Acceptable and Beneficial Health Care Reform

reply to post by WTFover


Sad to say, some local governments in small town, small counties have gma,gpa, mom, dad, kids, nieces, nephews, uncles, etc in charge of the local government, schools, health dept, road crews, library and on and on.
In that type of environment, unless you are family, you don't have much say, even in local elections. Of course, getting "married in" helps.

Originally posted by bowlbyville

why does an insurance company pay a reduced rate for a hospital bed but the guy without insurance is charged full-price?

Actually, the negotiation of medical care pricing is available to us, as well. It's just that most people don't know to ask. Cash pricing is available, as well. Medical facilities save money, when they don't have to pay for the filing of claims and being audited by insurance companies. The next time you need services, contact several providers and ask for cash pricing.

Also, I have a "healthcare spending account" - but I can't roll any of the money over from one year to the next - I have to spend it all before the end of the year or lose it...why can't they just cap it so that I can't accumulate more then $10K or whatever number they pick...but to force me to use it or lose it is BS.

I think the short answer is tax revenue. I agree there shouldn't be limitations. However, I can see where there would be great potential for abuse of the tax sheltering benefits. Some things present more questions than answers, I guess.

"Every human being is the author of his own health or disease."
~Buddha~

If health was truly as complicated as currently being portrayed in the United States today, humanity never would survived long enough for their to even be a United States. How has it come to this point, and are we all truly so dependent upon insurance schemes in order to be healthy? That the cost of health care has become the problem of our day is undeniable. In fact, just today the L.A. Times reported that health care spending grew to a record 17.3% of the U.S. economy, which translates into almost $2.5 trillion, an increase of $134 billion from the year before, when health care was merely 16.2% of the gross domestic product. (I actually still read newspapers in their printed form, so I don't have a link to provide for this)

These figures were given by an annual report by independent actuaries at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, (CMS), which was released today. The same report projected that as early as next year, another record could be broken when the government winds up paying for more than half of the nations total health care costs for the first time in history. A history, completely ignored by the left leaning L.A. Times, that didn't begin picking up the tab for health care costs in any fashion what-so-ever for well over the first 100 years, and programs such as Medicare and Medicaid didn't even begin until the mid 1960's.

So, when a report comes out from a "non-partisan" government agency claiming that as early as next year the government could be paying for more than 50% of peoples health care costs for the first time in history, that history is really not even 50 years old. Not even 50 years old. Not even 50 years old. Not even 50...sorry, I just want that to sink in a bit. The history of the U.S. proper is more than 200 years old, and for almost 150 of those years, the government had very little to do with the peoples health care expenses. Why is that? Was it that for the first 150 years of this nation that we the people had a callous and uncaring government?

The complexity of today's current boondoggle of a health care system is a complex history, and the perceptions of health care in 1776 by people today, in many ways does not at all jibe with historical accounts. Take for example, the common perception that the average life span of a person in 1776 was 35 years of age. However, George Washington was 67 when he died, Thomas Jefferson lived to the ripe old age of 83 years old, Benjamin Franklin was 84 years old when he died, John Adams, over 90 years old, Aaron Burr 80 years old, (Alexander Hamilton was only 47 years old when he died but that's because Aaron Burr killed him in a duel), Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall was 80 years old when he died, Thomas Paine was 72 years old when he died, and I could go through all the signatures of the Constitution and produce far too many to list that lived to ripe old ages rivaling the average life span today.

So, if the vast majority of historical figures from 1776 lived to a ripe old age, why is it that today we are bombarded with information that claims the average life span was only 35 years old?

Trends Magazine

fitnessandfreebies.com

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that that year, there was a little thing we now like to call the revolution going on, and that coupled with the fact that lifespan averages are figure in birth mortality rates, which were more common in 1776 than today. If a person in 1776 could survive birth, they had a pretty good chance of surviving past 35 years of age, unless they were fighting in the revolution, of which then their live expectancy dropped dramatically.

The point of addressing the longevity of the so many of the Founders and their less famous peers, is that if they lived to ripe old ages, how did they manage this without life insurance and fancy medical equipment? How did they survive the increasing rate of diabetes? Cancer? Heart disease? Were they better at counting calories than we are today? Did they jog as often as we do? Did they have better memberships at gyms? Did they drink their wheatgrass at Jamba Juice and Roebeck's and have an extra shot of vitamins put into their smoothies? Did they drink only the finest in bottled waters? Are you beginning to get my point?

There is too much propaganda being put out about how we are better off today, health wise than people were 200 years ago, and oddly, we are then informed that diabetes is fast becoming the deadliest killer among diseases and that a gross amount of Americans will have it by the time they hit 40 years old, that heart disease and cancer are on the rise, and this is after billions upon billions of dollars spent on research to combat it. More than 40 years spent researching the cause and cure of cancer and that disease still baffles the medical profession. Instead of insisting their patients stop eating so much processed foods with processed sugar, the medical establishment will wait until their patients become diabetic, and then rather than stress that this disease is wholly reversible, they will put that patient on an insulin regiment, to facilitate their bad diet, while the insulin itself becomes a part of that patients sure demise.
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The AMA was formed in 1844 and in a large part, to combat the "quackery" of home remedies, and today that organization will only begrudgingly admit that diabetes is wholly reversible, is in bed like a cheap whore with the pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies, and refers to the whole food industry as "alternative medicine" considered to be "quackery" because it is largely unregulated by the FDA, (another cheap whore if there ever was one), and is one of the largest lobby groups in the U.S.

