Good news or bad? You decide.

[Vekseid]

Cost have still skyrocketed in Massachusetts with Romney's mandate, it doesn't work.

There can be multiple things wrong about a system. Just because one solution does not solve the core driving problems (excessive focus on specialists over general and preventative care, frivolous testing, overpriced medical gear) does not mean that solving other problems (rising insurer overhead, patient nonpayment) is useless.

[RubySlippers]

Personally, I am one of those that wants LESS government. I think we have too much government in our lives as is. I do not believe in paying federal taxes (as the whole tax system is illegal to begin with and was started to fund a war and the government promised it would end as soon as the war did.) though I pay with every paycheck.

And let me point out the inconsistency Ruby. You want the government to be able to say “Do what we say or else!” where healthcare is concerned. What ever in the world makes you think that if they are given that power that they wouldn’t turn around and go “Do what I say or else!” where the national ID is concerned. You can’t have it both ways Ruby. You’d scream bloody murder if the government slammed the hammer down about the national ID but you are encouraging the federal government to do just that where health care is concerned. And if the government is given the right to dictate healthcare, how long before they dictate what we eat, what we drink, whether we exercise or not, who we have sex with, how many children we can have, what we can watch on tv, where we live, etc etc etc. Damn slippery slope there.

Originally the federal government was an overseeing body while each state had it’s own power. That is becoming less and less as we go on.

The difference is the states keep their rights in the case if ID they left a window and did not slam it down, every state can and should offer a state-use only ID and DL in addition to the Federal one under different rules so everyone can get an ID even if homeless.

With health care the states could opt out, they would still get Medicaid funding and other monies as agreed to for health care just they would lose alot of Federal monies and the citizens with them if they did not cover everyone in their state in some form of health care system. Its simply the Federal government using its right to use its money as they want and they would say fine your not covering people we will do exchanges and things on our end with our funds and you lose the use and access to those funds. Within reason like I said disaster relief is likely not going to be affected but loans to start a business backed by the SBA would for example. Its constitutional unless you can show me where the Federal government MUST spend some of their money in a state outside of again obligations it has in place. Its not dictating no state is being forced under my idea to participate in health care for all.

[Chris Brady]

Personally, I am one of those that wants LESS government. I think we have too much government in our lives as is. I do not believe in paying federal taxes (as the whole tax system is illegal to begin with and was started to fund a war and the government promised it would end as soon as the war did.) though I pay with every paycheck.

The problem with taxes is that every government in the world uses them as income.  And every single budget they do counts that in, rather than as a 'bonus' as they imply to do.  So now, they can't operate without it.  It's not just an American thing, it's worldwide.

[Zakharra]

The difference is the states keep their rights in the case if ID they left a window and did not slam it down, every state can and should offer a state-use only ID and DL in addition to the Federal one under different rules so everyone can get an ID even if homeless.

With health care the states could opt out, they would still get Medicaid funding and other monies as agreed to for health care just they would lose alot of Federal monies and the citizens with them if they did not cover everyone in their state in some form of health care system. Its simply the Federal government using its right to use its money as they want and they would say fine your not covering people we will do exchanges and things on our end with our funds and you lose the use and access to those funds. Within reason like I said disaster relief is likely not going to be affected but loans to start a business backed by the SBA would for example. Its constitutional unless you can show me where the Federal government MUST spend some of their money in a state outside of again obligations it has in place. Its not dictating no state is being forced under my idea to participate in health care for all.

The problem is Ruby, the Federal government could and sooner rather than later WOULD use 'it's' money (mind you, the money the feds get is from it's citizens, it's not the Fed's money, but the citizen's money...) as a club to force states to toe it's line. Even if it's against the interests of the state. If all Federal aid is cut off, what option does the state have? To withhold the money it gives the state for it's own use? I dare say the government would take that action very badly and work to get 'it's' money no matter what.

