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The great Health Care debate!

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vespergirl

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Date: 3/12/2009 7:16:42 PM
Author: trillionaire

Date: 3/12/2009 7:11:22 PM
Author: cara

Date: 3/12/2009 5:44:33 PM

Author: vespergirl

As far as children''s healthcare goes, a current statistic listed that over 2 million uninsured children have at least one insured parent. Which means that the parents are buying themselves insurance, without insuring their children. It is not my responsibility to buy their children healthcare - if you have the capacity to insure them through your employer, then you should be obligated to do it.


Just because the parents can get insurance through their employer does not mean that the parent is able to insure their kid on that policy, or do so for a reasonable price. Two examples:


There is a reasonable student health insurance policy available from my university; students are required to be covered and the school usually covers half the cost of the insurance. But those pesky grad students kept having babies, and babies are expensive so they banned dependent coverage. You can not pay more to add your child on this policy - no kids are allowed period. And yes, they even emailed that out as the reason - too many knocked up people. One of my friends had a healthy baby and was able to purchase insurance on the open market for a reasonable amount of money. One of my friends was likely to have a premature baby, and was simply not going to be able to purchase ANY insurance at any price if that had happened. The kid actually went full term but had some minor, minor issue that needed to be watched (and did not end up costing anything) but that was enough that they couldn''t buy any coverage on the market until the kid was 7 months and this issue was officially done. So they got superlucky, but really had no method of insuring their brand-new, completely healthy baby that needed monitoring for a minor, preexisting condition.


Another case. Prior to grad school, I worked at a cheap school that would cover your health insurance but no dependents. In that case, they would allow you to add a dependent but you had to pay ALL the cost yourself and the employer would not subsidize any of the extra cost. The secretary was a single mom and she had insurance for herself, but to add her disabled son was an additional $900 per month. This job did not pay a lot, and she simply couldn''t buy food, rent and her son''s health insurance. Nor could she qualify for state help with insuring her son cause her income was too high and because *she* had insurance, they assumed she could add her son and her employer would pay. She went round and round trying to show that she couldn''t afford to insure her son on the school policy so she could qualify for help but it didn''t work. She was stuck in a no-man''s land and was actually advised to quit her job so her son would be eligible for state aid.

Excellent examples of our broken system, Cara!

''Americans spend $2.4 trillion a year on health care. The Business Roundtable report says Americans in 2006 spent $1,928 per capita on health care, at least two-and-a-half times more per person than any other advanced country.'' we pay more, and get less. Source

Safety net health care centers strain under increased demand.

The hidden costs of health care
I''m not sure that the above statement is true (about us getting less). I was under the impression that the finest health care in the world is available in our country. Is that not true? I''m talking about for people who have insurance.
 

vespergirl

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Date: 3/12/2009 7:48:17 PM
Author: basil

Date: 3/12/2009 6:19:35 PM
Author: Lynnie
I would gladly take a 10% salary cut to be properly staffed, and have patients get the quality of care they deserve.

The physicians in my department actually just voted to take a 5% pay cut in order to not have to lay off nurses and technicians.

The VA system is basically an example of socialized medicine. In my experience, the majority of people do get good care at the VA. But some also get poor care, and there''s no way to really predict or control what you get. They definitely wait longer to make appointments and to be seen when they have appointments. Doctors have less choice when prescribing medications. If you try drug A for your patient and he has an allergy/sensitivity/side effect and can''t take it, in a private system, you would just choose another drug. At the VA, there are multiple forms (govt bureaucracy), and whomever decides these things (not an MD) can either accept or deny it.

Honestly, I don''t think Americans would tolerate socialized medicine. It''s very American to be able to say ''well, if I pay more I should get something better/be first in line/get the latest technology''. It''s not very American to say ''well, Joe Homeless needs an MRI too, so I guess I''ll wait a few more days''. Can you imagine the black market for some drugs? Can you imagine Ted Kennedy not going to Duke for his neurosurgery, and going to a community hospital and waiting in the waiting room instead? There''ll be black market clinics!

I''d like to blame the drug companies too, but the fact is that we pay the R&D for the whole world. Most of the pharmaceutical advances have come from the US, and are funded by drug companies. Then they charge the US market whatever they want, and the rest of the world negotiates for a lower price. Now, the extravagances of taking physicians to pro football games, on vacation, out to dinner, etc., has largely fallen by the wayside. I can''t even take a pen from a drug rep, and we can''t even give out medication samples to patients anymore (not that that''s a good thing).

