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From: Wes Groleau on 25 Dec 2009 09:44 Linda Hungerford wrote: > On Dec 24, 3:13 am, dorayme <doraymeRidT...(a)optusnet.com.au> wrote: >> That is not the crucial test, it is a simple fact that by and large, if >> people of the same weight eat exactly the same and exercise exactly the >> same, they will differ not that much. There are probably interesting >> differences but they would not be gross. > > Your statement,above, needs to be conrolled for gender. Males, with > 30% more muscle mass, can and will lose weight much more efficiently > than females. But in the long run, after 'equilibrium' is reached, eating exactly the same and exercising exactly the same will maintain almost the same body weight, absent rare genetic or environmental interference. -- Wes Groleau achy breaky grammar http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/WWW?itemid=229
From: Wes Groleau on 25 Dec 2009 10:14 Kurt Ullman wrote: > You know at all levels this exchange pretty much boils the essence > of the debate. Interesting that nobody is suggesting maybe we should > just screw with our own health care. You obviously don't visit alt.support.diabetes often. > BTW: That was also the last time you were the insurance company's > primary customer. It is has always been since then that the employer > pays the bills and thus is the main concern of the insurance company. > (When viewed in that light, pretty much all of the things the IC does > makes more sense since the goal of the actual customer over the last few > years has been to keep THEIR costs lower) And yet, the fact that the payer gets money both from the employer and from you, means the total cost can creep up even more--making it very hard for you to buy individual coverage. My wife had breast cancer (surgery, radiation, chemo) and I had diabetes. Yet the COBRA package we were offered cost about as much as the payer had paid out for all that treatment. Either they were basing the cost on our medical history, or they are making a dozen fortunes on healthy people. > Add in Mcare (not for socialized medicine concerns, but because it > essentially put a floor under insurance benefits), ... Not 100% sure what you mean. Medicare keeps other payers from paying less than Medicare? I work for a non-profit healthcare system. If we had _only_ Medicare and Medicaid patients, we would be in the red and eventually cease to exist. As much as we decry the stinginess and sometimes worse of the commercial outfits, they do pay on the average enough over our costs to allow us to write-off a lot of treatments for the uninsured. We worry that a "public option" would pay like Medicare, and that usage of it would gradually grow until non-profit providers are in trouble and for-profits are for sale. Another side of government-run healthcare: I also used Veteran's Administration health care while uninsured. As a taxpayer, I am appalled at the amount of money we are spending to treat complications _caused_by_ the bad advice and bad treatment given there. When my V.A. doctor prescribed once-a-week blood sugar testing, the pharmacist changed it because "that was not the policy" for my condition. When I cited the 2003 guidelines from the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists in support of my request for better thyroid treatment, I was also quoted the "policy." When I stopped in there one evening with chest pain, the doctor, after a five-minute interview with NO TESTING said it's not cardiac and gave me tranquilizers. (Standard procedure most places for chest pain is to take no chances--immediate troponin, EKG, maybe nitro.) Fortunately, it was not cardiac, but guessing that was stupid, especially for a known diabetic. An interesting thing about Medicare is the fee schedules. Most services, we get the scheduled payment of WAY below what we bill. But once in a while, a particular procedure that really doesn't cost much is on the schedule for a lot more than we bill--and they pay what's on the schedule, even when the bill is less. -- Wes Groleau Carlos Santana's Solution to Drug and Education Problems http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/russell?itemid=1539
From: Kurt Ullman on 25 Dec 2009 10:38 In article <hh2ksd$uqt$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Wes Groleau <Groleau+news(a)FreeShell.org> wrote: > Kurt Ullman wrote: > > You know at all levels this exchange pretty much boils the essence > > of the debate. Interesting that nobody is suggesting maybe we should > > just screw with our own health care. > > You obviously don't visit alt.support.diabetes often. > Okay, nobody in Congress with any power has actually.... > > BTW: That was also the last time you were the insurance company's > > primary customer. It is has always been since then that the employer > > pays the bills and thus is the main concern of the insurance company. > > (When viewed in that light, pretty much all of the things the IC does > > makes more sense since the goal of the actual customer over the last few > > years has been to keep THEIR costs lower) > > And yet, the fact that the payer gets money both from the employer > and from you, means the total cost can creep up even more--making > it very hard for you to buy individual coverage. My wife had breast > cancer (surgery, radiation, chemo) and I had diabetes. Yet the > COBRA package we were offered cost about as much as the payer had > paid out for all that treatment. Either they were basing the cost > on our medical history, or they are making a dozen fortunes on > healthy people. Or the 20% who are using 80% of the resources are hard to cover. I had always thought that the best idea was to get an FDIC-like reinsurance plan for healthcare to take care of everyone above a certain cut off. Spread the costs of these outliers across a much larger group than would be available otherwise. There are years and years of studies showing the impact of just