BS: The news is getting better and better!

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Bobert
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 10:44 PM

It's also a nightmare fir every one else... except for the ruling class....

I figured it out an' I am now payin' over 30% of my income for a health care policy that can be cancelled it either I or my wife get sick?!!!!!??!??!??!?!??......

This is totally unacceptable but with Hubby's buddies *ruling*, not governing the country, Boss Hog is havin' a field day...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: artbrooks
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 10:34 PM

Harpgirl, since you ask...

I worked for the VA for over 25 years and I use the VA almost exclusively for my health care. And, BTW, my past employment gets me no priorities or special treatment...I wait like anyone else. I do have health insurance (which I pay for, of course), and the VA bills Blue Cross at the Medicare rate. The care is excellent, and all I pay is a $7 copay for a month's worth of medication. This cost is so low because the VA (and the military) are allowed to negotiate for lower prices with drug companies, something that Medicare/Medicaid are forbidden to do by law (thanks, George).

There are issues with the VA, of course. Some places it takes a long time to be seen for a regular appointment, especially for the first time, and not all VAs have the full range of services. However, most VA hospitals do have an Urgent Care/Emergency Room that takes walk-ins. Clinics are more restricted...the VA Outpatient Clinic there in Tallahassee "belongs" to the hospital in Gainsville, and many servise would only be available there. Many veterans stay away from the VA because of the bad reputation it had (and often deserved) 30 years ago, but this is rarely true anymore. I'd suggest that you at least ask your clients if they have VA eligibility (and any honorably-discharged vet living on Social Security-only is eligible) and get them on the Clinic's waiting list.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: harpgirl
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 09:36 PM

Yes, Carol, I agree with you. We should also have free access to prescription medications from any market in the world. I thought we were in a "free market" capitalist economy. All the medicare clients I see (and there are a bunch) have medications they can not pay for or must skip certain months or forgo altogether, because they can't afford drugs when they make 550 a month on disability and can barely keep themselves in gas, apartment rent, and food.

Most have friends who look after them and they work under the table. I am constantly looking for sources for medications. We use all sorts of programs such as VR, Center for Independent Living, Easter Seals, and drug company programs for the indigent.

Health care in the United States is a nightmare for the poor. And try being an indigent aids patient in a small town like Tallahassee. Aids patients move away from here because the services are so spotty. We didn't even have a doctor that specialized in aids related infectious diseases for two years when the major one got burned out and left town.   If you are a medipass patient youu might get twothirds of the antivirals you need in any given month.

signed,
disgusted and outraged harpgirl


(New sources of info for patients are welcome folks. )

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Bobert
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 09:30 PM

Great news, hub!!!

36,000,000 folks without health insurance...

Make me all warm and fuzzy...

Meanwhile suckers like me and my wife pay $861 a month (with a $2000 deductible *each*) for a policy that can be cancelled, ahhhh, if we get sick?!!!!?!?!??!??!?!?!??!??....

Go stick yer nose back up Boss Hog's butt and quit defending rich people who pray on the working class...

This is the absolute worse thread you have ever started and when the revolution comes, and it will if you and yer buddies keep sqeezing the workinf man, I hope that one of my brothers or sisters makes a call to you house...

People like you really suck!!!

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 09:22 PM

harpy...as a couple others have noted, most hospitals do provide emergency care...which is all I claimed. But in some areas, the load is such that the treatment is slow, perfunctory, and often does not address the long-term situation.

Amos managed to enlarge on my other point in answer to SH...it is not a matter of basic care being a right, but whether it is a good idea! I am rather tired of pompous, smug folks who are doing ok and HAVE health insurance declaring that anyone who didn't 'manage' like they did must be freeloaders and lazy.
   We were without insurance for a couple of years because of exhorbitant prices and sudden changes in the job market...until we were shown a group plan we could just 'barely' afford...and it saved my wife's life! We managed to dig up the premiums for a few years by hard work and some amazing help from friends so that she could continue to be treated. Now we are both over 62 and able to relax very slightly, though the care is limited.
(I just got a bill for $99 (NON-covered)for a 10 minute follow-up LOOK at my right eye that involved only eye drops and a flashlight. I had eye treatment while I had full insurance, and had no idea what it would cost me to simply ask him if the problem I was having was serious. That $99 is a big bite out of the budget these days..)

