Did people forget we already spent over 800 billion dollars to get out of some suppose economic collapse? After a lot of middle working class people lost their jobs, how can you burden them more by forcing them to pay for health care?
I didn't see anything about it on the news so you must be crazy. The news did say, however, that the health care bill would save us money.
Because people who have lost their jobs will now qualify for Medicaid. And if you have Medicaid, you are exempt from buying insurance. And those who have a job who still cannot afford insurance will receive tax rebates to buy it. And the fine for not buying it is less than $700/year if you just say FU, I ain't buying insurance or taking Medicaid. And if you have a job and still have financial harships that make it impossible for you to afford it, but somehow don't qualify for Medicaid, then there are hardship waivers to get you out of that fine. And as I've said everywhere else, if you can afford insurance but refuse to buy it, and end up in an ER - even if you didn't want to go there - even if you accept that not buying insurance basically means waiving your right to health care - you are pushing your cost off on other people. Because when you don't pay your ER bill, they pass that cost on to other patients. And if you have a heart attack and go unconscious walking down the street, you ARE going to get taken to an ER and get treated - even if you decide not to buy insurance. So by not buying Insurance, you are basically saying FU to all the suckers that do buy it. You are forcing them to pay for your healthcare in the most expensive way possible - the ER.
^^^^ your post is completely irrelevent to the OP. He asked how a broken economy is expected to handle the added burdens of mandates and bureacracy. You just regurgitated some lie about emergency room abuse being the cause of a horrible health care system.
You may have interpreted that at saying something about a broken down economy. I interpreted it as how can you expect unemployed people to afford to buy insurance. And I never said that ER abuse was the reason for high health care costs. I said that if you think it's unfair to force people to buy something, then it's also unfair for people who chose to go without insurance to show up at an emergency room with the expectation that other people will foot the bill.
well actually... when you think about it... it will save us money. Based on this simple statement ( and im high) when a person needs health care, they are generally depressed and since they typically don't have any money to afford health care, they will end up stealing and robbing from others because they need money to get there pills/whatever. I say, if you give health care to everyone, you will have less crime... Its kind of like when you give people an A+ public school. you get it?
But why is it to the point that you have to have insurance to afford it in the first place? Most procedures are outpatient and shouldn't require the ridiculous bill that follows. Just recently I brought my girlfriend to the hospital for a UTI. We told them what we thought it was a UTI, so they did a urine test. Of course, instead of doing only the requested test they went off and did 2 others I guess while waiting on those results and racked up another almost $70 to the bill. And they don't stop at excessive testing to rack up a bill. After being brought in the room and waiting 20 minutes, we were breifly visited by a doctor who was literally in the room less than a minute to tell us it was indeed a UTI with no explanation of what they'd done, what they were going to do, or what we were waiting on. Finally, 20 minutes later, after I was messing around with the TV remote and accidentally pushed the Nurse button, the nurse that brought us to the room came back and gave her a nausea pill and a prescription for the nausea medicine and antibiotics. Once we got to the Ppharmacy, we were informed by the pharmacist that the nausea prescription, a new drug, was the most expensive, non-generic available. She told us, she'd been seing this script frequently all month and that it was literally the only anti-nausea drug the hospital had prescribed in the last 2 weeks. Also, rather than prescribing a relatively cheap cephalexin type anti-biotic, they prescribed some other anti-biotic which was, again, one of the most expensive options with no cheap generic alternative. WHY? Did the pharmeceutical company "influence" them? Did the insurance companies tell them to run as many tests as possible? This or something similar is what happens everytime a person goes in the emergency room in America yet somehow it's the person who gets footed with an outlandishly overinflated, government subsidized bill who's to blame for their inability to pay for it, though?
They are liable if they don't test you and can be sued out of practice, especially if they don't have good liability insurance. Sadly this has become a requirement of most practices, and would have been solved through tort reform. The healthcare law does not address tort reform. As to the pharmeceutical company influencing them, you bet your ass they did. Just go to any hospital and look for the smug useless prick in a suit with the briefcase and 'samples' (pharm. rep), I'm sure he can tell you exactly how that is accomplished, I lack such knowledge myself.
where do you think doctors get those 200k+ salaries from? =D WHY? Did the pharmeceutical company "influence" them? Did the insurance companies tell them to run as many tests as possible? This or something similar is what happens everytime a person goes in the emergency room in America yet somehow it's the person who gets footed with an outlandishly overinflated, government subsidized bill who's to blame for their inability to pay for it, though? All I can say is that if you go against the pharmaceutical company, you will usually get paid off or die in a mysterious way. you have just found out my reason why I believe that free A+ health care for all would be the best idea. and honestly, I wouldn't care if I was taxed for it because it would be MUCH less than any insurance company can give you... maybe, just maaybe. we can even take this further and perhaps the government could give everyone free car insurance too.. have that as a tax. It wouldn't be bad if we did it in the right way. It would eliminate the need of court costs associated by giving people "non insurance" tickets not to mention it would have a ton of other benefits. and this is another reason why everyone should have A+ health insurance. there should be no need for people to get sued for something so lame like that. Just give the guy all the tests you can for his problem and send him on his way.
