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From: Mark Conrad on 25 Dec 2009 00:29 In article <doraymeRidThis-9F6557.08211025122009(a)news.albasani.net>, dorayme <doraymeRidThis(a)optusnet.com.au> wrote: > > A top-of-the-line _unregulated_ blood lab would have > > spotted your rare blood type. > > So would a top of the line government owned one. > What is your point? No it would not. ObamaCare is all about using the lowest cost alternative, no expensive gear to spot rare blood types. ObamaCare takes this to extremes, they already tried to get political power to enforce medical decisions, taking such decisions out of the hands of the medical industry. The U.S. Court of Appeals shot down the ObamaCare attempt, saying it was an end run to violate existing law. Now they are trying to do the same thing, wresting medical decisions out of the hands of medical professionals, and getting non-medical politicians to make important medical decisions, by way of their 111 new political regulatory committees that this health bill creates. Doctors bitching now about the two hours following their shift to fill out paperwork - - - wait until that bill is jammed down their throats and they have to spend four hours filling out paperwork for all those new committees. Primary health care doctors are fined 5% of their Medicare payments if they recommend too many additional tests, such as the tests to spot rare blood types; if they exceed the 90 percentile figure for everyone else's "mundane medical care". Furthermore, they may be penalized further by having to pay for the test, even though they merely recommended the patient to a specialist, for the actual testing. Put yourself in the shoes of a doctor. Are _you_ going to recommend an expensive MRI test for a patient that has a few symptoms of a brain aneurysm? Hell no, not with all the potential penalties of ObamaCare. You are going to let your patient die of a stroke, in order to keep yourself in business. Either that, or you will "cherry pick" your patients to treat only those patients who have trivial medical problems. At the present time, patients can sue the doctor/hospital for lack of medical care that could have saved their life. It is called "malpractice". That legal privilege will no longer be allowed when politicians are calling the shots; retracting that legal privilege is right in the wording of the health bill. Most people are not even aware that they will have no longer have any legal recourse. Mark-
From: Mark Conrad on 25 Dec 2009 01:33 In article <C759A282.4E44F%nicknaym@[remove_this].gmail.com>, Nick Naym <nicknaym@[remove_this].gmail.com> wrote: > > You are dead because your f****** ignorant politicians were > > screwing around trying to regulate health care in the same way > > that they regulate the trucking industry. > > Nah...I'm dead because I could no longer afford to pay my premiums and/or I > reached my shrinking lifetime insurance cap and/or my coverage was not > renewed after I contracted [insert your expensive-to-treat-serious- > chronic-disease of choice here]. That too, I agree. > Look, right now I have absolutely no real choice when it comes to my > health-care insurance. Years ago, before the Industry got "special > dispensation," I had several choices; didn't have to take out a second > mortgage to pay increasing premiums (health-care premiums do indeed > rival > mortgage payments) for _shrinking_ coverage; nor fear that my policy > might > not be renewed and I'd find myself "uninsurable" next year for a > condition I > developed this year. A little competition -- that "free market" > economics > stuff that the right wingnuts seem to claim stewardship of (including > the > God-given right to interpret what the hell it means and when and where > it > applies), to suit their (or their corporate sponsors') agenda, certainly > wouldn't hurt. Okay, I will agree that the right-wingnuts (of which I am one) sometimes go too far, but they are orders of magnitude better at medical decisions than rabid left wing socialist politicians with Muslim leanings who are constantly running down our brand of capitalist democracy to the world. I for certain did not like the Bush stand on stem-cell research, nor do I like the Right Wing rabid types denying global warming, even though I am a dues-paying member of the Rush Limbaugh for president movement. ;-) ;-) ;-) > > Why? - Because your fly-by-night competitive "regulated" > > blood lab did not check you for rare blood types, and you > > have the rare "Bombay phenotype" type of blood. > > (there are about 200 rare blood types) > > > > Ah! I see. Competition inevitably leads to > "lowest-bidder-offering-poorest- > quality-always-wins" economics. Right on, I have you pegged as a closet right-wingnut. ....but then, I am a closet left-wingnut, go figure. > Sort of like allowing a government-sponsored insurance > alternative, to stimulate competition and provide consumers > some choice, will lead to Death Panels, right? Right on again, you frighten me. What _really_ frightens me is that once we go down the socialist path, we will no longed have the power to return to a capitalistic democracy, as per one of the definitions in my Mac dictionary: - - - - - - - - - - - - - "socialism - (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism." "The term "socialism" has been used to describe positions as far apart as anarchism, Soviet state communism, and social democracy; however, it necessarily implies an opposition to the untrammeled workings of the economic market." - - - - - - - - - - - - - Do we really want to abandon our capitalist democracy which has led to our high standard of living, and go down the path of a so-called "social democracy" like most Europeans have? State dictated health care is certainly the first step towards a socialist system, so we had better well decide exactly what we want before we take that step. Mark-
From: Linda Hungerford on 25 Dec 2009 01:59 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. > > -- > dorayme 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. Linda H.
