Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline
|
quote:
They should just put everyone on Medicare.
Taxes would have to go up, and that is like kryptonite to republicans. The other problem is cost, if you let the private hospital continue their price gouging, the cost would be too high.
The solution would be for the government to build its own hospitals and staff them with people on a flat salary. A good salary based on their qualifications of course, but not dependent upon billing. How it works now is a mess. But that takes cost clean out of it. This is what we need. You just walk in there and if you are a US citizen you get taken care of. Foreigners get a bill, unless they are working here legally and paying US taxes.
Cost is the major problem. And appendectomy varies fourfold from one hospital to another. Perhaps more. Are the doctors and nurses making four times the money in those areas ? No, the suits in the top office are.
That is where the money is going.
Ever see a show called Northern Exposure ? Not a bad idea. The state of Alaska paid for this guy's medical education and then he was required to serve so many years and live on a basic stipend. Of course they ended the series in a most realistic way. When he was supposedly off the hook and had done his time he gets this notice that because of some economic reason he has to keep it up. He wanted to get back to NYC where he could make some real money.
Then you got foreign doctors. They come here and have no student loans, test out of much of the education so if they have any student loans they are not strangling them like here. But then they make like four times the money here. That's why a thug like me could marry a fine young Russian doctor. The colleges in other countries don't take every dime you don't even have. You thought it was malpractice insurance ? Nope, it is student loans. And you can't file bankruptcy on them except in very special circumstances. I mean like your arms get cut off in some sort of accident.
The drug companies are raking us over the coals. The med schools are raking us over the coals. The suits in the top office are raking us over the coals.
Say, pay a doctor $80 an hour. He sees X number of people a day.. He makes the same doing surgery or drawing blood for a test. Nurses are already making about half of that. Some of them can prescribe drugs.
At lower pay, granted you might not attract the best of the best, but really most of us don't need the best of the best. Especially when many people eat junk food and don't realize that McD's is killing them.
It is the cost that is the problem. When I was a kid there was a doctor's office in walking distance from my Grandparents house. He operated out of his house on a corner lot, you didn't even have to cross a major street to get there. (Smith Rd) A visit cost twenty bucks, not a copay, that is what it cost. If you needed an operation he "booked" time at Berea hospital. Of course you got separate bills for nursing services, anesthesiologist and all that, but it did not add up to fucking $150,000.
And back then there were less lawyers. A kid falls out of a tree and breaks his arm the take him to the doctor, yes the had to get the Parents to consent to putting a cast on it, But there was no CAT scan and all that, it was a simple broken arm. Not even any pain medication.
And people lived to be 90 drinking whiskey and smoking all the time.
I know what changed, we got weaker. I will not reiterate the reasons for that here and now, but they got a TV commercial on about a guy who died at 54 from second hand smoke. BULLSHIT. How come the people who were smoking are alive ? He had a predisposition to it. That would also mean he should stay away from cookouts, campfires, even gas stoves. Nicotine is not poisonous, it is the smoke, so that means any smoke. The means don't even drive behind a diesel truck. In fact diesel mechanics have a higher rate of lung cancer even if they don't smoke.
The world is all fucked up, you can't trust science even. It is all bought and paid for. As long as things are run that way we are fucked. They come out with new drugs simply because the patent ran out on the old one. With many of them, the side effects are worse than what they are supposed to treat. You get clearer skin, but it might damage your kidneys and liver or even your brain. And they are allowed to sell this shit and even advertise it on TV.
And it is brand new. What happened to the drug companies' claims that they cost more here because of all the testing required ? If the drug does more harm than good, and they are allowed to sell it anyway, why bother testing it in the first place ?
All these factors must be dealt with before this country goes to single payer, or it will be too costly. People in countries that have free healthcare do pay for it on the form of taxes. They also do not have much of a military, for the most part we defend them. If they had to pay for their own defense they would never afford it, many are already taxing at near 50 %. And even at that rate some are having money problems with their healthcare.
In the US, if nothing else is done, the tax rate would have to be about 140 %. Couch potatoes eating McD's and pizza all the time, drinking their Pepsi, eating cream pies. And the people who try to live right have to pay for their power chair when they get up to 300 pounds and can't walk. And I mean at like 35 years old. I was in damn good shape when I was 35, I had changed how I eat and got healthy. Before that I was a fast food junkie, and had like three pizzas a week. I changed and no more bad back, no more bad knees, no more stiff neck. People do not realize how important diet is. That is something that must change.
So it is not just the establishment, it is the people as well.
T^T
|
RE: Replacement of the ACA - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread