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Remember what I said a few weeks ago:
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Any third party payment system for any commodity takes away the natural instinct to shop for the best service and price, this in turn decrease competition and causes out of control prices and poor service levels
TheSitRep on November 17, 2007 at 3:05 PM

I hate what has happened to health insurance

I used to go to a doctor when I wanted. If I didn’t like him I shopped for a better doctor

The HMO makes me choose a gatekeeper doctor. I am supposed to be a good little sheep and turn myself over to this doctor for an examination to his satisfaction not mine. Then he decides what is good for me. This usually means a regimen of drugs. If ypu do not take the first physical or accept the drug regimen you are a problem patient

I am no longer the customer. The employer supplying the health insurance is the customer and the doctor is the provider. I am the problem

Obey the gatekeeper or you will not get to see the eye specialist

Socialized medicine means there are only gatekeepers. You are no longer paying the bill, the government is. When you are no longer the customer they give a rat’s ask about your opinions or complaints

And I rarely hear anyone talk about smaller cytology-type tests where I’ve seen Medicare actually pay below a laboratory’s ability to do the test. I’m not talking about profit, I’m saying they literally lose money on these tests if Medicare is paying, but you have to keep the contract with them because the governement already runs such a large proportion of the medical system. Mark my words, if the government takes over healthcare, not only will they never give it back (duh) but it will get worse and cost more.

The framers made it VERY clear the government wasn’t to give charity to the people. Go read up on John Adams.

While on the subject of the Constitution, while most misinformed people believe that the core of rights contained therein is in the Bill of Rights, the real core of rights is Article I, Section 8, the powers of Congress which, when coupled with the 10th Amendment, essentially says that the Federal government cannot do anything unless it is on that list, or covered by an Amendment (such as the income tax, covered by he 16th Amendment). So, unconstitutional are:

Social Security
Medicare
Medicaid
Food Stamps
Public Housing
Welfare programs
EPA/environmental regulations
OSHA/workplace safety regulations
Wagner Act (forced negotiations with unions)
Minimum wage
Child labor laws
Product liability laws
Anti-discrimination laws (at least by non-government entities)
And I could go on…

If the democrat party had any interest in enforcing the Constitution, they would demand every one of these be eliminated immediately, period. Fat chance.

The primary concern was, The Patient. Not filling out reams of B.S. forms from some paper-pusher in D.C.

The skyrocketing cost of medical care and everything related to it can be tied directly to the involvement of the federal government in an individuals health care.

SCHIP is just another step in a journey that began decades ago.

The only surprise here is that a Dhimmi was honest.

SCHIP program is just a ploy to get on the path toward socialized medicine.

In the famous words of Gomer Pyle, “surprise, surprise, surprise!”

Since the government started Medicare, we now have over one third of the “medical workers” sitting at desks behind computer screens trying to prevent health care!

Real “medical workers,” like doctors and nurses, are dropping out of the system because Medicare won’t pay its bills. How would you like it if you completed a job and the contract administrator said said to you: “Well, I know we signed a contract to pay you $3000 for that job but we’re short of money so we’re only going to pay you $2000.” This is government-run healthcare in the U.S. today.

I’m a burned out nurse. Let me explain why nurses are in short supply:
1. Crappy shifts.
2. Crappy pay.
3. The threat of lawsuits hanging over every little decision.
4. Unappreciative employers.
5. Abusive Doctors.
6. Abusive patients.

I quit, as do most nurses because after a while, you realize that the job just isn’t worth it. It’s a lovely profession, but the burnout rate for a nurse is just awful.

Doctors mostly quit because of malpractise. The fear of ruining your life and your profession over a mistake (and doctors make mistakes – they are human, after all) is just not worth it.

As for the money thing mentioned above, Medicare is the one of the only “insurers” that always pays its bills. What you’re referring to in a round about way is the use of contracted facilities. What happens is that facilities sign contracts with Medicare and insurance companies to charge them, say $2000 for a knee replacement. If the person is uninsured, the cost is $3000. The cost of the actual equipment, time, etc is actually $1800. The charged amount that a hospital wants is never what they actually get from Medicare or an Insurance company because the facility has signed a contract that since they get business from these insurers, they give people a deal. When people get their bills from hospitals or doctors, they see the charged amount from the hospital of $3000 and the paid amount of $2000. Unless they go to a non-contracted facility, they are under no obligation to pay the difference.

And that’s the lecture on insurance from a nurse who now works for the evil insurance company for today.

We’re creating a system where everyone is either an insurer or an insured, but nobody will agree to be a doctor.

landlines on November 17, 2007 at 8:58 PM

And this is a good point. More and more doctors are leaving their profession (save plastic surgeons). My primary care physician did a few years ago due to problems related to getting paid — his practice couldn’t stay afloat. And he was many years from retirement.

And nurses are in short supply. It will eventually happen with medical doctors too. For doctors, the cost of doing business is becoming, or has become for some, too much to justify keeping their practices open.

Shocking! Just shocking!

[/sarcasm]

Real “medical workers,” like doctors and nurses, are dropping out of the system because Medicare won’t pay its bills

I work in healthcare finance, and believe it or not Medicare and Medicaid, while they don’t pay as well as commercial insurers, require very little administrative overhead from the provider compared to commercial insurers. They’re actually very efficient systems for what they do. The problems arise from the socialist nature of the programs (LBJ called it “cost shifting”. Heh) and also from the demutualization of the commercial insurers. When they went from mutual insurance associations to publicly-traded for-profits, their loyalties shifted, resulting in greatly diminished reimbursements and higher premiums. I’m all in favor of for-profits, but the continued pressures from below-cost government reimbursement on the one hand and commercial profit seeking on the other are killing providers.

Asher on November 18, 2007 at 12:08 AM

Actually, I long ago concluded that “progressives” are prone to waking up in the middle of the night with a horrible feeling that somewhere in the Universe, somebody is doing something without getting their permission first.

But of course, they have a cure for that. As Mordac said in a recent Dilbert strip, “In a perfect world, no one would be allowed to use anything”.

(They’re working on that.)

cheers

eon

Real “medical workers,” like doctors and nurses, are dropping out of the system because Medicare won’t pay its bills. How would you like it if you completed a job and the contract administrator said said to you: “Well, I know we signed a contract to pay you $3000 for that job but we’re short of money so we’re only going to pay you $2000.” This is government-run healthcare in the U.S. today.

We’re creating a system where everyone is either an insurer or an insured, but nobody will agree to be a doctor.