I think the entire medical mal-practice insurance rules need to be totally re-done, so that rates can be reduced and marginally profitable medical practices can be revived.

This situation today is just widening the gap further between the haves and have-nots...and a lot of the "haves" simply don't care what happens to those below the line.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: John O'L
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 07:23 PM

I don't live in the USA, so I only read the opening post, just to find out what the good news was.

If that's the good news I'm glad for my American friends that there's no bad news.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: kendall
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 07:19 PM

.. I learned that Newt Gingrich has a plan for health insurance for every woman and man, it will cost far less and I'll tell you why, when you get sick you just die die die... (Tom Paxton)

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: PoppaGator
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 07:13 PM

"Job creation" may not always be a good thing (except of course for those who fill the jobs that are created).

Does the proliferation of work required to decipher and complete tons of redundant medical-payment paperwork really benefit society as a whole? More than half of every dollar spent on "health care" goes not to medical practitioners and medical support personnel, but to cover the expense of all the paperwork our chaotic current system requires.

While huge numbers of moderately-well-paid (and adequately insured) drones are spinning their wheels to operate our many bureaucracies (both governmental and private-sector), large numbers of other human beings are doing without ~ without health care, without adequate income, etc., etc. Somehow, it seems to me, a society where more people were engaged in productive real-world activities, rather than manipulating needlessly complicated paperwork, would be a society better able to provide meaningful work and adequate earnings to all its members.

I agree with much of the "conservative" party line that opposes governmental red tape, but strongly disagree that private business is always automatically free of the same kind of wastefulness, and I also disagree with the right-wing dogma that all public-sector activities are ipso facto inefficient. In fact, the US government provides the most efficient use of dollars for health care; more cents of every dollar spent by Medicare/Medicaid goes to medical providers (and less to "administration") than monies dispersed by any other payment method ~ including, oddly enough, cash!

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 06:59 PM

And of course there is also the problem of the many working poor people who have no insurance and no access to health care. These people have jobs, but their jobs do not provide any insurance benefits, and they don't pay enough for people to be able to afford to buy it on their own. Their emergency room visits cost money and that cost does eventually get spread out to the rest of the country. But at a much higher cost than if these people had access to adequate health care to begin with. So it really is penny wise and pound foolish to not make sure that everyone has adequate health care right from the start.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: artbrooks
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 06:24 PM

There are certainly some people out there that could afford to pay for their health care but don't and others who could be holding down jobs and supporting themselves but don't bother (which is my definition of deadbeats), but there are many more who don't have job skills, or who can't find a job (and can't afford to move to where jobs might be) or who are too disabled to hold gainful employment.

I'm not exactly sure what Susu's Hubby thinks a liberal is, but I assume that he's not referring to the dictionary definition of "freely giving, tolerant of other viewpoints and favoring reform or progress". Or maybe he is. Personally I think that the United States, as the country with the fourth-highest per-capita income in the world, should be able to afford to help out those individuals who are unable (and that's different from unwilling) to help themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Once Famous
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 05:57 PM

Every emergency room has a sign that says by law they cannot turn any one away.

They do not however, have to give you long term care, which is what your friend obviously needed.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: harpgirl
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 05:48 PM

Bill, I disagree with your premise that MOST hospitals will treat uninsured people. That is just not true. My dear friend Marty Schuman went to Tampa General with cancer and he was turned away. He went to a doctor friend's clinic in Beckley west virginny and died in comfort there.

Moreover, the coverage offered is decreasing. I pay 570 dollars a month for insurance for myself and my son. A recent problem with his foot cost 25 for the copay at the doctor's office, 20 for the medication, another 75 at the emergency room at the health plan, and when we were all done, he had the operation on his foot at his school because no one here would do what was necessary. Thank god his school has doctor's on staff. I thought his toe was going to fall off from the "treatment" we got on my health plan.

susu and her hubby ar just divise plants. they aren;'t real people anyway. come on, they just show up one day on the forum and suddenly know everyone and their politics. I think they are another of lepus' rex's made up characters, frankly. He can log in a t any computer at his school. There are hundreds. We'll be plagued with these made up people until that school finally fires his ass.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Susu's Hubby
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 05:43 PM

Here's your LOGICAL link, TIA.



