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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ggersh who wrote (111842)	5/4/2015 6:33:28 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218201

As for healthcare, the D's tried to get drug costs lowered as part of the Medicare reform bill passed under Bush, You aren't going to receive any "pushback" from me on drug costs. Way back in 1986, when I had broken knee and had to have surgery, I discovered the BS that was going on with the drug racket. Prior to the surgery, my doctor had prescribed Tylenol 3 for me.. and I had a good quantity of them left for when I had the surgery. But instead of permitting me to use the relatively inexpensive ones that I already had, the hospital required me to only use the ones they provided.. at a far higher price than what I had paid.. But here is one more example of how Medicare should be operated. My father passed away in 2009 from complications of surgery for Mesothelioma. It was a very complex and expensive surgery, for which Medicare picked up almost all the costs (there was a supplemental insurance as well).. Now.. for one.. it's generally acknowledged that Mesothelioma is caused by Asbestos exposure and only that.. But there has, apparently, never been an attempt to also include medical costs in legal awards and settlements. I believe Medicare, or even the health insurance provider, should be included as a plaintiff in Mesothelioma cases (or other such types of workman's comp claims, as Mesothelioma is categorized) in order to provide payment for medical services rendered.. Either that, or medical costs should be included as expenses in these cases and the defending corporations should be required to pay for the medical expenses. It's controversial, and I'm not sure of the best manner in which to implement it, but why not? Why shouldn't Medicare be able to also be a plaintiff (without penalizing the victim, or their family) in order to obtain re-payment for medical expenses? Now.. the complications that led to my father's failure to recover from his surgery (and for the first few days he was doing rather well), was the failure of a medical "Pleural Vac" that was supposed to drain excess fluid from his chest cavity. For whatever reason, it started permitting air to enter the cavity and literally blew him up like the Michelin Man (to the point that his eyelids puffed up and blinded him).. 6 weeks later, all of it in ICU isolation because of multiple bacterial infections in his lungs and blood, we were required to take him off of life support. I personally unplugged his ventilator and watched him die.. (and that was not easy).. A $32 medical drainage container failure cost Medicare (I won't say exactly how much) in the 6 figures by ruining everything the surgeons had done. When I asked our lawyers if we could sue this manufacturer, we were told that, under Texas law, Mesothelioma is a "terminal disease" and that the manufacturer would argue "so what" (on whether their faulty device led to his death).. He was terminal anyway.. (but he could have lived for many years on one lung, until the Meso claimed it as well).. To this day, I'm sure no one has figured out how that device failed, or made any changes to it's design to prevent it from occurring to someone else.. So that's my personal story... And I've always believe that the Gov't should have been paid by the defendants for the medical care (and failure) to sustain my father's life.. And he was a strong man before the Meso and I have no doubt he would be alive today if that surgery had succeeded.. Hawk