For those that want socialized healthcare

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Most doctors will tell you that they want nothing to do with Medicare or medicaid patients. They get paid so little they cannot afford to even take them on anymore. In addition, every single little thing has its own code, and if you put the wrong code on something as benign as a band-aid, they will kick back the entire invoice for "coding errors" without even telling you what the fuck was wrong in the first place, making you start the process all over again. For a five minute consultation resulting in a renewal of a prescripotion and the issuance of a new one, a doctor will spend four administrative hours chasing het money down. The whole system is bullshit. Just look at the NHS in England for a clue. They have a demonic system that actually allows doctors to ignore patients for months at a time as they queue up waiting their turn for something as simple as an MRI. Anyone who thinks socialized medicine is the way to go is an idiot who has not done ANY reading on the subject. For every story touting the success of these systems, there are three horror stories.
 
Most doctors will tell you that they want nothing to do with Medicare or medicaid patients. They get paid so little they cannot afford to even take them on anymore. In addition, every single little thing has its own code, and if you put the wrong code on something as benign as a band-aid, they will kick back the entire invoice for "coding errors" without even telling you what the fuck was wrong in the first place, making you start the process all over again. For a five minute consultation resulting in a renewal of a prescripotion and the issuance of a new one, a doctor will spend four administrative hours chasing het money down. The whole system is bullshit. Just look at the NHS in England for a clue. They have a demonic system that actually allows doctors to ignore patients for months at a time as they queue up waiting their turn for something as simple as an MRI. Anyone who thinks socialized medicine is the way to go is an idiot who has not done ANY reading on the subject. For every story touting the success of these systems, there are three horror stories.

Interesting that you mention the problems doctors have with medicare, medicaid, or really any insurance company. I have some local friends that avoid the entire health insurance industry and find doctors that are willing to charge far less for cash paying customers. It is the same quality of work, but since the doctor does not have to deal the headaches, wasted time, and possibility of non-payment, they usually quote prices in the 60-80% off the normal price for the cash paying customers.
 
Is this what you really want:
http://thenewamerican.com/world-new...lth-service-euthanizes-130000-patients-a-year

Interestingly, I have lifetime eligibility for free government healthcare in the United States. However, it is so bad, I pay for my own healthcare. I can tell you some crazy stories about the wonder that is free government healthcare.

Like everything else, you get EXACTLY what you pay for.

If you pay nothing, you get nothing.

And if you are a proponent of free anything, I don't want nor need your business, nor can I afford to do business with you. I just don't need your whining, begging, and selfish behavior making a mess of my life.
 
There seems to be more articles/stories on doctors that people have on retainer. They are generally in less populated areas, but people will pay $XX amount per month, per person to be able to see a doctor when needed. No insurance or government paperwork involved. It allows the doctor to have reliable income without the hassle and time of paperwork, and it allows people to have affordable, general health care. The only issue is, when people start requiring speciallists.
 
...I've heard a story (might be a myth though) of one Chinese Emperor who was of ill health, and doctors were all over him all the time. One day he got pissed off, and he told them it is enough, and starting this day he will pay them every day, but only when he actually is HEALTHY and feels OK. But he won't be paying for cures, nor for the days when he is sick.

As story has it, his health has improved dramatically :). Yet another take on mmerlin's "you got EXACTLY what you pay for" - if you pay for treating your illness, well, you illness is what is being taken care of, not your health ;). Just read the list of "possible side effects" of today's medicines, it usually makes some read and a nice horror story, quite often I feel much better right after I read it, and without any interest in taking them, anymore :rotflmbo:...
 
...I've heard a story (might be a myth though) of one Chinese Emperor who was of ill health, and doctors were all over him all the time. One day he got pissed off, and he told them it is enough, and starting this day he will pay them every day, but only when he actually is HEALTHY and feels OK. But he won't be paying for cures, nor for the days when he is sick.

As story has it, his health has improved dramatically :). Yet another take on mmerlin's "you got EXACTLY what you pay for" - if you pay for treating your illness, well, you illness is what is being taken care of, not your health ;). Just read the list of "possible side effects" of today's medicines, it usually makes some read and a nice horror story, quite often I feel much better right after I read it, and without any interest in taking them, anymore :rotflmbo:...

There is a lot of truth to this. The other part of the problem is, is that a lot of the health problems are self induced and people would rather be treated (or have their symptoms treated) and keep living how they are living, rather than correcting the bad behavior. I would be frustrated if I was a DR. People keep wanting to be made healthy, but they don't want to take on any of the work that it takes to get there.
 
Just read the list of "possible side effects" of today's medicines, it usually makes some read and a nice horror story, quite often I feel much better right after I read it, and without any interest in taking them, anymore :rotflmbo:...

I quit taking ANY medicines when I was still in High School, many decades ago. The last medicine that I took was aspirin for something or other. I have never touched aspirin nor other poisons since.

I read labels religiously. If there is a long list of unpronounceable words listed, I neither buy nor consume the product.

The end result is that I SELDOM get sick. And when I do get sick, I am usually over it by the next day, because I know exactly what to do to solve the problem.

