DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Question on Health Insurance Choice

Can I get a little support from the moderators?

I’m offended by mgh888’s comments lol

I’m having a me too moment

plz, you know nothing of how DT Prison works. trust me, i got a permanent cot there. my Recidivism rate is 100%

There is a "NOTIFY" tab there if you feel so inclined.

This board is very unfair when doling out it’s supposed punishment

I’m not a whiner...I can take the abuse

And yet you whined about it......Twice. Lol

It's the new America. Trump plays a victim constantly. I've literally never known anyone as bad. It's his leadership and his supporters are following in his footsteps I guess.

Whining and truth have different meanings. It was intended to be on the humorous side with interjected truth

*L* ... atta boy ...

Compare us to other gov’s and forgot the history of the ONLY ONE THAT COUNTS ... BRILLIANT as usual ... *L* ...

How any one with a brain wants to give our government more control over any part of our lives is mind boggling to me ... talk about ignorant ... yet u somehow can’t see it and call us blind and refer to us as sheep ...

To bad your ability for critical thinking isn’t as good as your ability to move the goalposts ..

Well anyone with half a brain can see the USA pays nearly twice as much for less with the current systems vs other national health care provided systems of other 1st world nations. I think anyone with half a brain might pay attention to that instead of making excuses and going with their emotive responses. Yeah - I can't compare the cost of the USA govt provided healthcare to the current model ... because that comparison is IMPOSSIBLE. I did provide a comparison to a wide range of other govt costs for healthcare. Stick your head in the sand and try to pretend it's not relevant All good. Facts and qualified data always loses to emotion when it comes to the Trumpians.

Haven't you figured it out yet? It's not about facts. It's about feelings.

I find this weird considering the left's entire political ideology is that they are victims.

Let's look at it so far....

The FBI is out to get him.

The intelligence community is out to get him.

The Dems are out to get him.

The courts are out to get him.

Anyone who says anything that doesn't align with everything he says gets fired.

Anyone who testifies and is honest gets fired.

Did I miss anything?

Yes, you missed my point.

The post said Trump plays the victim. You said you found that weird. Maybe it was your choice of phrasing?

Nope. The whoosing sound is the point going over your head.

At least you admit you use waterboarding.

You were busted. Own up to it.

Suffice to say I think that's a just a smidge of a misrepresentation. I wanted to say it's also very unfair, but then I'd have to explain that to some people who would have no doubt replied ...

Waterboarding? So you are a prisoner of the forum and my posts torture you? lol

j/c:

Not going to get into the insult thing, but Diam said something that I want to address.

Obviously, it's all a matter of personal preference, but I'm not in favor of more control by the national government. I am NOT saying they shouldn't have power. I am saying that they typically make bad decisions and I would prefer to have more freedom of choice.

I think the goals of the Dems have been severely compromise over the years. These Dems are not my father's Dems. And that is not a compliment.

The thing that sucks the most is that I still despise the Republicans.

I bet I am not alone in thinking that I am a man w/out a party. I am not talking about on this board. I'm talking about in our country.

To me this is mostly a finacial matter.

In fact, I'm quite sure to all Americans this is a financial matter.

Healthcare is obscenely expensive.

We want less expensive healthcare that provides for our needs.

With a greedy overpriced healthcare framework in place and a very corrupt government in place it doesnt seem possible.

Lets keep it real. Both parties in Govt are corrupt and tell you what you want to hear to keep themselves in office.

Dems want to jack up your taxes to give you "free" yet inadequate healthcare. For which you will still have to pay for supplemental plans.

This idea is only beneficial for the very poor, who are getting Medicaid anyway, so what do they care.

For the rest of us, the taxes will far outway any benefit they provide.

And this is from a self employed person with pre existing conditions.
I pay my premiums %100 out of pocket. I know the score.

The government consisting of corrupt democrats and corrupt republicans is saying Oh Hey Trust Us You Gullible Effers and give us your vote and money to screw you harder.

No thanks.

It would cost far more in taxes than I pay now for subpar insurance.

