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25th February 2017, 04:15 PM | #561 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Holy ****! Leaked report suggests millions could lose coverage under GOP health proposal.
Quote:
Gotta get those tax cuts for the rich. |
26th February 2017, 11:46 AM | #562 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Interestingly, some doctors make the case that a high percentage of medical procedures don't really help the patient and may well cause harm, even death: http://www.theatlantic.com/please-su...517368%2F#seen |
26th February 2017, 03:27 PM | #563 |
Penultimate Amazing
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From that Atlantic article, one of the most pertinent quotes:
Quote:
The imaging is an issue, I just went through this with my 92-year-old mom who was on the bubble for needing a stint (straw-like devices that prop open arteries). I authorized it and made sure the hospital had her living will on file. It might have done her no good. There is one stint she got that seemed very effective and that was to a renal artery. It dramatically reduced her blood pressure. But per the article, that didn't necessarily make her healthier. Bodies are complicated organic systems. Blood vessels aren't faucets. Bones aren't just scaffolding. Things that seem to make intuitive sense don't necessarily improve health. |
26th February 2017, 04:12 PM | #564 |
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26th February 2017, 09:09 PM | #565 |
Penultimate Amazing
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26th February 2017, 11:20 PM | #566 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Oops, I meant stent, not stint.
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26th February 2017, 11:45 PM | #567 |
Illuminator
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I'm in Canada 🇨🇦 ... poster boy of free Health Care ... I was eating hard candy from my kids Halloween treats on All Hallows' Eve' .. cracked an old repaired molar (about one fourth of the tooth on the distal side is missing, second tooth from the back, on my left side)
It's almost March and it's not fixed yet ... have to save up cash as dental work is not covered here for working families (have to be on welfare for free dental care) I also pay for all my prescription drugs, three different concoctions to keep my blood pressure out of the stratosphere, that's also not covered here, unless you're old or on welfare. |
26th February 2017, 11:47 PM | #568 |
Illuminator
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27th February 2017, 04:53 PM | #569 |
Penultimate Amazing
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27th February 2017, 09:20 PM | #570 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Trump just realized that the health care issue is complex.....projects that "no one knew."
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1. He'd never do that. 2. Okay but he's not currently doing it. 3. Okay but he's not currently technically doing it. 4. Okay but everyone does it. 5. He's doing it, we can't stop him, no point in complaining about it. 6. We all knew he was going to do it which... makes it okay somehow. 7. It's perfectly fine that's he's doing it. |
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28th February 2017, 01:42 AM | #571 |
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28th February 2017, 02:28 AM | #572 |
Lackey
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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28th February 2017, 03:10 AM | #573 |
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28th February 2017, 04:31 AM | #574 |
Orthogonal Vector
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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28th February 2017, 04:33 AM | #575 |
Orthogonal Vector
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No you moved the goalpost from life time maximums to specific cost benefit analysis of one condition. You totally ignored past expenditures(ie the things that would add up to a lifetime maximum) in your discussion of if a treatment would be administered to save a life or not.
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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28th February 2017, 04:37 AM | #576 |
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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28th February 2017, 04:42 AM | #577 |
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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28th February 2017, 10:04 AM | #578 |
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28th February 2017, 10:07 AM | #579 |
Not a doctor.
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Suffering is not a punishment not a fruit of sin, it is a gift of God. He allows us to share in His suffering and to make up for the sins of the world. -Mother Teresa If I had a pet panda I would name it Snowflake. |
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28th February 2017, 10:17 AM | #580 |
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28th February 2017, 10:24 AM | #581 |
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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28th February 2017, 11:00 AM | #582 |
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TBF, ACA is complicated, but the underlying health insurance market isn't really much less complicated. Health insurance in the US, irrespective of the payment mechanisms involved, is a very complicated thing. Some might call it a ***********. Some might use a slightly more blue term than that polite spoonerism.
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The distance between the linguistic dehumanization of a people and their actual suppression and extermination is not great; it is but a small step. - Haig Bosmajian |
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28th February 2017, 11:30 AM | #583 |
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28th February 2017, 11:33 AM | #584 |
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There are an awful lot of administrators who'd be out of a job. As Emily's Cat is so keen to point out, a major part of the problem is that doctors in the USA earn much, much more than they do elsewhere. Fixing the problem properly, to bring costs in line with the rest of the world, would involve a large cut to doctor's salaries. You'd need to get by the AMA which, at the behest of it's members, heavily restricts the number of doctors graduating each year. A bit like De Beers and diamonds. |
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28th February 2017, 12:11 PM | #585 |
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No, nobody really "knows how to do it." There are numerous entities that have legitimate but conflicting interests. If you look at universal coverage systems around the world, there is no one model. Some use a national health system like the UK, where most providers work for the government. Many, like Germany and Japan, use private insurers that are closely regulated, like public utilities. The approach that would probably get the most support would be something like Medicare-for-All, supported by an increase in payroll taxes. But insurance company and hospital company executives wouldn't be able to collect multi-million dollar bonuses.
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28th February 2017, 12:13 PM | #586 |
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28th February 2017, 12:55 PM | #587 |
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There is no single issue that if fixed would solve our high healthcare costs and poor access. I work in supply chain for a large healthcare org and there are problems that contribute to high costs there as well
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28th February 2017, 01:09 PM | #588 |
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It actually is that complicated That doesn't mean that there aren't some very motivated lobbyists involved as well.
