Obamacare
Quote: EvenBobPeople in
the UK often die waiting for an MRI.
You know that an MRI isn't...ummm...medicine, right? It's a diagnostic tool...
Quote: DocI didn't know the percentages, but I think I understood the principles. If you are prevented from billing the difference, and if you consider the 14% or 30% too low for your services, you are still permitted to decline that small percentage and bill the patient directly, are you not? I have known a few physicians who have declined to participate in Medicare, and it wouldn't surprise me if quite a few do not accept Medicaid. Do you just accept the low percentages from patients that you expect would not pay (or not be able to pay) themselves? Under that policy, it seems as if you would be choosing to receive small payments vs. going unpaid vs. declining to provide service. Accepting the lower percentage seems like a charitable service which you can provide or not. Some lawyers do pro bono work, too.
I am not permitted to decline my services to those 'insured' patients. I can bill a totally uninsured patient my usual fee, but cannot bill a Medicaid patient anything. I do consider it as charity work, even though I am paid a small amount.
Quote: rdw4potusIt's a diagnostic tool...
Yesssssss, a vital tool that needs to be used
BEFORE the doctor can treat the patient. He
can just guess whats wrong, would that be
OK if you were the patient?
Quote: EvenBobYesssssss, a vital tool that needs to be used
BEFORE the doctor can treat the patient. He
can just guess whats wrong, would that be
OK if you were the patient?
It'd be OK with me during the period before the machine became available. Of course, I'd also like the Doc to use any of the myriad other diagnostic tools available to him during that time as well. And, finally, since machine availability is determined based on need and not on a first-come first-served basis, it seems unlikely that there are many fatalities as a result of the process.
Quote: rdw4potusIt'd be OK with me during the period before the machine became available..
OK then. He says you've got cancer and starts
chemo and in a month the MRI says you don't
have it. Sounds like responsible medicine to me.
You guys crack me up. Somebody else wants us
to lie on the gov't forms if we don't like the questions,
and you want doctors to start treatments without proper
diagnosis, all so you can get something you think
is 'free', and its not free at all. Amazing.
Quote: EvenBobOK then. He says you've got cancer and starts
chemo and in a month the MRI says you don't
have it. Sounds like responsible medicine to me.
The MRI isn't the only machine capable of making that determination. It's not even the best possible option, and it sure is expensive. But IF my doc thought I had cancer, the wait for the MRI wouldn't be a month. The cancer patients go to the front of the line, while your wife with her sore back gets to wait for a month. Triage is a real actual thing. And sometimes it isn't even based on ability to pay!
Quote: EvenBobWho do you think pays for the healtcare, peoples taxes
do. You can't give a huge number of people more in
benefits than you're getting in taxes from them, the
system will go broke.
Healthcare costs what it costs, it doesn't magically become more expensive if you collect the funds to pay for it through taxation rather than via personal insurance companies. If anything it becomes cheaper because you've cut out that middleman.
Do you think health insurance companies run at a loss? Of course not so whereas in your system you have to put enough money in to cover your healthcare AND to pay off the shareholders of your insurance company, we only have to pay what the health care costs are (via National insurance which is separate to income tax, something I feel you may be confused over).
As this chart shows, far more is spent in the US per patient and the medical records suggest you certainly aren't getting twice the results.....
http://blogs.ngm.com/.a/6a00e0098226918833012876a6070f970c-800wi
Your current system is already costing far more than it should and it suggests that the other countries are doing thing better no?
Quote: EvenBob
This is what we're afraid of with Obamacare. My wife
got hurt on the job last year and went to the doctor
on Monday. She needed an MRI and got one on
Thursday. 3 day wait. In the UK, the average wait time
in 4-6 WEEKS for an MRI, and 3% of patients end up
waiting longer than the 18 weeks thats supposed to be
the maximum.
Looking at waiting times in isolation is pointless until we know the urgency of the people having to wait 3-4 weeks. In a life or death situation you would get the MRI straight away, if it was a mere precaution then you wait (because god forbid people who have more urgent and worrying symptoms get checked out first).
But I'll say it again, if you want to pay for private healthcare and get the scan quicker you still can so I don't don't what you are 'scared' of. The existence of the NHS doesn't mean there is no private industry too.