Cara - I don''t really know that we get less. Sure there are individuals who get less. But some people get a lot more than they would in another country. I have never seen a breakdown of where those differences in costs come from. Do our drugs cost more? Hospital visits longer? More end-of-life expenses? Order more tests? It is hard to know.

Obviously, there''s no easy solution.
I agree with much of this. I don''t think that we should punish the people who can afford good health insurance by making health coverage equally bad for everyone. I would rather see it work very well for most of the country than poorly for everyone. (The current statistic is that there are 48 million uninsured Americans in a country of 310 million people - that means 262 million are insured).

I want to know that my doctors and medical researchers are paid very well - after all, that''s their incentive for working harder, right? If a brain surgeon made the same salary as a secretary, what would be the incentive to go through all of the extra years of schooling? American medical ingenuity is world-renowned, because we do reward our physicians and researchers for excellence in their work.

My parents immigrated here from a socialist country. They have experienced both types of health care systems. Trust me, they FAR prefer the healthcare they get in this country.
 

cara

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Just recently though, US physicians were polled and found to support moving to a single payer system. Even though doctor pay might be cut, the current system is so messed up that even doctors want to scrap it.

I think the US will best be served by moving to some kind of hybrid system rather than a traditional single payer system. Politically and practically, I don''t think it works to scrap the system that works for some people and start from scratch; rather we need to adjust what we''ve got to expand coverage.

Vesper, you are right that *some* people in the US get excellent care, but it''s not necessarily cheap and it is certainly not even all insured people. Many of the insured are actually underinsured, where they have insurance but could still get wiped out by a big injury or they commonly postpone needed treatment or cost-effective screening procedures because of costs. Like I said earlier, capitalism doesn''t necessarily work for providing health care. So you have to look at aggregate health measures, and even among the insured subset of people, our system does not produce good marks for cost effectiveness OR outcomes based measures compared to some of the more socialist systems out there.
 

LtlFirecracker

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Date: 3/12/2009 9:02:30 PM
Author: cara
Just recently though, US physicians were polled and found to support moving to a single payer system. Even though doctor pay might be cut, the current system is so messed up that even doctors want to scrap it.


I think the US will best be served by moving to some kind of hybrid system rather than a traditional single payer system. Politically and practically, I don't think it works to scrap the system that works for some people and start from scratch; rather we need to adjust what we've got to expand coverage.


Vesper, you are right that *some* people in the US get excellent care, but it's not necessarily cheap and it is certainly not even all insured people. Many of the insured are actually underinsured, where they have insurance but could still get wiped out by a big injury or they commonly postpone needed treatment or cost-effective screening procedures because of costs. Like I said earlier, capitalism doesn't necessarily work for providing health care. So you have to look at aggregate health measures, and even among the insured subset of people, our system does not produce good marks for cost effectiveness OR outcomes based measures compared to some of the more socialist systems out there.


I think a hybrid solution is a doable option. We already have one, in reality, but it needs major reform. I do think physicians need to play a more active roll in figuring out this problem. For 2 reason, the first is that we are in the front line and know what will work and what won't. And second, because we have to live with the benefits and consequences of the choices. Physician's staying on the sideline in the early 90's was not beneficial.
 

trillionaire

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In terms of mandatory insurance requirements,

The Christian Science monitor published an interesting editorial on this subject on 3/26/2008. An excerpt:
"In fact, under the law, there's a big difference between participation in a government health program funded by taxes and privatizing such a program, with individuals forced to purchase private health insurance.

Taxation involves representation, as when Congress appropriates money and controls a government program for the general welfare. This describes Social Security and Medicare. But government cannot simply delegate its taxing powers to private business."


Just thought that was an interesting commentary...
 

trillionaire

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Date: 3/12/2009 9:02:30 PM
Author: cara
Just recently though, US physicians were polled and found to support moving to a single payer system. Even though doctor pay might be cut, the current system is so messed up that even doctors want to scrap it.


I think the US will best be served by moving to some kind of hybrid system rather than a traditional single payer system. Politically and practically, I don't think it works to scrap the system that works for some people and start from scratch; rather we need to adjust what we've got to expand coverage.


