Semi-OT: Satisfied with your health care?

[Charlie Self]

Any reason applied is painful. U.S. health care is 37th among industrialized nations in effectiveness and first or nearly first in cost.

To put it politely, that is a sin, one aided and abetted by phalanxes of adminstrators, overcharging hospitals and surgeons and insurance companies, with the last listed being among the major problems...and problem causers.

I use VA health care and am grateful for it. It's far from perfect-- hey, what the hell: it IS government run, after all--but it is coherent, consideraly cheaper than civilian care (try 15% or so), and in the past few years, they have tried mightily to cure the long term ills that had built up from its being generally ignored.

My biggest objection is that VA cannot bill Medicare part B when I need hospitalization. I'm paying, IIRC, $96 a month for something that will only be used accidentally. The statement that one government department cannot pay another is, first, bullshit, and second, asinine, since that money is withheld from my SS each month, thus is my money, not government funds. I wouldn't mind at all paying VA the same amount monthly.

I wish to hell I could get similar care for my wife--and she is on Medicare, too.

[HeyBub]

They have, but they're all in the U.S.

[DGDevin]

The insurance companies are a huge part of the problem, their administrative overhead absorbs twice as much money as in Canada and something like eight times as much as compared to Taiwan. Their attempts to only insure healthy people and cut loose anyone who gets sick if they can get away with it is revolting. That recent case in Calif. where an insurance company cut off a woman right in the middle of cancer treatment was sickening, the arbitrator's ruling of nine million bucks hopefully got the bastards' attention. Press coverage of that and similar cases revealed that insurance companies have employees whose only job is finding reasons to cancel coverage of customers who have made claims, they pay bonuses for doing so. So you pay your premiums for years, then you get sick and make a claim, and they cancel your policy on the grounds that when you first signed up umpteen years ago you under-reported your weight (though that is not in any way related to your illness). If it was within my power that would be flat-out illegal.

And the VA negotiates lower drugs prices with the pharmaceutical companies, something Congress in its wisdom refused to allow Medicare to do under the previous administration. Now that the drug companies see which way the wind is blowing they've suddenly discovered that maybe they can cut Medicare some slack, to the tune of eighty billion dollars. Ain't it amazing what these companies are suddenly able to do when they realize they've pushed their greed too far?

[Lew Hodgett]

The change is upon us.

Obama wants it.

Obama is going to get it.

It is reported that Obama has a re-election "war chest" in excess of $2 billion.

An organization that can acquire that kind of campaign fund, is simply going to get the job done.

The medical status quo folks are clueless how to handle what is headed their way.

Lew

[WD]

Greed beyond imagination.

[DGDevin]

Just him? I'd have thought umpteen million voters had something similar in mind. IMO the mutts in Congress are going to mess up enough of what Obama wants to do that it will be at best half-assed reform, the Dems take campaign contributions from the same lobbyists as the Repubs.

It's also been reported that Elvis is still alive and well. That's a dubious number.

They've earned it. They care *only* for their profits, and the suffering of people who can't afford what the industry wants to charge is just too damn bad. Yeah, the govt. is going to screw up some of this, but it can't go on like it has, one in six Americans with no health coverage is intolerable.

[WD]

Change, what hallucinating grass are you smoking now? All Polititions are liars and crooks.

[DGDevin]

That's not so, private insurance exists in Canada but it can only pay for things not covered by the govt. insurance plans, e.g. private rooms, some rehab and so on, plus total coverage for people waiting to qualify for govt.-run insurance, e.g. recent immigrants. The 2005 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that prohibiting patients from going outside the govt.-run systems is unconstitutional while there are widespread life-threatening delays in diagnosis and treatment in the govt.-run systems is also worth noting--it makes the whole "not allowed" thing kind of doubtful.

Most hospitals in Canada are not "government-run," they are operated by non-profit charitable entities (although I'm sure they manage to absorb plenty of money without calling it profit).

[Lew Hodgett]

Yep, that's why he got elected.

IMHO, Obama is going to have to start leading the effort to get what is needed.

But then again, who am I to question his methods?

As Dirksen said, "a million here, a million there, etc".

Any way you cut it, it's impressive.

You want an argument, change the subject.

Agreed, but I'm sensing that Congress is beginning to realize the futility of opposing what Obama wants, at least for now.

Lew

[DGDevin]

Ah yes, the NIH Syndrome. We don't care how good somebody else's idea/system/machine is, if it's Not Invented Here, then we don't want it. Brilliant.

[HeyBub]

Greed is intrinsically good. An ancient great worthy once said: "Were it not for the evil inclination (greed), no man would build a home, marry, or father a child."

'Course he didn't work for a drug company, but the concept's the same.

[HeyBub]

I think you've wrapped your mind around the concept. It's evolution, you see.

For generations, those of the old country who possessed initative, self-reliance, bravery, and the desire to risk for greater rewards, came here. They left behind the cowards, the nay-sayers, the fearful and the fretful. We new-worlders - and here I include Canadians - are the cream of the crop. Those left behind are, in the main, the dregs. Each group developed systems, governments, and institutions according to their inclinations.