If our Congress people actually cared about the citizens of this country then they would put in place the same regulations on pharmaceutical companies that other contries have,

Price cap on Meds, etc Other countries pay waaaaaaay less for the same meds because they have regulations.

Common sense stuff.

It has nothing to do with imaginary free healthcare.

Yet our corrupt Govt wont do it because they are paid off by companies. Both parties are guilty.

If you feel otherwise than you are brainwashed. (OCD gets the brainwashed gold star)

So somehow you expect a corrupt govt to take its cash cow out of business to make your life better? lol

Lets at least keep it real.

I vote for the status quo. Because all the rest isnt believable.

/thread

This is how I felt about republicans the last 2-3 years of W's Presidency when I shifted to independent. I felt like the party left me. Then the tea party and racism toward Obama drove me to the far left during O's first 4 year. Trump was a big part of that and one reason I despised him before he ran. But that move left opened my eyes to a lot of what's wrong in this country. The more I explored the issues, injustices, inequalities, and general human decency the left was championing, the more left I felt I belonged. 35 year old me would have wanted to kick 50 year old me's ass over political views.

I find your view uniformed bordering ignorant and absolutely cynical. But I get the 'scared of change' mentality and don't blame you one bit. However I do take issue with you saying I'm brainwashed because I'm not. I just believe more of the same or putting our health back into the hands of for profit insurance/big pharma is insanity. That only leaves trying what all these other countries are doing that has been proven to work both financially and quality wise.

And your assumption that the poor can just get medicaid is a falsehood or we wouldn't have millions of uninsured. MILLIONS. But hey, those are just OCD's gold star brainwashed facts.

I will agree with you that it is a huge financial risk and the corruption in our government, especially now, leaves everyone not trusting them to handle something this significant. The result of Obama sitting down with the corps and republicans to negotiate Obamacare was nothing short of a disaster. With little to no price control, forced participation, an opt out loophole tax fine, and allowing the corps to draft the law was all just wasted effort that set true affordable healthcare back 10-20 years. A true legislative circle jerk and failure. So some degree of cynicism is not only expected but well justified.

That said, we both have to admit some good did come out of Obamacare. The covering of preexisting conditions and kids in college were huge, if you could afford the insurance. But Obamacare was a pyrrhic victory for all parties concerned and healthcare in general. Which makes propping it up, using it to build off of, or doubling down on it tantamount to polishing a turd.

So here we are, people like you wanting to avoid more financial risk and thinking maybe if we roll back the bad parts and keep the two good parts it will somehow work out in our favor and pretty much ignoring the greed that is screwing all of us in the first place. And then people like me who foolishly want to burn it all down and start over with a model that every other major country in the world has some form of and has reined in the greed and price gouging with. BUT it might not be perfect OR our government might or probably will find a way to screw it up to only make things worse... My solution, we have to try because the status quo is not working and people are dying. Your solution, it's just financial, as long as it doesn't get worse you can afford it and you only need to look out for you. If my solution is 'brainwashed gold star' sign me up because I can't be you.

Double posted for importance:

America is about to get a godawful lesson in why health care should never be a for-profit business

For four decades, American corporations have been caught up in a whole series of refinements that are intended to improve efficiency and productivity. Our processes are lean. Our efficiency is six-sigma. Our productivity has mysteriously run far ahead of employee compensation in a way that has made CEOs billionaires while leaving workers on food stamps.

It’s a system that maximizes profit. But it’s also a system that assumes that everything can be stripped to the bare bones; that business can make do with minimal staffing, minimal supplies, minimal alternatives. Nothing is there that makes the system in the least unprofitable. The system stands like a house of glass, waiting for something to challenge its fragility.

And in the United States, health care is just that kind of system.

Like every other system in America, we now have a super-lean, infinite-sigma healthcare system, absolutely dependent on every cog remaining in place. It’s one in which there are fewer than a million hospital beds for the entire nation; one in which many, many rural counties have no hospital at all. Because that’s the most profitable way of running the system, and that’s what happens when health care is subjected to the winnowing of the marketplace—just barely enough health care, at the highest possible prices people will tolerate without demanding a change.