From: Kurt Ullman on 25 Dec 2009 07:01 In article <C759A282.4E44F%nicknaym@[remove_this].gmail.com>, Nick Naym <nicknaym@[remove_this].gmail.com> wrote: > > > screwing with _your_ health care? > > > > No...no more than I want the stupid bean counters to be allowed to continue > to "screw with _my_ health care." > 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. > > Might help? "Competition" -- that cornerstone of our supposed free-market > economic system -- _might_ help? > > > > provided it is judiciously applied. > > "Judicious competition"...I'll have to look that up. ;P Me too. > > Look, right now I have absolutely no real choice when it comes to my > health-care insurance. Years ago, before the Industry got "special > dispensation," I had several choices; didn't have to take out a second > mortgage to pay increasing premiums (health-care premiums do indeed rival > mortgage payments) for _shrinking_ coverage; nor fear that my policy might > not be renewed and I'd find myself "uninsurable" next year for a condition I > developed this year. A little competition -- that "free market" economics > stuff that the right wingnuts seem to claim stewardship of (including the > God-given right to interpret what the hell it means and when and where it > applies), to suit their (or their corporate sponsors') agenda, certainly > wouldn't hurt. You really haven't had any choice at all unless you were involved prior to WWII when Congress bought off a workforce getting more and more restive by deciding that employer-sponsored healthcare was not REALLY a violation of the wage freezes in at the time and (concurently) gave only the employers the tax write off. From that day forward essentially the only HC choices you had were those offered by the employer. 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) Add in Mcare (not for socialized medicine concerns, but because it essentially put a floor under insurance benefits), bad decisions on the part of employers during the 70s when it was actually cheaper to add insurance benefits than wages for awhile, the rise in the subsidies for healthcare that resulted from this (in 1960 we paid around 50% of all of the healthcare expenses out of our own pockets, as of 2005 or so, it was down to less than 12%. When something is subsidized to that extent, people will over consume especially if not is viewed as leaving some of the employees wage on the table), the fact that many of the current benefits are such that it really isn't insurance any more and hasn't been since the days of the old major medical (insurance is usually defined as taking a small but expensive risk and spreading it around more people. Appendectomy qualifies, going to see the doc for a sore throat shouldn't), changes in treatment that aren't reflected in either delivery or payment systems (we have gone from a relatively inexpensive acute system where they either got better or died, did both quickly, and then were no longer costing the health care system) to a very expensive chronic system-- my favorite example being "blue babies" that before the advent of teflon patch would die within hours or days but who now probably will be living full lifetimes seeing the doctor). Anyway, there are many reasons for the current HC mess, few of them are being addressed in the current bill, and some are actually going to be made worse. Buckle up. -- 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 07:12
In article <241220092129276759%aeiou(a)mostly.invalid>, Mark Conrad <aeiou(a)mostly.invalid> wrote: > Now they are trying to do the same thing, wresting medical > decisions out of the hands of medical professionals, and > getting non-medical politicians to make important medical > decisions, by way of their 111 new political regulatory > committees that this health bill creates. These decisions have NEVER been in the hands of medical professionals in that respect. Insurance companies have since their creation always decided what they would and would not pay for. However, it should also be noted that most of the decisions are made by MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS employed by the insurance companies... or Medicare for that matter. > Put yourself in the shoes of a doctor. Are _you_ going to > recommend an expensive MRI test for a patient that has a > few symptoms of a brain aneurysm? Hell no, not with all > the potential penalties of ObamaCare. Of course, there are about no studies showing this to be cost or treatment effective, unless there is a very specific pattern of symptoms. One of the biggest debates in the medical field is overuse of tests and the unintended consequences thereof. For example, how many excess cancers related to radiation dose may we be triggering with yearly mammograms compared to those that we catch? > > You are going to let your patient die of a stroke, in order to > keep yourself in business. Either that, or you will > "cherry pick" your patients to treat only those patients > who have trivial medical problems. We are already seeing this in MCare. > > At the present time, patients can sue the doctor/hospital > for lack of medical care that could have saved their life. > > It is called "malpractice". Which is why, without tort reform, you aren't gonna see many changes in over testing > > That legal privilege will no longer be allowed when politicians are > calling the shots; retracting that legal privilege is right in the > wording of the health bill. Most people are not even aware that > they will have no longer have any legal recourse. > Find that for me, please. Tort reform would have made the Trial Lawyers come unglued and they are as much Mother's Milk to the Dems as Big Business is to the GOP. -- 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" |