Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
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I mentioned this in another thread, let's go to a pay for health system rather than a pay for sickness system. I am not the first to propose such a thing, and while it may sound like socialized medicine on the surface, it is not.
My refinement may have not been mentioned, but then that's me. Radical.
OK you pick a doctor. You pay by the month. A certain number of office visits and checkups are free. After exceeding that limit, there is a charge. That keeps the hypochondriacs out of your hair.
Elective things, boob jobs, face lifts and the like you have to pay for. Anything required to keep you alive and kicking is free, well not free but covered.
I am against socialized anything, but with this plan you pay the doc directly, there are no suits in the way sucking up the money.
I know there are a million problems to work out with a plan like this, and I did use the word drastic. What are we going to do about visits to a specialist, a CAT scan or an Xray, operations that need to be performed in a hospital with a support staff, like RNs etc.
I did not come here to argue with this. I'd rather know if anyone has any ideas on how to implement it. The issue of doctors themselves, well I hope most of them are honest, but it is known that some of them resort to the ways of greed. Kickbacks from the drug companies to become drug pushers, double billing, unnessecary procedures.
When they call people sheeple I know what they mean. Doc says you need this drug. Well before I take it into my body I want to know everything about it. And I want to be fully informed of all benefits and risks of either taking it or refusing it. This is my body.
When they say sheeple, just what are doctor's orders ? Since when does someone who works for me have the right to give me orders ? I know a guy has more pills than,,,,, I'll leave that to you, I do not want to sound cliche, it's not my style. Whatever they say he takes, he questions nothing. This is another case of money being able to buy the right to be ignorant. He is retired, he worked all his life, he can get at least partial drug coverage from the government, and if anyone deserves it he does, he paid into it for over forty years. But he pays for all this shit himself.
This is hundreds of dollars a month, and it should not cost that much even if one should foot the bill on their own.
It has become a big ripoff on many levels. The only way to correct it is to rearrainge the way the money is distributed.
In case your blood pressure is low, read this.
I can think of a reason, a valid one that drugs cost alot more in the US. This despite the fact that the US government gives them more money than practically anyone else. OK a few do get more green, but the drug companies want to blame all the research required for a new drug. First of all they don't pay for that by themselves. They get alot of help.
The reason we pay more can be attributed to advertising. Yes.
There is one thing that some people seem oblivious to, that the customer ultimately pays for everything. There are no exceptions. Turn off the cable box, get the old rabbit ears out and watch a day of regular TV. Make a list, for every different drug commercial you see add about a hundred thou for a cheap one, an elaborate one, up to a million.
Then addup how many times you see them in a day. Add anywhere from $2,000 at the very least, up to tens of thousands of dollars for a minute. On a local news show possibly more. Of course more on sporting events, especially the superbowl, things like that. It gets ridiculous. Now that is each instance.
Multiply that by 365 days in a year and total it up. Yup, I could live on that, but wait. Next day flip to another channel. Same thing. How many channels do you actually get locally ?
When you drive to work and see a billboard, how much do you think it costs to get your ad up there ?
I would go for an out and out ban on commercials for any drug. Period. First of all how can we tell the children "Just say no" and "This is your brain on drugs" and then advertise a drug ? Totally ridiculous. Second of all what are people supposed to do, call their doctor and say "I saw this new drug on TV" ?. So the guy is doing a triple bypass and the sectretary buzzes him with a caller on the phone. I could see it now "Hold on folks, I'll be back in a minute". Yeah right.
And some of these commercials are for anti-depressants, and at the end they say that suicidal tendencies are a known side effect. Come on, beam me up Scotty, really.
I realize that a type of reform like this ompossible unless there are other reforms. They way money is gained, distributed etc. At this point in time, industry owns government. Why is it that you see the same drug commercial many times in an hour ? Do you think most people only watch five minutes of a TV show and have never seen this commercial that has been running for six months ?
That kind of "saturation" is insane. There is no way in hell they are getting any kind of decent return in product sales. But that doesn't mean they are stupid. Oh no. Not at all.
There are two things they do by oversaturating a market with advertising. I'm sure that some already know but I will spell it out anyway.
1. Media control. By becoming a major source of revenue for any business, influence infers. That is a given. If you are the biggest customer for my widgets, you bet you believe that those widgets will be designed to meet your specifications. Likewise with the media, someone decides what gets reported and what does not.
Consider this, the local news reports that a certain drug has been found to kill people. And then they run a commercial for that drug. They won't be doing that for long.
2. Big business hates small business. That is business 101. They want small business gone, they want to buy up everything. You see with the enormous volume big business does, they might only make fractions of a penny on each transaction. But there are so many transactions. It is hard to concieve having millions in sales each year. But doing it on a bunch of small transactions.
So they rake off whatever the market will bear. Certain businesses, for example retail chains, in fact chain stores and chain restaurants and such, this rakeoff is quite small for the boardroom. But there is so much of it going on that it amounts to something.
Anything that makes it amount to less is a bad thing. When you are in business it is almost by definition, your job to try to kill the competition, either by undercutting their prices or buying them out, whatever. The easiest and cheapest means to an end. That is your job. It is defined by the very society in which we live, not me. I did not invent this, I learned it.
So to tell the second reason now, they incessantly advertise to keep the demand up, so that the prices are high and small businesses can't afford to advertise.
The whole kit-n-kanboodle has to go.
But on the medical, I'd rather go to a vet than a doc. They seem to say $250 alot I hear. Hmmmm, just occurred to me, the last time I went to a doctor it was $250. Maybe I am an animal ?
Well, I am going to end this now. I have read that some people say my posts are too long. In fact I think I agree. Some of them anyway.
So have at it, any ideas ?
T
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Drastic health care reform (and then some) - 
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