chobby192

I am not so sure if nationalized healthcare is better or worse than corporate run healthcare. One thing I know for sure is that uncle sam is not as greedy as these corporations. So I am willing to give this nationalized healthcare a chance to prove that it is better than corporate run healthcare. If it turns out to be worse, we can always go back.

China has become more capitalist than America; America has become more communist than China.
~ Propaganda Buster

NeilPearson

uncle sam is just as greedy... and way more irresponsible with money

nkira

I have been thinking about getting a health care plan.....<Notes Down as weekend project>

QUIET IS MIGHT. SOLITUDE IS STRENGTH. INTROVERSION IS POWER.
Words of a Wise Woman - We don't all get to have all things. I have been given more than most, not as much as others.
I enjoy the gifts that I have, I share what I can, and try not to begrudge others for having things that I don't have.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KelJu Power House became my hospital and the iron became my medicine.

min0 lee

Think so? I don't know, like I said I think it's one of the reasons.
Not saying it was the main reason.
I do know the bosses at Motorola and later when they became private this was one of the complaints they had.

min0 lee

My old company it changed every year, which was rather annoying. They said it was cheaper us but it turns out it was only cheaper for the company and not us.

I don't want to veer off subject but one year we had this health care rep come over and sit with us to explain about the new policies, so I grilled him and it turns out we were going to pay more.
I told him before I sign anything let me talk it over with my spouse, he told me to take my time.
2 days later I call him and he tells me the dead line was that day, I talked to my bosses and his supervisor and they tell me there was nothing I could do till next year.

Luck would have it I broke my clavicle and tore tendons a week later, no freaking medical......my shoulder was so swollen that they couldn't tell through the X-rays whether it was broken or not.

I didn't find out till a year later it was indeed broken. I couldn't afford my own medical....sheesh I think we almost paid $200.00 a month for medical through our company...I can't imagine how much it would be here to get it yourself.

bandaidwoman

Even if companies are not moving oveseas many small and medium size businesses are no longer offering health care as a benefit due to expense. It is my second highest overhead and if I wasn't in the business, it would be the first thing I would drop and it would lower my overhead significantly.

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min0 lee

Can someone list 10 good things and or 10 bad things on both sides of this subject.

Big Smoothy

The Health Care issue is very complicated.

One of the biggest problems is the annual rising costs. These costs increases have to be contained.

As Bandaidwoman noted, more and more medium sized business are hiring full time workers and not offering any health insurance plance to pay into because of the high costs.

These people are left to insure their families and the costs can be very high in monthly premiums. I know a couple of these families. They work full time, pay taxes, etc., etc.,

What is said is that the Health Care issue should not be as political as it is.

It's been turned into a political partisan issue with propganda, lies, and false information spewed out by both sides.

Military men are dumb, stupid animals, to be used as pawns for foreign policy
– Henry Kissinger (January-February 2003 edition of Eagle Newsletter)

bandaidwoman

Here is top ten reasons for:

http://pdamerica.org/misc/10%20Reasons%20-%20FINAL.pdf

could not fine ten against.

for those who don't think adminstrative costs are huge, just know that Duke university is a 900 bed hospital, it has 900 billing specialists , they don't have one nurse per bed, but they have one billing specialist per bed.... obscene..

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min0 lee

Thank you.

min0 lee

PRESCRIPTIONS
Bringing Down the House
The sobering lessons of health reform in Massachusetts.
By Darshak Sanghavi
Posted Tuesday, June 23, 2009, at 6:45 AM ET
The debate over achieving universal health care can seem hopelessly confusing. But the issues are actually pretty simple when you consider the lessons of Massachusetts.

In 2006, state lawmakers seeking to broaden health coverage made it illegal to be uninsured. It works like this: Employers have to offer you a health plan. If you are jobless or don't like your employer's plan, you must buy your own. If you don't get one, you pay a stiff fine. This strategy—known as an employer and individual "mandate"—forms the backbone of the national health reform bills now making their way through Congress.

On paper, the experiment was a resounding success. According to an Urban Institute estimate, the number of uninsured residents quickly fell from 13 percent to 7 percent following the law's passage.

