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Top U.S. Hospitals Are Opting Out Of Obamacare
Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg
Top U.S. Hospitals Are Opting Out Of Obamacare
In the off chance you are actually able to access the website and successfully sign up for the epic disaster that is Obamacare, you might be a bit surprised about your options when you actually encounter a medical issue. Every American that is even considering signing up for this nightmare needs to be aware of the disturbing fact that many of the top hospitals in the nation will not be accepting Obamacare related insurance plans. Even worse, in many cases it is virtually impossible to find out which doctors and hospitals are on your plan.
One of the most egregious examples of failure is the following:
Seattle Children’s Hospital ranks No. 11 on the U.S. News & World Report best pediatric hospital list. When Obamacare rolled out, the hospital found itself with just two out of seven insurance companies on Washington’s exchange.
Seattle Children’s is the only pediatric hospital in King County, and offers keys services, such as cancer care, which are not available anywhere else in the region. So if you sign up for Obamacare, good luck surviving. Fortunately, that represents only about six people at the moment.
More from U.S. News:
Americans who sign up for Obamacare will be getting a big surprise if they expect to access premium health care that may have been previously covered under their personal policies. Most of the top hospitals will accept insurance from just one or two companies operating under Obamacare.
Watchdog.org looked at the top 18 hospitals nationwide as ranked by U.S. News and World Report for 2013-2014. We contacted each hospital to determine their contracts and talked to several insurance companies, as well.
The result of our investigation: Many top hospitals are simply opting out of Obamacare.
Chances are the individual plan you purchased outside Obamacare would allow you to go to these facilities. For example, fourth-ranked Cleveland Clinic accepts dozens of insurance plans if you buy one on your own. But go through Obamacare and you have just one choice: Medical Mutual of Ohio.
Consumers, too, will struggle with the new system. Many exchanges don’t even list the insurance companies on their web sites. Some that do, like California, don’t provide names of doctors or hospitals.
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Im tellin ya the only possible solution is a single payer system
Communism has never worked before....then again....maybe they just didn't do it right.
Unlike Yofish,
I see the fallacy in your comment. Here it is:
They don't touch the price of doctors or hopsitals at all, but rather they have price controls on insurance companies.
Both of you fail to understand that when you try to have price controls, you are creating a distorted market, a market that is not a free market. It causes even more problems and unintended consequences.
As a former BCBS rep, I can tell you that price controls on BCBS would effect payouts to doctors and hospitals. Insurance companies don't control price. Neither do doctors or hospitals. The market does. They ALL have to find an equilibrium of sustainability or profitability. Any form of attempted government price control distorts that process.
The best docs respond by opting out of the insurance system. its called conceirge care. Look it up. These are the best private facilities (i.e. no insurance accepted) in the country. You pay a fixed cash fee to have a private physician shared with at most 50-100 other families (normally a primary care doc has 2000-4000 patients). And these docs are the absolute best in the business. Its pre-paid cash up front only. Debtors and deadbeats not allowed in. Save your money, and you can have this option too. This private system also exists all over the EU. Interestingly, you pay only the actual costs of tests and other diagnostic scans such as MRI. So, a $1000 catscan suddenly drops to the true cost of $200. Its well worth the $400-1000/month to have 24 access to a quality physician with connections to the best specialists. They even make house calls-how quaint-but very useful compared to an ambulance. But the best of all is to work out regularly, stay healthy and you won't ever have to use them.
fugettaboutit
So you have to sign up for the plan in order to find out what's (not) in it?
Sounds familiar somehow.
Vuja-de.
It's called Vuja Who-dey in Cincinnati.
We all get sick. Bitchez
Get off your fat rumps!
I stand corrected.
It's been a long week. Didn't mean to be offencive> BITCHEZ (double checking) Offensive? my bad oops
I always double chech/check my comments!
Ok time for some comments here...from a healthcare blogger...