It’s exactly where a nation does not want to be when encountering a health crisis. And it’s why America is, unfortunately, about to get a lesson in why there is much more to a national health system than whether you pay for it in taxes or with checks to an insurance company.

In the 1960s, astronauts used to joke about flying on a giant rocket built by a collection of contractors who submitted the lowest bids. But NASA had a safety culture then, and now, that demanded each of those components be tested and retested until its function was as near certain as possible. A spacecraft is the opposite of “lean,” with a backup, and a backup, and a backup to the backup’s backup at every possible point—and a massive staff of very smart people standing by to get creative if Murphy scores a perfect strike.

None of this is true for our healthcare system. Failure very much is an option at every clinic and hospital in America. A certain level of failure is even assumed. Building a system with redundancies and experts who were not always pushed to their absolute limits would cost more. Every intern, doctor, and nurse (especially nurse) who you ever met was overworked, because running the system on the ragged edge of failure is exactly the sweet spot. Or at least it is as far as corporations whose goal is to milk every penny from the process are concerned. In the average hospital visit, there are more people involved in billing you than in treating you.

This thinking isn’t just pervasive and accepted—it’s also actively considered a very good thing. During his press event on Wednesday afternoon, before fumbling the hot coronavirus potato into the waiting hands of Mike “Smoking is good for you” Pence, Donald Trump defended the cuts he had made to the CDC and the experts on pandemics he had dropped from the National Security Council and the epidemiologists he had flushed from his planning team. He didn’t want those people sitting around when they weren’t needed, said Trump. Besides, he claimed, you could always go and get them when they were needed. Because somewhere, somehow, there is a system that keeps vital specialists waiting in hermetically sealed containers, fresh, ready, and informed to meet the nation’s needs.

That is, it goes without saying, BS. But let me say it again. BS. The value of an expert brought in to repair a system after disaster strikes is so much less than the value of having that person on hand to plan that the old ounce of prevention being greater than pound of cure formula doesn’t begin to cover it. You cannot decide to hire some pilots after the plane has crashed.

The thing about extraordinary events is that they’re extraordinary. Planning for them will never improve profits. It will only save lives.

By treating health care like a business, Americans have already seen one of the first people who dared ask to be tested for COVID-19 get handed a bill for thousands of dollars, the primary result of which will be to dissuade other Americans from asking to be tested. Which is, right there, exactly the result that is best for insurance companies—and worst for the nation.

It’s an absolute certainty that Americans will hide their sniffles, drown their symptoms in over-the-counter drugs, and try to “tough it out” because they can’t afford health care. Besides, they have no paid sick leave, no paid child care, and no guarantee that missing a day’s work won’t mean being cast to the curb. All that “socialist” crap.

And because our whole system runs so excellently lean, American hospitals are already seeing shortages of everything from gowns to masks to painkillers, because the single-source, lowest-price vendor of those items happens to be in an area that’s already been overrun with the coronavirus. Not only have those factories on the far side of the planet been sitting idle for weeks, but what production has been available has been needed close to home.

Right now in Hubei province, Chinese healthcare workers are staggering around in exhaustion. Or, as American hospital workers call it, Thursday. Our understaffed, undersupplied, overworked facilities spend every day running at their limits. That’s what is considered normal.

The concern about dollars over people is so accepted that on Thursday the White House announced two new members of the Coronavirus Task Force—Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council chief Larry Kudlow. Though to be fair, it’s not as if they completely lack expertise. Kudlow does have long familiarity with taking nasally administered drugs from rolled $100 bills. So there’s that. And if in this version of The Stand the role of the Rat Man is to be played by Mnuchin … no one can say that this is not good casting.

Disaster is far from certain. Local and state officials can still take measures that will slow the impact of COVID. And antiviral medicines may prove effective, or maybe a vaccine will come along more quickly than expected— though, should either happen, you can assume there will be a line of Pharma Bros on hand to buy the companies involved and raise the prices to eye-watering levels. After all, holding people’s lives hostage is exactly what our healthcare system is all about.

