours and my pockets.

Yep, but completely coincidentally the countries whose governments reformed their health care have been paying significantly less money out of pocket for better health outcomes, while we've been waiting for the citizens to individually reform it.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I don't know what it would take, but I know no matter who is driving a piece of shit, it's still a piece of shit.

Well if you want to know...

First thing we need an actual analysis of health care and the processes involved with providing it. We don't even have verifiable unambiguous data to work with. We don't know how many are uninsured, for how long and why. Look at the numbers being tossed around.

As a provider I and others know that health care is in principle. It's about the quality of care the provider can give to the patient. That's it. Anything that facilitates this is good. Anything which doesn't is bad.

Also the first interaction between provider and patient is the most critical to a positive outcome. That means time spent asking questions, taking a proper history, an initial examination. Know how long that takes? A few people can do it in as little as an hour. Yep, 60 minutes by the best there are. When was the last time that anyone you know spent that much time with their doc? Unfortunately we have the bean counters who have figured out that it's more "economical" to cut that to next to nothing. You might have ten minutes or less. Some lucky people get half an hour. Hey it saves money right? Wrong. That time provides the provider the chance to make a correct diagnosis, to think about a proper course of action, and as important to interact with a real live human to see if there's something going on beneath the surface. What if you go in because you have a stomach problem, but the doc notes a melanoma? You have a better chance when he or she isn't being forced into assembly line medicine.

Oh but that's expensive. Well how expensive is missing that melanoma or early signs of Parkinson's or heart disease? How much will the more extensive treatment and death of productive people, treating the wrong condition or mistreating it because there are four more people to see before lunch?

It's penny wise and pound foolish, but have you once heard about providing health care in those terms from the politicians and yes even private insurance? I'll bet no.

Those who understand medicine, what it is and what it takes to do right could form a panel along with health care advocates with experience outside the Beltway, actuaries who earn a living calculating how much things really cost. All could be gathered but nope. We get a blue ribbon panel for an oil spill. Health care? Not a second thought.

If you want a better system, find out what it takes to make it that way and then enable providers to do just that. Get rid of silly regulations and requirements. Find ways to increase the time patients and their docs can spend together.

Cut out the top down shit.

 

[bfdd]

Yep, but completely coincidentally the countries whose governments reformed their health care have been paying significantly less money out of pocket for better health outcomes, while we've been waiting for the citizens to individually reform it.

Please point to me another nation with the #1 GDP, a 300m+ population and our current health care system they reformed into them paying significantly less money. Oh wait it hasn't happened. Look I'm all for looking at other countries and trying to figure out how we can improve things here, but to say "well so and so did it, so why can't we?" is fucking retarded.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Just like you write off the people hurt by the current system as the price we pay for private insurance.

If I wrote them off I wouldn't try to help them get covered. The current system is flawed. You want to replace it with another made in ignorance. It's a bit hard to be enthusiastic when Hobson offers you a choice.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Please point to me another nation with the #1 GDP, a 300m+ population and our current health care system they reformed into them paying significantly less money. Oh wait it hasn't happened. Look I'm all for looking at other countries and trying to figure out how we can improve things here, but to say "well so and so did it, so why can't we?" is fucking retarded.

If you look at the current increase of health care costs you'll find we aren't at the top. You'll also find out that many countries have a higher population density. We have more duplication of facilities simply because of demographics and geography.

Then there are people who look at average lifespan and try to make a correlation between that and quality of care. What they don't mention either because they didn't think or didn't want to let on is that we have disparate populations within the nation. Inner city crime skews data. You've probably seen how blacks have a shorter lifespan than whites, but did you know if you were to look at life expectancies of black males who have reached 30 years that they are substantially the same as whites? That's because of health care? No, because young black males are more at risk. Once they've passed the critical stage of youth things change for the better. Yet those injuries associated with crime in the inner city affect the cost of health care and the "quality" provided, if one wishes it to be that way.

