This is not about Healthcare, it's about slowing the growth of Medicare

What Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do is bring down healthcare costs in order to slow the growth of Medicare.

This is why they want to ration out healthcare. This is truly ghoulish.

What they want is a panel in Washington to decide which treatments are the cheapest. This is because the Government doesn't want to pay it's bills.

I wish people could see past the emotion of the issue and realize this has nothing to do with healthcare and the uninsured. These things are just used to appeal to your emotion. The real goal is to slow the growth of Medicare by rationing out Healthcare.

This is why Obama told a woman that her mother might not need surgery and she might just need a pain pill.

He talked about the red pill and the blue pill in his press conference. He wants you to take the cheap pill in order to cut costs but if he gets sick or his family gets sick they will get the best pills. This is how elitist think. The rules should apply to you and not them.

He talked about reducing the amount of tests Doctors give you and this will be controlled by a panel in Washington.

This is from the Huffington Post:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed the agreement as a "giant step forward" for the bill that Obama has made a test of his leadership. Advocates said it eventually would turn Medicare toward a program that rewards quality, rather than volume, as well as alter a system that pays doctors and other providers more in some regions of the country than others.

What's happening here is absolutely sickening. What people need to realize is that the Government is concerned about bringing down the volume of health care and then they want to increase the quality.

This is an oxymoron. If you bring down the volume of healthcare your going to reduce the quality. This is because Doctors are not psychic or telepathic. They don't know what's wrong with you without tests.

I will give you an example.

A friend of mine went to the hospital because he had a headache for a couple of days. He thought that he would get some pain pills and go home. Well they found he had a tumor and they caught it because they did blood work and a battery of tests.

If we were under Obamacare, the Doctors couldn't give him a battery of tests. The Doctor would have to look at a sheet provided by some panel in Washington and he will be rewarded for taking the cheapest route. So this means sending you home with some Motrin. So he would have never discovered the Tumor or it would have been much later.

These decisions are between a Doctor and the patient. Not the Doctor, patient and some people who think they are important in Washington.

Again, this has nothing to do with healthcare. It has everything to do with slowing the growth of Medicare through rationing healthcare.

If you noticed people in Congress voted down a public option for themselves. They don't want this rationed healthcare for them and their family.

A person in Congress and their staff choose between 10-12 private insurance plans that we pay for. They don't even have a public option. They don't want a public option because nobody will choose it. They will all stay under their private plans. The Government run healthcare is so bad that Congress does not want it for themselves but the little people should accept rationed healthcare.

I don't see how any American can suppport this nonsense. I have always said, people are Republicans and Democrats before they are Americans.

This plan is designed to do one thing. That's to slow the growth of Medicare through rationed healthcare. Obama thinks he's a Doctor and he can decide what tests should or shouldn't be done. I bet if his family goes to the Doctor, he wants volume. He wants every tests done in order to rule things out. When it comes to you though, you don't need the volume of tests in order to save the Government money.

This is ghoulish.



[edit on 25-7-2009 by Matrix Rising]

We do need some sort of controls. Not like okay, you are old and you will die. My dear old mum is 79 years old and she gets these white little bumps on her face. It's a cholestoral sort of thing. She gets these things removed from her face from time to time. Oh the horror. lol. It's paid for by medicare. And because she is allergic to latex, the little surgery room is purged of latex at great expense. For freakin bumps that I, too, get from tim to time. Just squeeze the bastards. lol. My grandson gets somesort of rash and his mom can't afford to get him help. His dad doesn't give a crap.

No, don't let old people die, but let them know, beauty stuff is their own responsibility is for them to pay for. At least let the health stuff be the stuff of everyone.

You wanna be a pretty old lady of 79 years of age sitting in your hospital bed in your living room while you watch TV? Yeah, not on my dime, nor on my childdrens' dimes. Let's fix the broken leg of a kid first. And then you can worry about a little bump on your face.

never mind the edits. yeah, I spelled words incorrectly.

Our health care system is broke, and medicare is only partly to blame. Medicare has allowed for an increase in costs, but the REAL culprit is a mix of doctors who are greedy and insurance companies.

On the part of doctors, the primary issues are the increase in prices. Let me elucidate:

10 years ago i had BCBS of Texas. My copay was 5 bucks, and my meds were either 4 or 8, depending on if it was generic or not. The average doctors visit billed for about 50 bucks, and for that you got 10 minutes of his time and some prescriptions.

Today, my insurance carries a 20 dollar copay, and meds are either 20, 30, or 40 (depending on their cost and what "tier" they fall in). I no longer get labs, xrays, or other ancillary procedures paid for, so i have to pay out of pocket. The average doctor office visit bills for about 160 bucks, and for that you get 10 minutes of his time.

So, in the last 10 years we have seen a 300% inflation in this particular medical service. Let me ask you, discerning reader, do you really get your money's worth out of that 160 dollar, 10 minute visit? Is a doctors service really worth 960 bucks an hour (that is what it equates to)?

