Healthcare Plan Misinformation Video-induced Debate

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Medicare already is. But even with the amount of fraud, which you rightly point out, they still operate cheaper than private insurance companies.

 

You are completely right there. Whether it's an HMO, PPO, or good old regular health insurance, they cannot drop you. If 2 out of the 200 people in your office come down with cancer, the insurance company cannot elect to to just keep the 198 healthy ones. (But they can raise their rates the following year.)

I'm surprised you do not know anyone who does not have insurance from work. Don't you know any small business owners? People who are privately employed? People working part time? Students and unemployed on COBRA?

Obviously I don't know for sure, but you had a baby last year, which also means you had a lot of pre-baby doctor visits, and a lot of pediatrician visits after the baby was born, and of course the most expensive part of actually having the baby. When my son was born two years ago, the bill was around $11,000 - and that was for a normal birth.

My brother, who is an ER doc, actually has a theory on this. Doctors can diagnose 90% of patients who come to see them based on a physical examination. However, they always send you for at least one, and often multiple tests before making the diagnosis, even though a lot of times those tests are just to confirm the obvious.

Example: A patient comes in with a sore throat. The doctor asks him to open his mouth, and he see his tonsils have white spots on them. The doctor is about 99% sure you have strep throat at that point, but he still will take a throat culture. It's a classic example of an unnecessary test. The thing is, for the 1% of time that the doctor would be wrong, the patient will try to sue his balls off, and frankly no doctor wants to deal with a medical malpractice suit when they can just send in the labs. All those tests add a lot to medical costs though.

From everything I've heard about co-ops, most of them don't work very well. Most co-ops have under one million members, meaning they are too small to have much of an overall effect on the prices charged by big insurance providers, and a number of these co-ops that have been started as trials all across the country have already gone bankrupt. I'm not sure the co-op is all that great of an option.

However, I really do think that everyone should have at least basic medical insurance. While I do think someone who is under 30 and healthy should be forced into any kind of premium package, having some basic package that would cost him a couple hundred bucks per month seems reasonable. And if he cannot afford a couple hundred bucks per month, then we should subsidize it. I really think there is a moral obligation that everyone should be able to receive medical care when they need it.

 

I can't remember the total. I think the insurance company got some discount that I would not have received if I were just an individual paying on my own. I know I paid over $3000.00, closer to 3500.00, out-of-pocket just for the birth, so it may have been pretty expensive at that. It's really hard to believe that it cost that much, probably more since it was a C-section. The visits are the problem because the insurance company is trying to screw me on them. There are 2 visits that they have not paid for and everytime I call them, they claim they will pay for them, but for some reason they never do, and it's been over a year. It's been a complete run-around, because they will never say that they won't pay them, only that they will. I have a feeling it's something the doctor's office jacked-up and doesn't want to get stuck with. but I don't know that for sure.

That's the cost of doing business. When I worked in retail you would not believe the stupid stuff we got sued for. All the time, people's dogs would destroy equipment, and customers would claim it was a "manufacturer's defect" and they were always suing over stuff like that. And forget about shoplifting; they can pretty much take what they want. And if you try to stop them from stealing, it's an instant lawsuit. Of course, it doesn't help when an over-zealous employee injures or kills a potential shop-lifter either. But that's why we carry insurance. Then you have to struggle with the insurance companies. But that's the cost of doing busness, like I said.

 

NOG, BTA,
had the Secret Service decided to expand the security perimeter, these people would not have been allowed in, and had the found their way in anyway, then they had been removed. Yes, I am quite certain that it would have happened that way, and that in that case their legal permit or their air of calmness would be very much irrelevant to the consideration to remove them. What appears to surprise you is the idea that the declaration of the security perimeter can make illegal otherwise legal conduct.

The security perimeter is about abstract dangers, like armed people at a presidential event. To be a risk, being there with a gun suffices. You don't need to discharge your guns to pose that threat. The idea is that when you allow the threat to manifest itself it is usually too late. That is reasonable after a few US presidents have been shot or shot at. For the same reason and with the same reasoning armed people, even if they're calm and have a permit, are not allowed into court buildings with their weapons.