Then there's the suicidal cubicle lifestyle. Know what the number one killer is? Stress. No, you won't find that on a death certificate, but stress leads to a chronic inflammatory state which marked increases the chance of becoming obese, sleep deprived (which adversely drives things to hell as well), diabetes, even Alzheimers. Just about every chronic condition has some relationship with stress, either as a causative or exacerbating agent. Was that tidbit in the health care reform bill?

This is common everyday knowledge for those who provide care, but absent from the mind of policy makers and their thralls. They don't care about your health, they care about who controls your access to it.

 

[theeedude]

Interestingly enough countries with universal health care are also the ones with more regulations governing vacation and work hours.
Conservatives want the free market to take care of both, and results are on display.

 

[bfdd]

Interestingly enough countries with universal health care are also the ones with more regulations governing vacation and work hours.
Conservatives want the free market to take care of both, and results are on display.

Uh... we don't work the most hours in the year and I'm pretty sure it's been on the decline since. I also get 3 weeks of vacation time which is more than my old union job. senseamp we have the beautiful thing called the 1st amendment which allows us citizens of this great nation to organize into groups. We can use these groups to influence things, like companies giving better pay or more vacation hours. If the people don't like it all the means to correct it are there. Just because they are to lazy to take up the cause doesn't mean we the government should for them. That isn't their job.

 

[theeedude]

Uh... we don't work the most hours in the year and I'm pretty sure it's been on the decline since. I also get 3 weeks of vacation time which is more than my old union job. senseamp we have the beautiful thing called the 1st amendment which allows us citizens of this great nation to organize into groups. We can use these groups to influence things, like companies giving better pay or more vacation hours. If the people don't like it all the means to correct it are there. Just because they are to lazy to take up the cause doesn't mean we the government should for them. That isn't their job.

The results of this type of thinking are what we have now.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Interestingly enough countries with universal health care are also the ones with more regulations governing vacation and work hours.
Conservatives want the free market to take care of both, and results are on display.

Greece, Ireland...

 

[theeedude]

Greece, Ireland...

Ireland bought into the whole less regulation, lower taxes mantra, paying for it now.

 

[bfdd]

The results of this type of thinking are what we have now.

The results of my thinking are what started the unions. If I want something or want to do something, I'm going to do it, I'm not going to sit around and bitch about it until the government steps in and does it. Your kind of thinking is what causes... nothing cause you just bitch about shit.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Ireland bought into the whole less regulation, lower taxes mantra, paying for it now.

And Greece sucked at the teat until it ran dry. France is in continual chaos, and want to talk about Italy?

The problem is that large organizations (private and government) are ill suited to take certain actions. The problem with governments is that not only do they perpetuate onerous bureaucracies (would you like to tout the virtues of that collective French institution? Even the French are exasperated and resigned to it) but it doesn't "suggest" it punishes with the weight of law.

There's this "wonderful" liberal, Cuomo who just became governor. Well he's already gearing up for a witch hunt. A few years ago when our whoring gov. Spitzer was in office, people were hired to go over regulations and do audits of pharmacies. These were temp employees who had one purpose. Fine pharmacies to make money. The mechanism was to look for conflicting regs, then fine based on whichever wasn't being followed. Oh that's just one or two things, right? Oh no. They had a "formula" where they counted the number of medicaid prescriptions and fined for a hefty percentage of the total. What was the basis? They could. That was it.

Now it turns out that it wasn't Spitzer at all, but Cuomo who had come up with this nasty bit of political hay making. Spitzer for his part seems to consider Cuomo as being of low moral character, which is saying quite a bit if you know his story.

Anyway, it was leaked what one fineable offense is. When a prescription runs out of refills it is legal and proper to fax or electronically request another. The physicians office can legally fax back the form we send back as long as it's properly endorsed. There is absolutely no rule or regulation prohibiting this. Oh, but wait- if the doc calls back or sends an electronic prescription back or faxes back HIS form, not ours, it's proper for the purposes of Medicaid. BUT if we take our request back, properly and legally endorsed, and use it we'll be fined. Why? How can we be fined for something that's approved? Simple. There is this concept they came up of minimum interaction between providers. If I take their prescription and use it, it's enough, but if they fax our original, legal prescription request back we must hand write it. Yes we must risk transcription errors because that's "more interaction", something which is made up and for which there is no written standard whatsoever.