Quote: EvenBob
Why is god's name would we want this here? People in
the UK often die waiting for an MRI. But shit, its 'free'
so you can't really complain. What a crock.
Now that's just scaremongering lies, let me guess they've come straight from a Tea Party convention. If anyone dies waiting for an MRI it would suggest whatever they had was going to kill them anyway, there's not a lot you can do with fatal brain injuries even once identified but the statement you've made is nothing more than propaganda.
You only have to look at survival rates of countries with natioanlised healthcare to see how well the perform and how silly this myth is of people dying left right and centre whilst waiting for operations.
And here's another table you should be interested in if fearing for your health is genuine.
Preventable Deaths for selected countries
http://www.allcountries.org/ranks/preventable_deaths_country_ranks_1997-1998_2002-2003_2008.html
And look, the US are bottom, France (universal healthcare) are top. Ergo, the US have a bad record for keeping people alive that should be.
But of course the well off to rich in the States know why these stats are like this, because they horde the best healthcare for themselves meaning it's the poorer people that are victims (and in turn drivers) of the statistics above. So they hide behind excuses like being scared of the 'cost' of universal health or fears of waiting times (forgetting that the short ones they cite only apply to the people that can afford it who are taking the place of poor people who can't even afford that scan even thought they need it).
Quote: rdw4potusThe MRI isn't the only machine capable of making that determination. It's not even the best possible option, and it sure is expensive. But IF my doc thought I had cancer, the wait for the MRI wouldn't be a month. The cancer patients go to the front of the line, while your wife with her sore back gets to wait for a month. Triage is a real actual thing. And sometimes it isn't even based on ability to pay!
So, once again the idea is "let someone choose who gets the care." News flash, under the current system in the USA it is even better, minimal if any MRI waits. But "equal access" types would rather we all wait a month than someone who can pay gets better service than someone who can't.
In other news The idea that Obamacare is not affecting employment "because it has not been fully implemented yet" took another blow today.
Quote: AZDuffmanSo, once again the idea is "let someone choose who gets the care." News flash, under the current system in the USA it is even better, minimal if any MRI waits. But "equal access" types would rather we all wait a month than someone who can pay gets better service than someone who can't.
If no-one is waiting for MRIs at present, then it wouldn't matter what system is used to utilize the scarce resource, surely, as it obviously is not that scarce, and neither "payment" or "by need" or "physicians desire" matters. So no need for a link the Beatles.. that's not evidence ;)
The argument is better put that a pay-for system encourages the growth of MRI services into the healthcare space, which means costs decrease, and the number of providers increases, resulting in more provision of a formally scarce service/good.
Quote: AZDuffmanSo, once again the idea is "let someone choose who gets the care." News flash, under the current system in the USA it is even better, minimal if any MRI waits. But "equal access" types would rather we all wait a month than someone who can pay gets better service than someone who can't.
In other news The idea that Obamacare is not affecting employment "because it has not been fully implemented yet" took another blow today.
I wish people would stop making this silly argument.
The amount of people that need an MRI scan is not dependent on how it is paid for. Therefore simply having a "pay for" system can't make waiting times shorter by itself, the only factors that can make waiting times shorter are....
1) You buy more MRI machines
2) A number of people who need MRI's are taken out of the system and not given them
I suspect the US's waiting times are more do to with number 2 than number 1. If you have a large section of your society who are uninsured (or don't have the same level as cover as everyone else) then of course the rest get their scans quicker, but as the expense (and even lives) of the rest of your society.
And I'll say it again for the 1000th time, you can have universal healthcare alongside private healthcare. Instead of comparing the waiting times for an MRI scan in the US's private system with the NHS, why not compare it with the UK's private healthcare industry?
So if you can have universal health AND private healthcare it really means there is no argument against a drop in service and exposes opposition to it for what it really is. It's not about a fear of healthcare worsening (you only have to to look at global stats to show the US are hardly world leaders anyway) it's the greed and selfishness of not wanting to contribute to a system that benefits other people.
I find that very odd, the question "Why should I pay for someone else's healthcare" is very easy to answer and one that very few people would make in Europe.
