Posted on 01/28/2017 9:15:41 AM PST by Auntie Mame
Freepers, let’s put our heads together and figure out how to fix healthcare in the US.
I’ll never forget watching Bill Bradley give a speech many years ago where he spoke with great outrage, saying something like this:
“I was at the doctor’s office the other day and there was a woman who brought in her young child. And the child had to have a shot of penicillin. And I watched that poor mother as she was leaving have to pull out her checkbook and write the doctor a check for $60!” he said with trembling voice.
I believe that until we remove this mind set, that healthcare should be “free” (and we all know that nothing is free), the “health care” problem will only get bigger and bigger.
One day I was driving down the freeway and saw a billboard adorned with the faces of three adorable little boys and underneath it said: “If you’re not going to _______ (insert generic name of medical clinic), you don’t have a healthy family.”
Until we remove the brainwashing that we’re subjected to every day, that you’re not healthy unless you’re going to the doctor, the problem will get bigger and bigger.
And of course, we all know about the incessant commercials on TV advertising disgusting diseases and symptoms. I believe these should be banished from the face of the earth, just like they banished cigarette advertising. It’s revolting, disgusting, and definitely not healthy (another form of brainwashing by the medical complex in this country).
There are large swaths of people who will not or can not pay for their own health care. Let’s start by listing these people because until we consider all the relevant segments of society that use large amounts of medical care or cannot afford it or choose not to pay for it, we cannot come up with solutions. At this point, let’s not judge them, this is not the point of this post.
Please add to this list from your own life experiences. Here’s a start:
1. People who have serious health conditions that, unless they’re millionaires or dependents of millionaires, cannot pay the exorbitant prices charged by the medical complex for their serious debilitating conditions.
2. People who are basically bums, who, by whatever reason, choose not to work to earn money that could be used for their health care (I have a brother in this category).
3. People who work but do not make enough money to pay the exorbitant prices charged by the medical complex.
4. People, such as hypochondriacs, who use inordinate amounts of medical services, and, if given free access to all medical services available, would spend their entire lives doing nothing but going doctor to doctor.
5. People who want others to pay for medical procedures that rational people believe are not necessary for a healthy life, like sex change operations, etc. They believe the medical procedures are necessary but “normal” people do not.
6. The mentally ill.
7. The disabled.
I believe the best way to solve what we’re brainwashed to believe is America’s health care crisis is to let the free market take care of it. But here in America we can’t have people dying in the gutter. It offends our sensibilities. So we need to figure out what we’re going to do about the people listed above.
We all tend to sit back and believe the politicians are going to fix it, but if you were one of those politicians, what would you do?
I’m sure Trump remembers those days. Maybe that can happen again, as an option?
Medicare for all.
Someone who lost his healthcare under obama told me, that he realized not having health insurance was surprisingly cheap.
First step is stop insuring routine office visits
End all mandates on what coverage people must buy - they purchase only what coverage they think they need. All companies can sell insurance in all states if they want. Government subsidies only to help with catastrophic coverage insurance and supplemental insurance to help with preexisting conditions. No one on their parents’ insurance after twenty years of age - start encouraging more independence and less snowflakedness by having kids purchase their own policies which at young age would be minimal cost. Age adjusted limits beyond which cost of medical care would be fully deductible from tax obligation.....
Two words: “Singapore model”. It works
I have heart disease which at some point may need open heart surgery to fix.
I’m self-employed and for many, many years I was unable to get health insurance...completely and totally unable to get it. Not one company would insure me, not one.
Then, under Obamacare I was finally able to get it. I understand how awful O-care is. I’ve got friends who have seen their rates double and triple while their deductibles have risen to $8,00-$12,000 before coverage starts, which is completely untenable.
I know some Freepers here say folks like us should just pay the $500,000 to the heart surgeon and cardiologist, or find a doctor willing to take payments, or simply die because we’re not multi-millionaires, but in the real world...that just won’t fly.
We somehow have to find a way to fix the system without returning it to the bad old days when people like me were simply terminal patients who just weren’t embalmed yet.
Ed
And if they have no coverage and they have deadly results from the pre-existing condition?
You’d just have them die?
Ed
That’s insane. We live in a country that should be better than that...”no money, sorry buddy, go off and die somewhere.”
In my opinion that’s barbarous.
There was a woman in my town about 15 years ago, a single mother with three kids who got brain cancer. The surgeon wouldn’t operate on her unless he was paid $35,000 up front, which she didn’t have.
Her friends threw car washes, BBQ’s and put jars out all over town asking for donations.
It didn’t work, she couldn’t raise the money and she died.
That was barbaric...just barbaric, that in this day and age the gov’t had no way to help her.
There has to be a safety net, in my opinion, and not simply your method of “no money, go away and die.”
Ed
No. Low income folks have access to Medicaid and insurance companies should offer affordable catastrophic plans along with transfer coverage if between policies - as mentioned in another post.
Got it...sorry.
Ed
First step is stop insuring routine office visits
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Good idea.
I’m not to keen on all this preventive medicine either. My docs want to prevent every damn thing.
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