Since this was just invented and there was no announcement of any policy change we're going to collectively be fined millions for "fraud", and in the papers it will stick.

Why? Because they can. They have unquestionable authority and power.

For us who aren't authoritarian that's frightening. Joe Stalin would have approved.

 

[DesiPower]

You remind me of someone who'd have a Hairdresser.

Atleast I still have hair, baldy

 

[Cerb]

Yep, but completely coincidentally the countries whose governments reformed their health care have been paying significantly less money out of pocket for better health outcomes, while we've been waiting for the citizens to individually reform it.

Yet, thus far, health care reform has been a name to what has yet to result in much reform of actual health care. Over and over again, good science shows that many drugs are less effective than vitamins and minerals, and/or avoiding certain chemicals in food (from tartrazine to gluten), for many common diseases and disorders. Over and over again, basic exercise and diet changes, and supplementation, show greater improvements for chronic diseases, which end up costing tons of money later on, than drugs. Over and over again, stressful home and work life show themselves to be slowly killing people (expensive, painful, and preventable). Nothing against drugs where useful (most of our problems are all diet and lifestyle, but there is a significant minority that aren't), but we are far too addicted to fixing the superficial, as though the most obvious symptoms are all that mater (and, to far too many, they are).

So, in policy, they are taking care of rescinding coverage, pre-existing conditions, and so on (not that these aren't problems, but fixing them by force is not going to make insurance cheaper, since the payment pool will include more risk). The mountains of regulations, CYA, and generally glossing over the simple matter that health care has needlessly become too expensive, too ineffective, and that health care itself has become a profit center for third parties, does little to change why it is so expensive, and why our health is generally so poor. This inevitably encourages poor quality, but fast, diagnoses and treatment, and discourages taking time to do things right.

We need fundamental paradigm changes, and it's not happening.

 

[umbrella39]

Mostly due to fucking greed.

Fix that for you. Your original line is, of course, 100% BULLSHIT as everyone who sees rate hikes every year already knows. Clear the shit from you eyes and place the blame with the real culprits ffs.

 

[umbrella39]

So tell us, who is making all the profits?

You should be one of those quick change artists at Vegas.

 

[matt0611]

Ireland bought into the whole less regulation, lower taxes mantra, paying for it now.

Uhhh no, less regulation and taxes brought many companies and prosperity to ireland, they're paying for bailing out private companies which they should not be doing.

As far as other countries paying less per GDP for healthcare, we can pay however percentage of GDP you want as long as we price fix and ration care which all those countries do.

Price fixing and rationing are fail.

Even if you take out insurance costs out of the picture healthcare costs are increasing much faster than inflation. Theres many reasons for this but it all boils down to its not a true free market.

1. The number of doctors and hospitals is limited by what the ADA will allow.

2. Americans are fat and unhealthy, driving costs up.

3. Theres tax incentives for employers to provide employees with health insurance, thereby everyone treating their insurance as "free healthcare", no one cares about costs so theres no incentives to keep costs down. This drives costs up.

4. High government regulation of healthcare and drugs, which drive costs up.

Fix some or all of these to drive actual costs down and give healthcare to more people.

 

[Darwin333]

Heh. Blaming Obama is like blaming the guy who just drove into town after the tornado for not cleaning it up faster.

They'd blame Daffy Duck if they thought it would work, and it'd probably work on some our resident Righties if they'd been conditioned to hate Daffy the way they've been conditioned to hate Obama, blame him for everything that their own heroes screwed up before he ever got into office.

You are the one that said he got played, not me.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally Posted by bfdd
Uh... we don't work the most hours in the year and I'm pretty sure it's been on the decline since. I also get 3 weeks of vacation time which is more than my old union job. senseamp we have the beautiful thing called the 1st amendment which allows us citizens of this great nation to organize into groups. We can use these groups to influence things, like companies giving better pay or more vacation hours. If the people don't like it all the means to correct it are there. Just because they are to lazy to take up the cause doesn't mean we the government should for them. That isn't their job.

The results of this type of thinking are what we have now.

Hehehehehehe :thumbsup: