[kcam213]

Originally Posted by malamute

Yet the doctors, the nurses and all the others want their big paychecks.

While others were out going out friday night; hanging out at the park saturday and at the zoo on sunday...

while other people were relaxing at home at night watching Sex in the City and Friends.... some of us were at school, studying or working part time jobs to pay for all that education it takes to get these "big paychecks" medical jobs.

those "big" paychecks are compensation for YEARS of school... and we are not talking about some humanities class. Classes that required hours of school work, HOURS OF FREE clinical work and hours of study.

I don't apologize for making almost the same amount as the US autoworker or line man for the electrical and phone company who have a fraction if any higher education at all.

Oh and don't forget that those doctors and nurses have to pay liability insurance, uniforms, continuing education classes, licensing fees.

We don't get hazard pay (when working with infectious people, insane and physically dangerous people), dangerous work environments (radiation, chemical) and lastly if we have a bad day, we don't make a useless part... PEOPLE DIE.

So really please stop with the "fat paychecks" of nurses and doctors. We are not the reason health care cost so much.

Direct your frustration at the pharmaceutical company and the durable equipment company.

One specialty bed cost over 50 grand a year to RENT... TO RENT! (and believe me, the beds are NOT for sale... why sell when you can get that much to rent???)

Some prescriptions cost well over $500 per month.

Effexor (an antianxiety med cost over $600 per month. EVERY MONTH!)

[Driller1]

Originally Posted by kcam213

While others were out going out friday night; hanging out at the park saturday and at the zoo on sunday...

while other people were relaxing at home at night watching Sex in the City and Friends.... some of us were at school, studying or working part time jobs to pay for all that education it takes to get these "big paychecks" medical jobs.

those "big" paychecks are compensation for YEARS of school... and we are not talking about some humanities class. Classes that required hours of school work, HOURS OF FREE clinical work and hours of study.

I don't apologize for making almost the same amount as the US autoworker or line man for the electrical and phone company who have a fraction if any higher education at all.

Oh and don't forget that those doctors and nurses have to pay liability insurance, uniforms, continuing education classes, licensing fees.

We don't get hazard pay (when working with infectious people, insane and physically dangerous people), dangerous work environments (radiation, chemical) and lastly if we have a bad day, we don't make a useless part... PEOPLE DIE.

So really please stop with the "fat paychecks" of nurses and doctors. We are not the reason health care cost so much.

Direct your frustration at the pharmaceutical company and the durable equipment company.

One specialty bed cost over 50 grand a year to RENT... TO RENT! (and believe me, the beds are NOT for sale... why sell when you can get that much to rent???)

Some prescriptions cost well over $500 per month.

Effexor (an antianxiety med cost over $600 per month. EVERY MONTH!)

I 100% agree. I make more than my neurologist. I only work seven months a year.

[xlabel]

Direct your frustration at the pharmaceutical company and the durable equipment company.

One specialty bed cost over 50 grand a year to RENT... TO RENT! (and believe me, the beds are NOT for sale... why sell when you can get that much to rent???)

Some prescriptions cost well over $500 per month.

Effexor (an antianxiety med cost over $600 per month. EVERY MONTH!)

[/quote]

Doctors could easily just refuse to prescribe the expensive meds. In my case Flexiril would do just fine $10 or $15 a script, but instead local doctor put me on Skelaxin $160 a script,(gee why would he do that? must be something in it for him). A lot of these companies that make surgical equipment and beds and such are owned by doctors as well.

[malamute]

Originally Posted by kcam213

While others were out going out friday night; hanging out at the park saturday and at the zoo on sunday...

while other people were relaxing at home at night watching Sex in the City and Friends.... some of us were at school, studying or working part time jobs to pay for all that education it takes to get these "big paychecks" medical jobs.

those "big" paychecks are compensation for YEARS of school... and we are not talking about some humanities class. Classes that required hours of school work, HOURS OF FREE clinical work and hours of study.

I don't apologize for making almost the same amount as the US autoworker or line man for the electrical and phone company who have a fraction if any higher education at all.

Oh and don't forget that those doctors and nurses have to pay liability insurance, uniforms, continuing education classes, licensing fees.

We don't get hazard pay (when working with infectious people, insane and physically dangerous people), dangerous work environments (radiation, chemical) and lastly if we have a bad day, we don't make a useless part... PEOPLE DIE.

