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

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (498114)	7/25/2009 2:14:43 PM
From: Alighieri	2 Recommendations Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1577592

I know it's hard to believe, but that's pretty much what it boils down to. Reforms within publicly funded services are almost always resisted based on this false choice. You know, I want to tell you a small personal story that, despite its flaws, proves that this belief is cynical and possibly unfounded...my father in law passed away only a couple of months ago, and for his last days he was in a hospital...he'was an elder man of 85 so covered by medicare...his final bill in the hospital was about $85K for a week of care approx...medicare negotiated that down to about $8K...now I am not sure if the hospital made any money on that one, but I suspect that they did not. I am also not sure whether the fee billed to medicare is padded accordingly, i suspect it is....in either case for the care he received for the last week $8 is "cheap". The shame of the episode however lies elsewhere...before ending up in the hospital here in AL he had been in Florida where they did many of the same tests that were repeated here...his records consisted of a folder 3 inches thick of illegible crap and wrinkled up sheets of paper...I watched his cardiologist here struggling to figure out his medical history and left with little choice but to redo these tests...one of these tests ended up hastening his death (which was coming anyway)...that's the state of medicine today. It's a mess... Al