Obamacare

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Stormieweather

In my opinion, all health care and medical costs are a complete and utter ripoff. There is NO reason to charge $129 for a box of Kleenex in the hospital or $86 for an Ace bandage. A prescription that cost $3 to manufacture should not cost $180 per month. A broken ankle should not cost $5,000 to fix.

Part of the cost issue is that you are paying for your band-aid
and the band-aid of the guy who doesn't have insurance...
and part of the cost for the band-aid of the person who is covered by medicare or medicaid. :/

[henry quirk]

Of course, Lamp, you understand you're confusing 'free market' (unrestrained, unrestricted, transactions between, among, of, individuals) with 'capitalism' (the free market's stunted, retarded, drooling, shitting itself, lil brother, the one that mates with its sister, socialism, spawning even more horrific monsters in the manner of Lilith)...you 'do' get the difference between the two, yes?

Probably not...*shrug*

[monster]

Originally Posted by plthijinx

i can afford insurance now. 6 months ago i could not. since i returned from my hiatus from society i could not. not until i got a decent paying job. so basically he's saying that if i cannot afford healthcare then it's going to be taken from my tax return. gee. really.

Wait, if you don't have a decent paying job, you won't be paying any taxes and so no tax return. No?

Also, pay less tax then there's no tax return for them to take. Aim for a $0 tax return. Why are you giving the government a free loan? Especially if you don't support its policies? As long as you don't end up owing tax you're good.

[monster]

A little biased perhaps, but made me smile (not saying this is you, philthy)

[tw]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

In reality, most hospitals and physicians and their medical aides are given a special place in society, and are not simple retail businesses subject to fair-market competition, freedoms, and restraints.

Nonsense. Hospitals have gone bankrupt and closed. Hospitals have even conducted massive firings of surgeons due to insufficient funds. At least one of those doctors I know (a heart surgeon) was applying for jobs just like everyone else.

We must decide whether we want socialized medicine (ie UK's National Health Service) or a working free market medicine (ie Affordable Health Care currently being implemented). Otherwise the best solution is to let people die in the streets if they cannot pay.

The current system is why a box of Kleenex must cost maybe $125. Due to a perverted and disfuctional system, openly advocated by many with a poltical agenda. Medical services must charge excessively so that the few pay for all others. And to pay for a bloated bureacracy necessary to make cost redirection work. This is the system that extremists want to protect.

Medicine is not a charity. It is a business. A service just like any other business whose purpose is the advancement of mankind. Even non-profits must balance the books.

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by tw

We must decide whether we want socialized medicine (ie UK's National Health Service) or a working free market medicine (ie Affordable Health Care currently being implemented).

what do you have against single payer?

[classicman]

Medicare for all!!!!

[tw]

Originally Posted by Ibram

what do you have against single payer?

Where did I say I was against (or for) any solution? Defined was only the problem with multiple directions that can be taken. Your quote did not include all directions.

[Ibby]

your phrasing, "we need to X or Y. otherwise, Z." seems to me to imply just those two options... Sorry if I assumed too much?

[tw]

Originally Posted by Ibram

your phrasing, "we need to X or Y. otherwise, Z."

Putting people who cannot pay on the street to die is a reasonable option. I don't understand why those who advocate free markets ignore that option. Only other viable solutions define how the hospital can be assured of payment.

No way around it. Either a hospital knows it will be paid. Or can refuse service. 'Refuse service' is only 'not an option' when one is entertaining emotions. Refusing service is a viable option considered when one is actually confronting the problem That option should be default should we choose to ignore the problem.

No other business would offer services that cannot be paid for. Nor should any business be expected to. Especially when all other options are viable and proven. That means I stated no preference for any. I even think leaving people to die on the street is a viable option. Because it solves the problem.

[plthijinx]

Originally Posted by monster

Wait, if you don't have a decent paying job, you won't be paying any taxes and so no tax return. No?

Also, pay less tax then there's no tax return for them to take. Aim for a $0 tax return. Why are you giving the government a free loan? Especially if you don't support its policies? As long as you don't end up owing tax you're good.

no,no, now i have a good paying job. six months ago i did not. i paid taxes while on that assignment (QA/QC of panel fabrication and wiring, see the gnomie thread beginning, he went to work with me while i worked there. it was a stepping stone back into engineering) so i did get a tax return. granted it was taken by the government for a government mistake when child ransom, errr support, was re-organized and mis-calculated.....by who? mhm. the gubbmint.

as far as aiming for a zero tax return, yeah, i see that approach. i like it actually, however having dealt with the IRS in the past, it's better to feed the mafia and get a return than to wind up owing it.

ETA - good comic monie, loved it!

