Boo hoo.......
National health care – NO WAY!
Unless you all know how the system works, I would say that you need to educate yourself to the system and how it can be fixed before falling into a National Health Care trap.
We live in a country that leads the world; I mean LEADS the world in medical innovations and discoveries. We spend more money on health care per person than any other country.
I do not agree with the 60% of uninsured crap, this number which is floated around by a lot of groups also includes Medicaid and Medicare people who do not have any insurance. The number is more like <20% - beside insurance is not the issue for many, it is access that ensure good care close to the real cost.
I also don’t buy into the crap that the cost of health care is the biggest issue that businesses face; the problem is the insurance company games and what they pay for. I mean why should BCBS pay the cost for a sex change operation or when someone is dying spend a lot of money on another operation when there is no hope (doctor decided surgery – not patient) –
ALL OF THIS DRIVES THE COST UP FOR US, THE INSURANCE COMPANY PASSES ON THIS TO US.
But I know that you don’t care about this, so I point to something else; Medicare. If you want to see what National health care will look and act like, look at Medicare. This is a national health care and it is a big mess. It is by far one of the worst government program ever conceived and I would love to see it go away. The abuse and fraud is worst with doctors than any where else, YES TallCal, even worst than Halliburton, Boeing and any military contractor could ever have.
Doctors make up their ‘loss’ by padding the bills, not all but enough to make it hurt all of us.
Here is a good link – read the article –
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/11/21/224331.shtml?s=ic
But what about the ‘uninsured’? I don’t have all the answers but providing government health care is the WORST thing for all.
I am uninsured, I have to scrape and save for my prescriptions and doctor visits. I have to deal with interns, a teaching clinic and people who think I am some dummy that just came out of an egg. I have been insulted, talked down to and almost hit a doctor for his attitude toward me. I know the billing game, all about HIPAA (sat on the BCBS Michigan advisory board for HIPAA) better than any of them and know what they can do and can not do. I get by but I am not happy about it.
So what I see can help the situation is a good fix which we will never see until people here in our country get off their a** and start doing something about it. Stop making it an election year issue and stop thinking about Medicare as a right. Insured, uninsured, independent – all have to get involved.
Let’s go down the list really quick.
The first thing is the insurance companies needs to stop paying for elective surgeries like Sex Change operations (that is one example I have about 300 of them I can list)
The second thing is the need to promote healthy living through insurance companies and the doctors. Something that is sorely lacking at the medical schools is proper education of healthy living.
About 100 or so years ago, France had a problem with malnutrition and high mortality rate. Well to shorten this, check out “The French Diet: Why French Women Don't Get Fat†by Michel Montignac that illustrates my point completely about proper nutrition.
The third thing is we no longer live in a manual labor society, meaning our kids for the most part are getting fat and lazy. We need to get the kids to move, but I know that is impossible for some parents.
Oh Tallcal, the reason we have high mortality rate is not because the lack of access or health care, it is because people are lazy and stupid. My wife works with a girl who got ‘knocked up’ (the girl’s words) to keep her boyfriend, yes trap him. He took off and she went on Medicaid. She makes more than my wife, $26,000 plus health care at the company but she gets Medicaid. She found out that when she names the boyfriend on the birth certificate, the state will go after him to pay back some of the cost, so she dropped Medicaid and has not been back to the doctor. Who’s fault is this? It is not the country’s fault, is it?
Well anyway, I also think that simple things like nutrition education is a good thing.
The fourth thing is something I said before, DOCTOR ACCOUNTABLITY. We lack a national doctor licensing system; it is still in the dark ages and state run. I say get rid of the state licensing system and make it national. This will eliminate a lot of problems with doctors who hack up a patient in say NY and move to Florida and continue their practice. Also I had to deal with the doctors who were caught being drug addicts, I think that this is where we need to pull licenses and not give doctors second, third of fourth chances. I got a good story but it is too long to post about this.
This leads me to point five – tort reform, sort of....
A lot of cases of malpractice is justified but a lot of the cases should never get to court but they do. The person who sued over cutting their finger off and the doctor can’t reattached it should not sue. But on the other hand a lot of doctors are protected by the courts when they are drunk or drugged up if they are under treatment.
Point six – Common Sense
