The latest in gov't mangling of our rights

[JThiessen]

Originally Posted by suicideneil

Arent alot of the lawsuits brought because the companies refuse to pay out though, claiming that the customer who has often paid for years & $$$$ over that period isnt covered for some specific diseases, but they arent told this (fine print) until they try to make a claim (alot like travel insurance and private health care in the UK- certain rare illnesses and conditions arent covered, rather conveniently saving the insurance firm alot of money since they dont have to pay out)?

Seems to be a common theme covered in alot movies over the past few years...

Well, on one hand you are correct. People do end up having to take thier insurance companies to court to get payment on their bills at times. Yes, there have been many movies and books on this.
But what I was referring to was malpractice lawsuits. From what I've been able to tell, malpractice insurance has gotten so costly, that its one of the main drivers on the cost you and I see when going to the Dr.

Originally Posted by jayjay283

Ill keep this simple 3rd grader, because thats what I am... 1st Nancy Pelosi is killing us. If we dont riot we will die (so to speak).. I don't understand why people say "I was denied a surgery" ..I don't have health insurance and got my gall bladder out. Cost $65,000 I dont have $200 right now but they did it. They werent going to let me die. You just have to go to the hospital and they fix you, ask for money later. I lived in England, that medicine system was nice, you need glasses, free, free eye exam, free glasses free shots from doctors etc..like Neil said, you want your own physician in a top roof apartment, you pay. I Just don't get where people say they are denied medical help here in America. I never have been and I have no insurance and im not on medicaid or medicare or anything, straight up insuranceless.

I dont believe anyone is saying they are denied medical help - they are denied insurance coverage for a lot of medical help. Also, you cant just go to any hospital to get that kind of care you are referring to - you need one that is county or state funded, otherwise they will get you stable and send you to the one that takes "freeloaders" (so to speak). So who's going to pay the cost of fixin' you if you have to have some sort of major surgery 'cause a lipo blew up while you were holding it in your teeth?

[jayjay283]

Originally Posted by JThiessen

I dont believe anyone is saying they are denied medical help - they are denied insurance coverage for a lot of medical help. Also, you cant just go to any hospital to get that kind of care you are referring to - you need one that is county or state funded, otherwise they will get you stable and send you to the one that takes "freeloaders" (so to speak). So who's going to pay the cost of fixin' you if you have to have some sort of major surgery 'cause a lipo blew up while you were holding it in your teeth?

The joint I goto "Northwest Community Hospital" (NW Illinois) is probably a state type hospital. Its the nicest hospital ive been in. Trust me ive been in alot of them. I imagine a private hospital like "little company of mary" in Torrance California wouldnt help me. NW Community fixed me up many times and then sent me a bill. I did negotiate it to about $26,000 out of the $65,000 they wanted and I paid it cash, so maybe they check your credit before you go in there ? All I know is I will be back there soon knowing myself and If my luzury of getting patched up and paying later is ruined ill be really pissed




Ill add on edit: It pretty much worked out to be the same money, when I had heatlth insurance last in the mid 1990s, if I still worked there and paid for it in 2009 it would have been almost $25,000 so its pretty much a wash. Glad im getting married next month and will then get Walgreens heath ins. lol Thats when I will pull out my quad and longboard again

[Finnster]

IDK about this.. what they are really trying to do is have all the healthy people buy insurance to enlarge the money pool to expand the coverage for everyone. If you want to eliminate practices such as "lifetime payment caps" and "pre-existing condition exclusions," etc (ie ways for the insurance companies not to pay for you if you need major care) and not jack up rates a bunch, you have to bring more people into the pool to distribute the costs.
Ins companies made up those terms to save money, as paying for major care is really expensive.