 

It used to be "terrorists," until health care reform, that was the big overriding concern. Just short time ago, it was all about "security" and people feeling safe from terrorists. Of course, now we have a different situation, and so America is on the verge of becoming an armed camp (with citizens being confronted by armed radicals) and security has gone out the window. All this talk about these characters appearing "calm" is just ignorant crap:

And this:

 

If your wife had a C-section that was very expensive. You immediately have to add in the cost of a surgeon that you wouldn't have to pay for a regular delivery. My sister-in-law has two children, and she mentioned to me that the one where she had the C-section was more than double the cost of the one that she didn't have a C-section. The cost of your son's delivery could have easily exceeded $20,000.

We are talking about two different costs. Carrying medical malpractice insurance is the cost of doing business. Sending a patient for a CAT scan or an MRI when a typical X-ray would do is wasteful spending and not the cost of doing business. It's the cost of a doctor trying to cover his ass, or at the very least hedge his bets on the diagnosis.

However, even if all we were talking about was medical malpractice insurance, that adds to the cost too. It may be the cost of doing business, but that cost is ultimately passed on to the patients. And I can tell you that just as there are frivolous claims by customers claiming "manufacturer's defect", you get your share in hospitals as well.

Here's a real life example. While my brother was an intern, one of his fellow doctors mis-diagnosed a case of pneumonia. The woman returned to the hospital a couple of days later, and ended up spending a week in the hospital recovering - a hospital stay that likely could have been avoided if she was originally properly diagnosed.

She sued the doctor and hospital for negligence, and ended up walking away with over $1 million in a settlement - and that's just crazy. My brother will readily concede that the doctor screwed up. He will further concede that not only should the woman not be charged for her hospital stay, but that she should be given some compensation for the pain, suffering, and sheer inconvenience of having to spend a week of her life in the hospital. However, he further contends that the pain and suffering she experienced was not worth anywhere near $1 million. He could have understood if the hospital paid something like $50,000 - somewhere around the annual salary for the average person. I remember him quipping, "Hell for $1 million I'd let someone deliberately infect me with pneumonia!" But the point of this is that malpractice insurance is a source of cost and some of it is for stuff like this.

 

Aldeth - Well yes, I agree with you, and carrying insurance is part of the cost of doing business. For instance, my wife works at a retail big box, and recently they settled a suit in which they were loading a guy's truck with some tile. When they got to his truck, the fork-lift driver started to lose the load of tile and it appeared it was going to lean against the guy's truck. Instead, the guy was so worried about his truck, that he got in-between the load and his truck and ended about getting squished by the tile. Needless to say they had to settle with the guy for his "self-inflected" pain and suffering (the moron was lucky he wasn't killed). But this kind of stuff happens all the time.

Or suppose a group of Muslim/Americans showed up armed at a Cheney or GWB speech. Would the SS let them parade around with guns near the former VP or Prez? How comfortable would Cheney feel with armed Muslims nearby? But as Muslims and Americans they would have the same rights as anyone else, and if they let right-wing radicals do it around a liberal black president, why not with others? This could start a trend with each group trying to make a statement with a show of arms.

 

Chandos,
you forget that the people who came armed to Obama events were 'the real Americans' who are no threat to the 'True America', whereas you and other Democrats and in particular Obama are unreal or surreal Americans, or not even American at all, never mind the actual citizenship. They want to save America, whereas you strive to destroy it. It means you are 'the other', and thus, the enemy to whom no quarter must be given.

This is about conceit and self exaltation. An astute look at it from Richard Sale:

 

Why would that surprise you? That was the big talk here in Texas during the election, that if Obama won the KKK would find a way to rush the president and get past the SS, even if it meant loses to themselves. You don't know who these guys are or why they are really there. You are making an assumption that the SS can't afford to make.

 

While I think it reasonable to assume that these people weren't interested in attacking the president, I nevertheless feel compelled to point out that none of them were given the opportunity to prove it. That these people wouldn't attack the president if given the opportunity is not a given. I agree that it is bloody unlikely that they would, but it nevertheless is not absolute.

