HEALTHCARE THREAD

lol there are about 10 nuns left in the usa and they're all over 80

Maybe true but they are about a hundred klicks out in front of the rest of the Church in meeting the needs of the needy and mitigating human suffering.

Agree that the Economist's intl news coverage is their strong suit.

this has been the case for everything the democrats have done since i started voting

but, CH*NGE.

There'd be more nuns but Reagan's death squads killed the rest of em in Central America.

And the Vatican cares enough about what those 10 nuns are doing to send some kind of Spanish Inquisition over here to look into their non-compliance with official doctrine w/r/t fertility, AIDS work, you know, compassionate care in general.

Perrin tweet:

Health Care "Reform": Same crooks holding the same guns, only now they're smiling.

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2008-07-28-DennisPerrin.jpghttp://hiphopandpolitics.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/armondwhite-225.jpg

another productive political post from the esteemed poster dr. morbius

another reflexive zing from that irrepressible enemy of Morbs, J0rdan S.

i love morbs but he should be called out for trolling

sorry

"duly noted, dennis"

lol

define "trolling," doll

cuz it seems to change when the subject is not Steven Spielberg but the Demublicans

health care "reform"

okay so now that we got our reform, can we list out the things about it we don't like?

1) limits FSA contributions by half. I know most people don't put that much in these things but I did this year. Hopefully I wont' need to next year because I'll ditch this high-deductible plan I'm keeping for my wife, but I'm not sure I understand what limiting these contributions does.

2) allows religious right to continue framing abortion as a shameful procedure only sought out by bad people instead of a safe & legal procedure that'd be part of any normal, comprehensive health care plan

3) Big business triumphant

4) Does not name Slim Goodbody surgeon general for life

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/42/370066086_ba139b5415.jpg

for years I thought that was richard simmons

just 'cause

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Sexualhealth/Pages/Abortionyouroptions.aspx

Taibbi:

As she inched toward the triumphant win, Nancy Pelosi issued a fact sheet about the bill that cheerfully quoted an E.J. Dionne editorial. The passage:

An op-ed by E.J. Dionne on Friday reveals that the current health reform legislation pending before Congress was “built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.”

The electoral-politics aspect of what just happened with health care is a bit strange. It seems to me that the Republicans capitulated entirely to Tea Party sentiment, a move that sets them up for a Sarah Palin candidacy in 2012, which in turn is a move that sets them up for a crushing general-election defeat. Meanwhile the Democrats spent the health care debate fleeing from their own base, a move that… well, I don’t know what it means, exactly, but it does make me a little ill. The whole picture is strange: Democrats running as Republicans, Republicans running as Turner-Diaries conspiracy theorists.

I don’t get what the Republicans have to gain by painting themselves as hysterical survivalist Ruby-Ridge loonies.... It doesn’t matter, though. Should I decide to change my politics and become a conservative now that I’m exactly the middle-aged bourgeois/suburban tool I used to rail against, I can always vote Republican by voting Democratic. The new Democratic Party is an excellent substitute for the old Nixon/Ford Republican Party. They even passed Nixon’s vision of a health care plan. That there’s no Democratic Party left is a shame, but I guess one choice is better than none.

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/03/22/baby-killers/

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/26/cheaper.surgery/index.html?hpt=C1

huh

I think my favorite part is where the hospital goes "oh actually we misspoke, it should have been a figure 3x what he paid instead of 10x"

"When Fitteron's team investigated the cost of the procedure Godfrey Davies underwent, for example, they found that on the high end, the price should have been no more than about $17,850 in his state."

OH WELL I GUESS THAT'S OK -- I DON'T MIND PAYING AN EXTRA 14K COZ IT'S GONNA BE BUYING AMERICAN!!!!! USAUSAUSA

lol oops, I meant 5x

yeah i recently saw the bill for a pediatric spine surgery that was well into the 200k range

My dad just said (paraphrasing):

"They're gonna test you for nicotine in your system. And if they catch you with nicotine in your system, your rates will skyrocket. and here's the thing - your rates will never go down. that's how they get you. they're punishing smokers for the rest of their lives!!!"

As with everything my dad says, there are grains of truth in there. But there's no way in hell the rates would stay elevated for the rest of your life. And I can't pin any proof on these internets to help me out. I'm staying mum until I can conclusively prove him wrong yet again. Can anyone help?

But there's no way in hell the rates would stay elevated for the rest of your life.

or maybe they would, because even people who quit smoking will have, on average, higher health care costs the rest of their lives in comparison to non-smokers?

The problem with my dad is that he just repeats everything he heard on Rush Limbaugh, which occasionally contains information that is tangentially related to a fact, so everything is just barely plausible, all of the time

is your dad still working? you may be better off just pointing out that his health insurance is not going to change so he should just shut up

j-christ, speaking of tangential lies, I found this while trying to debunk my dad:

http://www.smokersclubinc.com/modules.php?file=article&name=News&sid=518

The Ten Biggest Lies about Smoke & Smoking,
by Robert Hayes Halfpenny

Among the lies:

THE LIE: Cigarette smoke and Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) or Second Hand Smoke (SHS) Causes cancer.
THE Truth: Simply stated there is no known cause for any type of cancer.

