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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (196108)	7/28/2004 11:07:19 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576155

"There isn't an ER in the country who turn away a person needing immediate medical help." Actually, he has a point. Usually what happens is they stabilize and transport. In Houston, you often read about someone who dies during transport to Ben Taub. Apparently "stabilize" is a rather loosely defined word... The two of you are talking past each other. David is basically assuming that anyone who doesn't have health insurance is a candidate for welfare. You are talking about the ones who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, yet don't have jobs that provide health insurance. But the pool is even larger than that. Unless you have a good health insurance plan, it is quite easy to have very large, and uncovered, medical bills. We got saddled with about $6000 of bills when our oldest starting talking suicide and got involuntarily committed. If we had no insurance, the county would have paid. Since we had insurance... Given the fact both my wife and I were full time students at the time, that $6k hurt a lot.

To: Road Walker who wrote (196108)	7/28/2004 11:15:46 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576155

At the least it needs some change. Some change, I have no problem with -- to provide some coverage for the other 14% is fine -- realistically, you're not going to get that figure below some deminimus value -- perhaps 5-7% - just because those people won't get off their asses to deal with it. But when people talk about "national health programs", I can say it is a dangerous precedent. And the Doctors I know certainly don't think the system is good; one I know recently moved to New Zealand to practice. If you deal with doctors you must know most are not happy campers I consult regularly with a large number of physicians. Many are unhappy. Unhappy with WHAT? Medicare, for underpaying for their services, effectively shifting costs to private insurance. For Medicaid, which pays NOTHING and in some states is such an administrative nightmare you couldn't get paid anyway. The largest private health insurance carrier, United Health, last year removed its precertification requirement. Why? Because they determined that the additional cost of percerting wasn't worth the value they were getting from it. MAJOR RED TAPE, REMOVED -- because it was a private company. You'll never see THAT in a government run program. THis is but one example. I think there can be a legitimate debate about whether the government should purchase health insurance coverage for those who are truly destitute. But I would NEVER, EVER support a government run program such as Medicare or Medicaid doing this. I simply know too much about it to support such a thing.