Posted on 08/20/2016 10:29:09 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Health care will be on Rebecca Esparza’s mind in the voting booth this fall.
The two-time cancer survivor from Corpus Christi, Texas, says repealing the Affordable Care Act could make her uninsurable. The health law protects people with pre-existing medical conditions from being denied coverage. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Cancer treatment can take numerous forms.
1. Injection of chemicals.
2. Palliative surgery to say allow the patient to eat or excrete.
3. Total tumor removal.
For 1, you need someone who knows what chemicals to use, how much to use, and how to inject them safely. You also need the chemicals.
Cancer chemicals could be (and should be sold*) by the drug maker to the patient on account. The patient might annually pay (in monthly installments) say what a parent is expected to pay annually for a kid’s college education.
It might take an hour for a oncologist to review your medical history and prescribe the right chemicals. How much should we pay the guy/gal? At $500, that would be $1 million for 2,000 hours of work a year - sound’s more than enough to me.
As for the actual measuring and injecting, a cancer nurse might work for four hours at say $60/hour plus $20/hour in benefits, or $320 total.
For surgery, the federal government or state governments need to enable surgeons and anesthesiologists to set up low-cost surgical centers with combined 24/7 coverage or convert hospitals into companies merely leasing real estate to cooperating doctors, anesthesiologists, groups of lab and imaging doctors and nursing unions/companies.
Right now if you were to have an operation, you might get a $20,000 hospital bill, a $2,000 surgeon’s bill and a $1,500 anesthesiologist’s bill for a total cost of $23,500.
What you might get in the future is:
1. a $2,000 surgeon’s bill
2. a $1,500 anesthesiologist’s bill
3. a $1,000 operating room bill from either the surgeon (and his associates) or more likely the anesthesiologist (and her associates) (who has lots of equipment already)
4. a $702 imaging bill from First Floor Imaging LLC, who might be charging 1.4 times Medicare’s pricing
5. a $500 to $700/day nursing bill from say West Wing Nursing Inc.
6. a $334 lab bill from South Building Labs LLC, who might be charging 1.5 times Medicare’s pricing
If you had in operation in metropolitan Boston, a high-cost place, and spent five days recovering you might charged a total of $9,041.
You could take the money for the surgery (or cancer chemotherapy)from the patient’s Social Security account, or the parents’ SS accounts, or the patient’s adult children’s SS accounts.
My brother never lived long enough to collect Social Security. If his SS money had been used to pay for his care it would have been fairer to him and his wife.
[*to force drug companies to improve their drugs often rather than sitting on a 20-year patent]
President-Elect Donald J. Trump. And they fear him greatly.
Yep.
My Dad had leukemia.
The American Cancer Society helped him out some.
There are other ways.
the theory was he came to the farthest Catholic hospital he could find....
NO ONE is turned away from an ER for emergent care..
That’s not even really being a good liberal in the absolute sense. A good liberal in the absolute sense will economize himself so he can benefit the needy.
But like “gay” (a group of people that has some of the grimmest souls one ever met) the term “liberal” has long been an oxymoron in our secular politics.
I plan on getting home insurance after my house burns down
Medicare, at least, requires a selldown. She’d have to sell that Harley.
But there is no way we can generate this kind of unicorns and skittles of ourselves. Someone had to sacrifice, and those goats are getting restless now.
Medicare => I mean, Medicaid
Which is why there should have been a High Risk Pool, not eviscerating the current System as was done.
I am a Cancer Survivor myself, but I have had continuous Healthcare Coverage since the age of 18. I hardly used my Insurance for twenty Years but I was taught you always plan for the worst.
20 Years of paying Healthcare Premiums before I ever even got a Antibiotic Drug Prescription from my Doctor.
“Medicare is one reason too why physicians can not adjust charges for certain patients to make the bill more affordable.”
Once the doctor sends you the bill, he and you can agree to cut it.
Bush’s Secretary of HHS Bill Thompson said that Medicare policy didn’t prohibit doctors from cutting a bill after it was rendered.
Medicare only prevents sick people from shopping around - bad enough.
Look at what you’re actually getting for your money. Most have found that Obamacare really only amounts to distastrous healthy coverage and raised their prior coverage in price 3 to 4 times what it was before with a considerable reduction of benefits (items covered) and a much higher deductible. Its definitelt one of the worst scams perpetrated against the American people in history especially since it penalizes you significantly if you don’t play.
I am hoping Donald Trump makes it in and that he gets wise advice so he can come up with the deals needed to stop US healthcare from sailing off of a cliff on the Obamacare handcart.
Moves like this are definitely a Kick Me sign on the rear end of the Donks.
That's true so long as you're getting another job with an employer who offers health insurance as a benefit.
Otherwise you were kind of screwed before the ACA.
Funny how all those ultra liberals always happen to have money but don't seem to work or have a regular job.
Very few, if any, liberals actually practice what they preach. Liberals who practice the "bohemian" lifestyle do so because they're too lazy to work. Successful liberals who do make decent money are generally stingy with charity except for a few "feel good" causes like Planned Parenthood or Greenpeace... but otherwise wouldn't hesitate to crank up the AC when they get the slightest bit uncomfortable.
Group health insurers, and that includes essentially all employer provided insurance does not, cannot, and hasn't been denied to people with preexisting conditions for many years. More than 30 years if I recall correctly. Obamacare has nothing to do with that.
Before Obamacare, a number of states allowed single employee "groups" since a small business might start with one employee. Those policies did not deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions.
Insurers of last resort, and programs run by states have also provided insurance for people who were otherwise uninsurable in the underwritten individual market before Obamacare was put in place.
The whole "I couldn't get insurance" BS really boils down to "I couldn't get insurance from a particular insurer in the individually underwritten market, and I didn't take advantage of any of the other ways to get insurance coverage."
Of course the solution, Obamacare, is worse. Now the cancer patient gets an expensive, high deductible policy, but their policy in many locales doesn't cover any services at the kind of hospital a cancer patient needs to be treated at.
Here in New Hampshire you can get an Obamacare policy regardless of your health history, but it won't cover you at Dana Farber, or Mass General, or any of the other places you might need to go to save your life. And if your kid gets really sick you won't have insurance at Children's Hospital either. How is that a solution to the supposed cancer patient's problem?
Or, that a family member got a job that had insurance which would cover you.
I would have expected to see a plethora of marriages of convenience, even, for this (and so called gay marriage should, if this dark cloud had a silver lining, make it doubly easy).
The problem with a lot of our “liberal” solutions is that they encourage the atomization of society, rather than its uniting. That is a recipe for poisoning progress rather than for fomenting it.
Have the Freepers forgotten so quickly that the Obamacare law conveniently provided $2 BILLION to media outlets to promote nice stories about Obamacare!! For Shame!!
This is a consequence of the secularization of benevolence.
It really needs a living relationship with God to make it go well.
Well a story like this is kind of cheap (in both ways) so what’s going to happen now?
Trump ought to be pointing out the shame of taxing taxpayers to provide propaganda for their own taxation!
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