And yet, something strange happened. Despite having health insurance, roughly one in 10 state residents still failed to fill prescriptions, ended up with unpaid medical bills, or skipped needed medical care for financial reasons. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to insure more Massachusetts citizens, but many people still weren't getting necessary care. What happened?

Assume you're looking to buy insurance. The state has a handy Web site where you can find the cheapest plan. For a young family of four, that plan costs roughly $9,500 per year, which doesn't include a minimum annual deductible of $3,500 before many benefits kick in. (The state helps cover some of the premiums for those who make very little money, but many still have to pay the other fees.) And if anyone is hospitalized or needs a lot of specialized care, you also pay 20 percent of that bill. In this relatively cheap plan, the family can be liable for an extra $10,000 per year of medical costs. This sort of "high deductible" health plan is clearly structured to discourage medical care.

Imagine, for example, that your homeowner's insurance had a $1,000 deductible. If the faucet leaks, you'll try to fix it yourself instead of calling the plumber. The same thing applies to health care. If your newborn has a fever, you might give her Tylenol and just hope there's no serious infection rather than head to the emergency room and face a hefty co-pay.

Why does a progressive state like Massachusetts strong-arm many individuals and businesses into buying expensive insurance plans that don't encourage actual visits to the doctor and hospital? According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average person consumes more than $5,000 per year in health care resources. No matter how you slice it, some entity—government, business, or the individual—owes a boatload of cash for medical expenses. The annual costs for the 500,000 or so uninsured Massachusetts residents would run more than $2.5 billion, far in excess of the original state subsidy of $559 million.

That left billions to be paid by businesses and individuals. So for them, a high-deductible plan was a rational gamble. You (or your employer) front just enough money to get some coverage in case of catastrophe and then hope no one actually gets sick. But someone invariably does. As a result, out-of-pocket medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcies—even though of most affected families actually have health insurance.

The expensive Massachusetts plan is not well-designed to systematically improve anyone's health. Instead, it's a superficial effort to clear the uninsured from the books and then clumsily limit further costs by discouraging care.

This brings us to the real task facing health reformers in our nation. Atul Gawande recently observed that for too long we've been "arguing about whether the solution to high medical costs is to have government or private insurance companies write the checks." What's more important are the doctors who write the bills. The more procedures they do, the more money they make. To fix medicine, he argues, we have to create better incentives for doctors to do right by patients instead of their own bank accounts.

But that's not the whole story. Health care costs are rising everywhere, even in places like Minnesota, which Gawande cites as a prime example of low-cost, high-quality care that should be replicated nationwide. (Per capita health spending is actually 25 percent higher in Minnesota than in Texas, which has a hospital system that Gawande criticizes for profiteering.) In Massachusetts, some employers offering high-quality plans have annual rate increases of 10 percent to 15 percent. These jumps are certainly due to some overuse of services but also indicate increasingly high-technology care.

The lesson of Massachusetts is that really good health care is also really expensive. The concern isn't who writes the checks or who writes the bills. The real question is who makes the tough decisions about the limits of the checks and bills—in other words, who ultimately rations the money. Not everybody can have everything, and the sooner we admit that, the sooner our health care debate will get realistic.

In the haphazard Massachusetts plan, rationing fell to individuals, who then skimped on important prescriptions and routine visits. Gawande would leave rationing to properly incentivized doctors, but we have no data about whether this can be done widely. Others advocate for bodies like the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (an impartial medical Federal Reserve Board), which can make the hard calls to promote and limit certain kinds of medical care. Britain, for example, has a national institute that makes precisely these decisions, like limiting drug-eluting stents for coronary artery disease and certain pricey drugs for kidney cancer. And health insurance executives here are again talking about "capitation," or fixed global budgets in which a group of health providers gets fixed monthly fees to handle all of a person's health needs.

In the meantime, one thing is sure: Without a smart plan to ration our resources well—that is, stick to a budget—and improve health, simply mandating that employers and individuals buy health insurance will only worsen the mess.

Darshak Sanghavi is a pediatric cardiologist and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is the author of A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician's Tour of the Body.
Article URL: The sobering lessons of health reform in Massachusetts. - By Darshak Sanghavi - Slate Magazine

bandaidwoman

That was the problem with the massachusetts plan, employers purchased sub par insurances as well as the individuals, it was not a true "national health insurance".