one expensive person on the costs of premiums, even among the big Union-Big Biz contracts. > > > Add in Mcare (not for socialized medicine concerns, but because it > > essentially put a floor under insurance benefits), ... > > Not 100% sure what you mean. Medicare keeps other payers from > paying less than Medicare? Yeah essentially. Who is going to agree to a package less then MCare, especially among the big employers/unions. These in turn, are what the smaller companies want so they can successful compete for workers. > > I work for a non-profit healthcare system. If we had _only_ > Medicare and Medicaid patients, we would be in the red and > eventually cease to exist. As much as we decry the stinginess > and sometimes worse of the commercial outfits, they do pay > on the average enough over our costs to allow us to write-off > a lot of treatments for the uninsured. Yep. Overall the Evil and Mean Insurance companies pay $1 for comparable procedures where MCare pays ~60 Cents and MCaid even less. Because the Feds are a monopsony (the buyers equivalent of buyer's monopoly). The original House measure required the government option to use the imposed, not negotiated, MCare payment system. No other entity would have been able to compete with that difference in payments. BTW: More and more docs are refusing MCare patients. > > We worry that a "public option" would pay like Medicare, > and that usage of it would gradually grow until non-profit > providers are in trouble and for-profits are for sale. Pretty much a given. I always thought that was a back door way to single-payor by making sure no one else was still in existence. -- To find that place where the rats don't race and the phones don't ring at all. If once, you've slept on an island. Scott Kirby "If once you've slept on an island"
From: Kurt Ullman on 25 Dec 2009 10:47 In article <0093127c$0$8156$c3e8da3(a)news.astraweb.com>, Warren Oates <warren.oates(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Despite what your right-wing politicians tell you, the Canadian health > care system just works; it's just there. I'll never lose my house or my > health care no matter how sick I get, and I don't have to "shop around" > for "coverage" and one of the best hospitals in the world is about 30 > miles from where I live and no one is ever "refused" health care and my > family doctor sees me within minimally 48 hours and sometimes the same > day. > Yep except for chronic long waiting times, chronic underfunding of capital projects, chronic lag times in adopting new technologies. And lets not forget that there is no such thing as a Canadian Healthcare system per se since there are large differences in funding levels between the various provinces. Lets also not forget about 5 years where all 7500 nurses in one resigned at the same time to protest wages they were offered. You also see such problems in the British government system. If you look at the polls, in the US, the number of people happy with THEIR insurance runs about 80%. However much less about the system in general. Sorta interesting that these numbers are pretty much in line with polling that shows little support for Congress, but much higher support for their personal CongressCritter. I am trying to figure out the importance of that congruence (g). -- To find that place where the rats don't race and the phones don't ring at all. If once, you've slept on an island. Scott Kirby "If once you've slept on an island"
From: Jamie Kahn Genet on 25 Dec 2009 15:02
Kurt Ullman <kurtullman(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > In article <0093127c$0$8156$c3e8da3(a)news.astraweb.com>, > Warren Oates <warren.oates(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > Despite what your right-wing politicians tell you, the Canadian health > > care system just works; it's just there. I'll never lose my house or my > > health care no matter how sick I get, and I don't have to "shop around" > > for "coverage" and one of the best hospitals in the world is about 30 > > miles from where I live and no one is ever "refused" health care and my > > family doctor sees me within minimally 48 hours and sometimes the same > > day. > > > > Yep except for chronic long waiting times, chronic underfunding of > capital projects, chronic lag times in adopting new technologies. And > lets not forget that there is no such thing as a Canadian Healthcare > system per se since there are large differences in funding levels > between the various provinces. Lets also not forget about 5 years where > all 7500 nurses in one resigned at the same time to protest wages they > were offered. > You also see such problems in the British government system. If > you look at the polls, in the US, the number of people happy with THEIR > insurance runs about 80%. However much less about the system in general. > Sorta interesting that these numbers are pretty much in line with > polling that shows little support for Congress, but much higher support > for their personal CongressCritter. I am trying to figure out the > importance of that congruence (g). I'd still take all the waiting lists and other issues of an underfunded socialised health system any day. I'm covered, no matter what (rich, poor, retired, unemployed - it doesn't matter a damn), and I've always the option to buy private health insurance (though I don't think I know anyone who has) if I want to avoid waiting for non-life threatening operations, for example. In the US medical debt is the principal cause of personal bankruptcy, and an estimated 40,000 people die every year from lack of health insurance (and about 100,000 per year from lack of healthcare, regardless of their insurance status). I really don't know how anyone can defend that. You're the only industrialised country that is so callous about it's fellow citizens, it allows them to lose everything if they cannot afford to pay - even their lives. -- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. |