Health
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Stan Shannon wrote:
bullsh*t. There is no reason at all that there could not be fair and open competition for privately owned emergency care services.
"Hello, 911? My right arm and leg have gone numb, and while I realize that time spent getting to the hospital after a stroke is time that my brain is actively infarcting but I'd still like to discuss what my pricing options are with respect to my local hospitals - ahhh, you say Northwest General has a special on tPA, that's great - but that's only if it's an ischemic stroke, won't do much for a hemorrhagic one. Do any of them have deals on CT? Ohhh, great - that sounds...? Oh! Bother! Stroke! Reach! Broca's! Area! If! Could! Email! Me! Please! Thanks!"
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Fisticuffs wrote:
"Hello, 911? My right arm and leg have gone numb, and while I realize that time spent getting to the hospital after a stroke is time that my brain is actively infarcting but I'd still like to discuss what my pricing options are with respect to my local hospitals - ahhh, you say Northwest General has a special on tPA, that's great - but that's only if it's an ischemic stroke, won't do much for a hemorrhagic one. Do any of them have deals on CT? Ohhh, great - that sounds...? Oh! Bother! Stroke! Reach! Broca's! Area! If! Could! Email! Me! Please! Thanks!"
The arrangement could be established before the stroke.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Fisticuffs wrote:
"Hello, 911? My right arm and leg have gone numb, and while I realize that time spent getting to the hospital after a stroke is time that my brain is actively infarcting but I'd still like to discuss what my pricing options are with respect to my local hospitals - ahhh, you say Northwest General has a special on tPA, that's great - but that's only if it's an ischemic stroke, won't do much for a hemorrhagic one. Do any of them have deals on CT? Ohhh, great - that sounds...? Oh! Bother! Stroke! Reach! Broca's! Area! If! Could! Email! Me! Please! Thanks!"
The arrangement could be established before the stroke.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
The arrangement could be established before the stroke.
What about the thousands of other medical emergencies that us humans tend to suffer from? Could almost be a full time job just arranging cover in their likely or unlikely occurrence(s). I worry about you Stan, and your ideas.
modified on Saturday, June 6, 2009 8:22 AM
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Any system that requires people to pay up front, is open to these sort of issues. I prefer our system, where students pay for their education on the tail end, when they are reaping the benefits.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Please read this[^] if you don't like the answer I gave to your question. "! i don't exactly like or do programming and it only gives me a headache." - spotted in VB forums.
Christian Graus wrote:
I prefer our system, where students pay for their education on the tail end, when they are reaping the benefits.
Well, we may have figured out the worst of both worlds. The Diploma Factories make their money up front, but the students who have, in many cases, been subsidized by government-backed loans, can end up starting their professional careeras a couple of hundred thoudsand (US) doallrs in debt. I went to a first class private university in Boston where living hasn't ever been cheap. My entire first year's tuition was just over $1,000. Room, board, books, etc. came to just over another thousand. Obviously those were back when we were on the gold standard and inflation was what happened to balloons. That's why, now, the cost of room, board, etc. are ten times higher - to 11,000, U$. However, tuition - even though the college year has shrunk by six weeks from what it was when I went there is now thirty-frackin-seven times what it was then to $38,500.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin
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Daniel Ferguson wrote:
Nope, a profit-motivated business man is going to decide to pay your medical costs based on what makes the highest profit. Not giving you the money means more profit, which means denying care.
Huh? What do you mean 'not giving me the money'? What if I already have the money?
Daniel Ferguson wrote:
You know what, I totally agree. I don't want to depend on the government. I know the government wastes money and has too much bureaucracy. When it comes to medical care, I also don't want to depend on the business man because his profit comes first.
Absolutely. We should depend only upon the doctor. It should be a free exchange of money for services between patient and doctor.
Daniel Ferguson wrote:
The bureaucrat is motivated by getting paid their salary. They follow the rules so they can keep their jobs. If the rules say, "pay medical bills for car accident victims" then the bureaucrat does. The business man is motivated by profit, so if they can save money and make more profit by not paying my medical bills, then they will. That's why I trust the bureaucrat more in this case.
The bureaucrat is either not going to be motivated at all, probably will not be fired regardless of how poorly he does his job, or he is going to motivated by a political agenda which may or may not be to your disadvantage, or is simply going to be some kind of power mad jackass who likes to fuck with you. You know, pretty much the same kind of people you met at the post office.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
We should depend only upon the doctor. It should be a free exchange of money for services between patient and doctor.
Before Britain had its National Health Service, those who could afford medical treatments paid handsomely for it. Those who couldn't, and they were the overwhelming majority, suffered horrendous pain and injuries that occasioned their earlier than necessary deaths. Charity did help some but those it did help were just the tip of the iceberg.