So really please stop with the "fat paychecks" of nurses and doctors. We are not the reason health care cost so much.

Direct your frustration at the pharmaceutical company and the durable equipment company.

One specialty bed cost over 50 grand a year to RENT... TO RENT! (and believe me, the beds are NOT for sale... why sell when you can get that much to rent???)

Some prescriptions cost well over $500 per month.

Effexor (an antianxiety med cost over $600 per month. EVERY MONTH!)

You left out the other rest of my statement:

Free prenatal care for all! Free checkups, free everything. Yet the doctors, the nurses and all the others want their big paychecks.

The public wants it all free, they want free visits to the doctors, they don't want to pay if they go to a hospital. I'm just pointing out that in a field where the pay is the highest of any field of work, health care obvioiusly doesn't come free. It's very costly. Someone must pay.

I'd rather see everyone have to pay except for catestrophic care. Like I said, anyone can afford routine maternity care IF they can afford a baby in the first place. Routine doctor visits -- they're not more costly than a month of cellular phone services with unlimited text messages.

People want to put nothing toward their health care or trips to the doctor but they don't hesitate to spend money going to concerts, out to dinner and so on.

[kcam213]

^

I take exception to the "big" paycheck charge. It is too tempting for people who are angry about rising health care to put the blame on the pay scale of the health care workers.

I find it sad that people have no problem with an athelete earning 2 - 3 million dollars annually, an autoworker making $80,000 with free benefits, and the sanitation (garbage) man making $75,000 (unionized city worker). Yet, the woman that takes care of your elderly grandma in the nursing home makes as much as the McDonald's fast food worker.
The difference is if the McDonald's worker drops a hamburger, he will (hopefully) pick it up and throw it away. If the nursing home worker drop Grandma, Grandma gets a broken hip, she ends of bedridden, develops pneumonia and die.

Now who do you think should get better compensation so that you can attract the best and brightest workers into the field?

Things are so backwards. Teachers who we entrust with the future of America for educating, and nurturing (while we are at work) and they barely make $40,000 per year... about 1/2 of the auto worker and other factory workers. I am not knocking auto workers in particular. It just really irritates me when people hold teachers, health care workers etc to the most supreme standards... yet want to pay them peanuts. SMH.

[kcam213]

Oh and as far as free prenatal care for all etc, I agree that people could pay on a sliding scale per income...

but at the same time, the devil's advocate in me thinks that with all the billions of dollars we spend in Iraq monthly for the last several years, and all the billions of dollars that are going to financial institutions so they can consolidate wealth, why not let Annie have free prenatal care??? Why not pay for Cody's immunization?

I am tired of watching tax dollars go to a place that I can't find on the globe. If I can't keep my tax dollars, I would rather see it go to my neighbor down the street who can't afford prenatal care.

[malamute]

Originally Posted by kcam213

^

I take exception to the "big" paycheck charge. It is too tempting for people who are angry about rising health care to put the blame on the pay scale of the health care workers.

I find it sad that people have no problem with an athelete earning 2 - 3 million dollars annually, an autoworker making $80,000 with free benefits, and the sanitation (garbage) man making $75,000 (unionized city worker). Yet, the woman that takes care of your elderly grandma in the nursing home makes as much as the McDonald's fast food worker.
The difference is if the McDonald's worker drops a hamburger, he will (hopefully) pick it up and throw it away. If the nursing home worker drop Grandma, Grandma gets a broken hip, she ends of bedridden, develops pneumonia and die.

Now who do you think should get better compensation so that you can attract the best and brightest workers into the field?

Things are so backwards. Teachers who we entrust with the future of America for educating, and nurturing (while we are at work) and they barely make $40,000 per year... about 1/2 of the auto worker and other factory workers. I am not knocking auto workers in particular. It just really irritates me when people hold teachers, health care workers etc to the most supreme standards... yet want to pay them peanuts. SMH.

I didn't say pay them peanuts. Pay them whatever but realize that health care cannot be free or even cheap.

More and more it's a situation where the people earning minimum wages and facing unemployment are having to pay the high wages of teachers and health care workers. The money must come from somewhere. You can give all kinds of "free" medical care out to many people but someone is going to end up paying for it.

