UAW forced to be paid as a Southern Foreign factory worker.

We know, that person is you LOL

 

Enjoy hanging with your friends in the militia. Be sure to hide some
guns in the walls of your house so the gov't doesn't get 'em all when
they send "them" after you. Don't forget to keep your tinfoil hat on
tight.

 

Mike is immune to reality, as is deebs, hatching roachie, and the rest
of the rightwingnuts here.

 

Here's the fallacy of owning guns to protect yourself from your
government - the same awesome fire power we exhibit on any battlefield
will be turned on you guys with peashooters. Mike fires his AR15 once
or twice and a helicopter gunship levels his whole neighborhood.

 

From what I know of Aetna, Cigna, and Humana reimbursement practices,
that's highly unlikely, especially for the doctor bills. You're
probably confusing the billings with the payments, which often differ
by as much as 4:1.

 

I'm not confusing anything. The doctors bill was nearly $6,000 and my HMO
settled at $2,800.

In addition our VOLUNTEER community ambulance corps, of which I am a member,
MUST submit a bill to my HMO for transporting me the five miles to the
hospital, BECAUSE I am over 65. The Medicare reimbursement rate is $850
for that five miles . My HMO settled for $420 plus a co-pay of $25. Since
I pay $40 a year, to be a member, I do not need to pay the co-pay.

The stupidity of the high Medicare rates is, if I were a member of the corps
under 65, the corps would NOT charge me or my HMO a dine. Since I am of 65
and they did NOT bill the HMO they would be charged with Medicare fraud.
Medicare IS DEFINITELY one of the primary reasons for our high medical care
cost in the US and for the reasons stated previously

 

And unfortunately the way the rules are written, all dialysis patients have
to go on Medicare after 33 months, no matter how old they are. God, I hate
that rule, I feel like I'm stealing from the old folks.

Sir Charles the Curmudgeon

 

It's common, nearly universal, for reimbursement to be far less than
the bill, and your example doesn't say anything about Medicare.

Medicare WAS definitely one of the primary reasons for high medical
costs - that was how President Johnson got the AMA to support its
passage, but since the 1970s it's been the leader in cost cutting, so
much that HMOs and the rest of the private insurance business have
copied its practices. Doctors will tell you the 2 things they hate
most are the low rates of Medicaid reimbursement and the hours they
waste daily talking with HMOs and private insurers.

 

Far more Canadians get health care paid for by their government when
they come to the U.S.

 

Any American who believes the government will provide them with better
hearthcare for less money, was never in the US military. If they were,
they cerainly were never in a VA hospital LOL

 

My on son is a cardiologist I know what I'm talking about. If what you
believe to be true, was actually true, why would any doctor accept ANY HMO
patients and agree to an even lower fee for his service? I told you the
doctors Medicare reimbursement rate for my surgery was nearly $6,000 and my
HMO settled at $2,800. Why would he do that?

 

There's a big differnece between the government _providing_ health
care and the government serving as the intermediary (i.e. "insurer")
between the clients and the providers.

 

I guess we can assume you are not familiar with Medicare and how it is going
broke? LOL

 

Yeah, but their pricing will be "lowest bidder". As one Mercury
astronaut said (Sheppard?) "Here I was, sitting on 5000 pounds of high
explosives, all built by the lowest bidder"

Did you know that in the US, anyone with an MD can practice GP
medicine?
--
- dillon I am not invalid

When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams come true.
Unless it's really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which
will destroy all life. Then you're pretty much hosed no
matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteor.

 

[top post corrected]

You still don't get it. Medicare is the government PAYING for health
care. It's funded through a payroll tax. That's different.

Eliminating insurers and having the gov't act as the intermediary is
completely different. In that case, individuals or companies still pay
for health care as they do now, but there's no middleman (insurance
companies) taking a fat slice out of the money on it's way from the
patient to the doctor.

I'm going to make a wild guess that you've never had to pay the full
price of health insurance out of your own pocket or the pocket of your
small business - if you had, you'd know that the current system is a
failure.

 

But it all worked, because qualified engineers designed it. With rare
exception - mostly when the engineers were ignored by the bureaucrats
for political reasons - they did incredible things in those programs
(not that I really support spending billions and billions just so we
can say we walked on the moon). The government, in conjunction with
talent, can produce quality work.

And why is that important? All MD's have the same basic training and
requirements to get to where they can practice. They reach GP
qualification at that level. Specialists, otoh, need additional
training. If you said that any MD could practice brain surgery, I'd be
more concerned. Then again, it would account for some of the posters
around here...

 

I wonder why it has to be that way.

Here in the UK we have the NHS which provides the insurance, the
surgeries, the doctors/nurses, and the hospitals all at once. Since the
private companies and the private doctors/hospitals all have to compete
with the basic level of care set by the NHS, their pricing structures
reflect this and private insurance is quite cheap here.

The health service in the USA appears to be a big scam with the
insurers, the HMOs and - yes - the doctors who prescribe all kinds of
wonder drugs for small ailments - all in on it. I'd definitely agree
that a good private hospital will be cleaner and more comfortable than
the average hospital in the UK. But you're paying over the odds for it.
Our hospitals here are not hotel-like in their luxury, and I certainly
won't pretend they're perfect; we might wait a few weeks longer for
surgery, but the population as a whole is generally healthier. It
shouldn't be beyond the gift of the USA, a nation far more powerful and
richer than the UK, to figure this out ?