The cardiologist overlooked a successful experiment that is ongoing.. Taiwan

One of the medical students I had in last month's rotation, has a dad who is a taiwanese dermatologist. He is doing just as well after the changes. He had to implement electronic medical records but otherwise is doing well.

The national health insurance also made bankrupcies due to medical costs a thing of the past ( something that also plagued the taiwanese) Bureau of National Health Insurance-Insurance bureau heralds success

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IronAddict

good stuff !

The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Dale Mabry

Do you not know me by now min0, I was being facetious. Ya know, how all of the people who complain about their taxes cite how foreign countries have a lower corporate tax rate as being the only reason why companies move overseas. It has nothing to do with minimum wage being 15 cents a day or healthcare being provided.

If sense were common, everyone would have it.

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min0 lee

Doh!

min0 lee

1. Everybody In, Nobody Out. Didn't we have this at one time?
2. Portability. Doesn't COBRA already do this?
3. Uniform Benefits. Good.If you want to be treated better then pay for it out of your own pocket...not mine.
4. Prevention. Sometimes I think most of these medications out there are just to keep you defendant on them and not really cure you. I love how those commercials where the medication they promote has 10 more deadly side affects.
5. Choice. This is great, some of the places they refereed me too were hellholes or just too far.
6. No Interference with Care. This is good, I never even knew there was any interference.
7. Reducing Waste. Won't there be lost jobs...duh, this would actually lower cost, let's see them outsource that.
8. Cost Savings.
9. Common Sense Budgeting.
10. Public Oversight----When the CEO's get their greedy hands on our money it's never a good thing.

bio-chem

I speak to radiology directors and chiefs of radiology throughout north america every day as part of my job. I have spoken to multiple radiologists in canada that prefer the healthcare system we have here in the united states compared to what canada offers. I know this is second hand for you, so take it or leave it, but in multiple conversations i've had they state that there have been times when the wait for a non-emergency MRI or CT was months long.

bandaidwoman

First of all radiologists have no clue how many xrays, cat scans mris are denied on a daily basis by private insurers. When asked to help with prior authorizations say for followup cat scans , they refuse. Not a single one lifts a finger to help with the prior auths even thought they recommend followup cat scans etc. They don't have to deal with one iota of the paperwork the ordering physician, surgeon or internist does.

I can order a MRI for a medicare patient the next day but it can take me weeks to prior authorise one for the private plans.

I had an torn achilles tendon ( loss of ankle reflex) where blue cross HMO outright denied it because they wanted the person to have physical therapy for 8 weeks before getting one. Needless to say after 8 weeks, no better and by then the scar tissue was so bad the surgeon said operating would be useless and it was completly torn by the way.

It's interesting that in the JAMA and other polls where specialties across the board ( including surgical specialties) favor a national health insurance but the radiologists are the first ones to refuse. They, of all the medical specialties are over paid ( for the time). A radiologist gets paid more for a five minute read of a pelvic and abdominal cat scan then a vasular surgeon spending five hours in the operating room repairing a dissecting aneurysm. Thye get paid more for a five second read of a chest xray after a defibrillator is put in by the vascular surgeon. ( the latter takes about 45 minutes)

The irony, the vascular surgeon still has to look at the same cat scan and chest xray since he is the one that has to act on it, not the radiologists and he gets nada.

I'm just defending the surgeons who I believe should be paid more than a radiologist ( by the way vascular, general and even neurosurgeons can't come close to touching a radiologist's salary and the latter work half the hours the others do.)

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/498508_7

The top of a very unbalanced food chain is going to defend the status quo.

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min0 lee

Again thanks Bandaid for taking the time give us your input.

Special note.....must send kids to become radiologists, it this plan doesn't go through

bio-chem

Average Radiologist - Diagnostic Salary. Radiologist - Diagnostic Job, Career Education & Unemploym

radiologist median salary 360,000

Average Vascular Surgeon Salary. Vascular Surgeon Job, Career Education & Unemployment Help

vascular surgeon 330,000

you should probably use figures that a little more accurately show whats happening right now. The DRA has has had a hell of an effect.


