Yes and getting rid of Medicare will reduce the demand for health care and therefore reduce costs?
It would save us a lot of time if you would just come right out and say it, "more people should die to keep health care costs low".
SS does contribute to the defecit since all the money is put into the general fund for use.
The problem with medicare is more people are getting on it AND rising costs of healthcare due to rising demands.
So the problem is, people are living too long and we need them to die off before reaching the age of eligibility for Medicare?
No, but is fair considering I did pay less than what insurance would have paid him, private or government, because he doesn't accept insurance.
Yeah, he also works in the poor area of town with illegal immigrants because they pay cash and don't have insurance either. He is a great doctor and his practice is growing because doesn't have the overhead dealing with government or private insurance. Now, can he do big procedures? No. But he refers people to private/cash only insurance doctors and surgeons. It is a small and growing movement in the healthcare comminity.
Yes and getting rid of Medicare will reduce the demand for health care and therefore reduce costs?
It would save us a lot of time if you would just come right out and say it, "more people should die to keep health care costs low".
It's highly unlikely that you paid less than what insurance would have paid him. If you don't have insurance of your own and you can afford it, you're a fool.
I have insurance. It was a small problem, I have a deductible to meet, and he charged me less than what I would pay for an office visit. So how am I a fool exactly?
Ridicule all you want, but it was just an example. The current system is broken, I say we break away from it completely, make a return to a simple system and make people more responsible for themselves. Yours is to feed the government, who is grossly inept at handling money and is great at making inefficiencies.
I guess it would.
I'm not advocating that at all. I'm advocating a return to people being responsible for themselves without having the socialized risk of us paying for it all.
Except as pointed out to you already, the government run system is more efficient and the fraud and waste you complain about can be greatly reduced with an increase in spending for the department that handles fraud and waste and get this, that spending increase will still be loads less than the fraud it reduces.
But yes let's scrap that and try something that's already been done and didnt work and has been abandoned by most industrial nations instead of improving on what is working./s
Yes that's exactly what you are advocating because that's what we had before unless you are one of those, "bring your doctor a chicken" type idiots but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
http://m.cbsnews.com/blogsstorysynopsis.rbml?feed_id=71&catid=20003163&videofeed=null
I'm sorry to hear that you apparently have crappy health insurance, but if you read what I wrote (which seems to be a problem for you), you would have seen that I said you were a fool if you had the means to purchase insurance and had not.
Overall, paying cash for procedures means you will pay more.
There should be no safety net because abuse of that safety net has created the situation we face today. That situation is: how are we going to pay for all this stuff that more and more people are using instead of paying for it themselves?
I'm sorry to hear that you apparently have crappy health insurance, but if you read what I wrote (which seems to be a problem for you), you would have seen that I said you were a fool if you had the means to purchase insurance and had not.
Overall, paying cash for procedures means you will pay more.
You say wow, but it is. Why should I let other people pay for me or my family involuntarily? Why should I pay for people involuntarily? Why should doctors, nurses and staff work on people without getting compensated accordigly compared to private insurance rates?
Don't you find that immoral?
The government system is not more efficient, I don't know why you say it is. They say medicare admin costs are 2%. Well of course its going to say it is 2% when they are putting out billions in dollars in procedures that number is gonna look small. But at the same time, it is on par with private insurance, except Doctors are not accepting new medicare/medicaid patients everyday. Hospitals are cutting personnel because of reduced payments of medicare, increasing the problem of demand, and still the government demands more from hospitals.
Also most industrial nations that have universal healthcare have huge taxes, drowning in debt, or are in austerity measures to prevent debt from growing.
Paying cash for procedures costs less in this instance in the short term.
Uh - no. It has less to do with frequency and much more to do with increased costs associated with use particularly in relation to LTC
You forgot to mention how every nation with universal health care also pays much less for it than we do. What that means is that it acts to REDUCE debt, not make it bigger.
bullshit.
LTC aka people using it more.
LTC aka people using it more.
Ah - that alone is a bit of a stretch as there are quite a few factors that go into health care costs besides UHC. I think price transparency, education costs, and limiting the number of doctors goes a long way towards causing our cost problems.
I'm glad to see you are at least admitting that government insurance is the most efficient. What's odd however is that you seem to be complaining that Medicare costs too much but then also complain that Medicare pays doctors too little. Which one is it?
You forgot to mention how every nation with universal health care also pays much less for it than we do. What that means is that it acts to REDUCE debt, not make it bigger.
I'm saying it is a flawed system, doctors are going away from it and doing private only now.
Also how every nation is having their own problems with it in terms of wait times, rationing of care, and they have less comorbidities of obesity, hypertension and diabetes than Americans have.
LTC aka people using it more.