If we are to ever solve the ridiculous problem of health care in the U.S., the first thing we have to do is get down to the root core of the problem, and that problem in many ways begins with the formation of the dubious AMA. While doctors love to present themselves as non-partisan saints, who only want to heal the sick, they have, in their own twisted minds, nothing to gain by serving a healthy populace, and a sick one is...well CHA-CHING!

Doctors who become wealthy helping their patients reach their untimely demise is absurd. While the American consumer may have come to terms with planned obsolescence for their automobiles, toasters, microwaves and televisions, accepting such a dubious business practice for their own health is beyond the pale. We have the health care problem we have today because we are all idiots and too many of us eat too many Big Mac's and supersize the fries and soda, we eat too much processed sugar products, and even sugar has been supplanted with corn syrup, and I could keep going on and on and on, but there just isn't enough room in this post to do so.

It is my firm belief that if we are too have an intelligent discussion about health care, it must begin with nutrition. It should be understood by all, that your doctor spent maybe a total of 3 hours studying nutrition in their 8 to 16 years of medical school depending upon their specialty. It should also be understood that chefs and dietitians in many ways are better equipped to serve your health than a doctor is. It should be further understood, then insidious language they use, and when a medical practitioner refers to vitamin C or B or herbs and minerals as alternative medicine, the real question should be; alternative to what? If it is medicine it is medicine, and if it is not medicinal, then it is not an alternative.

Medical malpractice insurance companies pay out less then 10% of what they take in on malpractice claims.
About 40% goes to lawyers to fight the malpractice claims.
the rest is profit.

That means that 50% of what doctors pay is unneeded profit
Any if the government sold Medical malpractice insurance as a non profit company doctors would have to pay 50% less.

About 40% of the malpractice claims are for medically unneeded procedures.
Like breast enlargements. tummy tucks. nose jobs, botox, ECT, ECT,

If a treatment is medically unneeded the malpractice claims should be handled differently.
No payouts of $50,000 to a million just because someone does not like the way there nose job came out.
These should also not be covered by the government non profit.

This does not mean that people that are disfigured by accidents or other reasons would not be classed as medically unneeded for reconstructive surgery.
Only those that do not need the surgery or treatments.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


As usual, a very perspicacious post. (My new word for the day!)

In addition to the necessity of nutrition, we need to ensure the nutritious qualities of our food are not compromised by "science". A quick search of www.freepatentsonline.com... for "food preservatives" reveals 98,060 matches. "Food irradiation" has 31,908 matches and "food enhancement" 173,793.

It is hard to imagine that with all this "preserving" and "enhancing" of our food, cancer rates are on a steady rise and the World Health Organization predicts an increase of 50% by 2020. www.who.int...

It is difficult to understand why the cancer mortality rates are twice as high in industrialized countries, as in developing ones. How can this be, when the amount of money spent on cancer "research" is, also, increasing annually?

In my opinion, these are the kinds of issues our government should be controlling.

reply to post by WTFover



Ah Yes, perspicacity is a state not a city, a state of mind more incisive than audacity! I love that word, just dances on the tongue. The horror story of a link you provided, no doubt begins to get down to the root cause of why health care costs are rising at such an alarming rate in the "industrialized" world. I place quotations around industrialized, because such a term implies industry, and industry, while often defined as the aggregate of manufacturing or technically productive enterprises, when understanding the etymology of this word, it is understood that industry describes cleverness or skill.

How clever can an industrial world be that has slowly but surely produced and patented their own demise? Planned obsolescence for life itself is hardly clever and while there may be some skill involved, not a skill to be admired. That the medical establishment has so willingly facilitated this planned obsolescence should make us all wonder why so much respect is afforded them.

In ensuring that nutrition is at the forefront of health care, it would behoove science and government to begin questioning much of the corporate farming methods, ask why we have decimated the individual farmer and his/her simple method of growing food that offers sustenance rather than food that requires preservatives and methods of irradiation, and the long held traditions of soil quality so necessary to agriculture.

Selenium as just one example of a necessary mineral to health, is virtually absent in the soil of the U.S. farmlands. Selenium seems to be an essential mineral to our immune system and over all health, yet the only ones discussing this concern are primarily those people labeled as "alternative medicine gurus". (sigh) Would that this sort of debate be the focus of politics rather than how we can enrich insurance companies, perhaps we could be proud of a Congress that truly cares, and perhaps we could admire our President for truly being wise, rather than just pretending to be so.

Selenium Wikipedia

Flu mutations and lack of selenium

Lack of selenium may...

(Sigh) It never fails that I mess up one of those links. The last link brings up a 404 page. Here is the address to that link:

www.nutraingredients.com...

[edit on 6-2-2010 by Jean Paul Zodeaux]