Posted on 04/30/2009 2:58:28 PM PDT by Bill Dupray
“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Mr. Obama said in the interview with David Leonhardt of The Times. “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement, just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model is a very difficult question.”
(Excerpt) Read more at patriotroom.com ...
Let us say you have paid into a health insurance company all of your life, the time comes to have a hip replacement, but the company says, the actuarial tables say you only have 3 years to live why should we pay for a hip replacement? The answer of a person with a brain would be: "Because I have paid X amount of bucks into your program and you owe me this hip replacement, I have 3 year years left, and maybe more despite your tables, and I want them to be pain free and myself mobile. Pay up."
If you think that government insurance isn't paid for day after frickin' day by taxpayers who work for a living then you need a new brain. Embracing this type of BS means that you are not a conservative but are a liberal at best, and a communist at worst.
I vote for communist.
Soylent Green.
“Well, the man is making sense on this point”
Don’t get too excited. Translating Obamachevese, right wingers die.
Understand, Obama thinks this money is his to take. Just because American’s Spend money in the last 3 months of life, it is their’s to spend.
Why you may ask? Because a lot of this is coming out of cash / savings, The government is only paying a portion of this.
Also, when congress restricted private insurance from charging different rates based on age and setting up term plans like you have for life insurance, this responsibility shifted to the government. a.k.a. ponzi scheme a.k.a. social security/Medicaid/care/.... (age discrimination)
It isn’t right to deny the care now.
Maybe a mute point though, I think US is going to be insolvent unless they cancel all government goodies for 20 years.
>>But here the potential is the government making that decision (or forcing it on the medical community through law). And that’s wrong.<<
I know and it scares me.
More for one of my kids than myself.
All I’m saying is that if the government comes in and takes over, I hope they make my death painless.
>>I did not know if I should trust you...<<
LOL!
Trust but verify!!!!
I’m pretty sure the insurance company will still tell you to go to hell. The company doesn’t “owe” you anything just because you’ve been paying in for a long time. Consider what you’re paying for as “instantaneous” coverage. It doesn’t matter if you’ve paid for 10 years straight, if you stop, that coverage stop. It also doesn’t matter if you started paying for it a year ago and get sick (if the length of time you had insurance mattered, it wouldn’t really be insurance).
Everyone here complaining about not wanting some “bureaucrat getting between you and healthcare” is ignoring the fact that that is the case already. Whether it is an insurance company or a gov’t, nobody wants to waste healthcare resources. Private insurance companies actually have *more* of an incentive to deny you care, since they get to keep anything they don’t spend on you. An “efficient” private insurance company pays out as little as possible. I can’t even express in words how dumb some of the people in this comments section are.
Johnny lost his leg...... we could get him a replacement, a blood transfusion, antibiotics, pain killers, and physical therapy, but he'll just be a useless eater unable to contribute to the "greater good."
So why didn't you pay for it, Barry?
In fact, Barry - you can still pay back the cost, if you so choose.
Waiting....
Ahh! The “Right To Die” and the Duty to Die approach each other and soon they will merge under the rubric “One’s Duty to Die for the Greater Good.” Soon extreme psychological suffering observed in political enemies will be alleviated. Thank you “Divine One.”
The insurance company owes people who have paid into them, what else is insurance for? If you pay into your auto insurance do they not owe for a claim in an accident? If they try to claim otherwise the courts will straighten them out in a hurry. Your statement is BS. Insurance companies owe the person paying them for claims. Period. To say otherwise is just plain stupid. Why buy insurance if they don't have to pay or if they can pick and choose their recipients?
You are wrong, any government program for nationalized health insurance is wrong, and has been proved so in many countries. If you think differently then you don't belong on this forum, you belong on DU, that is where the communist and socialist hang out.
But soldiers *have* gov’t run healthcare, and that *isn’t* the case. They’ve had that for an incredibly long time, and they get substantially better care than privately-insured people. Subsidies for prosthetics and things are significantly better for military people with VA care than most people with private insurance.
There are plenty of reasons to be against gov’t run care, but the argument that this somehow introduces a “bureaucrat” into the equation is BS. The insurance company will pay out if you’ve been paying into their system *and* they think it is a good idea. They’re allowed to reject your claims for all sorts of reasons, and they frequently do. Many insurance companies have “maximum benefits”, and if you hit that limit, they stop paying for stuff, for instance. That limit doesn’t go up if you’ve had it for 5 years or 50. Insurance != “as much healthcare as you want under any circumstances”. It never has, and it never will, it doesn’t matter who the payer is. That’s all i’m sayin’
I use it as a comparison to people who think socialized medicine is a way to go. Also, for a little insight, check out the number of stories popping up recently concerning the VA and Active Duty health care..... such wonderful things like the same insulin pen being used for multiple patients leading to confirmed AIDS/HIV and Hepatitis cases. Or not screening blood before transfusions.... leading to all kinds of wonderful diseases being spread.
And, for some procedures that civilians can go and just get done...... there's a nice long waiting list. Now, I'm not complaining about it, just don't buy into the "everything is wonderful/grass is always greener" arguments.
Well, if you live in CA you can commit a crime to receive state of the art health care. The Feds are mandating we spend 8.5B in order to take care of prisoners.
Do you have statistics on that? In my experience, the last 3 months usually involve palliative care, hospice and the like, which isn’t all that expensive.
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