Vesper, you are right that *some* people in the US get excellent care, but it's not necessarily cheap and it is certainly not even all insured people. Many of the insured are actually underinsured, where they have insurance but could still get wiped out by a big injury or they commonly postpone needed treatment or cost-effective screening procedures because of costs. Like I said earlier, capitalism doesn't necessarily work for providing health care. So you have to look at aggregate health measures, and even among the insured subset of people, our system does not produce good marks for cost effectiveness OR outcomes based measures compared to some of the more socialist systems out there.

Everyone should check out Physicians for National Health Care It has a pretty extensive FAQs section, and dispels some of the misnomers and misunderstandings that we throw around about national health care...
 

zhuzhu

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Has any of you watched the documentary "Sicko"? What are your thoughts about the movie?
 

icekid

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Date: 3/12/2009 11:49:55 PM
Author: zhuzhu
Has any of you watched the documentary ''Sicko''? What are your thoughts about the movie?
All I have to say is Michael Moore
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He IS a sicko. Gross.
 

beebrisk

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Date: 3/12/2009 11:49:55 PM
Author: zhuzhu
Has any of you watched the documentary ''Sicko''? What are your thoughts about the movie?

Yeah, and I''ve been itching to move to the utopia they call Cuba so I can get myself full coverage.
 

vespergirl

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Date: 3/13/2009 10:00:12 AM
Author: beebrisk

Date: 3/12/2009 11:49:55 PM
Author: zhuzhu
Has any of you watched the documentary ''Sicko''? What are your thoughts about the movie?

Yeah, and I''ve been itching to move to the utopia they call Cuba so I can get myself full coverage.
I heard that the perfect Cuban hospital that was featured in the movie is reserved for high government officials and those with power and clout. Your typical illiterate peasant is not being treated there - they go to filthy shacks that barely have any supplies or medications. It''s a wonder that the govt. escorts didn''t bring Michael Moore to check out their rural "clinics."
 

beebrisk

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Date: 3/13/2009 10:42:27 AM
Author: vespergirl
Date: 3/13/2009 10:00:12 AM

Author: beebrisk


Date: 3/12/2009 11:49:55 PM

Author: zhuzhu

Has any of you watched the documentary ''Sicko''? What are your thoughts about the movie?


Yeah, and I''ve been itching to move to the utopia they call Cuba so I can get myself full coverage.

I heard that the perfect Cuban hospital that was featured in the movie is reserved for high government officials and those with power and clout. Your typical illiterate peasant is not being treated there - they go to filthy shacks that barely have any supplies or medications. It''s a wonder that the govt. escorts didn''t bring Michael Moore to check out their rural ''clinics.''

You got that right!
I got a hunch that if there WAS any footage of those clinics it was all left on the cutting room floor to be trampled on by Michael Moore''s dishonest feet. Unless of course, it was confiscated first by Castro''s thugs.
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LtlFirecracker

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I don''t think Sicko represented both sides of the story. It did not show the many problems with socialized medicine.
 

trillionaire

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Date: 3/13/2009 11:19:31 AM
Author: LtlFirecracker
I don''t think Sicko represented both sides of the story. It did not show the many problems with socialized medicine.

Agreed. But single payer health care in the US is not synonymous with ''socialized medicine'', for one, and I for two, I would rather have a problematic system where everyone was covered than our current equally problematic system where millions are uninsure or underinsured and can''t get what they need.
 

zhuzhu

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I hope everyone agrees that the CURRENT system is flawed to a point that it HAS to change. Building a new healthcare system from scratch will at least give us a chance to think strategically and plan wisely to correct the current wrongs. I do not expect a miracle of "perfect new system", but I do expect this to be an important opportunity to make healthcare an equal right to everyone, rich or poor, healthy or sick.
 

LAJennifer

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beebrisk

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Date: 3/13/2009 4:32:56 PM
Author: LAJennifer
What does everyone think of this:


http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/10/veterans.health.insurance/index.html


(excerpt) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance . . .


$1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa
$2 million "for the promotion of astronomy" in Hawaii -
$332,000 for the design and construction of a school sidewalk in Franklin, Texas
$2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York
$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi
$1 million for cricket control in Utah
$200,000 "tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past"
$475,000 to build a parking garage in Provo City, Utah
$1.7M "for a honey bee factory" in Weslaco, TX

The above list is just a FRACTION of the money we just spent wasted, thanks to Obama''s newly signed bill.