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Fisticuffs wrote:
"Hello, 911? My right arm and leg have gone numb, and while I realize that time spent getting to the hospital after a stroke is time that my brain is actively infarcting but I'd still like to discuss what my pricing options are with respect to my local hospitals - ahhh, you say Northwest General has a special on tPA, that's great - but that's only if it's an ischemic stroke, won't do much for a hemorrhagic one. Do any of them have deals on CT? Ohhh, great - that sounds...? Oh! Bother! Stroke! Reach! Broca's! Area! If! Could! Email! Me! Please! Thanks!"
The arrangement could be established before the stroke.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Stan Shannon wrote:
The arrangement could be established before the stroke.
You mean, insurance? I thought that would be outlawed under your plan?
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Fisticuffs wrote:
You mean, insurance? I thought that would be outlawed under your plan?
Insurance would not be necessary. Emergency services could be included as part of a subscription plan to a local doctor's clinic or hospital. And, since your next comment is going to be something along the lines of "well, thats just the same thing as insurance..." my response is: "No it isn't". A subscription service to a doctor's clinic would be no different than a subscription service to your internet provider. They seem to be able to deal with managing the revenue stream without need for some kind of massive secondary industry to do it for them.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Stan Shannon wrote:
The arrangement could be established before the stroke.
What about the thousands of other medical emergencies that us humans tend to suffer from? Could almost be a full time job just arranging cover in their likely or unlikely occurrence(s). I worry about you Stan, and your ideas.
modified on Saturday, June 6, 2009 8:22 AM
Richard A. Abbott wrote:
What about the thousands of other medical emergencies that us humans tend to suffer from? Could almost be a full time job just arranging cover in their likely or unlikely occurrence(s).
What about them? They aren't going to go away just because you give more power to the government.
Richard A. Abbott wrote:
I worry about you Stan, and your ideas.
Of course, because my ideas are predicated upon proven methods of successfully doing things important to the maintainance of human civilization, and yours have failed miserably every single time they've ever been tried, and, in fact, fail precisely and predictably to the same extent that they are most faithfully implemented.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Stan Shannon wrote:
We should depend only upon the doctor. It should be a free exchange of money for services between patient and doctor.
Before Britain had its National Health Service, those who could afford medical treatments paid handsomely for it. Those who couldn't, and they were the overwhelming majority, suffered horrendous pain and injuries that occasioned their earlier than necessary deaths. Charity did help some but those it did help were just the tip of the iceberg.
Richard A. Abbott wrote:
Before Britain had its National Health Service, those who could afford medical treatments paid handsomely for it. Those who couldn't, and they were the overwhelming majority, suffered horrendous pain and injuries that occasioned their earlier than necessary deaths
Not true. That myth was fabricated for you by the collectivists who want to control your life.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Any system that requires people to pay up front, is open to these sort of issues. I prefer our system, where students pay for their education on the tail end, when they are reaping the benefits.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Please read this[^] if you don't like the answer I gave to your question. "! i don't exactly like or do programming and it only gives me a headache." - spotted in VB forums.
Christian Graus wrote:
Any system that requires people to pay up front, is open to these sort of issues. I prefer our system, where students pay for their education on the tail end, when they are reaping the benefits.
You guys are out of your minds. The reason both health care and educational costs increase is precisely because of government involvement. Both are increasing far more rapidly than inflation in the general economy, and the gold standard or lack thereof is insufficient to account for that. When government artificially makes more money available to pay for something, that something is now more valuable simply because more money is available to pay for it. The government could set aside a hundred trillion dollars to pay for health care and education, and that is exactly what health care and education would be worth in the general economy - a hundred trillion dollars (the artificial economics), plus what ever you were paying before they made that money available (the real economics). Australia is absolutely no different than the US, you are simply paying more in taxes or you are given reduced options by the government to control costs. There is no way around the simple brutal reality of economics.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Fisticuffs wrote:
You mean, insurance? I thought that would be outlawed under your plan?
Insurance would not be necessary. Emergency services could be included as part of a subscription plan to a local doctor's clinic or hospital. And, since your next comment is going to be something along the lines of "well, thats just the same thing as insurance..." my response is: "No it isn't". A subscription service to a doctor's clinic would be no different than a subscription service to your internet provider. They seem to be able to deal with managing the revenue stream without need for some kind of massive secondary industry to do it for them.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
Insurance would not be necessary. Emergency services could be included as part of a subscription plan to a local doctor's clinic or hospital.
So if I travel a lot, because insurance is outlawed, I need to get subscriptions to every hospital in every city I'm going to visit? (Hint: most truly emergent conditions preclude flying back home). Hell, if I live in a big city (which you obviously don't) and travel around the city will I need to manage my individual subscription coverage to every hospital in the city (since, again, group insurance isn't allowed) so that I don't need to be transported an hour away during my sudden cardiac arrest? Yeah, sounds really practical. :rolleyes:
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Stan Shannon wrote:
Insurance would not be necessary. Emergency services could be included as part of a subscription plan to a local doctor's clinic or hospital.