How many of you seem to have doctors that want to refer you to every single specialist under the sun? Know why? Because the family practitioner gets a nominal fee paid to them for the referral. The insurance company will generally pay for that.

there is a bunch more, but i will end the example of the doctors with this: have any of you ever had a pulmonary function test? EKG? treadmill? Allergy testing? These 4 tests are VERY commonly abused and overused in people who don't need them. Especially on medicare patients. Don't get me started on the lab tests. Not saying these procedures have no value...only that they are not really needed in at least 80% of all cases (based on my own personal experience).

Regarding the insurance, i will keep it short and sweet....

When insurance companies pay a hospital/doctor, they negotiate for a lower price. Of course, the hospital is all to happy to negotiate if it means they will recieve renumeration quicker and easier (the reason having to do with collection costs and financial/fiscal wizardry tied to the hospital ledgers and various bond payments). The hospital just wants to get the money, and get it over with.

The problem here is, the "regular joe" doesn't have the bargaining power of an insurance company. Of course, if you can pay cash all at once you can usually get a discount. But this discount is not offered as a solution until the debt is close to being sold to a third party, or referred to the collections contractor (depending on the hospital, and the laws it operates within).

How does the hospital make money like this? they mark up the original price by 30% or more. This way, when they give the 30% discount to the insurance, they still make the money they want. This not only hurts the uninsured (who are forced to compete with the deep pockets of medicare and insurance companies), but it also drives up cost.

Our health care system needs to be over hauled, but where do we start? We get the best doctors because they know they can come here and make enough money to support their families back home. I would venture a guess that the majority of the recent expansion of Indias global influence has been paid for with American money, earned performing services for American citizens. This makes India, in all likelyhood, a powerful lobby preventing health care reform. But that is just a guess on my part.

There is hardly any money left for social security, and the baby boomers

want to retire? even though we have been good little slaves, we want

our do, and it ain't happening!!!! thanks to TPTB!!!

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


You make some good points but nobody is saying you don't need reform of the system. I think this is the line from Obama and Pelosi.

The truth is, we will not have healthcare reform unless it's a Government takeover of the healthcare system. This is because it is not about healthcare and insurance. It's about an ideology so it's either our way or the highway.

There's several ways to fix the healthcare system and then I will talk about why healthcare is becoming unaffordable for some Even though most people with insurance are happy with their insurance. This is just like those in Congress who don't want public, rationed healthcare for themselves.

1. Prevention - I always see Doctors on TV and in articles they say the number one problem is prevention. This is because many of the uninsured go to the hospital when the problem has gotten much worse. If they were getting check ups and physicals, then Doctors could catch any problem early.

You can fix this through a Nationally recognized Healthcare Charity. This Charity would have Government oversight and it would give out 2-3 free physicals/check ups per year to the uninsured or people under a certain income level. So if you wanted to get a physical or a check up, you just go and pick up a free voucher and get one.

This will go along way towards prevention and if the Doctor feels they need a follow-up or they need to see a specialist, the charity will cover it. You can also start a Catostrophic heathcare fund for serious problems.

Obama, Hillary and the rest of the democrats along with well known republicans can do fundraisers for this charity and it could easily raise billions of dollars.

2. We could make healthcare mandatory for people who make over 20,000 dollars a year. We also allow people to buy insurance across state lines. So if someone in New Jersey see's a policy in Vermont that's cheaper than the one they have then they could buy it.

This will bring down insurance costs because of competition and insurance companies would have to create plans to accomadate income levels from 20,000 a year and up.

There are more plans out there but Obama and the democrats want to act like there plan of Government takeover of the healthcare system is the only plan out there and that's a lie.

The problem here is Government. Government is ran and controlled by big business because they secure the politicians seat in Washington. These politicians know it's about how much money they raise and not about the vote.

Most of these people don't even face serious challenges unless the person has name recognition or alot of money.

People keep saying that business is greedy. Of course business is greedy by definition. They are about making money. Government is supposed to be about the protection of our God given liberty.

So if anything needs reform it's Government.

We need term limits, public financing of campaigns and a ban on corporate lobbying. I truly think this is dire and we keep allowing Government to blame everyone and everything when a crisis occurs and the blame usually lies with them.

They spend and waste trillions of dollars and say look at greedy wall street or look at poor people who can't pay their bills. This is just misdirection and sadly the American people fall for it everytime.

Healthcare costs also went up because we had a booming economy. The Government destroyed that starting with Bush and his massive borrowing and spending and now Obama who's doing the same thing.

People need to realize that we have a 13 trillion dollar economy with a population of 200 plus million and a Government debt of over 11 trillion. These means the Government is out of control and they don't want to control their spending.

Everything Obama is doing is about putting his place his ideology. It's not about fixing the economy and creating jobs. They want to rush people into a rationed health care system now before any economic recovery can occur.

This is because healthcare costs are skyrocketing as people lose their jobs or have to get another less paying job to make ends meet. This is because of the Government and their out of control spending and waste of peoples money.

This is about slowing the growth of Medicare because the Government doesn't want to pay it's bills. So they want to ration out healthcare through a panel in Washington.

This is Ghoulish and unAmerican.