joether
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Joined: 7/24/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: papassion
The CBO goes with predictions (that turn out to be mostly wrong) Using data from Romneycare which has been in effect for almost 7 years would be more accurate. Massachusetts Total per capita healthcare spending is $9278.00, the highest in the country. Well above the $6815.00 national average. Do they get better healthcare for the extra money spent and did this law have anything to do with it? To rein in costs, They are reducing Medicare spending by 425 billion over 10 years and establishes a board of 15 healthcare "experts" that can recommend more LIMITS on the the program. (will this morph into "death panels" restricting procedures to patients over a certain age ?")
One of the biggest dissapointments is the fact that even though they are insured, people continue to use the emergency room for non emergencies, says Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who consulted on both Romneycare and Obamacare. Damm, I guess the poorer people who are now given healthcare still feature themselves as too important to wait for a Doctors appointment.
You have a source for this info, right?
Source from JAMA
Source from Reuters
Not just for papapassion to read, but for everyone else....
Even with the introduction of healthcare into Massachusetts, it seems many people still use the ER for routine medical care, but not for the same reasons as before they had heathcare. In some cases (I believe its the Reuter's source) stated those with health coverage used the ER more often, since they didn't have to pay the full out-of-pocket expense. But both sources seem to hint at a few defining factors:
A ) Emergency Rooms are open 24/7, while primary care doctors are only open 9/10 am to 5/6 pm Monday thru Friday.
B ) The short supply of medical doctors in primary care positions across the nation
C ) A view that better care will be found in the ER than at the primary care doctor
D ) When a patient wants to see a doctor, they don't want to wait for next week!
Switching a behavior on a grand scale as Massachusetts (let alone the nation) is not something that's done over night. Will take years if not decades to convince both patients and doctors, to switch up how health care operates. That patients need to save REAL emergencies for the ER, and routine things for the doctor's office. For doctor's offices, to have Saturday and maybe even Sunday office hours. For doctor's offices to have numbers to be called that can reach either a 'nurse on duty' or a 'call center' of nurses for several doctors to help patients in determining if they should go to the ER or not.
I think most of us would rather society make this change, rather than laws going into effect to change the behavior. Unfortunately, most of us understand these sort of changes will not take place without laws going into effect. So what does society do exactly?
For myself, I have my doctor's cellphone number. If I need him, I call, and get connected to him pretty quick. The only times I've used it, he said "yes, go to the ER!". I don't call him to 'shoot the shit'; but rather because I respect him and don't want this privilege abused. Usually he contacts me a day later (or the Monday if I went to the ER on a weekend) to explain he got the information, and is following up on my status. If I'm still in a problem area, he'll open a session that day to see me.
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CBO: ACA to cut Federal Spending on Healthcare - 
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