Yes hospital are hopping mad and #1 on their list since April has been the sequester...2% pay cut since April, which not huge for a small practice but for hospitals getting 2% less from Medicare that is big. And don't forget they have to live the the 2 nights rule from CMS on admitting patients for "observation' or really admitting. That is important as it makes a difference as to what parts of Medicare kicks in...if only there for "observation" and less than 2 nights are spent, and it's really a bit more complicated than this, they pay less and won't pay for any nursing home expenses if needed and patients get stuck. So there's #1 on on the list.
Now #2 is that big insurers are deducting the 2% as well from what they pay hospitals on medicare advantage plans..saying well they government is giving them 2% less now so they are passing that on as well, hospitals getting it right and left and CMS just gave insurers a 3.3% increase instead of planned cuts so go figure and yes I would be read to sue as hospitals are getting ready to do.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2013/10/one-good-reason-to-fix-sequester-...
Number 3, well that is not exclusive to Obamacare, Blue Cross has been doing that with limiting access in Boston for a while now with not allowing the bigger "Partners" more expensive hospitals in so if patients go there, they are not "in network". That started a couple years ago, so where do you think Obamacare got the idea maybe?
Some hospitals created their own insurance plans..like Sutter for one and Memorial Care in southern California. I have my sneaky feelings Memorial live in the United Healthcare manifesto in the OC and I am guessing they are right in there some how helping this along with their "non profit" subsidiary the Memorial Foundation which as formerly the independent Memorial doctors group before United bought it a couple years ago. Example with Sutter who was going to be in the exchange, but pulled out in CA.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2012/12/sutter-health-forms-new-hmo-plan....
Commercial insurers drive the bottom line hard on what they pay doctors too and St. Josephs in southern California won't take United employer insurance and has not for a few years, pay is too low. Blue Cross auto opted in doctors as they are in the exchanges big time as their market is individual policies and not as heave on the commercial side as others and doctors in California will be paid around 30% less when they see a patient who bought insurance via the exchange..did not make them happy as on the other side back to contracts the American Academy of Family Practice is confronting United as their complex algorithmic contracts when the bottom line is found is paying doctors at rates less than Medicare...yeah they all have a reason to be mad.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-aafp-confronts-united-healthc...
I think some of this is helpful to know why and not just blanket blame Obamacare as United for one will just have gravy on top for anything they generate from exchanges as they have 15 pages of subsidiary companies listed at the SEC. And on that topic, one of course, QSSI is now the big website contractor. I guess we will get more work from India as if you look at the SEC page, that's their domicile and there's a link on my blog post below so you can see it. They also have one of those questionable Netherlands companies and a few more you might want to look at. So I hope Issa digs in here and gets to the bottom of this as Oracle and Microsoft had turkey state insurance software platforms ready to go. Nobody mentions them and it would be cheaper to pay some software license fees rather than what we have see with the website.
Oracle Fusion Middle ware could do what QSSI built perhaps in India if they were writing code from the bottom up. It was really interesting as I am asking this question big time and during the shareholder meeting at Oracle yesterday I had several hits on my blog post while the meeting was going on. Nobody else is asking but I used to code and do networking and it is a big question worth asking as HHS and QSSI were so secretive about the work QSSI was doing, All Health IT people were bitching about that...so why the big secret? Inquiring minds want to know. I'm not an Issa fan but will back this effort of his though.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2013/10/india-technology-to-fix-us.html
The exchanges were supposed to make sure that bare bones coverage policies were on their way out, why people are having to change and also hospitals don't want bare bones policies either as the patient end up paying a lot of it. Again we have hospitals creating their own plans so one can enroll there too and be covered by the hospital one wants too. Their way of competing. So see it's not all Obamacare, insurers have contributed their share of the mess too and are simply sitting happy wiht all the profits they are making. Hospitals only opt out if they feel they are going to get stiffed or lose a lot of money.
Again compare this to what was already going on in Boston with Blue Cross as that made big news with patients not being able to go to the hospitals they wanted either and it started out like this with CEO of Blue Cross telling patients "avoid these hospitals" and grew from there to where new rules said they would not cover those hospitals.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2010/12/blue-cross-launching-new-health.html
You pointed out some things I did not know, thanks.
palatiative care bitches
long morphine
I'll throw in another two cents here.
