one payer health care

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John,

Have you seen the 'auto-tune the news' series?

The news is less depressing if you auto-tune it and then set it to a beat, intertwine a tune and some backing vocals, and do some creative editing...

The latest is number six, I think... check for it on YouTube.

You may find it amusing... or you may not. (Hopefully you do) but these guys are supremely creative in my mind....

Keith
 
I make the little jokes for some personal stress management. There will be a hard push for federal capture of healthcare tonight, but i think that horse has already left the barn. I am in a better mood since the tide turned on that and carbon cap n' deal, turned into a obvious wheel and steal.

The news will get even more interesting when all the news biotches start acting like jilted lovers and turn vicious, but we're still several months away from that. So for now they're just a little confused.
------
I kind of enjoyed that website where they had girls doing a strip tease while they read the news, but I'm still old school and get my news mostly served up on dead trees.  Except for the middle east rebroadcasts that I still have to watch.. questionable translations and all.

group002.jpg


JR


 
I get the stress-management...

really though, -spend three minutes of your life in this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0OzxvClwoU

I promise you'll like it more than John Cleese!

Keith
 
OK.. I didn't sit through the whole thing but it was a lot more amusing (nice work) than the press conference tonight, that I also didn't sit through.

I very much appreciate the value of humor to communicate political agendas. Gulliver's travels anyone (more recently Lenny Bruce) ? When people are laughing their mind opens up a little to new ideas.

JR

 
A mandated healthcare package as it sits fuming in its own noxious juices would be the final nail in the American Economy, it would essentially force the majority of our economic potential into an instant death...the mom and pop companies that make up the majority of our economic engine would probably close up shop.

If Obama is willing to pay for the health care program out of his own pocket then I am also onboard for one payer health care.
 
Scodiddly said:
Does anybody here claim that the current free-market system is actually working?

Noooooooooooooooo...  It's corrupted by the insurance companies on one hand and the drug companies on the other, arm wresting for our pocket cash...

The drug companies have ramped up subsidies so individuals don't have to pay the co-pays for more expensive (name brand) drugs out of their own pockets. This effectively prevents the individuals from feeling any economic motivation to make cost effective decisions effectively blocking insurance companies attempts to reduce spending. And the hospital play along by overcharging for everything, then giving the insurance companies a discount. 

Then on the other other hand mix in the tort lawyers getting wealthy from malpractice lawsuits, having the unintended consequence of causing over testing, with second and third opinions to avoid lawsuits.

The system is broke, and the democrats will make it worse...

Why is there even single payer insurance for routine medical care, such that people don't see or care what stuff costs? Insurance economically is supposed to cover extraordinary catastrophes averaged over a larger pool of people...    We all need and use healthcare, so socializing it under government bureaucrats just reduces the free market influences that would make it competitive and efficient.  Making young people pay for older peoples health care is a Ponzi scheme (like social security) that only works if youth population growth is fast enough.

Yesterday in Congress when they tried to get Bernanke to support urgent health care change, he pointed out that medicare was underfunded and they need to focus on costs. They ignored his statement of fact.

They are moving in the wrong direction at warp speed. I am hopeful that the public catches on in time.

JR

PS: In addition to my proposed law to charge politicians with perjury when they lie, I want to punish politicians who vote on bills they didn't read...  WTF is their job???



 
Ummm...point of clarification...we do not have a "free market health care system" in the USA...Medicare/Medicaid/social security...besides the tort system abuse/insurance lobby/politicians in the pocket, have eliminated any semblance of true "free market"...
 
iomegaman said:
Ummm...point of clarification...we do not have a "free market health care system" in the USA...Medicare/Medicaid/social security...besides the tort system abuse/insurance lobby/politicians in the pocket, have eliminated any semblance of true "free market"...

True...  It's a cabal between hospitals, insurance, and big drug companies, but we need to move in that direction (customer/free market driven) for the health of the world...

Our market, relatively free of government mandated drug prices, subsidizes the cost of most new drug research... remove the profit and kiss new drug research good bye... the majors have already cut back on long term projects in anticipation of government intervention into pricing policy.

I don't suggest this is easy or not screwed up now... but we are moving in wrong direction... out of the frying pan into the fire. When a politician says "urgent"... that is code for don't ask any questions...

Lots of stuff to fix, I just don't hear anything that makes sense... more of the same... Co-opting the power brokers... There's a new boss in town, same as the old boss. But bigger (and less effective).


