Let's get real about healthcare (Page 3): I don't know what you mean by the VA system being awful. I have always had excellent treatment at the VA. No problem getting an appointment...

Wenonah Loc: Winona, MN

Leica User wrote:

Like most lefties, you are at the very least being... (show quote)

I don't know what you mean by the VA system being awful. I have always had excellent treatment at the VA. No problem getting an appointment and I usually get in pretty close to the time of my appointment. They do a great job with the number of patients they have to see.

Screamin Scott Loc: Marshfield Wi, Baltimore Md, now Dallas Ga

Wenonah wrote:

I don't know what you mean by the VA system being awful. I have always had excellent treatment at the VA. No problem getting an appointment and I usually get in pretty close to the time of my appointment. They do a great job with the number of patients they have to see.

Must be where you live. Here in the Atlanta area, my Father in Law had nothing but trouble. He uses Medicare instead.

Wenonah Loc: Winona, MN

Screamin Scott wrote:

Must be where you live. Here in the Atlanta area, my Father in Law had nothing but trouble. He uses Medicare instead.

I believe it is different in different areas. But that doesn't make the whole system awful.

Screamin Scott Loc: Marshfield Wi, Baltimore Md, now Dallas Ga

Wenonah wrote:

I believe it is different in different areas. But that doesn't make the whole system awful.

No it doesn't but it does make getting care difficult for those who don't live near one of their facilities. Plus the VA hospitals got a pretty ugly black eye recently with the appointment fiasco.

PalePictures Loc: Traveling

sb wrote:

All the nonsense about whether - and how - to repeal the ACA ("Obamacare") and yet there seems little discussion about the very important basics:
1) SHOULD our society guarantee healthcare to all of our citizens? Almost all nations do. It would be the Christian thing to do. BUT - most nations do not have the military spending that we do. Over half of our discretionary spending goes to past, present, or future wars (this includes VA costs, nuclear weapons costs, etc. that are not in the official military budget). Even if it is a moral imperative, can we afford to do this? Can we afford NOT to do this? Some studies show that providing basic care costs less - making sure that diabetics can get care, etc., saves a lot of money in the long run. Protagonists argue that even when people get Medicaid they still use the ER - but that is because almost no physicians accept Medicaid. A "Medicare-for-All" program would be widely accepted (for physicians who want to be paid...).

2) There is a lot of talk about premiums but no talk about costs. American health care costs about $9,000 per year per person. NO ONE will ever be able to get cheap health insurance again. People who say they used too get insurance for $200 are confused - their employer was paying much of their premium. Costs for premiums have risen over the years as states have required coverage for things such as mammograms. The ACA required much more coverage - that is one reason the premiums have become so expensive. I was paying $25,000 per year for a family of three. When I had a colonoscopy I paid zero for that service, which otherwise would have cost about $5,000.

Allowing the sale of insurance across state lines would allow people to find cheap insurance that doesn't cover a lot of things. Would I like to buy insurance that doesn't cover cigarette smokers? Sure - I would save a bundle! But states do regulate insurance. If you live in Florida and have insurance from Delaware and have a problem, who is going to care? No one!

Medicare for all would reduce costs. Insurance company overhead adds as much as 25% to our health care costs. Medicare has an overhead of less than 8%. Having a tight prescription formulary, like the VA, would also help cut costs.

Things to consider...

All the nonsense about whether - and how - to repe... (show quote)

(Group 1) of 30 people with cancer who smoked their whole life stand to your left
(Group 2) of 30 middle class people who never smoked and are healthy stand to your right.
Group 1 has no insurance. They never worked or quit work or whatever.
Group 2 has insurance they worked.
A group of 10 judges stand before you.
These judges are divided in half.
Half of the Judges will force group 2 to pay for group 1 insurance. (The judges of force)
The other half will not force group 2 to pay for group 1 insurance. (The judges of morality)
The judges inform you that forcing group 2 to pay for group 1 will raise the cost of group 2 insurance.
Which half of the judges will you allow to have power?

You see...The fundament concept of Christianity is making individual moral choices. You have free will.
By selecting the Judges of force you are in fact using an immoral means to achieve a perceived moral ends.
This concept is foreign to the modern left.
The lefts concept of morality is to obscure force by using a collective....aka congress.

There is not one individual that I know that would force a rich man to pay for a poor woman. when the individuals are not obscured by a collective.
Could you find someone on the street that is poor and force another person on the street that is rich to pay for them...and if they don't imprison them?
How can you vote for a collective to do what you as an individual cannot do and call that morality?

I love the people who use the Royal "WE". Those people are the very people that depend on the "WE" which usually means someone else must pay for them.

Whenever a service in our society is funded by government, commercial institutions will always extract as much funding as they can get.
ACA did just that. Once the funding happened the regulator of cost was removed.
It is a simple fact that when a service is less affordable by some it drives down the cost and produces more options.
You inject funds and the cost will rise.
This is what happened with college education as well. You make student loans easy to get the universities suck that (Seemingly) free money out of the students.
The debt attributed to the "Right of an Education" works exactly as the ACA. Student get degrees in fields where the amount they have borrowed can never be paid back. Many students will be in servitude though debt to our government backed student loans for the rest of their life.(Or much of it.)
Bankruptcy cannot even remove student loan debt.

The next time you think that someone else ought to pay for someone else's health insurance. Go buy yourself a gun and go to your neighbors house that has money, Declare yourself Robin hood, and go steal the guys money and drop it off at the nearest cancer center. Let me know if you feel good about yourself after you do that.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Screamin Scott wrote:

There are a lot of unnecessary tests performed just to avoid malpractice claims, that we pay for.... It's a double edged sword.

So, it's OK if they sew you up with sizzors still inside you?

Suppose a child pulls a pan of boiling water onto himself from a stove, and a MD treats the burn without treating the kid for shock, and the kid dies?

Just tough...huh?

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Blurryeyed wrote:

So? Are you willing to pay the $27,000 for your f... (show quote)

Bullshit question!

Dishonest and misleading.

Shame on you Blurry!

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

PalePictures wrote:

(Group 1) of 30 people with cancer who smoked thei... (show quote)

Another bullshit post!

You a friend of Blurry?

What ever happened to honesty?

Screamin Scott Loc: Marshfield Wi, Baltimore Md, now Dallas Ga

Twardlow wrote:

So, it's OK if they sew you up with sizzors still inside you?

Suppose a child pulls a pan of boiling water onto himself from a stove, and a MD treats the burn without treating the kid for shock, and the kid dies?

Just tough...huh?

While things like that occasionally happen, you seem to think it's the rule rather than the exception. Any doctor worth his salt knows what to do under given circumstances. I call bullshit on you.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Screamin Scott wrote:

While things like that occasionally happen, you seem to think it's the rule rather than the exception. Any doctor worth his salt knows what to do under given circumstances. I call bullshit on you.

I don't know what you mean by your second sentence. You mean it never happens? It does! What should we do? If you know anything, you know that No MD will ever criticize another; lawsuit is the only real option.

Google doctors with multiple malpractice suits, see what you find.

Wenonah Loc: Winona, MN

Screamin Scott wrote:

No it doesn't but it does make getting care difficult for those who don't live near one of their facilities. Plus the VA hospitals got a pretty ugly black eye recently with the appointment fiasco.

There is a remedy in place for those who don't live near a VA facility, or who have to wait too long for care, that allows them to go to a non-VA facility.

boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander

Twardlow wrote:

Despite what you say, there is such a thing as malpractice.

I said "if someone is truly injured" of course there is malpractice. And I said that such a patient should be properly compensated, bu not made wealthy as a result of that malpractice. I know for a fact that the majority of malpractice actions are nonsense and are filed because malpractice insurance companies are very quick to settle. Lawyers are known to "ambulance chase" so as to get the client to sue because of easy settlements. A case that I was called as a witness involved a supposed failed pacemaker. Patient sued the surgeon and the hospital for 3 million dollars for "Frightening the patient because he may have needed another surgury to replace the pacer if it was failing. Thing is IT WAS NOT FAILING and I proved it. Made no difference. Insurance company setteled for $100,000 as it was cheaper than going to court. Patients family insisted that the pacemaker be removed and a new one implanted. So we got to sell another device, for about $6,ooo. The hospital got another fee from the insurance company, and the MD got another fee, also from the insurance company. The tort sytem must be curtailed.

mwalsh Loc: Houston

Wenonah wrote:

I believe it is different in different areas. But that doesn't make the whole system awful.

The vets I know in the Houston area give the system pretty glowing reviews. I have of course heard the bad press...service quality must vary by region.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

boberic wrote:

I said "if someone is truly injured" of... (show quote)

A personal example. I was sued for $1.3 million by a patient who claimed "failure to diagnose". The case lasted 7 years for technical reasons. The day before it was to go to trial the presiding judge told the plaintiff's lawyer during a pretrial conference that he had no case.

The next morning the plaintiff asked for $5,000 to settle. We said no. They then dropped the case "with prejudice" meaning that it can never be reopened.

The crux was that my name never appeared on the report where the error was made (and there was an error). By this time the statute of limitations had run out and the plaintiff was left out in the cold.

Thought about suing the plaintiff's lawyer, but was dissuaded by my attorney.

I'm sure there were thousands of dollars in legal fees, but my Insurance Company did not want to settle such an outlandish claim.

Steven Seward Loc: Cleveland, Ohio

PalePictures wrote:

(Group 1) of 30 people with cancer who smoked thei... (show quote)

I like the way you think!