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Basic Health Care
What is so wrong about providing health care for our most needy?
In reality, we're already doing that in hospital emergency rooms. The most expensive way.
If y'all watched the Olympics from England, one of the centerpieces was their tribute to national health care.
How can we justify the loss of life of our young people (almost 4,000) and the wounded (30,000), not to mention the billions of dollars spent in unfunded wars and not give Americans basic health care?
Think about it.
In reality, we're already doing that in hospital emergency rooms. The most expensive way.
If y'all watched the Olympics from England, one of the centerpieces was their tribute to national health care.
How can we justify the loss of life of our young people (almost 4,000) and the wounded (30,000), not to mention the billions of dollars spent in unfunded wars and not give Americans basic health care?
Think about it.
Replies
You asked and answered your own question. We have healthcare for all.
Here is your real question-
What gives you, or anyone, the moral authority to screw a gun in my ear and make me pay for someone else's healthcare? If you think healthcare is a 'right', then can I have Govt agents screw an M4 Carbine in your ear, and imprison you or KILL you for not giving up the money that your family needs to eat to buy me a new gun (which is an actual right)?
What is wrong with providing healthcare and help to the most needy? Nothing. It is a great and noble thing for you to do. It is something I enjoy doing through my church. You should do it. Everyone should.
But the minute you point a gun at me and take money by force from me and my family, it becomes evil and immoral.
-Mikhail Kalashnikov
:applause: Well said sir, well said.
A person with insurance, pays his bill, plus a percentage of the bills of people
who don't have ins., the hospitals aren't going to lose money.
shall not be taken away, by ink from a tyrant's pen.
Jerry
Bull pukey!!! I can get cared for Emergency due the Hippocratic oath......but I WILL get the upteen thousands of dollars bill for it. I looked into the cost for my treatment, a lost is due to medical waste.
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA)[1] is a U.S. Act of Congress passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). It requires hospitals to provide care to anyone needing emergency healthcare treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions. Participating hospitals may only transfer or discharge patients needing emergency treatment under their own informed consent, after stabilization, or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment.[1]
Right now, things are too expensive because those without insurance or coverage end up in the ERs of large hospitals, where too much expense is wasted to small problems.
Way I see it is this -- if you've got insurance coverage you go to your regular doctor first and often that's enough. If deeper care is needed the doc sends you to the ER or a specialist. This is how it works if you're insured.
So I think it should be done this way... if you do not have insurance, you go to a regular general physician or small clinic first, whomever you choose, whomever you can get an appointment with. If you're insured, your insurance company pays the doc and you're billed a certain percent of co-pay, just like it is normally. Now, if you don't have insurance, you're treated the same and the doc bills you personally. Maybe you pay out of pocket, or if you can't afford it, depending on a means test, the govt picks up a percent of the bill. In other words, those who cannot pay are expected to pay a percent based on ability to pay, and the govt picks up the balance. But your getting treated by a local doc at a local office or small clinic takes the huge expense off the hospital ERs and spreads out the payments to sensible co-pay programs. Yes we can argue the decision of the means testing and argue how much the person is expected to co-pay, but that's simply a sliding percentage, not a change in policy. This costs less to administrate (less money wasted on bureaucracy as possible). Nobody gets denied needed care, but anyone without insurance has to pass means testing to determine amount of copay. This type of copay system is easier and cheaper to administrate.
Unfunded wars have nothing to do with it -- this is a political slant to the problem. Health care is a totally separate issue. You can argue war funding separately, just like you can argue excess welfare or social spending that's wasteful on a separate basis, not connected to health care. Those who cannot pay for health care in our wealthy country deserve to be properly cared for, so long as the person is required to pay even a small amount of copay on a sliding scale. But you can go to ANY doctor or clinic who's got appointment room and whose type of care you need. Naturally you wouldn't first go to a neurosurgeon if you had a sprained ankle. You'd go to a general MD clinic or orthopedic clinic. And always, for true emergencies, the ER.
When I had my heart attack I was out of work and had zero insurance. I was still treated the same, at one of the finest large hospitals in the USA, had bypass surgery, and then was billed over a hundred thou, which I was totally unable to pay. I showed my zero income, no property or wealth, etc, and demonstrated I had no way to pay. The cost was absorbed by the county/state health care system, which is typical for indigent patients.
When I was working but had no insurance I paid my medical bills out of pocket on a time basis, sometimes taking 2 yrs to pay a large bill.
Now that I'm on medicare I do have a small copay that I can afford, the rest is paid by my medicare provider.
FYI as a aside, a family who in involved in scouts is losing their insurance at the end of next month because of Obamacare. The employer can't afford it so they are own their own.
You said it exactly!
Emergency room care is the most expensive, hospitals know that insurance companies will foot the bill.
There's nothing political in my post, only economics.
We're already paying more than we should for medical care for these folks.
I guess I don't understand....are you saying that things will get better with Uncle's mandated health coverage, or worse? It seems (to me, sorry if I misunderstand) that you're arguing both ways.
Personally, I figure my (partially) employer provided coverage will be done when this fully impacts. When you take into consideration that here in WI the average premium is predicted to go up about 80%, I guess I can't blame him. I think it's funny that when this is all said and done, the number of folks without coverage is expected to be just about the same as before. Sounds worth it, huh?
George Carlin
Jerry
That's only the requirement for full time employees. Cut their hours back to 29 hours and they are part time employees and the employer is not on the hook for insurance.
