Sicko - spoilers - Page 12

Kerostasis · 03-05-2008, 05:45 PM

Well said, Ferris.

At some point though, you have to ask yourself, what exactly is the purpose of medical insurance? Suppose that rather than paying for an insurance premium, you simply paid for your own medical care when expenses came up. On average, would you wind up paying more or less over your lifetime by buying medical care instead of insurance premiums?

If the answer is "more", then why should the insurance companies do business with you? They're losing money with every client they sign up. If the answer is "less", then why should you do business with insurance companies? You're losing money with every premium you pay, and you lose control over your own health insurance decisions.

The only way the transaction makes sense is this scenario: The insurance companies collect more than they pay out on average (giving them a profit to keep them in the business), and in exchange you gain security from the rare scenario where your medical expenses are much more than average, and go well beyond your ability to pay out of your own pocket. Basically, insurance makes sense for catastrophic events. By contrast, any medical expense which is normal, anticipated, and within the ability of the average person to pay himself shouldn't be part of insurance at all. It should be paid out of pocket by the consumer, and therefore not calculated into insurance premiums to begin with. After all, the only way to convince insurance to cover $400 of regular dental costs (for example) is to pay them $450 dollars in additional premiums, and that doesn't benefit you at all.

The government messes up this equation somewhat based on the fact that employer-provided health insurance is tax free, giving you a tax incentive to make sure as much of your health costs as possible are processed through your employers health plan first. But economically this makes no sense at all, and just makes extra headaches for the doctors who have to deal with insurance companies for all of their billing, and has the annoying effect of disconnecting the person paying the bills for medical care from the person making decisions on medical care. The normal laws of economics are heavily distorted when decision makers are no longer the bill payers, and that adds another layer of confusion and chaos to our health care system.

Socialized medicine would only make all of this worse. What we need is less government in our health care, not more.

Hambergler · 03-05-2008, 06:58 PM

Dental insurance should never be brought into the same equation as health insurance, your examples giving the reason why. Your argument is based on an individual perspective. Which explains dental but not health. Health insurance is based on a "risk pool" model. For example everyone at an office pays premiums for the one person who develops cancer, most people leave their jobs never using their insurance. The insurance company keeps the unused money. Where as dental everyone uses it.

Why do people say socialized medicine won't work. We already have it. 90% of an average persons health care costs are payed out in the last 10 days of their lives. Medicare is footing the bill in most cases. Yes 90% of your lifetime health care cost are paid by taxes. The insurance companies are running away with a mint and have the balls to deny people coverage. I have no sympathy for them.

There hasn't been a plan laid out for socialized medicine so I don't understand why people are so booga booga about it. It obviously won't be very radical. In all probability they are just going to broaden Medicaid inclusion. It's in no way going to do away with private insurance. I think this is just more partition bickering. Sad. We hand out billions to so many countries in the world, but when it comes to using that money to help our own people, folks want to play politics.

Kerostasis · 03-05-2008, 07:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hambergler

Why do people say socialized medicine won't work. We already have it. 90% of an average persons health care costs are payed out in the last 10 days of their lives.

I have no idea if this is true or not, but supposing that it is for the sake of argument: By all means, let me die a week earlier and we could cut our medical bills by over half! If its really gonna cost that much to extend a dying person's life through that last week, it doesn't seem worth the effort. That's certainly not any way to justify socialized medicine to me. That just makes it seem even more silly.

**Ferris Bueller** · 03-05-2008, 08:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hambergler

Dental insurance should never be brought into the same equation as health insurance, your examples giving the reason why. Your argument is based on an individual perspective. Which explains dental but not health. Health insurance is based on a "risk pool" model. For example everyone at an office pays premiums for the one person who develops cancer, most people leave their jobs never using their insurance. The insurance company keeps the unused money. Where as dental everyone uses it.

Why do people say socialized medicine won't work. We already have it. 90% of an average persons health care costs are payed out in the last 10 days of their lives. Medicare is footing the bill in most cases. Yes 90% of your lifetime health care cost are paid by taxes. The insurance companies are running away with a mint and have the balls to deny people coverage. I have no sympathy for them.

There hasn't been a plan laid out for socialized medicine so I don't understand why people are so booga booga about it. It obviously won't be very radical. In all probability they are just going to broaden Medicaid inclusion. It's in no way going to do away with private insurance. I think this is just more partition bickering. Sad. We hand out billions to so many countries in the world, but when it comes to using that money to help our own people, folks want to play politics.