First, if I were a doctor, I'd probably be pissed at the low rates paid by the big plans, too, much less the insurance company games to avoid paying anything.
ON THE OTHER HAND the costs of even minimal medical care are horribly high if you believe the list prices the doctors submit to the insurers.
Now, some of that comes down to malpractice issues and insurance and tort reform, and some of it is real malpractice and more a matter of medical practice reform, I don't prejudge on this who has the better argument.
So where does that leave things?
You ask me, Obamacare should be completely withdrawn, and replaced by government programs to give away some minimal amount of medical care by whatever means necessary, insurance or free clinics or reimbursing hospitals for uninsured or whatever, and LEAVE EVERYONE ELSE THE HELL ALONE. This would address the uninsured and put some upward pressure on the rest of the industry. Would it cost some money? Of course. But probably a LOT LESS than Obamacare, because just the rules enforcement of Obamacare probably costs more than this alternative would, and paying for rules enforcement does not pay a doctor or buy a pill.
There is no component of this machine, not doctors or hospitals or insurers or lawyers - or patients! - that go without some blame. Only a fool would try to resolve it all in one big magic spell. And I know we can find one such fool at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
So what exactly will prevent doctors from raising their rates to compensate for receiving a lower percentage of their rates under OC? Do insurance companies actually control the rates that doctors can charge?
Doctors have lost the ability to charge for their services and in many cases provide care to their patients.
Which is why you will see less of our best and brightest going into medicine and instead opting for other careers. With the smartest of our generation avoiding healthcare, what do you think that does to the quality of healthcare?
From Atlas Shrugged:
I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything – except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only ‘to serve.’ That a man who’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards – never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind – yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of a man who resents it – and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.
Obama and the Democrats have literally ruined healthcare. This ALL started with Medicare/Medicaid (government programs), those are the programs that started pushing costs up and putting us in the position to begin with.
"Obama and the Democrats have literally ruined healthcare. This ALL started with Medicare/Medicaid (government programs), those are the programs that started pushing costs up."
The fascinating thing about this entire debacle is, they are enrolling moar people in these programs through their website (apparently to try and shore up the programs) but the kiddies they expected (if we assume their pretense) aren't buying in to it.
So, moar marginal income people go on the dole and stop working to go full time slaves to statists.
It is single payer they're after, ObamaCare was meant to fail (or succeed) depending on ones point of view.
If its chaos they want...lets give it to them...they can't handle anything but controlled chaos ;-)
We only got one way to go from this point brother.
Anyone reading the writing on the wall knows what's next.
Why do they need all the other dozens of government health care giveaways with ObamascareSinglePayer going full bore with only the few selected preferred exempted citizens getting off the hook. Illegal aliens still march to the emergency rooms like before to see their primary care physicians for free. Wow what a deal for those with $6000 deductibles who actually pay.
You are focusing on the victims.
Who is going to pay the doctors that treat them?
With little to no profit incentive ALL of us end up with poorer healthcare as the country's best and brightest opt for other more profitable careers.
Get it? If the smartest people in the country say "fuck medicine - I'll go to WS or Law or Tech" than we ALLLL get doctors who are less bright and less motivated. WE ALL LOSE going forward; rich and poor alike.
...we pay more for less.
Who is going to pay the doctors that treat them?
No one, they will be replaced by foreigners who will be the newest unionized debt slaves.
Excelent choice of passages.
Hope you don't mind if that gets spread around abit. ;)
With H/T of cource.
I hope it spreads like AIDS in Africa. This is a message everyone should have.
No worries: hordes of Indian/Pakistani, Arab and Eastern European Doktors to fill the gaps.
"How do you go, Mr. Smith?"
Welcome the future unionized government employees as planned under single payer. You nailed it.