For decades I consumed ONLY raw milk, about half gallon per day, mainly because it contained NO additives and was NOT pasteurized. When it became illegal to sell raw milk in the local stores, and the dairies were too far away, I started drinking pasteurized milk with NO additives. For eleven years I was able to buy that, but of all of the milk on the shelves there was only ONE that had NO additives. Last month, the milk company started adding additives to that milk, so now there is NO milk anywhere around here that is SAFE for me to drink.

For a few months after raw milk was banned, I experimented with additive filled milk, as I did not know about the additive free milk. That was a PAINFUL disaster! I FOUND THAT I SIMPLY CANNOT TOLERATE THE RAT POISON (VITAMIN D3) ADDED TO ALL OF THE LOCAL MILK. If I drink it, I get calcium deposits in my joints and in my muscles. Deposits in the muscles create some of the most excruciating pains I have ever experienced. And that is probably why the rats die - Too painful to move, so starve to death.

Like anyone my age (retirement age), I do have my share of health problems, but none of them are severe enough to prevent me from doing the same job I have been doing for decades. And my job requires lots of manual lifting of heavy objects (100-200 lbs each) and moving them around. I am sure that if I had not sworn off the poisons that I would be a basket case today.
 
mmooo ............

get one

you know it makes sense mmerlinn

hope your hands are nice n soft, cos they need to be treated right
 
We are fortunate to have a "barter clinic" here. They'll treat you, consult you, and take "whatever" in return. Some good docs there, and that's what I use these days.
Since they are getting hit with all this crap about digital records, that's what I pay them in - computer expertise.

A form of socialized medicine we used to practice in my family when there were more of us (age gets 'em all eventually) was simply to self insure, as an extended family. Used to be more practical than it is now with the very strange billing junk going on. We simply kept a fund in something liquid (often just a savings account back when they paid a little). This would pay any immediate expenses for things like trauma or acute conditions (not maintenance), and if someone drew down the fund, we'd all kick some back in as required till it was built back up to a level we agreed on. But for "ongoing, you did this to yourself" - you didn't get money. Only a family can apply that sort of "tough love" and get away with it, anything bigger gets into troubles.

I'm sick of this conflating of insurance with health care - that IS kind of how it is these days, but that's the problem, not the solution. The insurance companies pay a lot less than you do - bargaining power and so on, and they are constantly detecting fraud (as did I when I was the payer, almost every time with any hospital) and refusing payment.

When you go in uninsured, it's like sheep-shearing time - you can get billed for multiple docs you never saw, tests you didn't get (or did get but weren't smart to do and were simply defensive), all at 30% over what insurance companies pay, and with your credit at risk if you refuse to be fleeced.

I even had a billing nurse tell me this stuff during a fight with a hospital over their billing for an injury I had. We wound up making a deal for less than half the original billing - because I introduced them to my lawyer...and witnesses to my mal treatment. It shouldn't have to be that way.

Here's something that would slow that WAY down. You gotta pay the doc, itemized, yourself. Then if you have insurance, you recover the dough from them - but YOU have to do it. If you saw these huge numbers going by, and had to read the bill and see how they were trying to rip you off - you might not pay it, you'd certainly put pressure on the providers to cut the crap.

In what other repair business can you not get an estimate before they do the work?
In what other business do you have to pay for them to do unnecessary things to protect themselves from liability? With no choice to say "no"? In what other business do they pay main-technician pay (nurse in this case) to simply sit behind a window and be a file clerk? There are nurses getting nurse pay for decades that never touch a patient. Why do I need to pay for that supposed skill if it's never put to use on me?

Really, it's not that common for medical problems to be "rocket surgery", most are simple and obvious (and a lot are self-created, true). This should be like taking your car to the local shop - not the dealer who charges 4x more and isn't even as good.
And the car mechanic will certainly tell you "don't do that anymore" if your car problem is self created.

But no, we've had the equivalent of "financial engineering" in the med business. We now have way too few GP's and way too many specialists, who charge a lot more, yet due to specialization, miss a heck of a lot - I've had this happen to me, until I found another GP and in seconds he had me fixed right up. When all you have is a hammer....everything looks like a nail. Specialists mostly suck.

If you have excess calcium, maybe you should just skip the milk. I'm slightly lactose intolerant, so I do, and I'm doing fine. Yeah, the vitamin D helps you assimilate the huge excess of calcium there is in a food meant for infants of another species, the same is true of human milk. Are you still an infant with growing bones? Then skip the specialized-for-that-situation food!
 
Make sure its vitamin D3 if you want to get good vit D benefits

And yes the better you look after yourself the less you need to involve those blood sucking specialists.

I would love to see a system where the incentive was to keep people well but even this fails as people let others take responsibility for their health.

Even the family insurance idea becomes problematic when you move beyond injuries ( assuming they all have broadly similar attitudes to risk ) as keeping yourself in good health needs to be part of the deal and how do you reach agreement when one of the group needs a liver transplant due to their quality control testing the homebrew that everyone enjoys.
 
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