The main problem with your argument is that your concept of socialized medicine is wrong. Look at canada. Nobody pays for medical insurance, they pay taxes and get free health care. THATS socialized medicine. Which means that private insurance would have to go away, and theres no way that its gonna happen. Broadening medicare/medicaid is fine, but even that wont help much. There are tons of people who are excluded from medicare/medicaid for the same reasons they cant get private health insurance, such as P/E conditions.

Hambergler · 03-05-2008, 10:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ferris Bueller

The main problem with your argument is that your concept of socialized medicine is wrong. Look at canada. Nobody pays for medical insurance, they pay taxes and get free health care. THATS socialized medicine. Which means that private insurance would have to go away, and theres no way that its gonna happen. Broadening medicare/medicaid is fine, but even that wont help much. There are tons of people who are excluded from medicare/medicaid for the same reasons they cant get private health insurance, such as P/E conditions.

Why should we look at Canada as a model? I don't care what they are doing. And they do have private health insurance by the way.

They whole idea is that they do away with pre-existings because people will have uninterrupted coverage since birth.

**El_Gringo_Grande** · 03-05-2008, 11:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hambergler

Why should we look at Canada as a model? I don't care what they are doing. And they do have private health insurance by the way.

They whole idea is that they do away with pre-existings because people will have uninterrupted coverage since birth.

I like the idea of doing away with pre-existing restrictions. May require some kind of government subsidy or regulation but so be it.

Or possibly the government takes over for those that can't be insured for a certain amount due to these pre-existing conditions. Pretty soon the insurance companies will get rid of every body except the rich and healthy and we end up in the same place as a socialized medical system.

I also like the idea of the government taking over after costs exceed a certain amount if insurance company guarantee certain rates and conditions.

There are lots of options.

Take 5% of the military budget and you could probably insure the poor no problem.

Or just go socialized, single provider all the way. We Americans have no problem with socialized things. The highway system is basically socialized transportation. Individuals just decide how fancily they want to ride on it.

There is a solution to all this.

**El_Gringo_Grande** · 03-05-2008, 11:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kerostasis

Well said, Ferris.

At some point though, you have to ask yourself, what exactly is the purpose of medical insurance? Suppose that rather than paying for an insurance premium, you simply paid for your own medical care when expenses came up. On average, would you wind up paying more or less over your lifetime by buying medical care instead of insurance premiums?

If the answer is "more", then why should the insurance companies do business with you? They're losing money with every client they sign up. If the answer is "less", then why should you do business with insurance companies? You're losing money with every premium you pay, and you lose control over your own health insurance decisions.

The only way the transaction makes sense is this scenario: The insurance companies collect more than they pay out on average (giving them a profit to keep them in the business), and in exchange you gain security from the rare scenario where your medical expenses are much more than average, and go well beyond your ability to pay out of your own pocket. Basically, insurance makes sense for catastrophic events. By contrast, any medical expense which is normal, anticipated, and within the ability of the average person to pay himself shouldn't be part of insurance at all. It should be paid out of pocket by the consumer, and therefore not calculated into insurance premiums to begin with. After all, the only way to convince insurance to cover $400 of regular dental costs (for example) is to pay them $450 dollars in additional premiums, and that doesn't benefit you at all.

The government messes up this equation somewhat based on the fact that employer-provided health insurance is tax free, giving you a tax incentive to make sure as much of your health costs as possible are processed through your employers health plan first. But economically this makes no sense at all, and just makes extra headaches for the doctors who have to deal with insurance companies for all of their billing, and has the annoying effect of disconnecting the person paying the bills for medical care from the person making decisions on medical care. The normal laws of economics are heavily distorted when decision makers are no longer the bill payers, and that adds another layer of confusion and chaos to our health care system.

Socialized medicine would only make all of this worse. What we need is less government in our health care, not more.

Insurance probably inflates medical costs as well. Hospitals and doctors don't have to compete for the medical dollar so they inflate prices. Thus the average American can't afford health costs in most cases.

But then again medicine doesn't really respond as well to the free market as, say, TV's or iPods. You can't just decide not to get treated. At least most sane people don't want to make that decision. Especially for their children.