Fortunately (or unfortunately for the Galtists) that such strategic attempt to kill a country would not go unnoticed or unchecked for any significant length of time.
You people do realize that this has nothing to do with hospitals opting out of the ACA and everything to do with the insurance companies refusing to cover the hospitals..umm, you do know the dfference, right?
and its 3 out of 6 plans in seattle, not 2 out of 7.
uhh, nevermind...lets not let something like facts get in the way of reputable sources (/sarc) like watchdog.org or some blitzkreig blog making stuff up as they go along.
And you call "yourself" the Devil?
Well, as long as I can keep my insurance and my Doktor and my hospital, it'll all be OK. Period.
Man, the dogs be sleepin' tonight or they're not reading very far on Friday. On page one you'd be down voted 43.
Then why aren't the hospitals also opting out of non-ACA compliant health insurance plans, or to twist the language to meet your logic and expose its gaping flaw-- why aren't companies with non-ACA compliant health plans also refusing to cover the hospitals?
I'll give you a hint, it has something to do with the letters ACA...
UH, DOES THIS MEAN THE SINGLE PAYOR WAS THE WAY TO GO?
ubetcha. that's why it didn't.
:)
No. The way to go is the way it used to be. Everyone pays his own way. An employer being responsbile for his employees health care and retirement is ridiculous. Those are individual responsibilities. No lower authority should do what a higher authority can do itself. And the highest authority is yourself. Be careful what you delegate.
thanks for the comment. my post was to the point out that the process in place has been designed to fail for the ones who have to use it while at the same time maximizing profit for the health care industry.
as to your perspective that the way to go is the way it used to be, nonsense.
for example:
"Everyone pays his own way."
of course in the old way. uninsured would get treatment anyway and that was added into what those who could pay, paid.
"An employer being responsible for his employees health care and retirement is ridiculous. Those are individual responsibilities."
how authoritarian of you. certainly a group can negotiate on behalf of its members to achieve their goal. (health care benefits, for example.)
:)
Sir. I started my career when such "employer" responsibilities were just coming into vogue. It was the unions that brought it on. Management was able to throw these bones with little cost compared to the wages the unions were demanding. All it did is drive up the cost of everything while holding wages behind.
I know from personal experience, the previous way was superior.
And you are correct. I am an authoritarian. I am the author of my own security. And believe me, placing security in myself is far more comfortable than trusting it to strangers who want to profit in the process and are more and more likely to reneg as repayment time comes around.
More and more doctors are going concierge. Screw obamacare.
Less Justice is directly proportional to an increase in Laws
Obamacare appears to be a subliminal message to all Americans, which nobody seems to get?
Ho hum
Seemingly more liminal lately
At 40,000 new laws per year, can there be any justice left?
SHORT CalPERs !
Chinisms are waking up. GMT-7/daylights = Chinism/NORKisms'
Set your clocks back one hour .
