National Healthcare for the USA

by sammielee24 348 Replies latest jw friends

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  sammielee24

  How much is spent on healthcare for jailed pedos, rapists, murderors and other scum of the earth each year

  HB..I did bring up the issue of the 2.1 million prisoners that are currently in the system and receiving health care services. Seems like those who don't want to pay for national health care for the victims aren't doing much to lobby for no healthcare for the prisoners. I'm confused. It's okay for our dollars to pay for the healthcare of 2 million prisoners - including rapists, murderers, sex fiends - but it's not okay for our tax dollars to pay for healthcare that would cover everyone outside of prison...doesn't make sense to me. Report after report ad nauseum, has shown that the costs to cover every single person in the USA with medicare at this point, is less than the average cost per person spent right now. sammieswife.
• 

  hamsterbait

  LDH says

  "sweet Jesus, save the drama for your Mama."

  How is other peoples suffering comparable to soap opera hysteria?

  Why doesn't LDH go and visit India? In big cities there are feral children nobody cares for. They live from hand to mouth , living by theft and cunning, until they are old enough to go to prison, where for the first time in years they will get regular meals.

  One writer describes how she saw a well off child throw away an iced cream stick, which was descended upon by starving children, who then fought for the chance to lick it.

  The Times did a series on India, and described how dead children can lie all afternoon in the gutter, because the passersby don't want to get involved.

  Mother Teresa of Calcutta was an idiot. We will never win the argument against the LDHs of this world.

  HB
• 

  LDH

  Report after report ad nauseum, has shown that the costs to cover every single person in the USA with medicare at this point, is less than the average cost per person spent right now. sammieswife.

  And report after report has shown that the number of Doctors will plummet like a lead filled balloon because no one wants to finance YEARS of education to work for $9.71 per office visit.

  Once again I ask you to show me a plan that pays to educate Drs and guarantees them a HEALTHY compensation package.

  Do you even know WHY Dr's accept Medicare to care for the elderly? It's because of Medicare Capping Guidelines.

  DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?

  Medicare participation

  Q What are the main differences between being a participating Medicare provider and a nonparticipating provider?

  A Participating physicians receive a higher Medicare-allowed reimbursement amount than nonparticipating physicians, inclusion in Medicare physician directories that are distributed to senior-citizen groups and individuals on request, access to toll-free claims processing lines and faster claims processing. Participating physicians must also agree to take assignment on all Medicare claims, which means they must accept Medicare's allowed amount as payment in full for all covered services and cannot bill the patient for amounts in excess of the Medicare allowance. However, this does not mean they have to accept every Medicare patient.

  Nonparticipating physicians receive 95 percent of the Medicare-allowed reimbursement amount that participating physicians receive. These physicians are not included in Medicare's physician directories and do not have access to the toll-free claims processing lines. Nonparticipating physicians do not have to take assignment on all Medicare claims. Instead, they can make assignment decisions on a claim-by-claim basis. Unassigned claims must be submitted to Medicare, which will pay the patient directly. The physician must then collect for the service from the patient. For this type of claim, nonparticipating physicians may bill patients for more than the Medicare-allowed amount up to a certain point. That point, known as the limiting charge, is 115 percent of the Medicare-approved amount for nonparticipating physicians. Note that the 95-percent payment rate applies regardless of whether the nonparticipating physician accepts assignment on the claim.

  To choose the option that's best for you, you need to determine whether, as a nonparticipating physician, your total revenues from Medicare, patient co-payments and billings up to the limiting charge would exceed your total revenues as a participating physician, particularly in light of collection costs, bad debts and claims for which you accept assignment. The AMA has estimated that nonparticipating physicians would need to collect the full limiting charge amount roughly 35 percent of the time for a given service to equal participating physicians' revenues for the same service. (See the example below to determine how the different payment arrangements would apply to a $100 Medicare fee schedule service.)

  EXAMPLE: A $100 MEDICARE FEE SCHEDULE SERVICE

  Payment arrangement Total payment rate Payment amount from Medicare Payment amount from the patient Participating physician 100 percent Medicare fee schedule = $100 $80 (80 percent) paid by carrier to physician $20 (20 percent) paid by patient or supplemental insurance (i.e., Medigap) Nonparticipating physician/ assigned claim 95 percent Medicare fee schedule = $95 $76 (80 percent) paid by carrier to physician $19 (20 percent) paid by patient or supplemental insurance Nonparticipating physician/ unassigned claim 115 percent of $95 (Medicare's "limiting charge") = $109.25 $0 $76 (80 percent) paid by carrier to patient $19 (20 percent) paid by patient or supplemental insurance$14.25 balance bill paid by patient

  So please tell me again, LittleToe, that a Medicare type NH system is not a monopoly?!?!?! Either accept what we pay, or we'll pay the same amount to the patient directly and you can worry about getting paid.