So if I travel a lot, because insurance is outlawed, I need to get subscriptions to every hospital in every city I'm going to visit? (Hint: most truly emergent conditions preclude flying back home). Hell, if I live in a big city (which you obviously don't) and travel around the city will I need to manage my individual subscription coverage to every hospital in the city (since, again, group insurance isn't allowed) so that I don't need to be transported an hour away during my sudden cardiac arrest? Yeah, sounds really practical. :rolleyes:
- F
Well, the first thing that occurs to me is that if you've got all this money to be doing all this traveling about, than you certainly have enough to be paying for your own damned health care. You certainly aren't some destitute homeless person. What you are really saying now is that you want me to pay for your health care so you can have nice fancy vacations. If you wish to travel, than part of your travel expense plan should be having a fund of your own money set aside to pay for whatever accidents might occur. Otherwise, stay the fuck at home or take your chances.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Well, the first thing that occurs to me is that if you've got all this money to be doing all this traveling about, than you certainly have enough to be paying for your own damned health care. You certainly aren't some destitute homeless person. What you are really saying now is that you want me to pay for your health care so you can have nice fancy vacations. If you wish to travel, than part of your travel expense plan should be having a fund of your own money set aside to pay for whatever accidents might occur. Otherwise, stay the fuck at home or take your chances.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
Well, the first thing that occurs to me is that if you've got all this money to be doing all this traveling about
It's for my job. I'm an independent contractor. In a free market, I would like to pay someone to manage my health insurance in multiple cities, but I can't, because Stan outlawed insurance in a misguided belief that modern urban living can really be just like "Green Acres" if enough people are forced to do it.
Stan Shannon wrote:
Otherwise, stay the f*** at home or take your chances
Good advice from someone who sounds like he hasn't needed to leave his hometown since 1971 or so. :rolleyes:
- F
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Christian Graus wrote:
Any system that requires people to pay up front, is open to these sort of issues. I prefer our system, where students pay for their education on the tail end, when they are reaping the benefits.
You guys are out of your minds. The reason both health care and educational costs increase is precisely because of government involvement. Both are increasing far more rapidly than inflation in the general economy, and the gold standard or lack thereof is insufficient to account for that. When government artificially makes more money available to pay for something, that something is now more valuable simply because more money is available to pay for it. The government could set aside a hundred trillion dollars to pay for health care and education, and that is exactly what health care and education would be worth in the general economy - a hundred trillion dollars (the artificial economics), plus what ever you were paying before they made that money available (the real economics). Australia is absolutely no different than the US, you are simply paying more in taxes or you are given reduced options by the government to control costs. There is no way around the simple brutal reality of economics.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
The reason both health care and educational costs increase is precisely because of government involvement.
So, my government is heavily involved in health care costs here, because of Medicare. But, the cost of going to the doctor here is INCREDIBLY cheaper than the US.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Please read this[^] if you don't like the answer I gave to your question. "! i don't exactly like or do programming and it only gives me a headache." - spotted in VB forums.
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Stan Shannon wrote:
The reason both health care and educational costs increase is precisely because of government involvement.
So, my government is heavily involved in health care costs here, because of Medicare. But, the cost of going to the doctor here is INCREDIBLY cheaper than the US.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Please read this[^] if you don't like the answer I gave to your question. "! i don't exactly like or do programming and it only gives me a headache." - spotted in VB forums.
Christian Graus wrote:
But, the cost of going to the doctor here is INCREDIBLY cheaper than the US.
No, it isn't.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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kmg365 wrote:
how about rationed health care system
All health care delivery systems are rationed. And nobody gets free healthcare. In Canada, rationing is done primarily by long wait-times, secondarily by gate-keeping GPs. A lot of people who need health care badly don't get it until their disease has progressed a great deal or it is just plain too late. According to Canadian derived statistics, their wait times have quadrupled since 2000. On the other hand, the quality of care is very good and you have access to it regardless of employment status or economic position. In the U.S. rationing is done by employment, secondarily by gate-keeping GPs. At least in theory, the advantage of the U.S. system is that if you are rich enough or are a highly place manager with a platinum health-care plan, you can jump to the head of the line. You can also be assured of good health care if you are an illegal or on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. In these cases, the employed middle class pay for your health care. The primary disadvantage of the American system can be seen in the fact that for the last year for which their are figures, 60% of all individuals who filed for bankruptcy did so because of medical problems their insurance didn't handle.
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Both democrats and republicans are playing for the same team and it's not us. - Chris Austin
My boss had to declare medical bankruptcy. He had a daughter with an almost certainly fatal heart condition. He heard of experimental and probable but less effective treatments. He spared no expense to save his daughter. In the end she died. He is bitter about the whole deal and wants a government rationing system, but the fact of the matter is under a government rationing system what would have changed was the government would have selected the treatments by hiding from him what was available and only providing the "covered" treatments as an option. In the end, he likes the government rationing model because it would have spared him a lot of hard choices that he had to make.