Okay, reading more into this Affordable care act, i think i finally understand it, i wanna hear your thoughts on this plausibility . a large part of this bill was written by the ultra-right wing heritage foundation funded by the Koch brothers. They are playing the liberals and conservative public both like fools. They lobbied Ted Cruz via oil money to make a lampooning spectacle of himself calling it "socialism", which it is not, rallying the democrats to support the Koch bros funded ACA unwittingly (it's not like they read a 13,000 page bill anyway, they are merely baffling with bullshit because the lobbyists have paid them to). It is fascism. And many have unwittingly been duped into supporting it as something it is not. The tea party is a hoax movement to inflame passionate liberals, distort the nature of the liberty movement by distoring its message with reprehensible words and ignorance and confusing the meaning of the word libertarian (only about 19% of libertarians identify with tea partiers in any way shape or form. mainly in ignorance) into supporting the bill essentially written by shadow fascists right standing of neocons. The neocons are puppets. The shadow puppet masters are fascists. And the point of politics in a fascist state is to conceal the source of power in a fascist state. Newt Gingrich (the original neocon) began drafting this bill nearly 20 years ago. Plain and simple. Why do you think the billionaire Koch bros are rich? What, like, The 2nd most independantly wealthy people on the planet? Accruing the dollar value of entire countries. It sure ain't by being stupid. Koch Carbon invented the refining carbon cracking process that virtually every refinery on the planet uses to process petroleum. They are brilliant strategists. They were apparently smart enough to play the American populace into an utterly dissolved confusion where none of them is actually supporting what they think it is. Just like nazi Germany did prior to the rise of the fascist state. They implemented state mandated private healthcare just prior to the rise of national socialism. As Vladimir ilyich Lenin said "socialized medicine is the cornerstone of the socialist state." Equivalently, fascist medicine is the cornerstone of the fascist state. Socialist nations are pissed at our fascist spying. We were spying on the goddamn pope. We authorized secret murder of us citizens without trial by unilateral decision. Every leader of every allied and enemy country, spied on. They see what our nation is becoming. History is repeating itself. We are nazi Germany, like it or not. You are unwittingly supporting fascism because you are being told it is good for you. The tea party are your Emmanuel Goldstein. The invention of the fascist party as a ridiculous scapegoat for scorn, while they are passing fascist legislation through 13,000+ pages with a 2 day deadline to railroad it through congress before anyone knows whats in it. as nancy pelosi said "you have to pass it to see whats in it" . They railroad it through candidates you voted for and they bought and paid for because they are playing chess and the media reports it like checkers. Notice president Obama is a much different guy than candidate Obama. As is every post election politician. The Koch bros are rich enough to buy and sell congress over and over and over again, and do. With lobbying dollars cyphered by oil companies to launder the true source of the money. There are clearly fascists in America, but there are no fascist running candidate on any ticket. You can't call fascism fascism and have people want it. It is hidden under layers of deception and propaganda and apoligism nearly impermeable. What do you think? Is this off course from plausibility?
Plausibility of you being an idiot? Ah, pretty near 100%
What exactly is so idiotic about that? They are brilliant businessmen, but, they are like the modern Rockefellers. They revolutionized the refining process. They are heavily connected with cronies on both sides of the aisle. And they've got the money to buy plenty more than just the tea party. I'm not one of those liberal shills that's all like "ahh Koch brothers and tea baggers and conservitards ad hominem ad hominem". Why is it so unlikely they would like to expand the scope of their own control through manipulation? Do you think it's just one society or just one collusion or one interest at works? Nope. It's a complex clusterfuck of the American citizen and likely the world. How did hitler rise to power? He did not come right out and say "here comes fascism" nope, he called it "national socialism" and after the fall of the crony corporate weirmar republic, he blamed free market and lack of central control. Seems to be an awful similar narrative. If Obama ran again in '16, or signed term limits out of law, who would stop him? Or would they even need to? Could they not just buy the next one and retain the facade of a republic? Tyranny happens over time. Gradually, so nobody notices. We are much closer to fascism than socialism. Obama is not a socialist. He is a sociopath, for sure, and every act, every word, has been in the interest of state and corporate power. Cash for clunkers to fuel a new auto debt bubble. NDAA. Countless fascist policies argued by Murdoch moron media as socialism, and marketed by msnbc and lib media shillery as a godsend. Did you read the goddamn bill? No? Well your in good company neither did any one else. But as laws pass, justice erodes. 13,000 new pages of laws written by big pharma, big insurance, big medical, the heritage foundation and revised by the slimiest of neocons. Both sides of the aisle are bought by the same companies. C-span political posturing is as real as pro wrestling. What do any of them care about reelection when they get a qtr million dollar pension forever. Except for the lobbying and campaign dollars. Gobbles, the propagand minister said "fascism should be called corporatism, that is what it is after all, a collusion of state and corporate interests and power". Our crony capitalist system involved that personally. Now, obviously, the Koch bros are not hitler, but they do stand further right than neocons and have been playing some serious political kabuki theater for an ignorant public. If you had that much money, and believed in ultra-right wing authoritarianism, and it directly benefits you, why the hell wouldn't you? "Oh we have enough money and power now, time to give back!". Not to say George soros, Kissinger, and all those great little bohemian clubs men are surely all in the same boat. The Zionist mission is gaining momentum. Here comes globalism
You're quite an ignoramus, but very verbose. Try reading a little history and start with the "Creature from Jeckyl Island" then submit a coherent comment.