In personal terms, I know my uncle had his thriving small business destroyed after he had a heart attack. It was just personal insurance, so they dropped him right after he got out of the hospital. No other ins company would cover him or the heart condit (pre-existing) and he had to layoff people, sell equip, and take money out of the biz just to cover angioplasties, stints and other care. He had quite a bit of $ to start with, but he was nearly bankrupt in a few years. He spent 100's of thousands out of pocket. His docs managed to get him onto Medicaid via disability after a number of years, but he had lost his business then. Gov't ins is the only one who would ever cover his ass now (esp after cancer and other crap that came.)
I can't see how this system is at all good for small business or anyone else not under large group care.

What's more F'd up is that people pay into ins companies as long as they are well, then get dropped as soon as they get older and really ill. The gov't (ie us taxpayers) then get stuck paying for all the most expensive medical care while the ins companies spend all their youth just collecting premiums for major profits.
No one will win advocating throwing granny out of the hospital and try to let her pay for 100's of $K's of cancer treatments on a tiny pension, so what do you do?

There needs to be tort reform as well, but doctors have huge incentives to just rack up tests and collect bills. I've been in the hospital several times and seen where Drs (not even yours) just come by to ask to see how the patient is, then charge them $400 for a Dr's visit/consultation.
They really need to address this issue of cost controls in any reform. If they just pass a Ins req w/o cutting costs, subsidize poor who can't afford it, we're just going to see a huge funneling of tax $ into the Ins companies.

I don't mind the Ins req to make the freeloaders pay their fair share into the system, but they better get good cost controls and new incentive structures in there. Ins companies can make their profits by increased volume, not by increased margins.

[Finnster]

PS.
I don't see how anyone can go on about the Dems when the Reps have been just as bad (and really more culpable) as far as spending goes.

Reps go on and on about sm gov't and fiscal responsibility, yet every R president/Congress has grown the budget, and the last R pres to run a net balanced or surplus budget over their term was Nixon.

Besides TARP and the auto bailouts which Bush started, what about the Medicare part D program Bush started in 2003? Free drugs to seniors on the gov't tab, but the gov't is not allowed to negotiate low prices? Basically a huge giveaway to Pharma from the taxpayer. Anywhere from $500-$700 billion over Obama's full term just on that. They are all full of crap, but at least the Dems are honest about it, and at least they are not all in your business of who you are screwing and how you are doing it (all the while they are banging their hookers and Argentinian mistresses.)

[kraegar]

It all comes down to the bottom line, as was said above. I work at a hospital, it's a small, community hospital. Not in an even moderately sized city. We give $30m a year in "free" care away to the uninsured. The majority of it in ER visits for car accidents, etc that result in MRI's, blood tests, xrays, emergency surgery, huge amounts of medications, and lengthy hospital stays.

The only way to make that up is to jack up the price for everyone else that actually has insurance.

So the gov't plan is to make the pool its maximum size, so everyone is covered, and spread the costs out. Can't say if it'll work yet, the current plan is too undefined (last time I read it, anyway) on caps for different services.

Why is everyone required to have coverage under it, though? Because if not, those who don't continue to screw the system every time they get into a car accident, etc. (Unless we could say "No insurance? You only get the amount of care you have cash in your pockets to afford")

Can't really compare to england or Canada, either. In those countries the hospitals themselves are owned by the gov't, and I don't see that happening here.

[starscream]

I'm sorry, but Fix'd news is the last place to watch for any kind of accurate information.

I find it quite sad that "Socialism" has been religated to the distribution of wealth etc to the poor, however, when it's distributed to the rich, oh well that's capitalism. The last time I checked, the only interests the Health Insurance companies were looking out for were their own.

If you left it up to the RIGHT, they'd privatize everything. Just think what would happen if we privatized the fire dept or the police force. Wow, we'd have a lot of burnt down buildings and a corrupt police force. {sarcasm} Oh how fire dept's and police are socialism, we should definetly get rid of them and privatize it. Hitler had police and fire dept's too, so we should definetly get rid of them {/sarcasm}

[redshift]

FWIW

The Binary Fallacy

The binary fallacy is the crude dialectic that assumes that the two political parties are the only choices for voters and that what’s bad for one party will always be good for the other. As evidence for this, we have Nixon’s Watergate scandal followed by huge Democratic victories in congressional elections. President Carter’s economically distressed four years begat the Reagan revolution and so forth.

