Guess I'll chime in with a couple of comments.
Tamiflu MAY decrease your illness by a half day IF given early enough
at a cost well over $100.
As an ER physician I would be delighted to take a 10% cut in pay if
everyone would pay. We
currently collect about 40% of what we bill.
I'm all for overhauling our "system" (which really isn't a system);
but so far am concerned about
their definition of an overhaul. Medicare and medicaid are breaking
the country and going
broke and we don't want to replicate that.
I agree that we should quit rewarding doctors and hospitals for doing
more instead of rewarding
for better outcomes.
There are practical ways to decrease health care costs that the
politicians seem to be avoiding.
There..... I feel better already : >).
Dan C
On Jul 24, 2009, at 4:08 PM, Art Langston wrote:
Spot on Ralph. I agree 100%
My aunt was recently in one of the big teaching hospitals here
where the staff sometimes rotates. The doctor she and our family
liked and admired most was the VA doctor who was filling in.
My own personal feeling is that if a doctor wouldn't theoretically
take a 10% pay cut for 20% more of his patients to survive I sure
don't want him for my doctor. That's not a "brain drain" it's a
"lack of human decency drain". Let them go elsewhere if their oath
isn't more important than their bottom like.
The theory that you always get a better mechanic, plumber or doctor
by simply just paying more often doesn't apply in real life.
Art
N2666H
Ralph Finch wrote:
I’ll disagree with your examples item by item:
The USPS: “ever increasing costs and ever diminishing service.”
Almost every service cost is increasing. The fact the USPS is
also is irrelevant. Diminishing service? All I know is when I
buy stuff via the internet, and have a choice of delivery, the
USPS delivers a bit cheaper and much faster than UPS or FedEx
ground. I always choose USPS when I can, strictly on a Benefit/
Cost ratio, which is quite a bit better than the private delivery
companies.
Amtrak: My personal experience is positive. There’s a hugely
popular Amtrak commute run, the Capital Corridor, between
Sacramento and the SF Bay Area. Quite heavily used and runs about
once an hour for about 12 or so runs a day. That’s in spite of
sharing the tracks with freighters which often have higher
priority. If other Amtrak runs are deficient, what do you expect
when it’s deliberately starved for money? Roads and auto transit
are hugely subsidized.
VA: No personal experience, but my father used it for his
eventually fatal cancer. I don’t recall him complaining. Again,
deficiencies are caused at least in part by an administration that
loved to talk about supporting the troops but failed to do so in
reality…an administration that far more supported its private
mercenary Army, Halliburton, through tens of billions of dollars
of no-bid contracts. BTW, with respect to Tamiflu, that treats
only symptoms, and not too well. No medicine attacks the flu
virus, least of all H1N1. The whole Tamiflu stockpiling has been
a huge boon for big Pharma. Don’t act surprised now!
FEMA: Early on it was effective. Then, the same administration
that brought us one incompetent disaster after another brought us
“Heckuva Job Brownie”, whose expertise was Arabian horse farms or
some such. This is the guy whose office sent him emailed fashion
tips on rolling up his sleeves so he’d look hard-working while
thousands were drowning. Let’s see what a return to a competency-
driven, rather than politics-driven, administrator can do.
You failed to include the Social Security Administration in your
alphabet list of government agencies. Maybe that’s because over
the decades it’s been in service, and through the tens of
trillions of dollars that’s run through it, there haven’t been
huge scandals, frauds, and theft, and that in spite of it being
run and headed up by relatively low-paid civil servants. No need
for $50 Million compensation packages….just appoint competent
people with some oversight.
RF
From: [email protected] [mailto:ercoupe-
[email protected]] On Behalf Of William R.Bayne
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 12:28 AM
To: Ercoupe Social List
Subject: Re: [ercoupe-flyin] RE: [ercoupe-tech] Model C or D
Hi Ralph,
On the one hand, you are right...the reason there is no more
Socialist Party in the United states is that every plank of the
Socialist platform of the early twentieth century is today
established government policy. Everyone you ask will tell you they
are "middle class" and none will admit to being Socialists.
On the other hand...in Britain socialized health care is via the
National Health Service. It's a national program.
In the U.S., we had a National Postal Service that is now a
private monopoly with ever increasing costs and ever diminishing
service. We have Amtrack, which is not exactly a success story
either. We have FEMA, the FAA and the IRS, none of whom seem a
desirable administrative model for any "national health care".
Our VA (Veterans Administration) is the closest thing the U.S. has
to socialized medicine. You've probably heard of the crumbling
facilities at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington that some of our
returning wounded troops were being assigned until someone blew
the whistle. Then there's the current "shortage" of psychiatric
help for returning soldiers...we didn't think they would come back
with problems? They have in every other war, even if the need was
ignored then, too. Systems like this do not serve the
people...they serve the system.
I have VA coverage, and found out that my $25 co-pay for a monthly
medication (30 pills) would buy 200 pills from Costco by mail
order that I could split for over a year's supply. My VA physician
was not licensed to practice in my state, could not write an
"outside" prescription, and would not ask another physician who
COULD to do so for me. I changed physicians. They still won't
write me a prescription for 100 pills (better deal) of double
dosage (so I could split them) like a private doctor will. So yes,
the VA probably negotiates good prices from the pharmaceutical
companies; but I don't get the benefit...the VA system does. Ask
how many veterans have received the Shingles vaccine (that
Medicare covers).
If one comes down with the Swine Flu, the tape recording you get
when calling to make an appointment tells victims to stay home. If
they insist on an appointment, none will be available within the
48-72 hours that the antiviral Tamiflu is most effective; even
though my tax dollars paid for "government" stockpiles of it. If I
suffer complications and die as a result no one is personally
accountable, criminally or financially.
We do already know that current proposals to "insure everyone" do
nothing to contain future increases in costs. They are the same
old scheme that "covers" the uninsured by eliminating current
services and raising current taxes. The number of uninsured
children of legal residents that will come onto the rolls of the
insured will be far fewer than the number of illegal aliens and
their exploding families that will be given coverage. The bill for
same will be paid by...(drum roll)...existing taxpayers. Why am I
not surprised?
I respectfully disagree that local police, fire, schools, roads,
water and sewage systems are "socialized" in the manner that a
national common denominator of tax support would produce. They are
much more like the traditional agricultural "co-op" supported by
local funding with local leadership and local accountability.
I'm all for freedom of choice, but the choices that will likely
emerge will not be honestly represented nor honest financially.
Any fool can "contain" Medicare costs by lowering payments for
services until no one in private practice will participate.
Somehow I just don't happen to see that as "change" I can live with.
Regards,
WRB
--
On Jul 24, 2009, at 00:42, Ralph Finch wrote:
Hartmut doesn’t have to imagine, he lives in a country with
government organized health care. Hartmut, can you tell us how it
is? And you lived in the USA for a few years, how do you compare
it to here?
It’s a sincere question. Actually the USA has socialized police,
fire, schools roads, water systems, sewages systems….the list goes
on and on. And those are all government employees! The
“socialized” medicine the neo-conservatives try to scare us with
is not on the same order at all: it’s simply letting the
government act as an insurer along with all the for-profit, high-
salary, private insurance companies. Why do the neo-cons want to
deny freedom of choice?
Ralph Finch
From: [email protected] [mailto:ercoupe-
[email protected]] On Behalf Of heavensounds
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 8:33 PM
To: Techlist Ercoupe
Subject: Re: [ercoupe-tech] Model C or D
Harmut
You are correct. That's yet one more example of the imbecility of
government bureaucracies. Illogical regulations that make no sense
whatsoever. Imagine when government starts controlling health care !
Eliacim