**Ferris Bueller** · 03-06-2008, 01:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by El_Gringo_Grande

Insurance probably inflates medical costs as well. Hospitals and doctors don't have to compete for the medical dollar so they inflate prices. Thus the average American can't afford health costs in most cases.

But then again medicine doesn't really respond as well to the free market as, say, TV's or iPods. You can't just decide not to get treated. At least most sane people don't want to make that decision. Especially for their children.

To the former point: Yes, medical insurance inflates the hell out of medical costs. I could explain the intricacies, but it's long and would require graphs and an easel. Simply put: insurance means more money in the industry, which means medical supply manufacturers figure that this money goes to the hospitals, so they charge more for equipment, and in turn the hospitals have to compensate for the increased cost by billing higher, and then the insurance companies raise rates to keep their margins where they want them. Rinse and repeat.

To the latter point: Therein lies the main issue I've been talking about for so long Gringo: sane people shouldnt want to make the decision not to get treated, yet so many do by choosing not to get health insurance.

Now, many people have made the argument that lots of people cant get it because they cant afford it or they have preexisting conditions. The latter I will grant, and it is a shame that the insurance companies cant look a bit higher over their ledger books and cope with the fact that people actually do get sick once in a while and it might not just go away. The former, however, is a giant heaping pile of crap. I'm a 26 year old college student with a bad knee thats going to require replacement, chronic insomnia which causes migraines and occasional hospitalization, and a mountain of bills and student loan debt. I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and I drink regularly. Yet somehow, with all of my medical issues and things that should exclude me or drive up the cost, I can still get full health insurance for less than 150 dollars a month. 150 dollars a month is a paltry sum to pay for safeguarding my life.

And it's not by magic that it happens that way. I've had the same insurance since I was an undergrad education major, so it's not as a result of being a nurse. I've been smoking, drinking and had medical problems since I was a teenager, so those arent new developments either. I researched. I scoured every company I could get a phone number for to get the best rates and the coverages that I wanted. Then I made damn sure that my medical insurance was one of my first bills paid every month. I need very little. A roof over my head, food to eat and the knowledge that if something happens to me, I'll get treatment because i'm insured.

So say what you want about it, I'll gloat a bit and say that I'm making a smart move by keeping my priorities in order. I know people who pay a couple hundred bucks for premium cable before they pay for insurance and then they complain that it's so damn expensive. That strike anyone else as ridiculous? It sure sounds that way to me.

TANSTAAFL folks. If you dont know what that means, look it up. You have to work for it if you want something. The good insurance rates arent just going to magically fall into your lap. You have to go out and find them. You also have to get your act squared away enough to put your health first in line, above your fancy TV, above your luxury apartment, above your sweet new set of 22s for your pimp ride. If you cant see fit to do that, then dont complain. If a set of chrome rims is more important to you than your life, or god forbid, your childs life, then you have no right to speak on the subject at all.

By the way, all of the "you"s made in the last paragraph werent directed at anyone in particular, just the general public. Dont want to offend anyone.

You guys know me and my broad sweeping generalizations.

**Xen** · 03-06-2008, 08:52 AM

Ok, my turn with this topic, and many are not going to like it. First off, I work for a sub shop and an ambulance crew pulling in about 1000 bucks a month after taxes, I pay alittle over half of that for the roof over my head and having the ability to have lights and heat. I eat at work cause it's mostly free. I'm a certified Wilderness EMT-Basic and have Search and Rescue training. I have had to scrape people off cliff faces that looked more like hamburger then a living breathing human beings. Then had carry them, in a metal litter, 4+ miles just so we can get a Helicopter in to airlift them out. And you want to talk about what you deserve, because of what you see in a hospital??? Try keeping someone alive in less then ideal conditions on the side of a mountain, more then 7 hours from definitive care, only using equipment you can carry in on your backs. You want to talk about stressful try, not being able to sperate those that were there with the person your treating, like family members or freinds. Then when that person starts to die from Increasing Cranial Pressure caused from them bouncing head first down a 5.14 pitch rock climb, the family/friends starts freaking out and you have to try and stablize the patient and the bystanders at the same time. Atleast in a hospital you have a curtain or a door that can seperate you from them, in the wild you don't have that luxury. I get paid $0/Rescue to do this because, I'm a member of the Civil Air Patrol, which is an all volunteer national service. My main employer does not carry insurance, and I only work 4 days a month on an ambulance crew in my area, which also does not provide insurance. Yet, I know of atleast two surgeries that I need, one to repair a muscle tear from the achilles tendon to the calf muscle. And another to repair a damaged knee, which has already been operated on once, years ago. I will not get either one, cause to keep the lights on, I am having to buy a new vehicle instead of paying 170-250 per month for outside the workplace health insurance.