With love,


Hubby

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 05:31 PM

"he is only 28th on the list of people that have possibly accepted trips paid for by lobbyists"

This is exactly the sort of assertion that requires a reference to be the least bit credible. Not saying it might not turn out to be, but when stated with no source it carries zero weight in LOGICAL thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Once Famous
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 05:30 PM

If it's not tied to employment, all you will see is the usual deadbeats and freeloaders.

Work for it. No one is entitled.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: robomatic
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 05:16 PM

Why should insurance be linked to employment? If I leave a job of work, my body is the same body that will now have to shift insurance systems to Cobra and then to my next employer's program, which I will have to relearn. Why not have the same insurance system to look after my body regardless of whom it works for?

For reasons unfathomable to me, my government leaders have chosen to ignore this problem which concerns tens of millions of people right now and concentrate on medicare finances, which is a 'problem' in name only, and where the prospects are so far in the future it will have to be re-fixed no matter what. It's the biggest red herring in politics of recent times (along with missile defense systems which cannot be made to work).

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Amos
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 05:05 PM

It is not a right, and if you really think we ought to go back into the PLeistoce where tooth and claw were the only measure of human ability, be my guest.

The question is not if it is a right or not, but can and should we build a society that provides a basic minimum safety net?

I think there are arguments on both sides. Reactionary neocons -- almost always those who have gotten theirs one way or another -- believe that anyone without healthcare is at fault for not having done well enough. This confuses responsibility (which each human must take on their own) with blame.

It is obvious that some people are deadbeats, a condition which comes about through excessive coddling OR through overwhelming duress, OR through physical disability or biochemical imbalances OR through substance abuse OR through gene defects.

It is obvious also that some people are a lot easier to help than others, some people turn their lives around and head north more readily than others, and some people are hard to help.

The question which remains is, how helpful should a society be? How much help CAN we afford, and how much SHOULD we afford.

Your mindless carping about "liberals", which is being used much int he way "Commies" used to be during the pinko-panics of the Fifties, does nothing to inform or advance that dialogue, SH. Why do you keep slinging out heat instead of light?

Or, do you think that all help is folly or betrayal, and those who believe in offering one kind of help or another are just deluded softies?

A

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: mg
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 03:49 PM

As usual I am an omniist on every side of this issue. I want health care for the uninsured, I want catestrophic coverage especially, I do not want the current system, patch-work as it may be, to be destroyed to get it, I want the people who could afford to pay more of the health care costs to insure themselves, and some can, . If people receive medical care, I want it to be on a sliding scale of costs so that no one is ruined but you should have to pay something..if not money, then in your services, as they do in some hospitals..wash windows or something...I would like to see private pay always kept because it will drive costs down eventually and keep standards up and I would like a public system as well, with numerous public clinics staffed by nurses, PA-Cs, and other non-doctors. I'm all for integrative medicine and preventive medicine and people being as responsible as possible for maintaining their heallth etc.

mg

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Susu's Hubby
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 03:06 PM

Well,


Let's look at it this way.


If the unemployment number are going down and uninsured numbers are going up then it seems to me by the process of LOGICAL thinking that either taxes are too high for the individual or employers can't offer benefits like once before because the corporate taxes are too high.

That offers another question....why is it that you guys believe that healthcare is a RIGHT? I'll admit that it would be nice if everybody had it but at the expense of everybody else? That is unacceptable. Even the socialistic idea of universal healthcare sounds good on the surface but look at Canada....I read a story a few weeks back about people having to stand in long lines and waiting weeks and weeks to see a doctor and to have tests done. (I will look for the story and link to it if I can) That too, is unacceptable. The last time that I read the Bill of Rights, I didn't see where it was written that anybody should have the right of government healthcare or any healthcare for that matter. So those that do have it should be grateful and those that don't should strive to get it.


"Of course, the current labyrinth of private insurers, each with its own system of codes and categories, etc. has created a huge number of good white-collar jobs that would disappear if and when the process gets streamlined and all that private-sector paperwork gets eliminated."

The above quote was from PoppaGator's post earlier. Your idea of socialized medicine would do nothing but reverse the direction that the country is headed it as far as job creation and growth. What you are supporting is an idea that would do nothing but depress an economy that has seen significant growth in the last four years.