By tying all Federal funds to this damned healthcare thing, it would harm the state in question a lot and give the Federal government far too much power. Why? Because the Feds or more likely the bureaucracies would use it as a club to violate state rights because they can do it to get what THEY (Feds/politicians and bureaucrats) want. Even if it's not in the states best interests. What if the population of the state supports that state's government? Or other states? Should the Feds cut those states off too? How far would it be to push this? Why should the Federal government be given another club to use in it's arsenal?

The one example you used of the drinking age and withholding of funds was limited to only highway funds. The Feds didn't cut off all funds as you seem to want.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

The humor of this debate to me is that everyone views medical care as their own right.  Each one of us would be appalled to arrive at a hospital after a car accident and be refused due to an inability to pay for the care provided.  The hospital and people in the hospital have a responsibility to care for those in need to the best of their ability.  Oddly enough the government has gone further than that to make the statement that the care provided cannot be adjusted based on the ability of the person to pay, the conditions under which the treatment is administered (disasters) and the forces affecting the hospital (strikes).  Care is to reach a certain level and be maintained there no matter the cost.  So in effect people feel a right to medical care and not just basic emergency care but a higher standard of care.  People only begin to dispute the right of medical coverage when it extends to another person and who is paying for that person. 

Hospitals are consistently running in the red of their profit margins across the country.  Many are on the verge of shutting down and many more would shut down without access to government funding.  Insurance companies actually make up a small portion of revenue for a hospital.  I believe the figure for most hospitals is that government funding, at least with Medicare and Medicad, makes up around 60% of their income.  This does not include government funding for certain types of procedures, research and state funding for similar things.  Factor in that there are also charity groups that donate to hospitals and the amount of money insurance companies actually contribute is reduced even further.  If the government simply decided to pull those funds, the healthcare system would collapse.  They do not need to play all these games to force states to accept something covered medically.

The system that exists now cannot continue.  No, I do not like the idea of the government coming in to become the only figure in power over medicine.  They have already made some very bad decisions such as the “Never” events that can seriously deprive a hospital of money.  Still I have to recognize that hospitals and clinics cannot continue to operate as they are now.  People without insurance and people without money flood the Emergency Rooms with an inability to pay.  For every person that does not pay, the hospital eats that cost.  My paycheck as a nurse does not go down because four of my seven patients did not pay.  The surgeon does not ask for less because he is working on an uninsured patient.  The janitor does not take a paycut because he is sweeping a floor filled with non-paying patients.  I have read across multiple threads about how people “get out” of paying medical expenses not realizing that this is part of the problem.  I also understand that them being sick does not magically give them money and that they are not paying because there is no money.

Still this inability to pay then puts pressure on the insured.  The reason people are seeing their insurance rates go up so much, seeing the costs rise so quickly is because the hospitals have to raise rates on people with insurance.  They cannot raise the Medicare and Medicad rates because the government simply says no.  So hospitals raise the cost on people with private insurance depending on the rates negotiated.  For instance my payment may be hundreds if not thousands more than someone else based on our insurance.  A person with Medicare pays drastically reduced costs compared to the either of us with private insurance.  Certainly we could all complain and refuse to go see a doctor, but eventually we’d have to and the cycle starts again.  The system does not work. 

[Crazy]

This is such a blatant lie as to be laughable. The default measure of health care quality is to measure life expectancy. We're tied with Cuba. Go USA.

By that line of thinking, Monacco has the best healthcare in the world.  Who knew?  There are many factors that contribute to life expectancy.  Genetics being chief among them,  other considerations like diet, vice,  violence,  automotive accidents, and poor record keeping make that number meaningless.  If you really want to get into a measuring contest on the best healthcare in the world, I'd prefer to talk in terms of successful operations,  childbirth survival rates,  or other more relevent aspects of comparison.

Longtime members of this forum and friends of members of this forum are dead due to raw medical incompetence in this country, including the woman in my signature, who would be alive today had she only had a slightly more attentive doctor mere weeks earlier. Another woman died from a punctured lung...during a knee surgery.