[plthijinx]

Originally Posted by tw

Putting people who cannot pay on the street to die is a reasonable option.....

..... No way around it. ..... I even think leaving people to die on the street is a viable option. Because it solves the problem.

you think maybe we could all chip in and buy an island to ship these people to?


i'm kidding!!!!!!

seriously, now i know we've had our differences before and i want to keep this as civil as possible. if you, for example, had a great job but now you're either unemployed or underemployed and you get sick -no insurance anymore - and could die from your ailment .....you're basically saying put me out in the street for "bring out your dead" instead of help me? nah man, i get what you mean, a darwinism effect if you will, but dude, really. humane.

i remind you of the hippocratic oath:

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not", nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, be respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

so i hope you don't contract herpigonnasyphillaids. the end result could be painful. just sayin.

[Ibby]

I think tw is being hyperbolic to satirize conservatives who really DO believe that if you get sick and can't pay for it you SHOULD just die.
edit: i take that back. I hope that. I have no idea what sort of android or savant or whatever tw is... i can NEVER tell when he's being facetious or if he even ever is.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by tw

Nonsense. Hospitals have gone bankrupt and closed.
Hospitals have even conducted massive firings of surgeons due to insufficient funds.
At least one of those doctors I know (a heart surgeon) was applying for jobs just like everyone else.
<snip>
Medicine is not a charity. It is a business.
A service just like any other business whose purpose is the advancement of mankind.
Even non-profits must balance the books.

"Nonsense" is nonsense. Hospitals and medicine are businesses,
but have special supports and advantages that other forms of business do not have.
Medicine, and especially hospitals, survive in part, on the charity of the public.
As such, they have advantages because certain things (obligations) are expected of them.

What other free-market, service-business gets tax-free properties,
donations from the public, support by religious organizations, volunteers,
governmental reimbursement at rates that vary by location,
grants to employees for working in relatively isolated communities,
county- or volunteer-provided supplemental assistance such as ambulance services, etc.
And in some communities are allowed monopolistic business practices.

Likewise, there is state-support Schools of Medicine and Nursing to train hospital employees
that cause the tax payers far more than what the tuition and student loans.

TW, As you said in another post, "I never said...."
I too never said anything like "no hospital has gone bankrupt".
Of course some have, and physicians and hospital staff have been fired.
I too can give a specific examples of a hospital that fired it's entire
janitorial staff so aides and voluteers would do that work,
and in the same month increased the CEO's salary by $100,000.

I agree with you that Medicine is not a charity, but it can not be a free-market business either.
Of course, they have to balance their books.
But if when a hospital is in the red at the end of the fiscal year,
they can have a campaign asking for public donations to balance their books.
And, they can go to state and federal agencies asking for "emergency funds"
How many truly free-market businesses can compete on such unequal playing fields ?

As said before, hospitals have a special place in society, and as such,
have some special (non-emotional) expectations and obligations to serve the public.

ETA: I forgot to mention "training hospitals"
Some hospitals get special compensations from governments
by providing "training" to medical personnel.
As such, they are often (very often) getting high-trained employees
for below-market salaries.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Ibram

i can NEVER tell when he's being facetious or if he even ever is.

Reality is facetious. All medicine must cease - the Hypocratic oath must be violated - if medical facilities cannot pay their bills. All businesses including non-profits and even the Catholic Church must pay their bills. Otherwise they must cease to exist. Denying that is facetious.

Does not matter if the building is tax free. It is still a business. It must pay its bills. It must pay its employees. Or it must cease to exist even if desperately needed. Why are so many churches closing? As with any business, even if needed. It must cease to exist if the bills are not paid.

Without a system where customers can pay, then a hospital should be expected to refuse service. Otherwise medicine gets denied to so many more. Free market is the American way in any and every business. But to not fix the system only perverts a free market. Customers did not die because hospitals are evil. They died because we did not fix what is obviously a worst system in the world. Adversarial politicians caused those deaths by wanting bad economics and a political agenda.

Americans pay double what anyone else in the world pays because we think it is fair to seek medical services without paying. Foolishly think charity is a permanent solution. How to guarantee no medical services? Americans are somewhere down between 25 and 50 on the list of successful medicine. American medicine is that poor. Costs twice as much as any other nation. Deaths directly traceable to economic mismanagement. Facetious is that reality if it also was not so sad.

If we do not have a workable solution, then the most honest and decent people have no other option. Deny service to anyone who cannot pay. That is free markets gone bad because so many leaders would exercise a political agenda rather than address a problem. People are already dying because bills cannot be paid.

If our system cannot guarantee payment, then the Hypocratic oath is violated. Nothing works if the bills are not paid.