well I'm the one who used the term socialized medicine so I'll respond. I consider socialized medicine to be a healthcare plan where everyone receives basically the same type of healthcare and loses the option to choose what procedure to do. Everything must be approved before you can do it. This leads to worse care and overall frustration with the amount of time to get an answer. In the future, I will use the term "socialized medicine" in quotations for clarity or lack there of, whichever I deem necessary at the time.:grin:
Seriously? Just what do we do then with the people who DO need brain surgery? Accident victims with cerebral hemorrhaging go untreated then? Are you ready to REALLY say that about everyone who can get that care? This is an entrenched problem that costs way too much. She was getting free care on our dime but is finally considering doing the legal thing........going home.
I don't think it is the doctors, so much. It's mostly the medical insurance, the hospital administrators, and the third-party providers that are used to playing with huge amounts of money that isn't scrutinized carefully. The guy that sold my mom's $16,000 motorized wheelchair to Medicare and Humana made far more money than the rehab doctor who ordered it for her. The hospital that added $12 to my mom's bill for each box of Kleenex that she used is a prime example.
This already happens with your private insurers. Your doctor has to check and see what they cover before he can order a procedure.
yep, at least on the people's dime. perhaps a system including partial payment could be developed. basically, you have universal healthcare for most things, but also have some sort of catastrophic private plan if you wish. no, of course, not. my comment referred to the US population as a whole. you shouldnt decide whether or not to provide care based on an individuals productivity. i dont have a problem with not providing care to illegals. id prefer to provide them care and deduct it from yearly aid to Mx.
That's all fine and good but no one makes the money unless the doctor tells her to buy the scooter. The doc ordered it not necessarily to make money, but because it was free for the patient so why not. Not quite the same thing. Almost all basic procedures are covered with most private insurance.
I saw a lot of this going on 4 years ago when my grandmother was dying from a stroke. She was basically a vegatable who couldn't get out of bed, and more and more tests and therapy were ordered, which either had no hope of working or were never even performed (as in the case of the physical therapy.) My mother started checking the bills for all of this and found the hospital double-billing Medicare and my grandmother's private insurance. The hospital stopped bothering her about co-pays for treatment never performed after my mom pointed out the double-billing she'd found. But most of us don't really read all of that stuff. So, this sort of abuse goes on and on. We need reform. We need to do something about illegal immigration because it IS truly draining resources (especially in states like Texas and California). However, I still contend that the government won't "fix" it; they'll butt into it. And that scares most of us into thinking that our standard of care will drop--because right now, I'm pretty confident I receive good care. I would like that to continue.
Because it was an unnecessary waste of our Medicare tax and insurance premiums. Because SHE got no say in it, the chair just appeared! She was a complete invalid and not capable of operating the joystick by herself. She had 24-hour sitters. A standard $600 wheelchair that she could sit in and be pushed by her caregivers would have been fine--perhaps even better, the motorchair is heavy and bulky and requires charging. A better way would have been to offer us a chair and say "Medicare will pay $XXX and your insurance will pay $XXX. Now you can pick a chair from any of these competing companies and pay for any costs not covered". Then there would be a choice from the patient AS WELL AS authority from the doctor. There would be competitive offerings from other vendors, reducing the prices. Finally, there would be the opportunity for thr family to say "Rather than pay a $750 co-payment for this super-roboto-chair we don't need, we think this ordinary wheelchair will do".
You'd be surprised. I've had my doctor check his little book to see which drug my insurance accepted for a particular condition. The last time I was hospitalized they had to check to see if my insurance would permit a CT scan for my particular diagnosis. Apparently I have good insurance, but many folks don't. I'm not at all confident that my insurance would cover all the expenses that would be incurred if I ever got cancer or needed an organ transplant. And all those fancy diagnostic procedure we see on House . . . my bet is that many of them are not covered by medical insurance.