― Douglas Adams
Have you gone to an emergency room lately?
Doctors won't accept them, so they have no choice other than to go to an emergency room.
There's the problem. Obamacare attempts to 'solve' an apolitical problem with a political 'soution'. In fact, I believe that O-care was never intended to solve the percieved 'crisis' in healthcare, as the problem was mostly an insurance problem and not a lack of healthcare problem. So, instead we end up fixing nothing and charging more for everything.
George Carlin
Boy, Walmart is screwed....
Doubtful, Walmart plays by a different set of rules.
Thanks to totalitarian-progressive Democrats and RINO Republicans, the National Debt and unfunded mandates now obligates every household in the USA to over $534,000 (Pay Up Libs!). Funding social programs through wealth-DRAINING taxation and appropriation instead of wealth -CREATING privatized investment and endowment is financially fatal. The USA is on a fiscal suicide watch.
By 'socializing' our entitlements instead of 'capitalizing' them, we have squandered our wealth, crippled our economy and mortgaged our future, We have destroyed ourselves.
Nobody objects (at least I don't) to a tightly woven social safety net, with extensive programs to aid the poor and unfortunate among us. The worst and most dangerous progressive - liberal lie is that good things can only be achieved through their agenda, which demands power and control in exchange for enacting their good intentions. Not a good deal, America. In fact, it's a deal withthe devil.
It is an open secret that if Social Security had been funded through privatized investment from the start (like Chile's is), our retirees would be taking home twice what they get now, and it wouldn't be busting the government. Privatized entitlements are self-sustaining. Instead, we are forced to consider cutting benefits and raising taxes for the privilege. Some choice, eh? BTW, Chile has the lowest national debt in the hemisphere, and it's economy, fueled by a never ending river of privatized retirement investment capital, is growing at almost 6%, and it's national pension plan is earning almost 7% per year. Even now, with the whole socialist world in recession. Pretty cool? Leave it to Milton Friedman who designed the whole thing for Chile.
BTW, one county in the whole USA had a clue when FDR announced his Social Security Ponzi scheme and opted out. Galveston County, Texas. Google it. Galveston County went for a completely privatized pension plan. Yeah, it costs the County some big money up front until the privatized investments grew large enough to sustain their pensioned workers, but now their retirees get 2 1/2 times the money seniors get from the almost bankrupt Social Security system. And the County budget isn't out a fortune every year sustaining the system. Capitalism is the only sustainable option when it comes to entitlements.
Universal high quality non-rationed health, dental and long term care is a fine idea and I support it - just so long as it is founded and funded on the right principles of self-sustaining capitalism, and doesn't end up biting us in the behind down the road with rationed care and death panels because the stupid government is going broke.
in the UK the NHS is paid for by the tax payer through their wages via deductions either weekly or monthly -
on a £24000 and a £48000 annual salary (just as examples) http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php
[TH]Yearly[/TH]
[TH]Four weekly[/TH]
[TH]Weekly[/TH]
Gross Income
£24,000.00
£1,846.15
£461.54
Pension Deductions
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
Childcare Vouchers
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
Taxable Income
£14,560.00
£1,120.00
£280.00
Tax
£2,912.00
£224.00
£56.00
National Insurance
£1,949.40
£149.95
£37.49
Student Loan
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
Take Home
£19,138.60
£1,472.20
£368.05
£18,853.60
£1,450.28
£362.57
[TH]Yearly[/TH]
[TH]Four weekly[/TH]
[TH]Weekly[/TH]
Gross Income
£48,000.00
£3,692.31
£923.08
Pension Deductions
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
Childcare Vouchers
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
Taxable Income
£38,560.00
£2,966.15
£741.54
Tax
£9,022.00
£694.00
£173.50
National Insurance
£4,174.40
£321.11
£80.28
Student Loan
£0.00
£0.00
£0.00
Take Home
£34,803.60
£2,677.20
£669.30
£34,621.10
£2,663.16
£665.79
the NHS is payed for with Tax and the National Insurance is the state pension
I don't know if things are different there than they will eventually be here, but the true fiction (at least here in the States) was that somebody would be denied healthcare because they couldn't pay for it.
George Carlin
But let's face it, the great majority of folks wouldn't have the discipline or means to put money away for their old age. Myself included at age 30.
As I inderstand it, the national health care act would provide basic, not high quality health care, paying doctors to supply regular checkups to prevent emergency situations.
Health care is already rationed. The poor go to emergency rooms, the most expensive way.
We're already paying for it in increased insurance costs.
doesnt happen here - every one gets health care regardless of income - there are surgeries that you have to pay for ie cosmetic
What about the folks that are too "old" to qualify for a procedure. I work with a guy originally from Ireland, his mom was in a car wreck and deemed too elderly to qualify for the surgery she needed. They gave her blood transfusions until he could get there to say goodbye, then they let her die. Fixing our healthcare system cannot be done by adding a level of government drones to manage it. Think about the last time you went to the DMV to renew your driver's license, and apply that to your heart problem. If that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling I can guess which way you voted last November.
You have no idea of the problems that small Churches have in meeting their financial needs.
I'm trying to say that you already have the gun screwed in your ear by exhorbitent costs for heath care in emergency rooms.
There are 300 million of us. Maybe one third that are tax payers.
Would I give 50 bucks a year for health care for folks that don't have any? You bet I would
Let's see, 100 million times 50 bucks.
You do the math.
Christ said "take care of the poor."