Forcing the poor into ER is flat-out ridiculous. One member had to wait until an infection became an emergency, so she spent five days in ICU because she could not afford antibiotics. Another could not go to the doctor for her headaches. Rather than spend several hundred dollars on preventative care, we're happy to spend a quarter of a million for her to suffer through chemo for years.

Norway solved its MSRA problem. Here it's still a terror.

I'm sorry for your loss,  but so far much of the horror stories on this forum are the result of HMOs and other regulations from the body politic, Medicare and Medicaid.  None of these tragedies would be averted by the new healthcare law,  and there is every reason to believe that more government interference will result in more travesty.

Norway is a wealthy nation with an enviable oil supply.  We would be too were it not for the evironmentalists.

And yet for the not so wealthy, 'medical tourism' is about going the other direction. When I lacked insurance, the Mayo was one of the few institutions that would treat me, yes. They wanted $3,000 just for the evaluation. For one of the most routine surgeries in the world. For that, I could fly to Prague, meet some Elliquiy members, get treated, and fly back.

The excellence of the Mayo and Hopkins has less to do with the magic of the talent they hire and more to do with the fact that they have developed better incentives for doctors to actually treat patients.

I don't know what this means.

Insurance companies don't compete for business in many states. Exempt from antitrust laws, they are happy to establish monopolies and engage in blatant price fixing without recourse, while providing said same incompetent bureaucrats in the form of rescission workers.

This is true,  and I'm sorry that the healthcare debate isn't centered around this key issue.  Nothing would lower the cost of healthcare more than removing the imaginary political boundries between states.  More evidence that the government is the root of the problem.

Let me guess, you were shouting 'Death Panels!' right alongside the rest when it was proposed to take care of the main offender of said wasteful spending.

You're damn right I was,  and an embarassed president removed end of life counseling from the bill before it was passed.

That's a bridge that will be burned when it happens.

That's never going to happen.

No, when you buy health insurance, you are taking advantage of said provider's ability to dictate prices. The larger the insurer, the more powerful their ability to dictate.

Another sound reason such an important aspect of our life should not be relegated to a single entity.

To say nothing of the fact that, as a self employed person with conditions on my record, it would cost me six thousand dollars a month to buy insurance. And I'd still have to pay for my surgery out of pocket. That isn't free market competition.

Yes it is.  Forcing me and two other people to pay for insurance we don't want or need to compensate for your exceptional condition is exactly the opposite of free enterprise.

This is a non sequitur. Two, actually. It neither follows that public employee costs will reduce because of a collapse of private insurers, nor does it follow that reduced employee costs would cause a larger government.

I felt that that was a logical conclusion.  With a single payer system,  the government need only pay itself to insure its employees.  They have a bad track record for that sort of paper shuffling,  and ultimately the private sector will support the burden for all recipients of benefits.

The obvious intention of this legislation is to further increase the influence the government has over our lives.  As it stands,  we just shrug our shoulders about a government shutdown.   That won't be the case in our dark future. 

"Death panels" was trotted out to giving older people actual end of life care, rather than wasting 60% of our health care spending in making them suffer for six more months. Their lifespan would be increased by a far greater amount if they had better care before 65. It was originally a Republican proposal, but because Obama tried it, that makes it worthy of attack.

This statement is not worthy of a response.

Of course, people such as yourself blatantly overlook the fact that private health insurers essentially are barriers to care in our current system, often denying critically needed treatments.

And yet, the prime cause of bankruptcies in the United States is what?

And how many of them had insurance?

Half a percent of the voting population loses their insurance each year. That sort of bullshit is only going to go on for so long before the fraud gets tossed on its head.

As I've said,  standing up to private health insurers is as easy as doing business with someone else.  There are many plans to choose from,  a good situation that the current adminstration finds intolerable.

Poor health does cause bankruptcies,  but not so much from medical bills as loss of income.  Many of these bankruptcies are the result of living beyond their means,  having no emergency funds for even minor financial setbacks.

Even with insurance, there is some out of pocket expense.  Proponents of the bill blatently ignore that that aspect of medical care isn't going to go away.  Opponents of the bill strongly believe that situation will become far worse.