The fact that this cut in veterans'' health care can even be suggested by the White House shows nothing but contempt for the military by it''s own Commander in Chief and that he''s unfit to carry the title. Shameful.
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basil

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There is no question that of all people, vets deserve good health care maybe more than anyone.

Trillionaire, I read the FAQ by the Physicians for National Health Care. They had a lot of good points, especially re: the distinction between socialized medicine and socialized insurance. But the one where they basically stated that the VA provided the best health care in the country is just not true. Between my husband and I, we''ve worked at 4 separate VAs all across the country. Although I really love working with that patient population, the system is very frustrating. There is nearly no motivation for staff, nurses, or staff physicians to work hard. And consequently, I think it attracts lazy people. Yeah, they have a standardized electronic health record which can make your job more efficient, you can''t be efficient if your staff is constantly in the breakroom, not working up your patients. In our private OR, a training surgeon usually completes about 5 cases per morning. At the VA OR, it''s more like 3 or 4. For the exact same procedures. And the whole reason is because the entire staff - technicians, nurses, anesthesiologists, etc., drag their feet all day. This adds up to a lot of cases day after day and week after week, so vets wait a long time for nonemergency surgery. It''s not optimum health care.

About the Obama "plan", I am a little surprised. I would bet money that it''s not really that the government isn''t going to pay for your surgery when your leg gets blown off. In every vets record is their percentage of "service-connected" conditions. I''m not exactly sure how it''s determined, but over a certain percentage allows a vet to get totally free health care for anything. Including meds, eyeglasses, etc, for any condition even if it''s not an injury received while in the service. My guess is that that privilege is the one that they want to revoke. FWIW, I don''t think that''s a fair or good idea, but it sounds a little less heinous than making people pay for getting shrapnel removed. Since no details of the plan have been released, I like to assume the best.
 

LtlFirecracker

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I have seen the same thing with the staff when working between a government run and private run hospital. Government workers are really hard to fire. Like basil was describing, you often have to ask someone many times to do something, and they do it when they feel like it. In the private hospitals, it seems to me much more of a team approach. The nursing staff often has more experience in the type of care they are giving and know what is going on. They are much less argumentative when you ask them to do something, and you don''t need to remind them to do things that are ordered.

The lack of effective support staff is probably the biggest reason I want to go into private practice. I think if a worker is not doing their job, you need to be able to let them go easily. We would need a whole culture shift in our government for that to happen. You need effective teamwork for good patient care.

Also, in private practice, you can adjust your clinic for your local needs. The VA and military system are all forced to chart with electronic medical records. Obama is pushing for this, but I think he needs to look at how horrible the military one is. The database is so large that the charting is super slow. I have been told that it takes longer to write a note than to see a patient, which means that less gets done in the same amount of time. There are plenty of good computer charting programs out there. Are there are different programs for different specialties. But the military wants you to use the same one no matter what speciality you are in. They don''t just want you too, they make you use it. That means you are using a charting system designed for adults for a micro premature baby. That makes no since. There have been several complaints about the system (ALTHA is the outpatient one for anyone who wants to look it up), but they have put so much money into this, they don''t want to start over. Plus, the Congressmen in the state where the program is based are fighting for it. This brings up another problem with government run medicine. Politicians making decisions on how a clinic should run and putting their own political agenda above what is best for the patients.

I have used computer charting at a private hospital. It is intuitive and easy to use. Improvements are being made every month. In ALTHA, there is no spell check despite the fact that it has been requested for almost 5 years! At the private hospital a board of physicians give input into the program. There is very little physician and nursing input in the military one.
 

strmrdr

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Date: 3/13/2009 4:32:56 PM
Author: LAJennifer
What does everyone think of this:


http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/10/veterans.health.insurance/index.html


(excerpt) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance . . .

that pisses me off beyond words.
I was going to start a thread on it but couldn''t without using swear words...
This is what I think.... bleep bleep bleep bleep @$#$!@$!$ !$!%@#!%@# #%%#%@#!%# #@#!%@%@$ %@^$^$#^$@^$^$^#$.
A friend of mine has been wounded twice once in a Iraq and once in Afghanistan and is headed back to Afghanistan for a 4th tour that he volunteered for at the end of the month.
 

