TENN: 200,000 are off TennCare — again (socialized medicine)

The Tennessean ^ | 1/03/03 | Bill Lewis

[freepy smurf]

another nazi.

I love you too. If you're going to shove your hand in my pocket and take my hard earned money away from my family (I crawl to a crappy job at 5 AM too), you'd better have a more convincing excuse than "Free stuff is there for the taking" or "I'm too tired to try for something better".

[mg39]

I won't do your historical research for you, laughing boy, but communists and trade unionists were the Nazis first victims.

[tdadams]

I won't do your historical research for you

The standard retort of blowhards who hastily spout off words they can't backup.

[mg39]

Freepy, you said people who "settle" for cleaning toilets (or similarly undesirable jobs) are lazy. That's an ignorant statement. People come from very supportive, nurting backgrounds, and they come from miserable, impoverished backgrounds.

My grandparents came to this country penniless, and though they were both educated, worked very hard, for very low wages, not because they wanted to, but because they had no choice. Their children, my parents, had it better, and I as a professional have it better, too. I thank my grandparents for all their hard work in miserable jobs.

Not everyone has the means to get a better job and must take what they can get. They work very hard at these lousy jobs, like cleaning toilets or picking vegetables, in the hope that their children will lead better lives. You call them lazy, which is outrageous, ignorant, and unacceptable.

[mg39]

"The standard retort of blowhards who hastily spout off words they can't backup."

My pointing out your error, and my refusal to do your work for you, does not make me a blowhard. You're wrong, and you can't accept it, but then, that was evident from your very first post.

[tdadams]

I didn't make an error, and you are a blowhard, evident from your first post. A sanctimonious blowhard at that.

I've had a firsthand account of Nazi Germany all my life which corroborates with everything I've seen, everything I've heard, and everything I've read and you're telling me I'm wrong? That's rich.

I pity you.

[LonghornFreeper]

Man, you are pretty cool. It takes some real brilliance to refer to those who disagree with you as Nazis. In the spirit of the argument I will go ahead and call you a moron.

[mg39]

Thank you, I am pretty cool.

FR has its share of knuckledraggers, including people who think like Nazis (though ignorant of their history). If you agree that it is okay to equate the poor and disabled with the lazy and criminal, then that is your pitiful problem.

[Zack Nguyen]

You need to settle down. With all your talk of a "master race" and "concentration camps" the insinuation isn't nice. No one was attacking you personally. Don't attack them. Sermon over.

[DannyTN]

The Tenncare system is corrupt. The solution is to reinstate Medicaid. It worked much better.

The privately run MCO's (Managed Care Organizations) that were contracted to manage the benefits rewarded their founders with multi-million dollar parachutes and then went bankrupt leaving care providers unpaid and causing many of them to bankrupt as well.

Since the MCO's were paid a flat fee per person they signed up 50,000 people from bordering states who didn't even live in Tennessee. The only requirement was that they have a post office box in Tennessee.

Hopefully most of the people cut were these people. But I do not doubt that they probably cut some people who shouldn't have been cut. The answer is that they need an expedited review process to reinstate these people. (Expedited and TN government are mutually exclusive except for the Nashville Clerk of Court who seems to be have a very efficient auto tag process.)

Simultaneously with the enrollment cuts, certain benefits have been cut. The media has found several cases of people who are going to die, if the benefit cuts go through. And some of these people are literally wards of the state. The TN Justice Center is suing Tennessee on behalf of these people to get their benefits reinstated.

They have not thought through the TennCare system. They installed it without any independant controls or oversight.
And in the process, the politicians have made their friends wealthy and eliminated much competition in the healthcare field.

[DannyTN]

The other problem is Healthcare in General. 30 years ago healthcare professionals spent 15% of their time documenting their care and filling out red tape. Now they spend 65% of their time documenting their care and filling out red tape.

The constant march of beuracracy keeps installing more and more controls. Some are designed to insure that beuracrats have jobs, some are designed to insure that the people caring for you are providing good care (of these some are good and some indicate a lack of trust in Doctors and nurses), some are designed to prevent the system from being frauded (these usually don't work and audits are more efficient), some are to provide statistical information that may or may not be helpful, but will probably be used by some statistian that has no clinical experience and will badly misinterpret the result causing who knows what harm.