There is a fraud that will be tossed on its head,  but it is the communist nationalization of one of our nation's largests industries,  not the ideals of free markets and personal liberty.

Nonpayers already do place that burden on our system. Go to a medical forum and you will see doctors bitch about how good people who are down on their luck struggle to afford basic care while they have to give effectively free ER care to bums and druggies.

And, of course, the threat of a hypochondria declaration did nearly kill the friend of another member here, who had a life threatening condition, but the hospital could not find it after five visits. If another friend had not stood up for them, your 'finest healthcare in the world' would have left them to die in agony.

Because the hospital would not do a fucking X Ray.

This only supports my arguement.

Of course you don't see it. In common parlance, this is because you are 'drinking the kool-aid'. You have bought bullshit right-wing talking points hook, line, and sinker, and happily regurgitate the bald-faced lies you've been told.

There's that kool-aid thing again,  has AMC been rerunning Jonestown late at night?

Negative, bro.  Conservatives don't need newswires, support groups, or thinktanks.  We automatically know right from wrong.

Eventually, however, reality will assert itself.

Just like it did in Massachusetts under Romneycare,  or in Tennessee under Hilarycare.  Bankruptcy at the state level.  Not enough people in the pool?  We're looking at bankruptcy on a national level.

Doctors in general are overworked and underpaid, very little health care money actually goes to them. Most of it goes to overpriced goods (I paid $40 for a piece of gauze and tape, for fuck's sake) and frivolous testing.

You'd be amazed what the army pays for a hammer.

Probably the same way America got to that lead in the first place, and why other nations are catching up to the US while American prestige is falling.

Jim Crow laws?

Nothing. We'll just hire the Indian doctors currently working as New York taxi drivers.

Touche`

Well, I know some medical professionals -as is- who would give you less time of day -right now- simply because you do those two things. They'd much rather be treating people who just had something horrible happen to them through little to no fault of their own, rather than some ignorant jackass who waltzes into trouble.

On the contrary,  they send Christmas cards and provide services as personal favors.   I'm not real sure what Hippocrates would have to say on the subject,  but it is difficult to date nurses or paramedics, much less go bareback on one.
 

You don't even know what the market hypothesis is, where it works, or why, and believe our current system of lobbyist infested corporatism is 'free enterprise'. Hint: It isn't free enterprise if lobbyists can insert legal barriers to entry.

Precisely the point I am trying to make.  There is already too much regulation.  More of the same is going to be disasterous.

Here's a hypothesis for you:  The government is one big fuck-up machine.

If you refuse to learn basic terminology, there is no reason to take your arguments seriously.

I can't hear you unless you speak into the conch.

[Iniquitous]

Poor health does cause bankruptcies,  but not so much from medical bills as loss of income.  Many of these bankruptcies are the result of living beyond their means,  having no emergency funds for even minor financial setbacks.

This is almost like asking which came first, chicken or egg. But I can tell you this much - I am looking at bankruptcy because of medical bills. I work, usually 50-60 hours a week when overtime is available, but there is no way for me to pay off nearly 100k in medical bills from having cancer twice and two major surgeries from 2005 to 2007. And to top it all off - I HAD insurance during that time and I am now getting calls from debt collectors wanting ME to pay for shit the insurance company was suppose to pay for in 2007.

Fact of the matter is what I make now goes to keep a roof over my head, my utilities on, take care of my kids and food in the house. I do not have extra money, I most certainly do not live beyond my means. I live in the ghetto, I do not own a car right now, I don't go on vacations or have the newest gadgets. Don't own game systems, dont even own a dvd player. My tv was a prize from work for nearly killing myself working 12 hour days 7 days a week for just about a month straight. To put it bluntly - what money I make is what I need to live on. There is nothing to spare.

Insurance companies are a major problem with healthcare and it isn't as simple as "oh, I don't like your prices. I'm going over here." Open up competition across state lines and it might be that simple. But right now it isn't.

