Sirsnapalot Loc: Hammond, Louisiana

Medicare has made it harder to have joint replacement! In 2011 I had my right hip replaced and 2012 had both knees replaced! For the last several months my left hip has been bothering me so I returned to the same Dr. That replaced my other joints and sure enough he said that the hip was bad and needed to be replaced! He also said that he would not be able to do the surgery because of the new restrictions Medicare has placed on doctors. He said although I am in better physical shape now than when he replaced my other joints, it didn't meet the new restrictions! He said I would have to loose 21 pounds and he took a long needle and stuck in my hip to measure the amount of fat. I'm 71 years old so I also had to pass a dementia test, guess if I had failed I wouldn't be worth saving. My surgeon told me that he had quit taking new Medicare patients because of all their BS that he had to put up with since Obama Care came into affect.
I've finally met all the new restrictions and my surgery is scheduled for this coming Tuesday at 7:00am, wish me luck!
Getting older just got harder!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

WOW!

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

welcome to obama care.
i was diagnosed with gross hematuria by the clinic and given an "urgent referral" to a urologist on mar 29.
Its now april 15 and they have yet to set up an appoinrment.
clinic says not to worry though because they will follow up on it when i
come in for my regular checkup in sept.

Jim Plogger Loc: East Tennessee

Wishing you the best. I, too, am 71 and, yes, getting older is getting harder.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I'm glad you finally qualified. I guess we have to cut costs somewhere if we're going build up our military.

pbearperry Loc: Massachusetts

Good luck with the latest procedure.

damfyno Loc: Hudson Valley of NY

The "death panel" that has been denied for the past 7 years exists under a different name. Politics decide if you are worth survival. Hope Lerner isn't there.

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

its just good business; kill off all the old farts draining the social security funds so
the money can be diverted to something else.

Sirsnapalot Loc: Hammond, Louisiana

Yep, it's called share the wealth, take from the elderly who've earned it and share it for votes!

Sirsnapalot Loc: Hammond, Louisiana

Thanks

Sirsnapalot Loc: Hammond, Louisiana

Not a bad trade!

coyotecall Loc: New Mexico

Let's be clear, Obama Care in itself did NOT make things harder, the restrictions placed on health care by the Republicans in Congress had to be put into the bill to finally get it passed through a Congress that was hell-bent on damaging the bill. Much as they tried to do when FDR tried to get a version of health care passed as part of the Social Security bill in the 30's....he had to dump it to get S.S. passed. Further, there would be no Medicare at all if it weren't for Democrats getting it put in place over Republican opposition. Their view? If you don't have the money for a hip replacement, either limp along old timer or find a charitable organization that will give you some money.
And why are we talking about this on a photography web site?

Sirsnapalot Loc: Hammond, Louisiana

"And why are we talking about this on a photography web site?"??

Well if you paid attention to your other facts as you did the instruction informing you that this is a none photograph "chit-Chat" section of UHH, sorry, but I can't put much stock in the rest of your opinion!

anotherview Loc: California

Back in the 18th- or 19th-Century, the thinker Jeremy Bentham posited a view known as utilitarianism.

One of its tenets involves measuring the value of an action or a policy by a weighting of pain and pleasure against each other. Supposedly, this weighting could tell if the action or policy produced more pleasure than pain. This tenet became reduced to the slogan, "The greatest good for the greatest number."

Applied, this tenet means the Medicare dollar spent for a patient must account for the ratio of the benefit to the payment by a fixed measure of some kind.

Hidden here lodges the value judgment that spending, say, $10,000.00 for a joint replacement for an old man falls short of producing enough overall pleasure when these dollars could buy, say, a vaccine for a thousand children at $10.00 per injection, thereby saving them from death. The benefit (“pleasure”) here to many children outweighs that of funding the non-urgent medical procedure of one old man. Naturally, this scenario implies limited resources forcing a choice between the two actions.

The conclusion appears arbitrary to some extent. After all, humans devising and following a moral code disguised in a rational policy can introduce a bias to the process. To offset this bias, potential or real, older people have organized to protect their well being in the application of social policy.

I am glad you got your hip replacement. I know others who’ve had this procedure. They enjoy life way more, and benefit from increased mobility and less pain.

Sirsnapalot Loc: Hammond, Louisiana

That theory does not hold water when you have to steal from those who have earned it to give to those that haven't, no matter the age. Robin Hood don't work in a free society, that's called socialism!