I do SAR to provide hope to someone that get's injured or lost. The hope that someone will try and make a difference and preserve their life. If I could live off of wandering around providing basic health care, I would, cause it's about helping to end peoples suffering, not the all mighty dollar. I'm not entiled to any more then what people are willing and able to give. You are entiled to nothing more then that persons thanks, and be happy that you helped him be able to say thanks again. That is what is lost in healthcare nowadays. The problem is this god complex, if you want to live, pay me.

To exclude life sustaining treatment because, they can't give what I want them to think I'm entiled too (read MONEY), is more evil then Hitler and the Holocaust. Yes I said it, and completely spits in the face of the Hyppocratic Oath. An oath that doctors and other medical workers were once required to uphold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

Only providing just enough care when they come into the ER to make them stable, then boot them because they can't pay the cost to actaully make them healthy, productive members of society completely argues against what is just and right. If they can not be productive, why let them live with the suffering and the pain? Would it not be better to just put them down? It's what we do to animals that are suffering when it costs too much to treat the cause of the suffering.

Now, I grew up in the Pharmacy business, a mom and pop sort of store. We had customers that had to take mainetance drugs. These are drugs that they must take for the rest of their lives. Some of these drugs cost around $600 dollars for a month supply, which we hardly made profit on. That's roughly 20 bucks a pill, yet these customers would take that 600 dollars fly down to Mexico, and buy a years work of the medication and have a great vacation for $1200 dollars. These customers would always come in after going down there and have us, the pharmacy, screen the medication to insure they got the right ones. Which 9 times out of 10 they would be correct. We would also deliver medications, to the homebound, and take a hit on the cost for those elderly that could not afford to pay anylonger. It was a community service that has died in this, it's all about Me and screw the man next door culture.

The reason health insurance is evil is because most are owned by drug companies, so you get circular money. The Drug company pays money to the Insurance company to have their drug covered on their formulary. A Formulary is just a list of drugs covered by X policy. Then the insurance company pays whatever the drug company asks for, cause the money is garenteed. So, drug companies in the US, which doesn't regulate the cost of drugs, keep inflating the price cause they know they will get paid by insurance companies whatever price they ask. Well, it still costs the same for the person without insurance. Except now, you have a growing group of people that can't afford the maintence drugs to keep them alive.

These become emergencies, and I have to respond. One of the first questions we ask for people with chronic problems, are you on medication for it and have you taken your Med's today? I've actually had an elderly person tell me that they could no longer afford it so they stopped taking it. In essence, they knew they would get bad enough that they would goto the hospital and get the med in the ER, but what happens when they are sent home again and run out of money before they can get a refill? We EMT's, get called out again and again. You get to know some of these people personally. Sadly, I have on occasion placed bets on what the call will be before we get there, I've won more then I've lost when I said it was because of them not taking meds. And, these are people that, if they could have afforded the Meds, they would have taken them diligently.

Now, I also grew up with 3 nurses in my family, and a pharmicist. I've had heathcare coming out of my ears for longer then I have been alive. To become an LPN or RN, it's a 2 year course mostly taught at the 2 year college level. Also, to become a NP, Nurse Practitioner, it's 6 years total and is a masters degree. NP's have the ability to Perscribe medicine and diagnose ailments, as long as they have a doctor review their case work on a timely fashion. They are also paid much less then doctors to perform the same sort of tasks.

So to conclude, there are options to get the cost of healthcare down, and they should be persued. From either, getting rid of insurance companies who artificially inflate the price and can deny coverage to save money, to strict government price regulations on expendible items, to re-evaluating the way in which we train our medical personel and finally, getting rid of mal-practice lawsuits. If the doctor bladently screwed up, it's criminal not civil court that it should be brought up in. To keep paying for GREED and excluding those that could lead perfectly productive lives but can't pay to stay that way, we need to find the solution for them.

Hambergler · 03-06-2008, 09:27 AM

@ Xen

Completely agree.