No, I was thinking more about an increase cost in health care because of the lack of competition. My point is this. No matter what you think about health care, good or bad, should we be burdening ourselves with this right now? Also it won't save money for the people that currently enjoy their employers health care afaik. Sure, it may save money in the federal budget, but it's impossible for us to get out of debt. What we should have instead of a health care reform is a banking reform. How people think our current system is acceptable is beyond me...
The only A+ the government has ever been capable of providing is its treasury bond rating. Unfortunately the increase in the deficit this recent law will bring just may cause that A+ (AAA actually...) to be downgraded. US credit rating at risk, Moody's warns - Telegraph
Because she'd been having pains for a few days while we were trying all the home remedies and cranberry she could. Then the day we went, she was getting nauseous and having bladder spasms from it and we were out of state on Spring Break. Didn't know where else to go. We even actually had cephalexin for our dogs, but her mom insisted we went to the hospital.
I bet she had to wait HOURS in the ER. My friends and I have a joke about the er, it goes like this " if we all had to go to the ER for a gunshot wound, we would die while waiting".
People have to wait hours at the ER because people are using it for things like UTIs. I'm sorry Raoul, I feel for her, but a UTI is not an emergency. Things like that are a huge problem with our health care system. You complain about having to wait 20 minutes and only saw the doctor for a minute? Well no shit, perhaps they were dealing with REAL emergencies.
No, no. I understand. The problem wasn't the wait and quite honestly in a system that wasn't clogged with bureaucracy, a doctor could've told us the test result and had us walk out within a couple of minutes. They get government money and insurance benfits for us taking up a bed there though. And as for the UTI not being an emergency, I very well know that. However, with an unknown abdominal pain bad enough to cause puking its wonderful that we were right and I'm gald it wasn't bad, but who's to say we couldn't have been wrong. Around the new year, my dad started seeming to have worse than usual back pain. Then he had abdominal pains. He has diverticulitus though, so we didn't do anything since its not a "real emergency" and he just started on the outpatient anti-biotics we had plenty of. After nearly a month of increasing pain, he went to the Emergency Room. He had appendecitis and they brought him into surgery that day because the appendix was so close to rupture the toxicity was even on the rise. We needed that first UTI test, quickly, and at 10 in the evening, it at least seemed we didn't have too many options.
BTW, for future reference what would you have done in our situation? With the pain and nausea that bad and all and the self-treatments not working, we kinda wanted that UTI test quickly and without any knowledge of the area really and definitely not its health facilities, we were lost as far as what to do. I already didn't want to go to the hospital because we were fairly sure it was a UTI and we could've started her on anti-biotics, but like I said, I didn't have a clue as to anywhere else to go. I know from what I've read that you seem to have a good knowledge of volunteer services and responsible health facilities, so please give me some advice on this one. I guess I just kinda half-ass assumed we would actually get some doctoring instead of process. I mean was it really ever necessary to bring us to a room. When the scrub came to bring us to the room, why couldn't that have been someone with the test result and prescription? That was already 25 minutes after they'd taken the urine sample. They knew they weren't going to do an examination, so why bring us to a room and have her put on an examination gown to wait for a doctor who didn't perform an examination you can be damn sure we're getting billed for? They get insurance benefits and strange government stipends for every bed they get to fill. If I hadn't have notified the nurse's desk, its possible we could've been in there another 20 minutes. Why? No one's benefiting except hospital bureaucrats.
I probably would have called my doctor at home to see what he recommended. Then I would have found a local physician, explained that I was pretty sure I had a UTI, and that I was away from home, and ask if I could come in for a quick visit. I'm honestly not trying to harp on you. I get that you were out of town, and that does make the situation a bit different. It's very likely my doctor would tell me to go to the emergency room in that situation. The problem is that so many people use the emergency room for everything, and it results in higher fees, longer waits, and less personalized service.
No believe me, we're the other, opposite type of people. The ones they complain about because we "won't go to the doctor or emergency room until its so bad that we need catastrophic care instead of simple preventative measures and unnecessarily burden the sytsem" as I've heard it put.