We already have universal healthcare!!

Good points on the costs of prevention compared to treatment. Still, as more hospitals close their emergency rooms, they are not available at all.

And under Obama's plan we get to keep this great part of our current system.

Re: We already have universal healthcare!!


They don't get turned down, they're quickly stabilized and sent on their way.

Then they're billed and if they don't pay up, the bill collectors grap their cars, their homes, their wages, their furniture, anything of value.

And if worse comes to worse, who knows what else the bill collectors will do.

And...many of the ERs still in service restrict their services to patient referrals from physicians, who
are affiliated with the hospital.

I didn't know they had that choice, Miller.

I am quite surprised that the occupants of this thread are so out of touch with the state of the health care system in this country.

I worked in five different ERs...

Never did I run into a single one of them that even had the option to not care for a patient based on whether or not they were referred or are insured.

And none of them just stabilized them either. If the patient isn't completely healed, they got transferred to the surgical dept for the amputation or bypass or whatever else they needed.

Every serious problem that a patient has has to be dealt with before they could be discharged.

Just stabilizing them and sending them out is a huge liability. If the patient dies later on and it turns out that was a problem they had months ago when they were in the ER and wasn't treated, the pts family could sue the hospital.

So everyone gets their important healthcare needs fixed, just in the least efficent most expensive way possible (by waiting till the problem is much worse than it needed to be if addressed earllier).

And the costs for anyone that can't pay up were added into everyone else's bills.

Centroles, with your experience and obvious left-leaning views on the health insurance issue, I'm curious about your opinion on Clinton and Obama's health care proposals.

Personally, until they show me exactly how they're funding it, I think they're crap. But I don't blame them for it.

I think universal healthcare won't be implemented thanks to the 2 trillion we blew on Iraq and neither candidate offering any real plans on where to get the money.

That nonsense they proposing about cutting costs to fund it all is much easier said than done.

True universal healthcare that emphasizes prevention would save a lot more money within a decade than we spend on healthcare now. But that will take a decade to show up.

For that decades, we will be paying for both the bypass surgeries and the preventative meds and I don't think any politician no matter how competent could fund that by making things more efficent.

They'll need to make serious cuts elsewhere (the pentagon imo) which I hope one of them end up having the courage to do.

Mandates or no mandates to buy health insurance?

That depends on how good the plan actually will be.

If it ends up being as badly thought out as I think it will be, no mandates.

Re: We already have universal healthcare!!


What, like rough someone up? I knew a pair of repo men that liked to scrap, one was my boss. They still weren't crazy enough not to avoid it if possible, but if you weren't holding onto someone else's capital you'd never meet them anyway. I mean, if someone sews your carcass back together and you hold out on them, call it kharma, and if you need your stuff to function bankruptcy is still easy enough to get abused.


As for getting the same thing in Obama's plan, that's like saying if we buy everyone a car that ain't got one I get to keep my Chevy. Thanks very much.

Anyway, amen Centroles, great post!

RE the OP:

Perhaps you have not noticed, but hospitals are closing up shop because they ain't getting paid. There is no free lunch.

Next time you or someone you love needs a level one trauma center to save their life, but there isn't one close enough or good enough to do the job because the one that was near closed up after blowing all their resources caring for the uninsured for free or because the best doctors refuse to work in the hell hole that is the modern American emergency room, a light bulb might go off.

Until then, enjoy the day dream.

The vast majority of people have at least some money. Many of these people go without needed care and/or medicine, knowing, for instance, that a visit to the ER will cost a couple month's rent.

The film "Sicko" has a couple of poignant scenes in which hospitals dump nonpaying patients on to the street, sometimes wearing their hospital gowns.

Is this what America is all about?

Excuse me please.
I was born in India and I live in Germany.
If the embedded journalist in USA wish to uphold the health care in USA then i am spellbound.
Better be a Culcutta beggar than be aa NY street kids.
Cuba
is not that holy as USA

we dont need healthcare, let the weak die off and the strong will reproduce and make it a little easier for their offsrping.

Months rent, car payment, flat screen TV, drugs, who knows. If it's working capital bankruptcy will protect it, if not, I'd rather not help people that can't orchestrate a payment to get it. And of course we are capable of valuing some things more than safety and comfort or taking a gamble to get what we want - that's what makes us great, otherwise we're just termites.

I wouldn't say stumbling in some place and getting dumped in the street is what America's about - I'd either go there, do my thing, and walk away or die with dignity - but that it's symptomatic of the fact that we still place some value on doing for oneself. I mean, once someone loses self-determination, what kind of money could we spend to help them? It's hopeless. Whoever got dumped in the movie would still be a chump in a waiting room in Canada, just that someone behind him in line might not be quite that screwed to start with...

I was seen in the ER a few weeks ago for a kidney stone. A fairly sizable one.

After well over an hour in the waiting room vomiting and pacing from the pain, I was provided pain meds. The doc came in and assessed. He asked if I have insurance. I told him that I do not. A scan was ordered to confirm the diagnosis. I was sent home with pain meds and instructed to call a uroligist associated with the hospital.

I called the urologist the next day, was told to pay prior to seeing her, did so and was instructed to continue pain meds and Flomax. If it wasn't better after a week, it was suggested that I go to the other hospital that is "for people without insurance."

Now, I get that what the urologist was saying was that she was trying to save me money. She even stated that the hospital that I went to would charge at least double what the other one would charge and wouldn't even consider scheduling surgery without half the money up front.

But, as I told her, I can't even get insurance that would cover anything. I get rated, as is the practice of insurance companies now, for a lot of stuff, even if it was a urinary tract infection 25 years ago. And, this is for someone that has been in the ER or to a doctor only twice in over twenty years.

So the issue isn't wether or not anyone has insurance and takes responsibility. I could be paying over $500 a month now for insurance only to find that once treated they have declined to pay.

The middle man is the problem, not the health care. This particular doctor was sympathetic to that and agreed. She said she sees it all the time. Her suggestion was to wait until it got bad enough again to be seen in the ER, at which time they would HAVE to remove it.

That's a pretty lousy "choice."

Thank you squinney for putting this back on target.