One of the major complications that often gets overlooked is how closely interconnected many elements of the health industry are. In other developed countries, political leaders looked around relatively early on in the process and said "Hmm, this health care thing seems like it could get messy. Let's avoid that and go ahead and centralize it now before it gets too big". The US didn't. There's a ton of history that can go into that, including the fact that health insurance had it's beginnings in the US. It started as ancillary products sold in the workplace alongside life insurance: critical illness benefits, AD&D, disability insurance, etc. In its infancy, health insurance was simply another tool for financial protection. Somewhere in the 30s, however, things changed. History isn't my strong suit, so dates aren't going to be part of this discussion . At some point, there was a wage freeze - employers weren't allowed to pay higher wages. Don't ask me why, had something to do with the great depression and/or WW2. Anyway... employers still had a need to compete with each other for labor, so they began adding non-wage compensation to the package: group life insurance for example. This was the first time that something resembling modern health insurance showed up. Much of that went hand-in-hand with the beginning of the blue cross association. BCA went out and contracted with hospitals so that they could offer better packaged rates to those employers. It was all downhill from there. Once that initial foot was in the door with employer-sponsored health insurance, we saw the expansion of those contracted hospitals to include physician services, then prescription drugs, screenings, routine care, and preventive. Hospitals started contracting with medical suppliers, technical services, etc. Physicians started banding together to increase their negotiation power. Insurance companies relied on independent insurance agents for distribution. The states started taxing premiums. Insurers began acting as a conduit for access to medical services instead of just financial protection. We're at a point where a fundamental restructuring of the industry affects the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people. Who pays the bill isn't even the largest of the problems in the US health care industry. Other countries didn't go down that same path - they didn't have the same hand-in-hand growth that the US did. They employed their power to learn vicariously, and sidestepped a lot of the potholes we've got. They never developed a health insurance broker industry, because they really never had a mature private health insurance marketplace. They never developed 3rd party pharmacy benefit intermediaries, because the never had a mature health insurance industry that needed to contract directly with pharmaceuticals to provide access to drugs. They never ended up in the gordian knot of provider costs that we're facing, because they never really had to deal with provider contracting in the same way the US does. So yeah, it actually is more complex. |
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The distance between the linguistic dehumanization of a people and their actual suppression and extermination is not great; it is but a small step. - Haig Bosmajian |
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28th February 2017, 01:30 PM | #589 |
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I've had a bit of experience interacting with lobbyists and I've noted that they are incredibly good at making the group they represent seem like a vitally important part of any relevant process whose interests must be respected lest catastrophe result. They tend to be particularly effective when dealing with people less informed about the field (which, of course, includes many politicians).
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28th February 2017, 01:31 PM | #590 |
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I just note that wage and price controls were imposed during World War II, to prevent -- or at least discourage -- war profiteering and market distortions that would cause shortages of basic goods.
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1689.html |
28th February 2017, 01:44 PM | #591 |
Orthogonal Vector
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What is the big deal with repealing the ACA, they had the plan worked out last year only to have the president veto it, just push that through again. Simple people really how hard is that?
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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28th February 2017, 01:49 PM | #592 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Because the ACA has many parts. Simply repealing it would mean returning to the pre-2010 landscape: Pre-existing conditions would keep people from buying insurance at any price, people could have their insurance canceled on pretexts if they started racking up big bills, adult children couldn't remain on their parents' insurance, small employers wouldn't have to offer insurance, money for Medicaid would be cut, etc., etc., etc. It turns out that many people actually like -- and benefit from -- the ACA; they just hate that nasty old "Obamacare."
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28th February 2017, 01:53 PM | #593 |
Orthogonal Vector
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It is almost as if they never intended any of their votes to pass so they didn't need to have then written in a form they cared about. But they would never do a pointless grandstanding gesture like that.
Hmm imagine how much they would have panicked if Obama had signed it instead of Vetoed it... |
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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28th February 2017, 05:12 PM | #594 |
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The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French) |
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28th February 2017, 08:31 PM | #595 |
Penultimate Amazing
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1. He'd never do that. 2. Okay but he's not currently doing it. 3. Okay but he's not currently technically doing it. 4. Okay but everyone does it. 5. He's doing it, we can't stop him, no point in complaining about it. 6. We all knew he was going to do it which... makes it okay somehow. 7. It's perfectly fine that's he's doing it. |
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1st March 2017, 06:31 AM | #596 |
Penultimate Amazing
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It's an interesting thought exercise. Obama could have said "I have decided to comply with the will of the people, as expressed by the legislators they have elected. Of course, if this isn't really what the people want, they could send somebody else to Congress...."
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1st March 2017, 03:29 PM | #597 |
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The latest draft of the Obamacare repeal is available. To Republican legislators only. It's literally being kept in a basement where people have to go to read it. All that's missing is the sign saying "Beware of the Leopard".
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1st March 2017, 03:54 PM | #598 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Republicans are going to silly lengths to avoid meeting with their constituents over their ACA replacement plan. WI Senator Johnson just sent a cease and desist letter to constituents who want a town hall meeting.
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1st March 2017, 09:02 PM | #599 |
Scholar
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The Donald will hire a focus group made up exclusively of Vegas magicians, and it will happen.
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1st March 2017, 09:07 PM | #600 |
Scholar
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Eliminating all of the overhead and headaches that come with various people (patients, medical office staff, hospital office staff, etc.) dealing with the insurance companies...
Which, in real life, translates to paying a bunch of extra paper-pushers salary + benefits... Yes, we would definitely save money by cutting out the middleman. And people would be less afraid to access care when they become symptomatic, because they would be less afraid of the resulting bill if we had Medicare For All. |
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