Meanwhile the Docs and Nurses that really care about people are leaving the profession because they can't provide the care they wanted to, they don't get paid when they do (thanks to HMO's, Tenncare, etc), the costs of being in the profession are too high, the legal liabilities are too great, and the surveying beuracracy turns on providers and docs and nurses if they receive the slightest complaint no matter how unfounded.

So the schools are letting anyone through medical and nursing school now. They are not weeding out people who are not competent or do not have integrity. Meanwhile the Hospitals and providers are pushing more and more skilled care down to workers without medical educations. The number of people working in Hospitals that addicted to controlled substances is horrendous. Untrained aids now perform numerous operations in Hospitals that used to require an RN. LPN's (2 year degreed nurses with no clinical training) do the rest of what used to be nursing. RN's now fulfill the roll of doctors (nurse practitioners).
And Doctors, well they are going on strike or entering politics.

And the beuracracy marches on, installing a new control, more paperwork, more penalties for every error.

Glad I'm not sick.

[GailA]

They did raise $300M in taxes this last session. We did DODGE the Income Tax for this year. BUT watch out in 2003..Weasel Pharoh Phil Bredesen will be wanting MORE taxes to finance his SPENDING SPREE, and to keep his promises to the NEA and the minorities to FIX ALL the crumbling college buildings BEFORE he builds another MUCH needed prison. We need a new mens prison, a women's prison for the rising population of women criminals and a new juvy prison, currently we can only house 1,000, they are stacked up in local juvy lock ups.

[GailA]

Our neighbor is totally disabled, in a wheel chair due to polio, has lost 95% of his hearing and can't hear very well with the use of a hearing aid. He's 61. He has high blood pressure and is a mild diabetic with 1 kidney. Keeps getting kidney stones because of the HB and diabetic meds. He makes $704 a month and can't qualify for TennCare.

Yet illegals, state employees, inmates, out of staters, and out of country can get it.

[babylonian]

Folks rave pro & con about TennCare, but it recently saved my butt, literally! I had tried to get back on Blue Cross/Blue Shield just over a year ago, and was turned down because of my weight. In April of last year I started having medical problems, and applied for TennCare. It kicked in just one week after I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. TennCare paid for my surgery. I hate to think where I'd be without it.

Interesting story: Last November I had to reapply for TennCare. I was given an appointment to come in for an interview (At the Dept. of Human Services in Gallatin) There were scores of people there...on a Saturday! And, all with the same appointment time! At 11 am, we were all herded into a large room full of tables, with a form and pencil on the table at every seat. There was a facilitator at a podium who guided all of us through filling out the form, and two or three "helpers" circulating the room to give special help to those who were having problems.

I was sitting across from a very loud mouthed woman of about thirty five who was dressed just as loud, complete with lots of dangly jewelry. She had to have her own special "helper" because she didn't seem to understand any of the questions. Because of her loud mouth, most of us had trouble hearing the facilitator speaking to the whole room. The loudmouth didn't know what to put down for her address, and asked if she could use her mother's work address. The "helper" told her they needed her home address, to which the loudmouth replied that she didn't have one...she was living with various friends! Asked for an ID, she said she didn't have one, except for an expired ID from Georgia. She continued giving the helper a fit, asking for special attention and treatment. In one of her replies, she commented, "Everybody knows me!". to which I replied, (under my breath and without looking up) "Yes, we all know you, but we're all wondering who you think you are." She sarcastically thanked me for my opinion, and I told her she was welcome and deserved it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the lady to my right break out into a wide grin, and some man in the room (behind the loudmouth) gave me a big thumbs up! The loudmouth was a perfect example of the type that TennCare is trying to weed out.

I still have my TennCare, and I'll bet the loudmouth does not.

[GailA]

You, my neighbor and the others who qualify for TennCare need and should receive the help it provides. The illegals and mooches from out of state and out of country should NOT be able to suck up our tax dollars, thus depriving the provider with adequate reimbursement for their services. I read a couple of years ago that one doc did an 11 hour brain surgery got paid a whole WHOPPING $150.00 for it from TennCare..no wonder the docs are bailing out if it left right and center.

In Memphis some sleazy docs are sending buses into the projects to round up patients for eye exams, pap smears, and other GYN screenings weekly...same patients every week. Another type of FRAUD that needs to be STOPPED.

[pray4liberty]

They have not thought through the TennCare system. They installed it without any independant controls or oversight. And in the process, the politicians have made their friends wealthy and eliminated much competition in the healthcare field.

Which is probably what they intended to do all along, if intentions equal results.