Comments (29) Jump to Comments Form

1. 

   believecommonsense said, 4 months ago

   oh geeze …. and now it already is:

   health insurance company’s rules and protocols for obtaining prior authorization

2. 

   cabrobst said, 4 months ago

   Reduce the salaries of doctors, nurses and insurance executives to make them commensurate to how much they contribute to society. Pay insurance executives minimum wage.

3. 

   lalas said, 4 months ago

   Funny that the righties say “the gov’t can’t do anything” and yet they’re scared of exactly that competition injected into the marketplace.

4. 

   Gladius said, 4 months ago

   cab,
   We already have a shortage of nurses and are heading towards a shortage of general practitioners. Education costs are soaring through the roof and you want to mess with their salaries. How are you planning to get enough of them? If you claim that proper health care is the right of all people then I’d say that their contribution to society is priceless.
   Feel free to bash insurance executives and any health administrators that don’t seem to be serving any purpose.

5. 

   rlsaxion said, 4 months ago

   Cab, I am curious to know how much value you actually put on your life? If you want medical professionals to be paid a salary that “commensurate to how much they contribute to society” then we are going to face with much higher costs. Or are you saying that the ability to save someone’s life is not very valuable?

6. 

   dtroutma said, 4 months ago

   Gladius has a good point, my daughter is an RN, and we are short. I remember when the “Bushies” were saying we had TOO MANY DOCTORS AND SHOULD CLOSE MEDICAL SCHOOLS! My vote was to eliminate law schools instead. Now the right argues that a “universal” health plan will overburden our supply of doctors with new patients? At my doctor’s offices the employee shortage is administrators to handle all the complexities of PRIVATE insurance companies. My wife’s attempts to get therapy approved by our private company is FAR more complicated than getting care from VA or medicare.

7. 

   nomad2112 said, 4 months ago

   … regulated by the same clowns who regulated the banks.

8. 

   mikeut66 said, 4 months ago

   Oh yeah … like the insurance companies treat you any differently.

9. 

   oldlegodad said, 4 months ago

   Reduce nurses pay??? already doing that by importing Philippinas by the hundreds…As above cost of education in US facilities is too high, w/o government subsidies. Stimulus $ should go to training for jobs for US native born citizens to take back medical care . US Medical Academy? Regional nursing schools? Better in long run than NHS

10. 

    senorbullwinkle said, 4 months ago

    IF WE INCREASE the amount of doctors we’ll have a shortage of golf courses. It’s hard enough getting a tee time now.
    .
    ps if your sick, go to a golf course.

11. 

    Gladius said, 4 months ago

    Old joke. Golfs gotten way too popular. Take away the doctors and you still can’t get a tee time.

12. 

    churchillwasright said, 4 months ago

    Congress should just legislate no more Tiger Woods. Problem fixed. (of course they wouldn’t read that bill either)

13. 

    Gladius said, 4 months ago

    Tiger merely made watching golf more popular. I still don’t undertsand it, but hey. I have enjoyed playing it but watching it is kinda of like watching the grass grow.

14. 

    churchillwasright said, 4 months ago

    How is it that someone who doesn’t understand golf, doesn’t play, and doesn’t watch can have such a definitive opinion on it’s popularity, the number of people playing, and why? Oh, because it’s another know it all lib, that’s why!

15. 

    Gladius said, 4 months ago

    You obviously didn’t take time to read my post carefully. I played golf since I was 7 or 8. I don’t play now because I have a hip replacement. I Do not understand the popularity of Watching golf. Go stick your head in some ice water, cool down and try reading Slooooowly.

16. 

    senorbullwinkle said, 4 months ago

    WHAT HAPPENED churchhill ? Someone slap a OBAMA sticker on your bumper ? Health insurance get canceled ? Or Did you lose your job, and get foreclosed on today ?
    .
    Only two kinds of people want to hear your problems, them that dont care, and those who are glad to hear it. So Churchill I’d be glad to hear your problems, if you’d like to tell me.

17. 

    churchillwasright said, 4 months ago

    GLADIUS: I don[t want to argue with you. I remarked that Tiger Woods was somehow responsible for longer waits at golf courses. YOU countered that “Tiger merely made watching golf more popular”. I read it very carefully and slooooooowly. See how slooooooowly you can read this:

    “Sports experts say Tiger Woods is mainly responsible for an increase in the popularity of golf in the United States. They say more people are playing and watching golf because of the young golf star. And they say the game is becoming popular with new groups of people. In the past, most of the people who played golf were older white businessmen. Now the game is becoming popular with younger people and with members of minority and ethnic groups.” (This Is America - Golf 6/25/01)

    If you can’t read it slooooooowly enough, the audio can be downloaded here, so even you can understand it: http://tinyurl.com/mlnajv Then stick your own head in some icewater.