Do I think the government can do better with healthcare? Not the way our government is right now. I think they need to take lessons from countries where socialized healthcare works (Norway comes to mind). But something has got to give. As it stands right now I don't have health insurance. Can't afford plain and simple - and I desperately need it because I am diabetic and need to be under the care of a doctor.

[RubySlippers]

I'm sadly in some ways better off than you are Iniqui I am firmly in the Underground Economy and make ONLY cash, have no financial institution accounts, no job as in one that anyone can garnish, my income is fully untraceable and my credit rating horrid. In other words I look like an indigent homeless person to any credit search means. This means generally I never got pressured to pay a debt the hospitals never tried to bill me or go to collections, my medical doctor I'm tossing something to being nice but figure they had not choice I pointed out I had nothing to take if they pushed.

When you look like a pauper on paper and live very modestly its a fine defense from such people. You likely having a job, bank account and the like were an easy target to move on they could hurt you and go after assets.

Its a pity sadly I work as little as I can to make money and am in many ways better off medically I can go to the ER and laugh off the bill, figuring logically they will look at my credit report and do an asset search and go - arghhhhhhhhhh. And I don't even keep financial records it goes into my safe deposit box and I spend what I need to and use a few envelopes to set aside sums for things I need to alot money for. Its oddly not hard I learned much of it from undeground illegal immigrant workers I know and with things like Amscott for electronic bill paying and money orders plus Debit Gift Cards with a Major Card Imprint (useable for online purchases) its not oddly hard. Housing is not even hard you post on Craigs List offering cash for rent every day a certain amount and you get lots of offers, usually can even pick and choose. Underground landlords are also pretty common.

You did everything right and are getting hit so hard doesn't seem fair does it.

(One advantage you pay taxes including social security and medicare and well I can't without risking exposure. So in that your lucky.)

In the end I just don't care in the end I live day by day and enjoy my life and won't let bills get me down.

[AndyZ]

I'm sadly in some ways better off than you are Iniqui I am firmly in the Underground Economy and make ONLY cash, have no financial institution accounts, no job as in one that anyone can garnish, my income is fully untraceable and my credit rating horrid. In other words I look like an indigent homeless person to any credit search means. This means generally I never got pressured to pay a debt the hospitals never tried to bill me or go to collections, my medical doctor I'm tossing something to being nice but figure they had not choice I pointed out I had nothing to take if they pushed.

When you look like a pauper on paper and live very modestly its a fine defense from such people. You likely having a job, bank account and the like were an easy target to move on they could hurt you and go after assets.

Its a pity sadly I work as little as I can to make money and am in many ways better off medically I can go to the ER and laugh off the bill, figuring logically they will look at my credit report and do an asset search and go - arghhhhhhhhhh. And I don't even keep financial records it goes into my safe deposit box and I spend what I need to and use a few envelopes to set aside sums for things I need to alot money for. Its oddly not hard I learned much of it from undeground illegal immigrant workers I know and with things like Amscott for electronic bill paying and money orders plus Debit Gift Cards with a Major Card Imprint (useable for online purchases) its not oddly hard. Housing is not even hard you post on Craigs List offering cash for rent every day a certain amount and you get lots of offers, usually can even pick and choose. Underground landlords are also pretty common.

You did everything right and are getting hit so hard doesn't seem fair does it.

(One advantage you pay taxes including social security and medicare and well I can't without risking exposure. So in that your lucky.)

In the end I just don't care in the end I live day by day and enjoy my life and won't let bills get me down.

This is probably a personal question, so don't feel that you have to answer it. 

If they don't repeal Obamacare, though, and you end up in the hospital so that your lack of health insurance suddenly appears and forces them to trace down your existence, wouldn't that risk exposure for you also?  Or am I not understanding this correctly?

I mean, when you Zero, everything depends on your having absolutely no paper trail.  If you're forced to buy insurance, then not having it means that you'll show up on radar.  The government will want to make sure you're paying the fine and will go after you.

I honestly can't understand why you'd want more governmental regulation and crackdown.