Fast food workers and other service industry workers with no health benefits simply are not going to support a very expensive health care industry and very expensive education industry for long. Manufacturing once created great wealth but now requires multi-billion dollar bailouts.

[Cliffie]

Doctors could easily just refuse to prescribe the expensive meds. In my case Flexiril would do just fine $10 or $15 a script, but instead local doctor put me on Skelaxin $160 a script,(gee why would he do that? must be something in it for him). A lot of these companies that make surgical equipment and beds and such are owned by doctors as well.

I worked in a doctor's office for 9 years, and talking to my own healthcare providers I am convinced it is not about the docs getting kickbacks or perks for prescribing certain drugs. The fact is, they are just as easily seduced by pharmaceutical ad campaigns as anyone else out there. And the drug sales reps have all kinds of great-sounding research studies that make the drugs look safe and infallible. They also give out samples so that some people, who will turn out to like it better that whatever they were taking before, will bite the bullet and pay the huge co-pay because they think they can't live without it.

The psychiatrist I used to work for believed every word of the hype, giving everyone who rolled in the door the newest drug until he found out it wasn't perfect after all, and then he would go to the next new thing. It was sort of a flavor-of-the-month deal. He would not hear of you taking something else under the bloom was off the rose and he realized that it did have side effects, or whatever.

And of course the drug companies are putting on TV and radio ads to encourage people to self-diagnose and demand the newest drug on the market. Never mind that the symptoms of depression announced on TV can also be the first signs of diabetes, or something else that an antidepressant isn't too damned useful for.

My own treatment providers tend to think the same way: we now know this is better than the stuff that's worked well for you for years, because we have this research study that proves it. Of course it was some of those very research studies that got so many Vioxx takers killed.

[tuebor]

Now that MA has elected a Republican to the Senate, the current healthcare legislation appears to be dead. The Congress and the Obama administration will have to come up with a different approach. I wonder if they would consider the health care credit card (HCCC) idea we discussed on this thread? Probably not, but I think recent developments justify giving this thread a bump.

Some questions were raised above about free preventive care. I guess the issue of free preventive care is separable from the core idea of using a credit-card system to pay for health care, but I suggested making it free because I assume that this would result in significant savings in the long run. Yes, people should be responsible enough to take care of their own preventive care, but I'm guessing that the benefits of preventive care are great enough to warrant giving people an added incentive to do so. The ones who are the most irresponsible are the ones who would end up costing the system the most in the long run, so the cost of free preventive care would probably be less than the cost of trusting everybody to behave sensibly. Also, in the case of prenatal care, one of the concerned parties (the child) has no control over the matter and so must be protected.

That segues into the issue of abortion, which I deliberately sidestepped above. I don't see elective abortions being covered by the HCCC. But this would have no effect on existing insurance plans that cover abortion, so it really would be "abortion neutral", unlike either the House or Senate versions of the recent healthcare reforms (once there is a universal mandate to buy health insurance that is partially subsidized by the gov't, "abortion neutrality" becomes impossible).

[Driller1]

Originally Posted by tuebor

Now that MA has elected a Republican to the Senate, the current healthcare legislation appears to be dead. The Congress and the Obama administration will have to come up with a different approach. I wonder if they would consider the health care credit card (HCCC) idea we discussed on this thread? Probably not, but I think recent developments justify giving this thread a bump.

Some questions were raised above about free preventive care. I guess the issue of free preventive care is separable from the core idea of using a credit-card system to pay for health care, but I suggested making it free because I assume that this would result in significant savings in the long run. Yes, people should be responsible enough to take care of their own preventive care, but I'm guessing that the benefits of preventive care are great enough to warrant giving people an added incentive to do so. The ones who are the most irresponsible are the ones who would end up costing the system the most in the long run, so the cost of free preventive care would probably be less than the cost of trusting everybody to behave sensibly. Also, in the case of prenatal care, one of the concerned parties (the child) has no control over the matter and so must be protected.

That segues into the issue of abortion, which I deliberately sidestepped above. I don't see elective abortions being covered by the HCCC. But this would have no effect on existing insurance plans that cover abortion, so it really would be "abortion neutral", unlike either the House or Senate versions of the recent healthcare reforms (once there is a universal mandate to buy health insurance that is partially subsidized by the gov't, "abortion neutrality" becomes impossible).

"FREE"??? How would it be free??? There is no free!