 

Ragusa, this is just plain stupid. The fact is, they didn't breach the security perimeter that was there. Why do you assume they would therefore breach an extended perimeter if it existed? That's like saying, "Well, these people got a clean shot at Obama and didn't take it, but if it had been somewhat obscured, then I'm sure they would have." You're assuming (without any reason) that they would do something they've already proven they wouldn't do.

And no, I have no problem understanding that such a security perimeter would change the laws applicable within it.

They had just as much opportunity as they would have if an extended security perimeter were in place. That's the point.

 

No, they didn't. So I guess you aren't making much of a point. They are only allowed outside of the event and not within the event itself. The president was never that close to any of these jokers, and they were more than likely kept in the crosshairs and shadowed by SS sharpshooters. The one guy who was at the NH event was told by the SS to leave by the time the president arrived and he did.

 

Exactly, they weren't allowed in the site and, with the perimeter extension, they wouldn't be allowed close enough to do anything. Either way, they would have to violate a security perimeter to do anything. Since they didn't violate the one security perimeter, what makes you think they would violate an extended perimeter?

Further more, the one concrete case we have proves that the man was cooperative with the SS, and not looking to make trouble.

 

NOG,
(a) Does him being cooperative when being approached for carrying a gun at a town hall event, does that make carrying that gun a good idea, and (b) does him being concretely cooperative make his conduct abstractly any less dangerous? (c) You said it yourself in the Gates thread, in a heated dispute things can go downhill in an instant. But that's impossible here, after all, it's all about law abiding and calm US citizens? What if these US citizens were Muslims? Or agitated? Same thing? Technically they'd still simply be exercising their right to bear arms. No problem there, right? Also, (d) because nothing has happened, and everybody was calm and cooperative, the conduct in question is not problematic?

I really don't get your ho-hum reaction to it.

 

A and B you may want to re-word. I'm not sure I understood them. I'm guessing language differences. If I understood them correctly, though, then yes, him being cooperative was a good idea and, yes, less dangerous than someone who was uncooperative and/or made a scene.

C.) Again, the difference between this case and Gates was that Gates was aggitated and aggresive whereas this guy is calm and cooperative. If you don't see the difference between the two (and it's significance), you need to review human nature.

D.) I won't say the conduct was wise, but it wasn't 'problematic'. There were no problems. In fact, I'd say this is a textbook case on how a rights protest should go: push your rights to the recognized legal limit, but don't cross it.

 

So far.

Isn't that being a little provocative? Do you think that provocative conduct, pushing your rights to the recognized legal limit, does serve the goal of achieving a peaceful and civil exchange of views, or to get information from a politician on the topic, well?

Consider that this started out as a health care debate. What contribution does carrying guns at town hall make to a discussion of health care? If anything, it appears to distract from the issue at hand by conflating two separate issues (to paralyse the discourse, intentionally so).

I like to suggest that guns are not ... essential to any argument on health care, except, of course, when you consider health care tyranny - then a relation between the two can be constructed in some minds, as evidenced by signs with the Jefferson quote and so forth.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the carrying of guns is about the second amendment and carrying guns. Bringing guns to a town hall event on health care, to make a point to another issue, gun rights, is about as on topic and appropriate as, say, the Phelps' going to military funerals to protest against 'teh gay' (appropriate as in 'a lame excuse' or 'pretext').

 

I'll agree it's off-topic, but since there aren't any big gun-rights protests going on, it's a reasonable chance. I'd even argue it may well be an attempt to bring the gun issue to the front (perhaps not to take away from health, but at least bring in another issue on top of it).

Imagine if the guy had been arrested, without breaking any laws, without confronting the police in any way, just someone comes up to him and arrests him. That would have started an issue, and probably raised media attention. As it is, just him standing there has gotten us talking about it.

And yes, if the intent is to test the law enforcement, to either get it enforced properly or to show that it isn't being enforced properly, then going right to the edge but not crossing it is a good way to go. Either you get to show how the law is being broken by the establishment, or you get confirmation that you do, indeed, have the rights you should.

 

To me, the guy was legally carrying the gun. The authorities knew about and so I'm O.K. with it.

Now, this on the other hand is more disturbing. See if you can guess why?