That's why what seemingly works in Germany is abhorrent here.

Come to think on it, it might NOT be evolution. Maybe Divine Intervention?

[jo4hn]

"Greed is good."

Gordon Gekko: "The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you."

[WD]

Maybe it did not work for drug companies, I can accept that! But, how about politicians (Democrats/Republicans), Banks, Insurances, Hospitals, Lawyers etc.

>

[DGDevin]

The rest of the story being that they set free the lion of fire, but first blinded it in one eye. That's the part that some folks forget, that self-interest cannot be allowed unchecked freedom, it must be restrained by law or we might as well be living in a jungle.

Or as another wise person once said, "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness." And a lot of people think greed is the way to happiness, they sure do. Bernie Madoff will probably be reflecting on that for some years to come.

[DGDevin]

Oh, really? You might read up on why many early colonists came to the new world; hundreds of thousands of them were convicts, indentured servants, political prisoners and other undesirables expelled from their homelands. For all intents and purposes many of the early European colonists were slaves and could be bought and sold and generally treated in the same fashion as slaves from Africa. They died like flies in the Caribbean and thus weren't very effective at working the sugar plantations; they did somewhat better in a climate more similar to their native lands. It's also odd how right to the present day immigrants have been widely considered losers, undesirable, low-class. America has a long history of treating immigrants with suspicion and even hostility, just ask the Irish, or the Chinese, or the Japanese, or Jews, or Mexicans, or....

Ah yes, eugenics, the pseudoscience beloved of the Master Race.

I remember many years ago talking to a gentleman who had been a tanker in WWII. He related how most of the Sherman tanks he and his comrades rode were armed with a pipsqueak 75mm gun (based on a First World War French field gun) that was nearly useless against the German heavy tanks they faced. But to their amazement the British had some Shermans (with the typically British name Firefly) armed with a British gun called a 17lber. It was every bit as good as what the German Panther tanks were armed with and could shoot holes in enemy armored vehicles at great distances. Needless to say it was a source of some bitterness to them that the Brits had come up with a better gun than the mighty American industrial machine while most of their tanks had crappy little guns.

Which brings us back to the NIH Syndrome--if it ain't American, how could it possibly be any good?

[HeyBub]

Here are the top wealthiest people in the U.S. What 2/3rds inherited their wealth?

William Gates III (Founder of Microsoft) Warren Buffett (Investments) Lawrence Ellison (Founder of Oracle) Jim Walton (Inherited) S Robson Walton (Inherited) Alice Walton (Inherited) Christy Walton & Family (Inherited) Michael Bloomberg (Founder Bloomberg) Charles Koch (Inherited small company) David Koch (Inherited small company) Michael Dell (Founder, Dell Computers) Paul Allen (Founder, Microsoft) Sergey Brin (Russian immigrant, founder Google) Larry Page (Founder, Google) Sheldon Adelson (Created Comdex) Steven Ballmer (Founder, Microsoft) Abigail Johnson (President, Fidelity Investments) Jack Taylor & Family (Founder, Enterprise Rent-A-Car) Anne Cox Chambers (Inherited Cox Entertainment) Donald Bren (Real estate developer)

my count, seven of the top twenty got their start via inheritance. That's about ONE-third, not two-thirds.

[Han]

"HeyBub" wrote in news:4JudnTGEit_ZndPXnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

Simply put, statistics lie, or, rather, one can easily interpret statistics so that lies result, as you just did. You simply took the top 20 richest people as being representative of the top 1 % of the tax payers.

Another example: Vioxx. It increased the chances of death by at least a factor 2, with a highly significant probability of causality. From 1 in 10,000 to 2 in 10,000. (Rough numbers, I am too lazy to get the real ones). No one has as yet satisfactorily explained the mechanism by which Vioxx caused excess deaths, although plausible theories exist.

This is the basis on which Vioxx was taken off the market. The real crooks were the company, who (yes it is people who did this) hid results, and the marketers who pushed a drug with limited good potential onto many, many more who should have taken something real cheap like aspirin, tylenol, whatever other NSAID for their pain, or a narcotic if the pain was really too bad. And greedy consumers who said let the insurance company pay. -- Best regards Han email address is invalid

[Upscale]

> By my count, seven of the top twenty got their start via inheritance. That's

Perhaps you can't count high enough? Try working out the average for all of them instead of just 20. Nevertheless, what possible difference does it make?

[scritch]

Thanks to you all for your (mostly) reasonable arguments. It seems that, unlike most OT political/economic discussions here on rec that the vast majority of us are in agreement.

Now, President Obama stated this week that single-payer is "off the table". Clearly he believes that it either can't get done because a) the Congress and Senate are too bought-off to pass it, or b) he is too bought-off to pass it. We can't rely on him to push this himself.

What I am doing is writing my legislators EVERY DAY, and including senators from other states who are standing in the way of the American people, who have wanted this type of health care reform for more than fifty years. I urge you also to write your legislators if you agree with me.

If you would like my list of legislators that I am writing to, send me a message to [e-mail]. I will respond with a private message.