[GMAN]

The real problems in healthcare have yet to be addressed. Government is not the answer, it is part of the problem. Litigation plays a huge part in the cost of medical care. Keeping the government happy by doing all the extra paperwork also plays a part. Insurance companies are also a problem. They often tell a doctor what he can or cannot prescribe and what care he may do in order to care for his patient. Prices were much less before some of the above happened. I do think that if an insurance company is going to write insurance then they should be willing to accept everyone, even those who are currently uninsurable. One other reason costs have gone through the roof in recent years is all the illegals in this country who flood our hospital emergency rooms. They don't pay but receive the benefits of our healthcare system. Providers must raise prices for all of us in order to cover the cost of taking care of these illegals. I have family who work in healthcare and the cost of caring for illegals is driving many hospitals to the brink of bankruptcy. They cannot refuse to stabilize these illegals. It is hitting the border states more than others, but illegals have moved all over the country.

I haven't heard of anyone who has praised the state healthcare system in Britain but the democrats. I have spoken with Canadians about their system and from what I gather it is great unless you are ill. Anyone who has serious health issues is likely to die before they can get needed care.

[VitoCorleone99]

Originally Posted by Ridge Runner

Good debate!!! Both V and D brought up some very good points and did so in a respectful manner. I do want to bring up one point tho. When we talk of people having to file for bankruptcy due to medical care; is it all due to medical bills??? If the "breadwinner" is the one laid up and unable to work then this could happen very quickly. There are a lot of "other" costs that go along with a medical problem, travel, lodging, ect...


Just some food for thought,


Ridge

When I used to sell disability policies, the spiel said that the number one cause of foreclosure was loss of income due to disability. People think they'll be cool with Social Security so they don't spend the few bucks for their employer's plan every week or the few more bucks for an add-on like AFLAC. Then they find out the hard way that Social Security's main objective is to try as hard as possible to deny as many people as possible, kinda like the government health panels have to do.

This was a few years ago, but the statistics probably haven't changed much. It seems that the data have merely been adapted to the current discussion; Disability = medical (usually), therefore medical --> bankruptcy. The loss of income will obviously put you in the poor house quicker than calls from collection agents will. Discussing universal disability income insurance as a moral imperative apparently doesn't evoke the same response though.

The joke is on all of us suckers though, once the world figures out that long term care will be the one to bankrupt the universe, not medical or disability. Almost nobody has LTC coverage, we have an aging population with fewer and fewer children in each household to support their parents, and this is where Medicaid will make extreme cuts to paper over its colossal failures as a program. A big part of the ObamaCare model is to expand Medicaid eligibility. The states, as you may have heard, are flat broke. Yet they will get the pleasure of paying for their share of more Medicaid recipients. (This added cost to the states is entirely outside the CBO's evaluation of the cost to the feds, for those of you keeping score. Pretty clever maneuver, eh?) If you can get in on the ground floor of a do-it-yourself Kevorkian Kit manufacturer, you might just strike it rich.

[Dejanh]

Originally Posted by GMAN

I haven't heard of anyone who has praised the state healthcare system in Britain but the democrats. I have spoken with Canadians about their system and from what I gather it is great unless you are ill. Anyone who has serious health issues is likely to die before they can get needed care.

No one has praised their system because no one that i know of here, knows that it actually exists. I do not know what Canadians you have spoken to but i get to go there almost on a weekly basis and i know what their people tell me. I also have couple of friends there around London area..

Everything concerning our health care is very expensive, expecially when doctors order tests that are completely unneccesery. They are getting payed for that just like they get payed by the drug companies if they prescribe more of their medications.Maybe thats why they are calling us pill-popping nation..

[Ridge Runner]

It seems that there are MANY things that interact that has made "health care" in the U.S. what it is today in terms of cost.Take the issue of illegals and their use of the ER's for every little thing knowing full well there will be NO payment for services. As a businessman, what would that do to your pricing of services? If you knew that half of all of your billing would NOT be paid, and you were required to service accounts that you KNEW would never pay you, how would that affect the cost to your paying customers? Go to the head of the class.... we all got that one right.:thumbsup:

It seems that we tend to "mix and blend" numbers to make our point. Both sides left and right are guilty of it.

One side states that there are appox. 45 million uninsured in the US. When we break those numbers down tho things are not as they seem. After you throw out the illegals, the ones that can afford insurance but choose not to buy it and the ones that quaify for medicaid but are not enrolled ( tho their first trip to the hospital will be covered and then they will be enrolled ) it only leaves about 10 million people not covered. Doesn't look quite like the crisses it is made out to be now does it?

The cry of how many have had to file bankrupty due to medical expenses was explaned very well by Vito. It is not so much the amount of the medical bills as it is the loss of income. I had read somewhere that the average wait time from first filing for SS disability to receiving the first check was 2 years for those that lived to see it. And you want the Goverment to be in charge of my health care???

Just so you know, I am no novice when it comes to healthcare. My formal education was as a respitory therapist in the early 80's. I have a daughter that was born with a cronic liver disorder that we have lived with ( and cared for with great sucess by BTW ) for the past 12 years. We just met all of the doctors and did all the testing for her to have a liver transplant.

We met with a world renound liver transplant doctor that has led the way in transplant sugery. He was the first to split a doner liver and transplant it into two paients. he was also first to preform a live doner transplant. The new medications for organ rejection have improved to the point that crossing blood types is not a problem anymore.The drug is expeceive but when you factor in that it cost almost 1 billion dollars to bring a drug o market and that there is a very limited number of buyers then it will cost more.

For a poor Ga. boy who was a driver ( now a hated dispatcher ) to have access to all of that........ I'll keep what we have.

In closing: Other than the interstate hwy. system.... name one thing that the goverment has stuck it's nose in that turned out good.


Ridge

[Dejanh]

Originally Posted by Ridge Runner

In closing: Other than the interstate hwy. system.... name one thing that the goverment has stuck it's nose in that turned out good.Ridge

NASA maybe...