  Lisa

  You'll ignore this, too Class
• 

  sammielee24

  you would have told me that your "cousin" died last week while tragically falling under a tractor wheel at work, and since he had no insurance everyone just left him there to rot.

  No - I couldn't have. I only have one family member who owns a farm and she lives in Canada so if she has an accident, she gets immediate care. Sorry you don't like real people with real stories LDH - thats life for millions of people. I often wonder if low self esteem drives people to self absorption or if it is a product of their childhood. swife.
• 

  LDH

  We will never win the argument against the LDHs of this world.

  Because you can't prove your case.

  Do we need to fix the current system? YES. Is socialized medicine the answer? Based on the logic presented in this thread (Save the little babies in India) it will never happen.

  Present a good case, prove that it will be financially feasible, and prove that people will have a choice. Is that too much to ask?

  Lisa
• 

  sammielee24

  according to Dr. David Goodman, a researcher at Dartmouth's Medical School, the corporate practices compete for the insurance and Medicare dollar by subjecting patients, especially the elderly, to unneeded tests and procedures. He contended in a July New York Times article that "small physician groups in disconnected offices provide fragmented treatment while multi-specialty practices" increased the quality of care, as well as efficiency if they are integrated with a hospital like Hopkins.
  
  Beatty blames much of the trend toward corporate medical practices on the influence of the insurance industry, which encourages their formation to enlarge their networks. And often the HMOs second-guess these practices and deny coverage to patients. But for doctors, the corporate practice has become necessary for their survival. For the insurance industry, Beatty says, "it's a matter of greed."
  
  He has a point: Ronald A. Williams, chairman of Aetna, earned $6.1 million, plus $18.2 million in stock options last year. Dale B. Wolf, chief of Coventry Health Care, earned $13 million in 2004, including stock options. And William W. McGuire, CEO of UnitedHealth, raked in nearly $37 million in 2004.
• 

  LDH

  I often wonder if low self esteem drives people to self absorption or if it is a product of their childhood. swife.

  And I often wonder, when people "leave" the world of JWs, how they adapt to having to actually BUILD A CASE for their position instead of "By National Health Correspondent in the US" gobbledygook.

  You've done nothing except try to appeal to people's emotions. Big deal. We all know you will stop your car and hand out candies and bandaids to the little babies.

  Now how about some PROOF.

  You have yet to answer my question about National Food Service. Screw India, kids here die of hunger every day. Shouldn't we have a Nationalized (Socialized) system of food distribution? Why or why not?

  Lisa

  You're fun to play with Class
• 

  sammielee24

  There's one big reason healthcare costs so much more in the U.S. and it has nothing to do with rationing care.

  The payment system for healthcare in the U.S. is based on a fatally flawed assumption: that competition will make private coverage more efficient, when it does exactly the opposite. No private insurer is required to cover everybody who applies to them. So they have great financial incentives to spend time and money to identify potentially high cost people and reject them. For individual insurance companies this makes economic sense, but for society as a whole this system creates an enormous duplication of cost and time.

  The result: nearly 30% of all U.S. healthcare spending goes to administration, i.e. rules and red tape to screen out potentially high cost people, compared to 3% for Medicare and other single payer systems.

  Several independent studies comparing many payment systems have found that a single payer system would cover everybody for less than we spend now. And with no reduction in the kind of coverage that most of us have now. We could save nearly 30% of our current healthcare spending and use it to cover everybody, with the same private care and quality as we get now.

  You cannot fix a system that is based on a fatally flawed economic assumption by making small changes on the margin. You have to change the fundamental design of the system to get it to work.
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  littlerockguy

  Lisa you have a PM
• 

  sammielee24

  FYI, the majority of US doctors favor a fairly reimbursed single-payer plan (see www.pnhp.org).

  And if we go single payer and they don’t like it, they have options. One, anyway. It’s called South Africa and it is the only other country outside of the US that does not have a universal health care system.

  And I’ll say once more: single payer is not socialized medicine, it is socialized insurance. It essentially eliminates the profits that are shelled out to the 1500 insurance companies in the US in favor of one Medicare administrator.

  For the same amount of money that we are paying to cover 85% of the population ($1.7 trillion), we could cover 100% of our people. The only people that won't like it are the insurance, HMOs, pharmaceutical and hospital industries