**El_Gringo_Grande** · 03-06-2008, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ferris Bueller

To the former point: Yes, medical insurance inflates the hell out of medical costs. I could explain the intricacies, but it's long and would require graphs and an easel. Simply put: insurance means more money in the industry, which means medical supply manufacturers figure that this money goes to the hospitals, so they charge more for equipment, and in turn the hospitals have to compensate for the increased cost by billing higher, and then the insurance companies raise rates to keep their margins where they want them. Rinse and repeat.

To the latter point: Therein lies the main issue I've been talking about for so long Gringo: sane people shouldnt want to make the decision not to get treated, yet so many do by choosing not to get health insurance.

Now, many people have made the argument that lots of people cant get it because they cant afford it or they have preexisting conditions. The latter I will grant, and it is a shame that the insurance companies cant look a bit higher over their ledger books and cope with the fact that people actually do get sick once in a while and it might not just go away. The former, however, is a giant heaping pile of crap. I'm a 26 year old college student with a bad knee thats going to require replacement, chronic insomnia which causes migraines and occasional hospitalization, and a mountain of bills and student loan debt. I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and I drink regularly. Yet somehow, with all of my medical issues and things that should exclude me or drive up the cost, I can still get full health insurance for less than 150 dollars a month. 150 dollars a month is a paltry sum to pay for safeguarding my life.

And it's not by magic that it happens that way. I've had the same insurance since I was an undergrad education major, so it's not as a result of being a nurse. I've been smoking, drinking and had medical problems since I was a teenager, so those arent new developments either. I researched. I scoured every company I could get a phone number for to get the best rates and the coverages that I wanted. Then I made damn sure that my medical insurance was one of my first bills paid every month. I need very little. A roof over my head, food to eat and the knowledge that if something happens to me, I'll get treatment because i'm insured.

So say what you want about it, I'll gloat a bit and say that I'm making a smart move by keeping my priorities in order. I know people who pay a couple hundred bucks for premium cable before they pay for insurance and then they complain that it's so damn expensive. That strike anyone else as ridiculous? It sure sounds that way to me.

TANSTAAFL folks. If you dont know what that means, look it up. You have to work for it if you want something. The good insurance rates arent just going to magically fall into your lap. You have to go out and find them. You also have to get your act squared away enough to put your health first in line, above your fancy TV, above your luxury apartment, above your sweet new set of 22s for your pimp ride. If you cant see fit to do that, then dont complain. If a set of chrome rims is more important to you than your life, or god forbid, your childs life, then you have no right to speak on the subject at all.

By the way, all of the "you"s made in the last paragraph werent directed at anyone in particular, just the general public. Dont want to offend anyone.

You guys know me and my broad sweeping generalizations.

You are a single male 26 years old. You may just have insurance for $150. You don't have to cover any of the female ailments or probabilities or common childhood sicknesses. Try to do that for a whole family when the adults are in their 30s early 40s. Cannot be done.

I looked about two years ago for health insurance. The cheapest I found, and I looked hard, for a family of four was around $700 a month. And it had large deductibles (2,000 per member max of 6k/year if I remember correctly) a max payout of $500,000 for the whole family lifetime. All kinds of things it didn't cover. There where only a handful of doctors that accepted it. So I would have to pay out of pocket and then wait to be reimbursed for most doctor visits. Copays where thirty dollars and prescription coverage was very thin. Plus the rating on it was low.

Most of the options where between 900 and 2000 a month. And that didn't include the fact that my daughter had a pre-existing condition! Throw that in there and the lowest I could find was $1200 a month. And it was crappy insurance that very few accepted. That is a house payment for a pretty nice house where I live.

Now take my mother. A 57 year old woman with a heart condition. She lives off of disability. Does not qualify for Medicare. She had two different non-profit organizations look for her and nobody wants to insure her for ANY price. She is already claimed bankruptcy because of medical bills. Before her heart condition showed up there was no way she could pay for insurance making 15k a year.

I don't think you young men realize how much it costs to insure a family. I really don't. Now throw in day care, $150 a week for gas, dental insurance, school costs, mortgage, car payments, clothing, food, student loans, saving for retirement and college for the kids, electric, gas and phone. There isn't a lot left over for insurance.

My family made around 135k last year and we do not take vacations. We eat out maybe once every two months, have the $75 cable package and the cheapest DSL package and $16 a month netflix account. That is our entertainment. I feel guilty about my SM hear at TG. And we still don't have money laying around. We live in a area that has rather low living expenses, OKC, even.

