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Who's right, Democrats or Republicans?
- Thread starter Mike Zaman
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Yup. People will pay the tax / fine at least while uts relatively small. They the imperial federal govt will have to find a place to lock them up when they just say no.Cruella said:
Texas_tea
Well-Known Member
53 million people are uninsured in the US at the moment. Wonder how much that number will increase when Obamacare is fully implemented?
But, who knows, the death panels might actually reduce that number. Then all the libtards will be praising Obamacare for reducing the number of uninsured.
Kind of like the unemployment numbers .....
I saw recently that some legislator has noticed the swelling disabled rolls and realizing that fraud is rampant in that situation. Of course it will go unaddressed as has fraud in medicare medicaid.
Texas_tea
Well-Known Member
Well, fraud is rampant in all government programs but, entitlements are untouchable, didn't you know?
Entitlements were designed to be cash cows and thats without the fraud. Govt in healthcare has been a lucrative arrangement for the medical biz
steveox
Well-Known Member
Even Hitler is upset with shutdown
Cruella
Well-Known Member
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Really? Is that why so many doctors won't take medicare patients? Hardly lucrative for them.
Bigger picture Cru. While they may not fetch quite as much for a Medicare the creation of it elevated their income dramatically. The down side at this point is that there is more hassle since there are more burocratsso they stop taking more and they can as theyve made their fortune and can dial the routine back. Medical care need not cost what it does but a superstructure of cash generating protocol drives it all. It could never have happened if medicine had remained just a business. If its just a business that has to compete spiraling increases would not happen. And lawyers win with the malpractice (most pols are lawyers remember). Pharma and medical equipment and supply all thrive when the costs of medical care is a copay vs what it really costs. When you hear docs moan about being abused by medicare and medicaid thinkabout what Brere Rabbit said about not throwing him into the briar patch. Or as Reagan observed, government is never the solution but rather the problem.
and yet somehow they remain in business and happily increasing their investment portfolio. how do you suppose that happens ? and did you notice how every time DC slashes the reimbursement rates that Medicare costs continue to rise ? be not tricked by the smoke and mirrors, there are lots of ways to make money off govt healthcare.
Lagboltz
Well-Known Member
From my personal experience, it's not so much the docs, it's the hospitals and specialist associations that make the money. They buy expensive machines, MRI, CAT scans, etc and need to keep them humming. If they can get enough unnecessary tests they can pay for the machine in only a year or two.
This is a Time magazine article on medical costs. It is 42 pages long, but worth reading for anyone discussing Medicare/Medicaid.
http://www.uta.edu/faculty/story/2311/Misc/2013,2,26,MedicalCostsDemandAndGreed.pdf
Random out-of-context quotes from the article are listed below. The costs are for people without insurance.
Bedside xray: Patient was charged $333. The national rate paid by Medicare is $23.83
$7 each for “alcohol prep pad.” This is a little square of cotton used to apply alcohol to an injection. A box of 200 can be bought online for $1.91.
Patient was charged $18 each for Accu-chek diabetes test strips. Amazon sells boxes of 50 for about $27, or 55¢ each. (Note: I bought them for 20 cents each)
Patient was charged $6,538 for three CT scans. Medicare would have paid a total of about $825 for all three
Niacin Tablet: Patient was charged $24 per 500-mg tablet of niacin. In drugstores, the pills go for about a nickel each
… Sloan-Kettering is billing more than $1,200 an hour for that nurse....
“One of the benefits attending physicians get from many hospitals is the opportunity to cruise the halls and go into a Medicare patient’s room and rack up a few dollars,” says a doctor who has worked at several hospitals across the country. “In some places it’s a Monday-morning tradition. You go see the people who came in over the weekend. There’s always an ostensible reason, but there’s also a lot of abuse.”
Jonathan Blum: ‘When hospitals say they are losing money on Medicare, my reaction is that Central Florida is overflowing with Medicare patients and all those hospitals are expanding and advertising for Medicare patients,’ says Blum, deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. ‘Hospitals don’t lose money when they serve Medicare patients.’
and who owns them ? has extensive kickback relationships with them ? has the lawyers busy making protocols of needless testing to keep these ancillary medical services humming ? spiraling healthcare costs are no accident. and they all came to pass when the government went into the healthcare business.
Lagboltz
Well-Known Member
It is the hospitals that are privately owned that are ripping off the patients, insurance companies and the government. Rick Scotts hospital chain paid $1.6 Billion in fines to the government for medicaid/medicare fraud. Spiraling costs are caused by hospital greed, not the government.
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and how was it that hospitals were allowed to not compete ?
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