Democrat Party operatives see the collapse of the nation and attendant pain as working against the Republicans since they were in control when the decline was assured by Republican sponsored programs. The situation is so bad, they argue, no one will take the Republicans seriously over the near and midterm. Add the highly favorable demographics among youth, women, and the emerging Latino population and you’ve got the dominant political party of the next few decades.

Republican loyalists speak of the risks that the Obama administration has inherited. When he falters, as he may given the circumstances that Republicans know all too well, his failure will assure a Republican comeback they argue.

Both parties fail to realize two flaws in their embedded fallacy.

First, the fallacy became a manufactured truth over decades due to the rigged game of U.S. politics. Funding and access to major media presume membership in one of the two major parties. Third party candidates need to poll equal or ahead in the public opinion polls, as Ross Perot did in 1992, in order to get any media attention or money. When the system is heavily rigged to exclude third parties, then, of course, there are only two choices.

The second flaw in the binary fallacy is embodied by our current troubles. The fallacy does not take into account successful performance during extreme crises. We’re either in a depression or we’re in the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. Times are desperate for tens of millions. The vast majority lives in fear of entering the world of the unemployed, homeless, and bereft. Iraq is the biggest foreign policy disaster in modern times. Our new plans for an Afghanistan adventure have the potential to equal Iraq in terms of national loss and increased threats of blowback.

One party created the current disaster. The other has embraced the broadest parameters of the policies that created the disasters that voters want fixed — wealth transfers to the ultra rich while the vast majority gets just about nothing plus mindless, counter productive fantasies of empire through war. (emphasis mine)

The two parties and the elitists who look down their noses on the overwhelming majority of citizens assume that the people will simply tolerate the creation of a catastrophe by one party and the perpetuation of that grave injustice to citizens by the other.

When you’re broke, you know it.

When you’re out of work, you know it.

When there are no jobs, you know it.

And when the country continues to fight overseas but does nothing to protect economic security at home, you know it.

The game is up. The party is over. The people have a fundamental right to survive, at the very least. If both parties continue to promote policies that leave out almost all citizens, as is now the case, there will be alternatives that look nothing like the current two political parties. The binary fallacy and the two parties that fail to address our crises will be no more. Relying solely on the failures of the opposing party while embracing their programs will soon be defunct

Source: http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/th...f-two-parties/

Another good one: http://www.etherzone.com/2008/brow060208.shtml

[starscream]

[QUOTE=redshift;323793]FWIW

The Binary Fallacy

The binary fallacy is the crude dialectic that assumes that the two political parties are the only choices for voters and that what’s bad for one party will always be good for the other. As evidence for this, we have Nixon’s Watergate scandal followed by huge Democratic victories in congressional elections. President Carter’s economically distressed four years begat the Reagan revolution and so forth.
[QUOTE]

Good read,
The really sad thing is that the way the laws are setup now, and all the funding behind each party, it's virtualy impossible for a 3rd, 4th or any other party to gain control. Unless the laws are changed etc, we are stuck with the Democrats/Republicans in control.

[redshift]

Found this, from today- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33056413...th-health_care

I have to say, it's surprisingly balanced for mainstream.

[redshift]

I voted for Perot twice, 92 and 96. Both times he lost of course, to SlickWilly. Those are the only times I ever voted, and the last. I didn't need the internet to know that the game was staged, I felt it.

And yeah starscream, it does leave you feeling hopeless. All the rahrah is in vain.

I suppose it's easier for some to cling to fantasy, rather than the real hope that would be provided if they would face some cold facts.

And the question as always is, what can we do?

About all you can do... is spread the word.