JR
 
The current free market system is not free.  Layers of legislation and market compensation have created quicksand.
In NY, I cannot buy catastrophic health insurance outside of a HSA, and my HSA options are only 1.
I have to become some kind of entity in order to get more than the 4 choices of insurance I have.
The answer is more limited coverage.  If you have a "health care" policy, you will use it more, even if you do not need it.
That is what is wrong.  Most people do not need "healthcare"; they need to see the doctor once or twice a year, and need the hospital in case of an emergency.  This whole notion that you should only pay $20, or nothing! to see a DR. is created by the politicians in bed with managed care.
I would prefer to pay $2,000 per year for catastrophic insurance and pay for docs out of pocket.
Instead I pay $12,000 a year to see a doc for $30.
And the feds want to take US further in this direction.
FAIL.
Mike 
 
Yes...

Doctors need to talk/negotiate prices (as other industries) with patients (consumers) not insurance companies. The less a third party is involved the better. I would prefer the catastrophic insurance only with out of pocket doctor visits.

As an analogy, if my faucet is leaky (runny nose) and needs replacement, I don't make an insurance claim. I just pay to fix it. If a tree falls on my house (broken bone) and causes considerable damage, I make an insurance claim. There's no reason have insurance companies pay for routine visits.
 
Don't even get me started on the health care system.
I have a chronic illness that I deal with every day and have fought the insurance companies tooth and nail all the way.  I have a part time job just to have insurance because the insurance I had bought through the state (Illinois Comprehensive Health Care Program) had gotten so exorbitantly expensive that it was costing me more than my car payment...insurance and all... every month...and that's not including the meds. I had to get the state insurance as due to my "pre existing condition" I was deemed uninsurable by all the "BIG" insurance companies. So what then I'm supposed to curl up and die?
Even then I had to send innumerable letters to different state offices to get approved.
I felt like I was in some Kafkaesque nightmare.
The drug and insurance companies are lying cheating scheming bastards..
R&D is important but most drug companies lump advertising into that category.
WTF? We need to charge you more so we can advertise this new drug.
NO if the drug works
it will be used.....TELL THE F*CKING DOCTORS!!!
If a new drug comes out my doctor should know about it...I shouldn't have to learn about it via the TV.
This is another way of telling people what they should think they need instead of letting the doc make the decision.  I think a system could be put together that works. Don't know if the one they are working on will but I also know people who have  moved back to the UK due to medical issues that got out of hand. I would gladly pay out of pocket for insurance if it cost me what it does weekly at my part time job.
Oh, and the old "I had to wait months to get care in so and so country...." yeah okay....
My father might have rheumatoid arthritis, is now in pretty severe pain on a daily basis and the soonest any one of the 3 specialists he's contacted can see him is in 2 MONTHS.
ARGHHHH!!!!!!
I love all the scare tactic ads everyone is using too.  I'm actually starting to miss Billy Mays.
 
Drug companies have shifted from curing diseases to pursuing chronic medication... like the drug pusher of old, they want to get patients  hooked on cholesterol medicine, for the rest of their life, or hard-on medicine, or swollen prostate (piss too often) , etc. They don't want to fix something, They want an income stream.

The reason they have to advertise these drugs is because DRs wouldn't prescribe them unless patients walk in and ask for it. I am sure my parents never sat around and wished they had medicine so they could overeat without getting a heart attack, or magically get a boner on demand (well maybe they would if they thought it was possible). 

Insurance should NOT pay for medicines that really don't effect health. And drugs to mitigate avoidable conditions (like metabolic syndrome) that patients could avoid by eating better and exercising, should at most be paid for only for a few moths with advice to the patient to heal himself. We have epidemic adult onset diabetes, from people eating too much and riding the couch instead of working up a sweat.  I just read in todays newspaper that MS is number one again with 21.9% childhood obesity... arghhh.

Another elephant in the room is that even in an ideal world, the cost to extend life when in decline at the very end can get very expensive. To the person dying, most want the extra weeks or months, but that treasure in the past would have instead given younger generations in that same family a down payment on a house. I might argue it's unfair. I plan to die on time. Just not today.

Insurance is supposed to protect against catastrophic events by spreading the risk across a pool of like individuals for whom only a small percentage will file a claim. If health insurance is expanded to cover everybody, and everything, it IS NOT INSURANCE. Instead it is simply pooling costs, and a matter of moving money from one pocket to another. I guess some people would like to have the cost come from somebody else's pocket. If we had full participation, young people who generally have lower health needs would be paying for the healthcare of older citizens. A classic fallacy is thinking that money ever comes from the government. They just take our money, waste most of it, and give us back the pocket change. I suspect there is more class warfare implied as this will be another vehicle to shift wealth from those who earned it to those who didn't.