THE LIE: Second Hand Smoke is a public health issue.
THE TRUTH: It is impossible for SHS to be a public health issue for the simple reason there is NO proof that SHS has hurt anyone. In fact, according the W.H.O. (see above), SHS may have some beneficial effect on children.

xpost
my dad doesn't even smoke. but he loves to identify signs of the approaching socialist govt takeover (seriously).

Simply stated there is no known cause for any type of cancer.

um this is pretty demonstrably and definitively not true

like, you know what causes skin cancer? THE SUN

i'd like to see you prove that. plus, I heard that getting some sun occasionally is good for you, THEREFORE the sun cannot be bad for you in any circumstance.

my standard advice is never argue with your family.

sorry, i should save the crap about my dad's fear of the world for another thread. but can anyone shed some light on the premiums for smokers, and whether they would stay at the same elevated rate, even if the person stopped smoking?

i'd like to see you prove that.

maybe we should focus in on what constitutes "proof" for your dad (double-blinded peer-reviewed scientific studies not good enough, presumably)

although in this instance, maybe point out that the body doing the assessing and penalizing based on tobacco use is going to be a private actor, JUST LIKE TODAY, RIGHT NOW, WHEN THEY DO THAT??

xps

xpost shakey, my dad believes the earth is 8000 years old so

goole, he would most likely say that the rates will be higher than they were before, and the tests more strict (or something), because that's what the govt wanted. and regardless of the veracity of that statement, it would take me so long to debunk that he would conclude "1 point for dad, i am the man, rushbo is the truth"

I LOVE THE HOLIDAY SEASON

My mom on end-of-life planning: "but what if Grandma isn't 'shovel-ready'?"

GUILTY LULZ

Could do with some advice or consolation:
I was at a swanky party a few weeks ago when I passed out, actually lost consciousness twice. Would have been happy with a sit-down and some water but this guy who I assumed was an on-site medic (because he told me he'd been a medic for 20 years) but could just have been general security or something, had already called an ambulance, wouldn't let me have water until I'd been checked out, then told me "no-one faints for no reason" and that there could be something seriously wrong. I am healthy with no other medical probs and have had a history of passing out before - although not for years. Anyway he scared me enough that I got into the ambulance and had a hospital visit. Now I'm getting bills I thought my insurance would cover - by all accounts it's very good insurance but I didn't have my card on me at the time it happened. My claim for an acute care admission has been denied because I was otherwise healthy - all things I told him and the ambos - so it wasn't medically necessary, and now I'm bloody livid because I let myself be scared into going to the hospital based on this AND there was no mention of what costs might be even when I asked about them. I'm scared I'm going to have to pay thousands out of our savings just because I took the advice of this guy who was obviously just covering the arse of the venue. The doctors at the hospital wanted to keep me in overnight because it was the fainting twice that worried them and I'm covered for the observation stay.

I have been stressing out ever since and wishing I'd had a bit more information before getting into that ambulance or just stuck to my instincts but I honestly (stupidly) believed that if there was a potential major cost that was unlikely to be covered, someone might have pointed it out while I was trying to decide what to do? I KNOW it was stupid and I KNOW I should've at least gotten a cab but the guy had already called the ambulance and I was scared and tbh didn't have much memory of what had actually happened to me, so was relying on his judgment. Do I have any comeback with the insurance co?

bumping because someone here probably has advice that knows a lot more about it than i do

Call the hospital and speak to the billing dept. Ask to have your bill reduced. Call your insurance company and harass the shit outta them, too. It'll probably take multiple phone calls to both organizations, but your should at least get a reduction in your bill.

Thanks kate, will do.

Correction: The observation overnight stay was authorized. Something called "acute care inpatient hospital admission" has been denied because it wasn't medically necessary - I don't even know what portion of my highly enjoyable evening that refers to (the time on the bill is a few hours after I actually came into the hospital)... but surely they can only tell it wasn't necessary because they did the tests and it turns out I was fine? If it wasn't necessary why would they have done it? Reason for their concern is because it can be a symptom of arrhythmia/ heart problems but seems like it can also be nothing.

interesting article from Michael Pollan on some promising side effects of Obamacare re: the food industry

http://www.readability.com/articles/cpcdx1xn

whole thing is a t-bomb, and makes me p jazzed about primary care

great article gbx

this is v. troubling:

The clinic encountered similar troubles with some of the doctors who saw its hospitalized patients. One group of hospital-based internists was excellent, and coördinated its care plans with the clinic. But the others refused, resulting in longer stays and higher costs (and a fee for every visit, while the better group happened to be the only salaried one). When Fernandopulle arranged to direct the patients to the preferred doctors, the others retaliated, trolling the emergency department and persuading the patients to choose them instead.