Here's a hint: its all about the individual vs the collective (state). The method of enslavement is always debt. Thus, no difference between socialism (actually Fabian socialism) and fascism. Both are based on top-down hierarchy and modeled on the military command and control system. Don't you find it puzzlying that all major welfare programs (social security, medicare, medicaid) and wars (I, II) were initiated under the same single party-including obamacare. The common theme is they all require more debt and more dependence on the state.
Read and watch Larken Rose. In particular, "The Most Dangerous Superstition". He doesn't have the solution but he has definitely identified the problem ... a necessary first step.
fascism & socialism are precise opposites.
ALL systems are top-down except evolution.
ALL.
saying they're the same with that trait in common is the same as saying all laws are identical in all nations because all lawmakers breathe AIR.
It's bullshit.
The truth is that fascism can never ever involve the collective ownership BY THE PEOPLE of a country of that country's resources & means of production.
Never. By all means CORPORATIONS, never a person, MUST be a pre-condition to fascism (Mussolini's invention) and this can't ever be socialism (PEOPLE, not corporations).
Most people here wouldn't know the Koch brothers underwrote the first Tea Party convention in Tampa. As a a result, real Tea Party backers left the movement in 2008.
In ten years, the US will be like California. A Hispanic friend told me that US will become just like the rest of South America.
Do not sign up. Do not cooperate.
I think Gandhi said something like that.
It doesnT matter whether you sign up or not.
Obamacare is not the "fix" for the health-care industry. "They" created Obamacare to fully break down the health-care system. "Their" solution comes after Obamacare which is actually the "problem" which "they" created so that "they" can later provide "their" solution.
break it again
buy it all up again (cheap)
...
That's how "they" got their billions (trillions?). Causing that cycle generation after generation.
The best way to predict what will happen in an industry is to cause it to happen. "They" know when "they" are going to take down an industry and short it first. "They" know when "they" are ready to rebuild an industry and go long.
break it, buy it, fix it, sell it
or if you already own it,
sell it, break it, buy it, fix it
Teach your kids how to do this. Teach your grandkids how to do this,
and build up a Dynasty to last millenia.
SUCCESS! Exactly the kind of results they had hoped for.
Well, our neighbor went to a renowned research hospital for his leukemia. He was in a "sterile" room as he was getting chemo. Everyone who came in was supposed to wash their hands and put on special clothing, and everyone did, except the lady who stomped in through two layers of "cleanliness security" and tossed down his tray, and then arranged his food while sticking her fingers in the food containers. She came in later on the same day; she also cleaned the bathrooms.
Our neighbor also got chemo at home, via a pump. Then he had to go to the hospital for an emergency, and the pharmacist tried to convince his wife that it would be just fine to "dilute" his chemo and give it all in one day (instead of two). Wife had the brains to refuse to let that be done. A nurse there agreed with her that it could have been lethal. Later, when our neighbor's wife told a hospital employee re this, the employee wanted the nurse's name, so that she could rat out the nurse for saying the pharmacist was wrong.
Well, his treatment was successful, ultimately. However, gigantic renowned teaching hospitals can suck, too.
Over the last ten years or so I watched as both my elderly parents went through their hospital stays on the road out, at a couple of well-respected hospitals. I don't think an hour went by when I didn't witness some serious confusion, delay, or error.
To be fair the nurses and staff including doctors are highly overworked to try to keep costs down, and it was entirely clear that elderly patients on medicare were nobody's top priority. Hard as that is to stomach when it is your parents, after some consideration one can see how the medical professionals look at it and it is not quite as grotesque as it sounds - but it's sure not pretty, either.