I don't want you young folks to pay for my health care. I am fine paying for my own responsibilities. What I object so violently to is the present system that distorts prices to the point I am getting ripped of when I consume healthcare as an individual. I predict I paid roughly 3x for some diagnostics, what it should have cost because, I don't get the insurance company negotiated kickback.

I can buy generic drugs for a couple bucks at Walmart. Let's put clinics in Walmart, and other drug chains, hook them up to doctors in India via the Internet,  and let the games begin.

The Government will probably screw this pooch so bad it wont ever fetch. Congress is about to head home for summer break... tell them what you think...

JR
 
JohnRoberts said:
Lots of stuff to fix, I just don't hear anything that makes sense... more of the same... Co-opting the power brokers... There's a new boss in town, same as the old boss. But bigger (and less effective).

So... you have no ideas of your own, you've not heard any ideas you like, but you're convinced that we're headed in the wrong direction and that those other people (the Democrats) can only cause further damage.
 
Scodiddly said:
JohnRoberts said:
Lots of stuff to fix, I just don't hear anything that makes sense... more of the same... Co-opting the power brokers... There's a new boss in town, same as the old boss. But bigger (and less effective).

So... you have no ideas of your own, you've not heard any ideas you like, but you're convinced that we're headed in the wrong direction and that those other people (the Democrats) can only cause further damage.

My last post and this whole thread is full of ideas.....

But I'm not the one trying to take over the country one industry at a time.

JR
 
I wonder what the chances are of having political representatives that have no personal investment/return/connection to any outside lobby groups whatsoever?

We used to have options, now we are are a nation run by lobbyist.

The Feds spent 79 BILLION on "climate research"...carbon trading was 128 BILLION in 2008, and banks make the most off of carbon trading...which is a horrifically stupid idea...

Not one of the federally funded studies takes into account the suns activity...you know that big blob of gas burning in the sky that actually heats our planet...how can you determine the cause of global warming if you don't figure in the suns activity at all?

Health-care is the next global warming...
 
Excuse me if I chime in..
I see that this thread is related to the current Obama USA health proposal/law.

Must say I think the JohnRoberts arguments are thoughtful and logic.

But I feel I must add a simple fact..
In Italy we [still.. who knows if and when it will end] have a public [more or less.. it helps if you have a friend inside, of course and sadly] working free health care system.
That means that if you have a sudden serious illness, you can go at an hospital and be cured,
it doesnt matter if you're rich or poor.
No need of insurance.
I think that it is a great goal for a nation.

That said, my own POV is that the best is the old chinese system..
-> the doctor is paid if his patients are healthy.

P.S. about the global warming.. the Al Gore's episodes of South Park with "Man Bear Pig".. fantastic  ;D
 
My chronic illness is
Crohn's Disease...which right now has no cure and has put me
in the hospital twice since being diagnosed and once prior to that.
The first time the emergency room doc said, "You've either got Crohn's or Cancer."
SWEEEET!
Must say at the time I hoped for number 1 cause I was sure I didn't want number 2!
I'd love a cure....got any suggestions?
I've researched it extensively and done what the Doctors have told me.
As I said should I just curl up and die? I'm in my 30's right now.
What's the line from a Christmas Carol, "it'd decrease the surplus population..."
I have changed my eating habits endlessly.
I exercise everyday.
The only thing that quells it IS a drug that costs money that I don't have unless I have insurance.
John, I bet the last round of drugs you bought cost less than $9000.00 for an 8 week dose....
that was the initial cost of my medication without insurance.
Blue Cross used to send out EOB's (estimate of billing or some sh*t) that showed you
what some poor schmuck without insurance would be billed for the same treatment or
what I could be billed if I somehow lost my insurance.
I am not fat.
I watch what I eat.
Maybe I should give up eating?
As I said the insurance and drug companies are just as bad as the politicians.
Phonies and thieves. DRUG ADS SHOULD BE BANNED.
Most folks don't give a sh*t about or care to know about these things until they
happen to them personally. 
So yeah. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.



 
My younger brother has Crohns, it has changed just about every aspect of his life.
He has a three year old girl which is quite a thing considering that the treatments were supposed to make him sterile.
I sort of understand your situation, but cannot imagine it without some sort of insurance...that is simply nuts.

I know that stress has a huge impact on his health, he recently changed positions (he is a Colonel in the Army) and the amount of stress he was under diminished incredibly, his health/disposition improved dramatically (the General he was an assistant to was a complete control freak imagine that!).

We have a pact that he will call me whenever he gets to stressed or depressed, we tell stupid jokes and I pray fro him until his posture changes...I was getting a call every week until he got promoted away from the General.

I cannot imagine you doing this on your own dime.
 

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