Keith Nuttle wrote in news:jspell$8b6$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:
I believe people are entitled to the insurance. If at all possible they should pay for it. Ultimately I believe that quality of life will be better, and cost less than when you let them muddle on. The only alternative would be to a) provide work for all and b) pay wages to cover life's expenses. Of course getting rid of the lawyers and bureaucrats would help too ...
There were houses, food, clothing, and education back then. The founders didn't consider those things to be "rights."
No, they would have said something specific about health care itself.
US media propaganda.
Yep ... alive, just not healthy enough to live without Big Pharma. There is no profit in a healthy population.
Agreed ... not to mention that the past three decades, approximately
109,000 people die DIRECTLY each year from drug interactions in the US ... to put that in perspective, about 30,000 die from automobile accidents.A medical profession, and culture, where "nutrition" is not on the menu, plus government malfeasance while Food, Inc and Big Pharma poisons the population, insures profits.
There is NO profit in "healthy" for politicians, the medical and/or drug industries.
You are what you eat ...
Before the government got involved the family with the help of the community handle problems where the family could not afford health care.
Not US media at all. A cursory check, or neutral question, would have prevented a knee-jerk reaction on your part.
"[LONDON, June 21, 2012] An eminent British doctor told a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine in London that every year 130,000 elderly patients that die while under the care of the National Health Service (NHS) have been effectively euthanized by being put on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), a protocol for care of the terminally ill that he described as a "death pathway."
"NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.
"[The Liverpool Care Pathway] is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent. It can include withdrawal of treatment - including the provision of water and nourishment by tube - and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours."
It's called Mutual Assured Destruction. Canada, for example, goes to Pfizer and says: "We'll pay your cost of production plus ten percent for your new miracle drug."
Pfizer says: "Not by the hair of our chinney-chin-chins!"
Canada comes back with "Then we'll abrogate our treaty on mutual patent protection under the rubric of saving lives. The World Court and everybody else will be on our side."
"We'd be more comfortable at 12.5%..."
The socialist elements have created an environment that promotes "me"ism. Before the socialist programs, as a last resort each individual knew that he HAD to depend on family and the people around him. With the socialist programs this has changed, and now the last resort is a government program.
Swingman wrote in news:h5KdnWTgMPfcD2zSnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:
So the solution is simple - pay the medical providers on the basis of the health of their patients. Oh, wait, that's just bookkeeping ...
That was for the kidding. I believe some progress is being made in hospital reimbursements. No more reimbursement for preventable side effects (hospital-acquired infections, readmissions because something didn't go right during the first admission, etc).
Nowadays with the computerization of pharmacy records it is easier to flag potential drug interactions. But it's difficult in some respects, since almost everything you put into your body is a drug in some respect (if you're on coumadin, as some in this newsgroup are, either eating or not eating broccoli acts as a drug, becausethe vitamin K in broccoli prevents the coumadin from doing it's job).
"HeyBub" wrote in news:c9SdnZOPJryHCGzSnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:
Everywhere it is really important that advance directives, living will etc are in order, legally speaking. Plus the next of kin need to know and be willing to execute the wishes of the patient. IMNSHO that is paramount and should govern the actions of patients, next of kin, doctors, hospitals, all to whom the care of the patient is entrusted.
However, there will always be situations where there is little if any hope that medical science will be able to "resurrect" an elderly or otherwise infirm individual to what I would call a quality life. Then the question is whether such a "vegetable" should be articifially kept alive in the sole sense of having a beating heart. It is of note that being kept alive could be extremely painful, physically, mentally or both, for the affected individual. The treatment-related questions then are soul searching to the max. If and when one gets to the point of having to make such decisions for others, he/she will (hopefully) lay awake long hours trying to make the correct decisions.
I could relate several stories in this respect, but they are kind of personal. One involves that an ambulance was called. "They needed" to take the patient to the hospital for care, because the relevant paperwork (living will, advance directives) couldn't be located. The patient might have expired without the care. Some may contend that "living" weeks or months longer at that point is something good, others that it isn't really living. My point is that we should comply with the wishes of the person involved, and not necesarily commit huge resources to keep someone alive who might not wish that.
No family? No friends, or at least none better off than you? To the poorhouse! Which, BTW, was run by the local/county/state government.
Now it's federal. Why? Because the state politicians figured out it was safer to blame taxes on the feds so they wouldn't be responsible.
When I was a child, we had a name for the homeless - we called them "escapees from the insane asylum" - want to go back to that?
Keith Nuttle wrote in news:jsscpe$74m$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:
This isn't a socialist or capitalist concept. In the stone ages, the tribe was the insurance for the individual's well-being. If there was a use for the sick, old or infirm, they'd keep them alive. If the individual was a drag on society, I have been told the Eskimo would go outside and freeze. In modern society, insurance has been invented to help in case of rare occurances (sp?) where the individual might not have the resources to correct what has gone wrong.
The true problem is that if you get sick or have an accident, we as society have ordained that caring for that individual is paramount, and worrying about the costs secondary. That is very well and altruistic, but it leaves out the problem when there is no money available to pay for that care. Currently, there is a surcharge for hospital costs to help pay for those indigent. If you will, a tax or penalty on people with the foresight to have insurance, or able to pay without, so that the indigent can be cared for. I like the proposed system where everyone is urged to be responsible and get insurance much better.
He also forgot to mention that around 200,000 die each year in the US from medical mistakes - and that apparently doesn't include non-treatment.
I read something that put it closer to a million a year. Gary Null says 480k from adverse drug reactions/medical errors.
"Mike Marlow" wrote in news:13a40$4ff1d4be$4b75eb81$ snipped-for-privacy@ALLTEL.NET:
I'm a cynic too. However, it should be easier to smoke out collusion and malfeasance in a single system. Unfortunately, the system is a mashup of private companies doing the insuring and federal mandates for coverage. That, I agree, is not a good recipe.
If the aggregate costs of healthcare are the same in 2 different ways of administering it, it should boil down to the same thing - altogether, we as the sum toal of all the insured (or uninsured) should be paying the same grand total. But that assumes that bureacratic costs are the same. Having experienced the clusterfuck that the billing is nowadays (I really have had minimal trouble) and somehow understanding the thinking of the clerks, I have no confidence in the current convoluted way of doing things. Hopefully it will get smoother with Obamacare. I'm still hoping!!
This morning, my haircutter girl at the neighborhood new Great Clips made a mistake in entering data into the cash register. Now she had to pull out the calculator to subtract $7.01 from $14.00. I'm just saying ...
As I read what you read, I believe our disagreement is a chicken and egg issue of which came first? "me"ism caused socialist think OR socialist thinking caused "me"ism.
Socialism promotes and encourages "me" ism, but "me"ism is an integral component of human nature.
Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership and/or control of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy, and a political philosophy advocating such a system.
There is not a single politician in the United States that advocates the above, nor is social security, safety nets, welfare, common defense, or medicare 'socialism' in any sense of the word.
That's only one definition. Socialism is also a political system where the government controls the means of production. Every step that government takes to regulate or control any part of the economy is a step in the direction of socialism. Obamacare is a great big fat step toward socializing the U.S. health care system.
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