I don't know how a family making less than $75k a year could afford insurance on their own. I guess they could give up their kids college and retirement. Or live in the car. Or not eat and go naked? I just don't see it.

And that doesn't include the out of pocket expenses even if you do have insurance. We had a baby this year and I have already paid around $2500 out of pocket. When my daughter goes in for her yearly checkup that will be another $1000. We can afford it. We are also in the top ~20% of earners in the country. How do the bottom 80% do. I know when I was there I ran up large credit card bills. Most of them where the extra medical expenses.

I just think you are wrong when you say most people could afford it if they made different decisions. Maybe most single young people could afford it. But most families? I don't know.

Kerostasis · 03-06-2008, 11:59 AM

@Xen: I agree with about 80% of that, and I'm too lazy today to specify where we disagree. 80% is good enough for now.

**El_Gringo_Grande** · 03-06-2008, 01:27 PM

Oh, and don't forget that your credit rating often affects your premiums if you get your insurance outside a group policy.

03-05-2008, 06:58 PM	#167 (permalink)
Hambergler Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Houston, TX Age: 33 Posts: 1,033	Re: Sicko - spoilers Dental insurance should never be brought into the same equation as health insurance, your examples giving the reason why. Your argument is based on an individual perspective. Which explains dental but not health. Health insurance is based on a "risk pool" model. For example everyone at an office pays premiums for the one person who develops cancer, most people leave their jobs never using their insurance. The insurance company keeps the unused money. Where as dental everyone uses it. Why do people say socialized medicine won't work. We already have it. 90% of an average persons health care costs are payed out in the last 10 days of their lives. Medicare is footing the bill in most cases. Yes 90% of your lifetime health care cost are paid by taxes. The insurance companies are running away with a mint and have the balls to deny people coverage. I have no sympathy for them. There hasn't been a plan laid out for socialized medicine so I don't understand why people are so booga booga about it. It obviously won't be very radical. In all probability they are just going to broaden Medicaid inclusion. It's in no way going to do away with private insurance. I think this is just more partition bickering. Sad. We hand out billions to so many countries in the world, but when it comes to using that money to help our own people, folks want to play politics. __________________

03-06-2008, 08:52 AM	#174 (permalink)
Xen Join Date: Mar 2005 Age: 34 Posts: 559	Re: Sicko - spoilers Ok, my turn with this topic, and many are not going to like it. First off, I work for a sub shop and an ambulance crew pulling in about 1000 bucks a month after taxes, I pay alittle over half of that for the roof over my head and having the ability to have lights and heat. I eat at work cause it's mostly free. I'm a certified Wilderness EMT-Basic and have Search and Rescue training. I have had to scrape people off cliff faces that looked more like hamburger then a living breathing human beings. Then had carry them, in a metal litter, 4+ miles just so we can get a Helicopter in to airlift them out. And you want to talk about what you deserve, because of what you see in a hospital??? Try keeping someone alive in less then ideal conditions on the side of a mountain, more then 7 hours from definitive care, only using equipment you can carry in on your backs. You want to talk about stressful try, not being able to sperate those that were there with the person your treating, like family members or freinds. Then when that person starts to die from Increasing Cranial Pressure caused from them bouncing head first down a 5.14 pitch rock climb, the family/friends starts freaking out and you have to try and stablize the patient and the bystanders at the same time. Atleast in a hospital you have a curtain or a door that can seperate you from them, in the wild you don't have that luxury. I get paid $0/Rescue to do this because, I'm a member of the Civil Air Patrol, which is an all volunteer national service. My main employer does not carry insurance, and I only work 4 days a month on an ambulance crew in my area, which also does not provide insurance. Yet, I know of atleast two surgeries that I need, one to repair a muscle tear from the achilles tendon to the calf muscle. And another to repair a damaged knee, which has already been operated on once, years ago. I will not get either one, cause to keep the lights on, I am having to buy a new vehicle instead of paying 170-250 per month for outside the workplace health insurance. I do SAR to provide hope to someone that get's injured or lost. The hope that someone will try and make a difference and preserve their life. If I could live off of wandering around providing basic health care, I would, cause it's about helping to end peoples suffering, not the all mighty dollar. I'm not entiled to any more then what people are willing and able to give. You are entiled to nothing more then that persons thanks, and be happy that you helped him be able to say thanks again. That is what is lost in healthcare nowadays. The problem is this god complex, if you want to live, pay me. To exclude life sustaining treatment because, they can't give what I want them to think I'm entiled too (read MONEY), is more evil then Hitler and the Holocaust. Yes I said it, and completely spits in the face of the Hyppocratic Oath. An oath that doctors and other medical workers were once required to uphold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath Only providing just enough care when they come into the ER to make them stable, then boot them because they can't pay the cost to actaully make them healthy, productive members of society completely argues against what is just and right. If they can not be productive, why let them live with the suffering and the pain? Would it not be better to just put them down? It's what we do to animals that are suffering when it costs too much to treat the cause of the suffering. Now, I grew up in the Pharmacy business, a mom and pop sort of store. We had customers that had to take mainetance drugs. These are drugs that they must take for the rest of their lives. Some of these drugs cost around $600 dollars for a month supply, which we hardly made profit on. That's roughly 20 bucks a pill, yet these customers would take that 600 dollars fly down to Mexico, and buy a years work of the medication and have a great vacation for $1200 dollars. These customers would always come in after going down there and have us, the pharmacy, screen the medication to insure they got the right ones. Which 9 times out of 10 they would be correct. We would also deliver medications, to the homebound, and take a hit on the cost for those elderly that could not afford to pay anylonger. It was a community service that has died in this, it's all about Me and screw the man next door culture. The reason health insurance is evil is because most are owned by drug companies, so you get circular money. The Drug company pays money to the Insurance company to have their drug covered on their formulary. A Formulary is just a list of drugs covered by X policy. Then the insurance company pays whatever the drug company asks for, cause the money is garenteed. So, drug companies in the US, which doesn't regulate the cost of drugs, keep inflating the price cause they know they will get paid by insurance companies whatever price they ask. Well, it still costs the same for the person without insurance. Except now, you have a growing group of people that can't afford the maintence drugs to keep them alive. These become emergencies, and I have to respond. One of the first questions we ask for people with chronic problems, are you on medication for it and have you taken your Med's today? I've actually had an elderly person tell me that they could no longer afford it so they stopped taking it. In essence, they knew they would get bad enough that they would goto the hospital and get the med in the ER, but what happens when they are sent home again and run out of money before they can get a refill? We EMT's, get called out again and again. You get to know some of these people personally. Sadly, I have on occasion placed bets on what the call will be before we get there, I've won more then I've lost when I said it was because of them not taking meds. And, these are people that, if they could have afforded the Meds, they would have taken them diligently. Now, I also grew up with 3 nurses in my family, and a pharmicist. I've had heathcare coming out of my ears for longer then I have been alive. To become an LPN or RN, it's a 2 year course mostly taught at the 2 year college level. Also, to become a NP, Nurse Practitioner, it's 6 years total and is a masters degree. NP's have the ability to Perscribe medicine and diagnose ailments, as long as they have a doctor review their case work on a timely fashion. They are also paid much less then doctors to perform the same sort of tasks. So to conclude, there are options to get the cost of healthcare down, and they should be persued. From either, getting rid of insurance companies who artificially inflate the price and can deny coverage to save money, to strict government price regulations on expendible items, to re-evaluating the way in which we train our medical personel and finally, getting rid of mal-practice lawsuits. If the doctor bladently screwed up, it's criminal not civil court that it should be brought up in. To keep paying for GREED and excluding those that could lead perfectly productive lives but can't pay to stay that way, we need to find the solution for them. __________________ Curiosity is going to kill this Cat.

03-06-2008, 09:27 AM	#175 (permalink)
Hambergler Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Houston, TX Age: 33 Posts: 1,033	Re: Sicko - spoilers @ Xen Completely agree. __________________

03-06-2008, 01:27 PM	#178 (permalink)
El_Gringo_Grande Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: OKIE HOMY Age: 39 Posts: 2,324	Re: Sicko - spoilers Oh, and don't forget that your credit rating often affects your premiums if you get your insurance outside a group policy. __________________ Sen. John McCain (AZ) For President '08 --- I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host. - "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt - "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson - "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta - If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

03-08-2008, 07:17 PM	#179 (permalink)
INSUNABULA Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Toronto Age: 30 Posts: 1,526	Re: Si

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