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1. 

   dtroutma said, 4 months ago

   A little cruel, a set of stocks might have been more literal.

2. 

   nomad2112 said, 4 months ago

   Like this couldn’t be predicted. Once the money has run out they will just let you rot.

3. 

   oldlegodad said, 4 months ago

   With out comment except. You want Government controlled health care?

   http://hamptonroads.com/2009/07/struggling-cancer-and-government-forms

4. 

   pbarnrob said, 4 months ago

   @oldlego: You want insurance (=legalized gambling) controlled sickness care? When HMOs came in, there was speculation that the expense would be controlled by concentrating on preventive medicine, proper nutrition, several ways to keep everybody healthier. It was cheaper and easier to just deny claims.

5. 

   believecommonsense said, 4 months ago

   pbarnrob, you’re exactly right. HMOs absolutely promised to control spiraling healthcare costs by better coordinated care through primary care doc and promoting wellness, preventive medicine and patient education.

   They failed big time. Started denying care by not authorizing medical treatments the primary care docs said patients needed, fighting with their own “gate keepers” about what patients needed.

   Early detections and treatments were the casualty of their strong arm tactics to prevent primary care docs from sending patients to specialists. So patients were much sicker by the time HMOs would authorize treatments, therefore costs went up, not down.

   HMOs response? Be more careful about who they would sell policies to in the first place.

6. 

   pbarnrob said, 4 months ago

   And we saw first-hand, the young (healthy, unconcerned) kids in the workplace went (of course!) for the cheap policies, us older codgers who actually were going to the doctor at times, needed the more expensive policies with actual coverage…