starsapphire

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Please correct me if I am wrong, but the impression that I get is that the reason that the medical system in this country is having problems, is that it is for PROFIT, right. If we just make it like any other govt institution, would people still practice medicine?
 

basil

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LtlFirecracker - is ALTHA the same as CPRS? That''s the one we have. Your note is basically a blank text box and that''s what you write your note in. Only for our specialty, that''s pretty useless. In our private hospital, we have our own EMR, it''s specialty-specific but other specialties use it as well, so we can access their notes and we can see theirs, etc. It even has a drawing function, graphing functions, quick review functions, etc. to look back over numerical data over visits.

One more story about VA healthcare. I was talking to one of our technicians at the private hospital, and she told me how she had recently interviewed for a job at the VA as a lead technician. It paid $12k more than she is currently making. Now this technician coordinates one of our busy clinic, and she works up about 20-25 patients before 1 pm, plus routes all the phone calls for that clinic to the appropriate provider, or handles them herself. She works hard. The VA techs see about 10 patients per morning, take no phone calls, and don''t complete all the portions of the exam that private techs do. Of course, the VA promoted one of the current lazy techs to the lead tech position instead of hiring her. So now we just have the lazy leading the lazy. And we end up working up 50% of our own patients. Which means we spend a lot less time doing actual medicine, and see less patients per day. And these people are being paid $12k more than their private equivalent.

Anyway, I do worry about physician compensation with a single-payer system. That just means the government will get to decide how much physicians are paid. AMA has lobby power, but there''s not much else to stop them from cutting physician payments 10%, 20%, 50% or whatever, whenever they feel like it. Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are already lower across the board than any private insurance company.
 

basil

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Date: 3/13/2009 7:08:34 PM
Author: starsapphire
Please correct me if I am wrong, but the impression that I get is that the reason that the medical system in this country is having problems, is that it is for PROFIT, right. If we just make it like any other govt institution, would people still practice medicine?

No, I don''t think that''s correct at all. Read Icekid''s post at the beginning for a better understanding.

If health care were like any other government institution, people would still practice medicine. But they would be lazier, less productive, and less motivated to ever improve things. See mine and LtlFirecracker''s descriptions of VA health care for evidence of that.
 

LtlFirecracker

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Basal,

No it is worse. You have to click boxes. And the boxes make preformed statements that read like a robot.

ex

Pt complains of: suffy nose.
Congestion
No cough
Emesis
emesis is non Bloody

You get the idea

Every-time you click a box, the stupid egg timer goes off. And you have to wait. The thing is the boxes are tied to RVU's. So the more boxes you click, the busier you look, and the more support staff you get (since you are salaried, they can't just pay you based on the work you do so this is how they do it). Needless to say, people end up clicking a ton of boxes and the note does not read well. Plus, you have no idea what the doctor was thinking because the order of symptoms are the same no matter what. I have herd that the VA system is way better than the military system. You can free text (which reads much better), but you don't get credit for free texting. A perfect example of how this lacks common since, is bad for patient care, but will not be changed.

The system crashes at least once a month (world wide) and it is a disaster.
 

vespergirl

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Date: 3/13/2009 5:10:23 PM
Author: beebrisk

Date: 3/13/2009 4:32:56 PM
Author: LAJennifer

What does everyone think of this:


http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/10/veterans.health.insurance/index.html


(excerpt) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance . . .



$1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa
$2 million ''for the promotion of astronomy'' in Hawaii -
$332,000 for the design and construction of a school sidewalk in Franklin, Texas
$2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York
$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi
$1 million for cricket control in Utah
$200,000 ''tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past''
$475,000 to build a parking garage in Provo City, Utah
$1.7M ''for a honey bee factory'' in Weslaco, TX

The above list is just a FRACTION of the money we just spent wasted, thanks to Obama''s newly signed bill.

The fact that this cut in veterans'' health care can even be suggested by the White House shows nothing but contempt for the military by it''s own Commander in Chief and that he''s unfit to carry the title. Shameful.
38.gif
It''s still not a fraction of what Bush wasted each month for the past 6 years on our imperialist invasion of Iraq.
 

vespergirl

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Date: 3/13/2009 4:32:56 PM
Author: LAJennifer

What does everyone think of this:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/10/veterans.health.insurance/index.html

(excerpt) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance . . .

Totally immoral. The govt. sends kids to be blown up for no reason, and then doesn''t want to pay for their injuries. A total disgrace.

From what I understand, there has already been a total breakdown of services to vets coming back with PTSD. I saw a TV special where vets families and congressmen were complaining about the "treatment" many suicidal vets were getting when they returned to the states. Apparently, because of the lack of psychiatric resources, VA shrinks have been ordered not to diagnose PTSD (too expensive to treat) - instead, diagnose them with pre-existing condition depression, and send them on their way.

There was one particular case of a vet whose wife found him in the garage with a gun in his mouth, so she immediately took him to the VA for treatment. They refused to diagnose him with PTSD, and told him that he must have been depressed before he went to war. No evaluation, no observation period. They didn''t even write him an RX for anything. Instead, they told him to go home and get 45 minutes of cardio exercise every day to stave off his depression. That''s it.

I guess this sort of treatment has happened to so many vets now, that soldiers have contacted their congressmen and are trying to get improved psych services. I hope that they sort this out and get the vets the help they need ...
 

LtlFirecracker

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There is still a bad stigma with mental health and the military. Your medical records are not as protected as in the civilian world, so being diagnosed with a mental health disorder could be used against you in career advancement, or a way to kick you out. There is starting to be a realization that this culture needs to change, but it is going to take a long time as this kind of thinking is hard wired into people who have been in for years.
 

coatimundi_org

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Single payer is the only way, but unfortunately our government is so entrenched in corporate healthcare that Americans will continue to suffer.

As long as the health insurance corporations are involved in any capacity, healthcare will be too expensive to cover the majority, because officially, 20-30% of every dollar spent on healthcare...is not spent on healthcare, and I imagine the percentage is much higher.

Profiting off the sick...is sick.

http://http://singlepayeraction.org/
 

coatimundi_org

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Date: 3/12/2009 8:45:48 PM
Author: vespergirl
I don''t think that we should punish the people who can afford good health insurance by making health coverage equally bad for everyone. I would rather see it work very well for most of the country than poorly for everyone. (The current statistic is that there are 48 million uninsured Americans in a country of 310 million people - that means 262 million are insured).

So you''re ok with collateral damage?

If so, 14,000 Americans die every year from lack of coverage.

Is that an ok number for you?
 

beebrisk

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Date: 3/13/2009 8:51:16 PM
Author: vespergirl
Date: 3/13/2009 5:10:23 PM

Author: beebrisk


Date: 3/13/2009 4:32:56 PM

Author: LAJennifer


What does everyone think of this:



http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/10/veterans.health.insurance/index.html



(excerpt) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance . . .





$1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa

$2 million ''for the promotion of astronomy'' in Hawaii -

$332,000 for the design and construction of a school sidewalk in Franklin, Texas

$2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York

$650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi

$1 million for cricket control in Utah

$200,000 ''tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past''

$475,000 to build a parking garage in Provo City, Utah

$1.7M ''for a honey bee factory'' in Weslaco, TX


The above list is just a FRACTION of the money we just spent wasted, thanks to Obama''s newly signed bill.


The fact that this cut in veterans'' health care can even be suggested by the White House shows nothing but contempt for the military by it''s own Commander in Chief and that he''s unfit to carry the title. Shameful.
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It''s still not a fraction of what Bush wasted each month for the past 6 years on our imperialist invasion of Iraq.

Lol...You guys really need to come up with a better strategy for making your point other than the "BUSH!" non-sequiturs. They''re getting as old as they are meaningless.
 

beebrisk

Brilliant_Rock
Joined
Dec 18, 2005
Messages
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Date: 3/13/2009 9:24:56 PM
Author: coatimundi
Single payer is the only way, but unfortunately our government is so entrenched in corporate healthcare that Americans will continue to suffer.


As long as the health insurance corporations are involved in any capacity, healthcare will be too expensive to cover the majority, because officially, 20-30% of every dollar spent on healthcare...is not spent on healthcare, and I imagine the percentage is much higher.


Profiting off the sick...is sick.


http://http://singlepayeraction.org/

...As opposed to when our all-wise, all-knowing federal government takes over, cuts the waste and makes the system run like a well-oiled machine? Yeah, they're REALLY good at that!
 
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