A new survey by the American Medical Group Association (AMGA) shows diagnostic radiologists in group practices remain among the highest-paid specialists in the United States. Not only did diagnostic radiologists enjoy strong compensation increases in 2003, but also, over the past four years, they have seen larger percentage and dollar increases than any of the other 27 medical specialties studied.

In 2003 the median compensation for a diagnostic interventional radiologist was $410,250—the second highest in the survey. Cardiac/thoracic surgeons took the top spot at $416,896. In 2002, median income for a diagnostic interventional radiologist was at $401,000, slightly higher than the $400,500 reported for cardiac/thoracic surgeons.

Diagnostic non-interventional radiologists maintained fifth-ranked status in median compensation in 2003 at $345,619, behind catheter lab cardiologists ($368,938) and orthopedic surgeons ($354,495).


Surgeons seem to be doing pretty good for themselves. even by numbers that are from 2003

bio-chem

If your kids don't mind hundreds of thousands of dollars for school debt, years upon years of schooling, and then spending all day in a dark room staring at a computer screen then this is the job for them.

danzik17

Sounds like a comp sci degree but with more money. Where do I sign up?

Ron Paul 2012

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bio-chem

Med school. good luck

min0 lee

What? It's welfare for them bastards then!

ALBOB

I got a better question for you, can someone name one program that the government has ever run that worked, didn't cost billions of dollars more than the same program run by private corporations and didn't get tied up in years of beaurocratic red tape?

The U.S. government is good at ONE thing, feeding itself. I want them out of as many different programs as is humanly possible. I sure as HELL don't want them "managing" my healthcare. I'm sick enough as it is.

Rules? You mean we have RULES for that???

bandaidwoman

The average vascular surgeon, general and cardio thoracic surgeon works 90 or more hours a week here in my hospital, the radiologist half that, yet their salaries are comprable. Per hour worked, the radiologist is cleaning up house. When a stent placed by an interventional radiologist goes bad at midnight, they call the surgeons ( or myself if they are my patient), they ( or I ) come in at all hours of the night. It's pulling teeth to get the interventional guys to come in to clean up their mess if the mess doesnt' happen between 9 and 5. Those are just the fact from the trenches.

per hour worked, the surgeons put in far more sweat and agony than any radiologist. They also have longer years of training vs a radiolgist and have to accrue higher amounts of debt and defer repayment for a longer period of time. Of course my hours are close to 85 a week but in a system that rewards procedures vs thinking, I knew my salary would not come close to any of those specialties. Luckily my business ventures ( I own and rent commercial real estate ) more than quadruples my physician salary.

And really think about the 90 hours or more if you worked six am to six pm 7 days a week that is only 84 hours a week.

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bandaidwoman

The NIH National Institute of Health where top of the line, ground breaking medical research happens. Drug companies are now so busy making "me too drugs or copycat drugs" to turn the quick profit and make share holders happy, they no longer gamble on any real ground breaking ( and cost gobbling research and development) to bring any new revolutionary drug to market.

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Little Wing

i know a Canadian that is waiting for a call to start a medication and therapy for debilitating anxiety and agoraphobia. 16 weeks and still no call from the clinic where they are on a waiting list. to me that sounds fucked up.

and as for the U.S. all i want to know is what is going to stop the damn trend of having our kids pumped full of medications to make them docile little zombies from the time they're 2. it's a bullshit money making racket.

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Dale Mabry

I can't really fault Big Pharma for that. Look at what they go through, they spend millions upon millions of dollars researching a drug and then have to deal with companies like Cipla that essentially copy the drug and sell it at a steep discount because they never had to put forth the upfront investment. They go through all of the bullshit red tape in dealing with the FDA and these other companies just pounce once their is an indication. What incentive is there to even bother any more considering most insurance providers hardly cover any name brand stuff anyway?

If sense were common, everyone would have it.

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bandaidwoman

very true, which is why I no longer look to them for any "revolutionary' meds, the medical periodicals are full of groundbreaking stuff done in europe, and china is coming along ( they used stem cell research technology to cure an american of her congenital blindness...)

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