So, I have come to have a very modest and tempered respect, not to mention low expectations, for any kind of medical care, unless you're a billionaire and can spend millions per year on your health. Obamacare ain't gonna do that for nobody, but neither is Congress going to improve things much by anything they do, much more likely to make it worse and worse.
If there is an answer, I haven't heard it yet.
Our neighbor was in his late 40s at the time, and had excellent private insurance. I'm sure you're right that it's worse for old people.
In my family (which is not large at all) we go to great efforts to make sure no-one is alone ever while in the hospital. If you can't manage that, you should hire a private care nurse, to stay at all times with your relative, if you can possibly scrape up the money. I know that most people can't do that, but at the same time it doesn't require billionaire status.
I am expecting that there will be more openings for private-pay, private duty nurses to fill this role. A friend's aunt (who died 15 years ago of old age) made a very good living at that in a different era.
Absolutely agree, don't leave anyone alone in a hospital if you can avoid it.
OTOH as a layman you can also get in the way for no reason. I have a couple of medical professionals of various types in the family, and I was always on the phone to them with questions, had one or two come by when they could. It helps - some. Maybe we can arrange to Skype 24x7 from the hospital rooms, including telemetry.
Maybe in twenty years when the cars are driving themselves we can also get some robo-monitoring that will work better than the current chaos. Yeah I know, it's a natural extension to the Obamacare web site, sneeze wrong and Skynet will terminate you.
The indiginous americans had it. You go out into the wilderness, build a platform, climb up and lay down, look at the stars and ponder the universe until it sucks you home.
This debate is ridiculous. The solution is what will occur here, collapse of the Health Care industry. You have a better chance of acquiring MRSA in a Hospital stay than getting cured of what is currently ailing you. Just stop going to doctors.
At the moment, if you get super sick and really wanna try extending your life, hop on a Plane to Delhi and check in at a hospital there for CASH. They'll give you a Bypass Operation for 1/10th the cost here in the FSoA.
I'll have an Obamacare article up Sunday on the Diner. I avoided this insanity as long as I could, sadly it requires some "treatment". :(
RE
Before going Delhi-bound on a Medical Tourism jaunt, it might be relevant to read up on the history of something called "NDM-1".
You might be returning home with some "unexpected baggage". . . . . . .
The Ambulance in the picture - I'm SURE it's an old NSW one (from about 15 - 20 years back!)
Any Aussie (NSW) Ambos reading this site? Can you confirm (or not) this suggestion? Ambulanne NSW certainly DID use the GMC chassis, and I saw many of these when I used to work "up North" near a place called Wollongong.
Edit - it is: spoke to a colleague and he's very sure this is one of the crash worthiness / rollcage evaluation testing photos from the late 1980's.
if this board is reflective of american society today, then you americans still living in the states are fucked.
trader one so you are not an american, yet you know so much about what we need to change..then answer this how much shit can you put in a 5lb sack?
watchdog.org = web site toeing the repubican line daily giving wingers what they want to hear.
Jack Hoffman with a 69 yard touchdown in the 2013 Nebraska Spring Game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jmisv1Spck (1:10)
Greatest NFL Touchdown of All Time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3iwKEb1R-I (1:42)
Thought experiment:
1. ACA - ObamaCare is successful in blocking access to real medical care via poorly written computer software.
2. The US government brings in the "big government" thinkers from Congress and the White House to fix the problem thereby assuring a long incompetent fix and further delaying access to care.
3. Mix in natural selection, food riots, and a dumb down dependent US population.
4. Let stew for two more years under the flames of QE to infinity dollar debasement.
5. Congressional budget office then reports a marked decline in Medicare, Social Security and unemployment expenses.
6. Overcrowding is no longer a US problem.
7. The average age of the population approaches that of Haiti.
8. Education become real again as people learn to think for themselves.
9. The immaterial becomes immaterial - Fiat currencies die! Central Banks die! The Ron Paul Silver coin is minted.
Wow there is a happy ending after all!
Which will put them in the crosshairs for every single violation that they have done, or will do.