The numbers quoted above puts us at about 14% of the US population that's currently without some type of healthcare. That is a shame. But to tell the other 86% that do have it that some of them may lose their jobs and current coverage in order for the other 14% to have it is taking a huge leap backwards.

Think, people, Think.


Hubby

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 02:17 PM

if an uninsured person goes to a hospital with an emergency, most hospitals will treat them, and the cost gets passed to you and me. NOT having insurance....even just minimal insurance....creates disease and health and social problems that affect all of society. It would be FAR better to control problems in some organized way, rather than let 15-25% of society fall thru the cracks and eventually cost the system more than if they were reasonably insured in the first place.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 02:08 PM

Zero would be a good target to aim for.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 02:05 PM

36 million? 45 million? How am I supposed to know whether those numbers are good or bad?

Will somebody please tell me how many people ought to be uninsured? Then I'll know.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: PoppaGator
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 01:31 PM

It's buried at the very bottom of the article, but it is clearly stated that economists and experts from both ends of the political spectrum agree that the number of uninsured ~ whatever the exact count ~ is increasing because, as is obvious to everyone, employment-based health benefits are being reduced across the board by large and small employers.

In other words, the actual number of uninsured is not decreasing; we may be getting more accurate numbers now, which may indeed be lower than previously reported, but things are not "getting better and better" ~ not hardly! While the numbers may indeed have been overreported in the recent past, and are now being corrected downward, there is still a large number ~ and, more significantly, an increasing number ~ of uninsured Americans.

Contrary to Adam Smith and the neoconservative movement, profit-driven private enterprise is not necessarily the ideal medium for progress in every field, and it should be obvious that public health is one area where the public sector could be more effective than the corporations.

The extremely complicated and wasteful current procedures for administering corporate medical claims, contrary to right-wing anti-government-bureaucracy dogma, create greater inefficiency than would a "socialistic" single payer system (like the rest of the industrialized world uses). The private sector creates bureaucracy too! Of course, the current labyrinth of private insurers, each with its own system of codes and categories, etc. has created a huge number of good white-collar jobs that would disappear if and when the process gets streamlined and all that private-sector paperwork gets eliminated. But, of course, the newly-unemployed "medical coders" and other pencil pushers would at least have public health coverage while searching for new employment.

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Wesley S
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 01:31 PM

So it's supposed to be a good thing that ONLY 36 million people are uninsured ? I'm glad that's an acceptable number for you. It isn't for me.

And I'm with you on one thing. Lets get rid of any of the politicians that are accepting bribes. I don't care what party they are from. And lets not change the rules to save any of them - right ?

Only 28th on the list ? Is that supposed to make it acceptable ? How about unacceptable anywhere on the list ?

Subject: RE: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 01:27 PM

It seems as if things are actually starting to look up, afterall.

From the article:

A lower estimate of the number of uninsured Americans may provide only a fleeting sense of relief, however. Both groups of outside researchers found that the ranks of the uninsured continue to rise with the erosion of private coverage.

"Whatever method one applies, we're still going to get rising uninsurance," said Linda Giannarelli of the Urban Institute. "This problem is not going to go away."

Subject: BS: The news is getting better and better!
From: Susu's Hubby
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 01:00 PM

Once again, our liberal friends have gotten some bad news and this time, it's even from a liberal source such as the LA Times. You know, the good thing about the internet is that these liberal media outlets can no longer hide what they consider to be bad news on page 6 below the fold. You can read the story from the link below.


It seems as if the number of uninsured Americans has been underestimated. Now it seems, at most, only thirty-six million Americans are currently not covered by insurance instead of the forty-five million that the left has been consistently quoting over the past two to three years. With the number of uninsured going down and the number of unemployment job claims going down then what bandwagon will the left jump on next? It seems as if things are actually starting to look up, afterall.

It seems as if the Tom Delay fiasco is slowly fading away with the learning that he is only 28th on the list of people that have possibly accepted trips paid for by lobbyists. Above him are many democrats including Nancy Pelosi that have accepted more. I'm personally for getting rid of everybody from Delay on up the list if the lefties are so inclined. But this would seem to do nothing but stall the forward momentum of the government.
So if this is the best that you've got then Conservatism as the accepted form of US government seems to be the way of the future.



Updated numbers on Insured Americans?


Hubby