COVID-19 is going to swing a big hammer at the glass house of American health care. All anyone can do is hope they don’t get cut in the process.

And then vote to change the damn system.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/...profit-business

I would love a national healthcare system, but I don't trust our government to do it properly.

They obviously will have to rely on private companies for equipment and supplies, and when the government gets involved, those items get jacked up in price thanks to the mound of paperwork and requirements needed to make a simple sale.

So then our supposed $3 trillion a year cost will start to rise, and we will pay more in taxes, and so on and so on.

Once we allow them control, they can raise taxes at their will and there is nothing we can do to stop them.

I would rather see the government get involved in regulating the current costs of procedures and things, and see where that goes first.

Along will create a government healthcare system for those lacking insurance, to get free care. Why can't both systems operate side by side.

I am sure there are flaws in my idea, but damn we have to start somewhere other than just hand it all over to the government.

That's a fair point and one made more politely than Diam.

However - simply sticking to the mantra of having less government involved in everything and everything is not tenable. Some things need and demand governmental "interference". One example might be the recent financial meltdown because big business basically couldn't be trusted to make smart decisions that made profits AND didn't put the entire financial markets at risk. The banks and those against government interference railed against Govt oversight and restrictions. . . but without them the entire system would have crashed without the bail out.

With healthcare - it's a choice: For profit insurance companies making vast profit and making the decisions - or the Govt. getting bigger, "interfering" with more of our lives.

While I get the idea of not wanting more/bigger Govt .... in this instance I think a badly run and inefficient Govt healthcare system would still be better than what we have now. And based on the measurable results of other countries around the world ... that opinion is substantiated with the closest thing to 'evidence' we can get. It's not just one or two Nationalized healthcare services worldwide that are cheaper and better than the US model - it's either ALL of them or virtually all of them. And none of those Govt's are smarter or better or more efficient than the USA.

It sounds very much like you agree with the theory but don't believe that in practice that [1] politicians will actually do what's best for the Nation [2] that the Govt can't actually run anything half as well as other Govt's around the world - and is simply corrupt and incompetent.

I wouldn't buy into "it will cover everything" I mean, that's what Bernie wants but you know how it goes, it gets watered down and cut etc.. you could end up with something that you don't want.

Right now, I have Medicare and my suppliment is Medical Mutual,, Cost for both is around 304.00 per month..(my wife has the identical plan) I don't have dental or vision care. I've looked into varies dental plans and frankly, most are worthless. VSP might be a decent vision plan, but then again, with Medicare, you get one eye exam per year, and glasses are a minimal cost. For me, my last pair was around $200 or so. So really not worth it.

With my plan, my deductables are non existent. I have virtually nothing in co-pays. I mean, in 2019, I had a stint put in my heart and cataract surgery and another 2 day hospital stay for my heart... No biggie, I'm fine.

At the same time, my wife had Breast Cancer surgery, radiation treatments (20 of them) and rotator cuff surgery and months of PT for that.

Total out of pocket for both of us was around $300. Peanuts by comparison.

So, if they somehow can provide that kind service and cost with M4A, then the only reason not to have it would be corp greed and payoffs to politicians.

Yes, you'll pay higher taxes... the test comes if the savings off set the additional taxes... I really have no way of knowing that..

With the wool pulled over their eyes, does it really matter which set of teeth is doing the chewing?

Wouldn't private healthcare be the wolves, and the government be the shepherd in this case?

That's the first thing that entered my mind. Pretty ironic, indeed.

Yea but the sheep does get eaten by wolves as well so....snakes all around me.

You know what they say..... "Clowns to the left of me, Joker's on the right"

Not when they trust the status quo capitalism and greed and fear the government.

First, "uninformed bordering ignorant" is ridiculous. Ignorance is ignoring all of the facts, most of what she stated is fact. "...putting our health back into the hands of for profit insurance/big pharma is insanity." It's always been there, please tell me what changes under "healthcare for all".

