Posted on 04/11/2014 2:29:53 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The City of Boston this week is rolling out a new program that’s whimsically known as “Prescribe-a-Bike.” Part medicine, part welfare, the initiative allows doctors at Boston Medical Center to write “prescriptions” for low-income patients to get yearlong memberships to Hubway, the city’s bike-share system, for only $5.
These are not prescriptions in the legal sense. Rather, they are a kind of physician’s letter, says Alan Meyers, a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center. “A clinician working with a patient or family could generate this form and then a hospital parking office which is right on the campus could enroll the person in the program,” he explains. The hope is that signing low-income patients up for bike shares will help combat obesity, which disproportionately affects that community.
The $5 prescription rate Boston Medical Center is offering is significantly cheaper than Hubway’s $85 annual membership fee, and even beats the $6 24-hour-access pass often purchased by visitors. Boston has also waived credit qualifications for low-income patients, which have proved too much of a roadblock in the past, and is putting its own funds up to insure against potential losses or damages.
Perhaps the oddest thing about Prescribe-a-Bike is that it starts at the doctor’s office, yet its aims and functions are not strictly medical.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
And the first time someone falls, or has an MI, or gets hit by a car, the lawyer vultures will gather to strip the carcass of the unlucky doctor.
Bikes don’t work when you need to transport two kids, are elderly, don’t have the time to go slow or in an intense downpour.
Liberals love bikes as mass transportation, but most people can’t do it all the time.
And the Obama freeloader class expands yet again.
Who gets to pay the $5.00 fee for the recipients?
Awesome. Now some of the poor can get a doctor’s “prescription” to get easy access to a lot of bicycles, for which there is a lucrative “undocumented ownership” market. On top of the subsidized $5 access fee, I wonder how much more money will be lost to bike theft rings?
I wonder if they need to sign up for Obamacare go get script for a bike. And while you’re at it, register to vote. There’s got to be some connection to politics.
Nothing new. 30 years ago customers at my Schwinn dealership would buy exercise bikes because their drs. would write them an rx for one. They’d submit the receipt to their insurance co. for reimbursement.
This weekend, we are going to bike 50miles.
Bike on your own dime..
this will cost someone a ton. it won’t be the person that gets the bike.
How much longer until the doctor can make you exercise? Or worse the government can make you also? The precedent has been set (thank you justice Roberts)with the mandatory requirement of every American must purchase health insurance. We are truly living in tyranny.
regarding exercise and obesity. Those that don’t exercise an morbid obesity are actually good for the country. They will save medicare by dying before they are 65
Or, if they don't like you, doctors can call the cops and have your child abducted and incarcerated by DCS.
Schwinn had a lobbyist involved in writing the Affordable Care Act?
Who knew?
One of the biggest unrecognized issues behind organized crime are poorly monitored/designed government programs. From the mob’s start via prohibition to gas tax stamps in NY to IRS refunds organized crime counts on government for a significant amount of its loot.
FMCDH(BITS)
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