    BULLWINKLE: AT LEAST I DON’T TYPE IN ALL CAPS AND YELL LIKE YOU!!! Now, how about a nice relaxing round of golf? Your private club or mine? Al Gore’s jet is free this week and he owes me a favor. We can fly down together. Have your people call my people…

18. 

    believecommonsense said, 4 months ago

    oldlego …. ain’t a single proposal out there to create a NHS or have government run healthcare as in England. Shoot, there’s not even a proposal on the table to go with a single payor system, run privately, like Canada.

    Doesn’t it say a lot that the private insurers are quaking in their boots to even talk about creating a public health insurance plan an option people could choose?
    It will be all too obvious how inefficient and costly the private insurers are. Can’t have that! So they want to scare everybody by crying socialism, socialism!

    Between the VA, Medicare, Medicaid and government employees, about half the country already has the government “option” people are screaming about!

19. 

    HOWGOZIT said, 4 months ago

    Gladius–I played golf with an 85 year old with two hip replacements–he regularly shot in the mid to high 70’s on a 6300 yard course. Get back out there and enjoy!

20. 

    Gladius said, 4 months ago

    Church your problem is that you couldn’t be bothered to make a reasoned response addressing the Tiger criticism. Instead you posted as attack on me that showed you had not read my entire post. I stated that I had played golf and enjoyed it and nowhere did I state that I didn’t understand the game merely the phenomenon of viewing. If you had replied with your sports expert comment in the first place you would have gotten a reasoned reponse in turn. See how this works?

21. 

    Gladius said, 4 months ago

    HOW,

    I had arthritis for several years before the replacement and gave my clubs away. I may get back into it when I feel like replacing the clubs.

22. 

    dtroutma said, 4 months ago

    I’ve been getting good support from VA (after much trial getting signed up some years ago-it’s the bean counter appointees, not field people). Just started on Medicare at 65- interesting search this week , after getting a treatment payment denial letter, revealed how much of a stranglehold THE AMA already has on “policy”. Blue Cross also runs the program under contract- so it is “interesting” how “public” this program really is. (actually isn’t)

23. 

    HOWGOZIT said, 4 months ago

    Go for it Gladius–even if just on the range for awhile. All the best to you in getting back.

24. 

    believecommonsense said, 4 months ago

    dtroutma, did you select the Medicare Advantage plan? that plan is privately administered and is also subsidized by govt with an additional 18 percent higher payment than the traditional fee-for-service Medicare plan that pays 80 percent of premium

25. 

    dtroutma said, 4 months ago

    Believe- my “other”(federal employee health benefit plan) insurance has had no problems on this issue- it was a chiropractor visit- which is where I read the AMA definitions, or rather non-definition of “medically necessary”. I imagine it will work out at some point. It IS very confusing, figuring out “who’s on first”.

26. 

    believecommonsense said, 4 months ago

    What I was wondering was if you chose the traditional Medicare plan, or the Medicare Advantage plan, which is structured like a private HMO. Was just curious. I chose the traditional fee-for-service medicare plan, so I also purchase a private supplemental plan, along with a prescription plan. Between the three of them, my healthcare premium costs alone are now about $450/mo. When someone talks about or writes about “free” Medicare, I know they don’t know what they’re talking about, just spouting somebody else’s inflamed rhetoric.

27. 

    striper77 said, 4 months ago

    In all actuality Medicare sets the prices for the medical treatment. They have to charge these prices to people with out insurance and then charge less for people with insurance.
    This alone keeps the medical prices soaring.

28. 

    lightartsteacher said, 4 months ago

    My mother-in-law was an emergency room nurse, before her death. This was happening years ago. She had to count items used in each emergency procedure, to allow them to be billed, no matter how quick and scary every thing was happening.

29. 

    David said, 4 months ago

    Yes, tell me, will that regulations book be 60-70,000 pages long like our tax code.

    Again, we observe a government that can’t even run iteself properly to save its own life and we want it to run health insurance?

    Government insurance being introduced as “competition” is a sham. Government insurance will have much more leverage, much more money to borrow and will be able to undercut private insurance easily. They will do so until their competitors are reduced to ashes and then take the whole system over…which was their plan to begin with.

    Here is the only thing predictable about our government: It will do whatever it thinks it can get away to serve itself by increasing its money and power…and it will bide its time if that is what it takes to make those ends.