The poor can just get medicaid. Fact. The income threshold is over 50,000 per couple and 25,000 per individual... and "the applicant" can choose to have their significant other's income ignored.

The millions without healthcare amount to 8.2% of the population... of those, 46% are eligible for state or federal funded coverage or tax credits that equate to that, they simply don't apply. Also, keep in mind that that people aged 20-25 dwarf all other age groups as far as the non-covered... they simply don't care. What we're looking at is a system where 1 in 25 can't get coverage, and to be blunt, many of them are not legal citizens.

"A true legislative circle jerk and failure." Please tell me what would be different under your burn it down and start all over scenario? Burning it down only offers more avenues for corruption. Burning it down while ignoring the fact that corruption is the very foundation of our political system leaves no avenue for the utopia that is promised. NONE.

As far as the Obamacare disaster, again, what tells you the next great plan will be treated any differently? Let's tell the corps we have another 40 trillion with their name on it and see if their greed subsides?

Personal story that no one cares about: I have great employer provided healthcare insurance, my wife and I moved halfway across the country just to keep it. My son is in college and has epilepsy. I went through the Obamacare site to make an informed decision before uprooting our lives. 63 plans available to me ranging in price from $260 per month to $3300. Did the 3300 cover his meds? Nope. Did any of them? Nope. They'll cover his yearly visit to a neurologist (I'm guessing $200-300) but won't cover a penny of his meds ($600 per month). Again, 63 plans, not even the one for $40,000 per year would cover my largest recurring expense. Government healthcare means the ones making the profit write the rules. Again, not sure what would be different.

Lastly, your final paragraph... The appeal that we all want to agree with. "Let's just do it, it's the right thing to do". At the root, I can agree, but let's not ignore some of the pitfalls...

It seems that proponents for a plan such as Bernie's want to ignore a few key facts...

Universal healthcare in the rest of the world is not some be all end all utopia. In many places it doesn't work very well at all. Long lines, long waiting periods, inferior care, still high prescription prices or non-coverage of prescriptions at all. Nearly all of them are still a multi-tiered system which require additional insurance. Nearly all of them still have co-pays and out of pocket expenses.

Most countries that have a universal system have had it in place since at least the 1980s. We've spent an additional 40-50 years letting the crooks run and ruin the system. "Burning it down" is much different here than in any one of these countries. They have 40-50 years of trial and error in the rear-view, they were controlling costs before they were out of control... We have a cluster***, and a 40 trillion dollar plan to fix it, wink, wink.

Proponents tend to stick their fingers in their ears and ignore the wild elephant in the room. There is little to no evidence that our government is willing, or even able, to bite the hand that feeds them. Universal healthcare, like most good and just ideas are a near impossibility until we take money out of politics. We can chop at the ankles with any and all problems with our government, until we take out the head, they'll just put on bigger boots.

If you truly want to solve our "healthcare crisis", you need to back up a few boxes on the flowchart. This endeavor is nearly impossible, or will come with an impossible price tag, until we look at the real problem with our government and political system.

We've had five or six Democratic debates, spent hours talking about healthcare... and about fifteen seconds talking about term limits, money in politics (except for candidates arguing that others get more), and the corruption that has a stranglehold on the entire process.

Why is that? The media asks these tough questions on our behalf... why do they never ask these ones? Until we are willing to march in the streets and burn ish down over these issues, we'll all just continue to be the sheep. The wolves and the shepherds are one in the same.

You mean in the states that actually expanded medicaid under Obamacare. In states who did not, this isn't true at all.

That was funny. I did change one word around, but good take.

I think your response is much more feeling and opinion filled than based in fact. But since you have all the facts and y'all love attacking people like me who want to bring solutions to the table, please enlighten me with a plan that includes backing up a few boxes on the flowchart and covering 100% of the population. I'm all ears.

BTW, I'll look into it, but unless something has drastically changed, your income criteria for medicaid is way off for Ohio.