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People were getting treated w/o health insurance even before Obamacare. It isn't any different now.
A metric f.ckload weren't. The ER requirement to treat you until stable doesn't help those who need meds, long-time, to function. I have helped a friend pack up house to move in with her parents because the choice was between rent and thyroid supplement.
People were getting treated w/o health insurance even before Obamacare. It isn't any different now.
The American Hospital Association says hospitals provided $367 BILLION in uncompensated care since 2000. That is a staggering number and we who had insurance paid every nickel of it in our premiums.
You can't pass a law (actually ram it through). And expect to tweak it and hope it gets better. We already know by Obama's unconstitutional delay of whatever he cherry picks; Obama already see problems with his own law.
Healthcare is not static. It evolves over time. Germany has the oldest universal health healthcare system ( ACA is not universal healthcare) in the world- 130 years. The laws are revised and reformed, all the time.
ACA became law 3.5 years ago. Since then, the house has voted to repeal it at least 41 times. Too bad that a a fraction of the time, energy and money spreading misinformation was not expended to t improve ACA and the healthcare system, in general.
Heck, a simple bill authorizing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription medications would save hundreds of $ billion in deficit spending, over time. Medicare could buy meds manufactured in the U.S. and sold to Canada cheaper than it can buy from the source in the U.S.
Why is the tea party protecting the interests of Big Pharma?
In other words, Obamacare is completely unneeded, and has been since 1986.
Its goals were (a) to lower costs, and (b) to provide health care to those who didn't have it.
But we see now that (a) it's raising costs instead of lowering them, and (b) every single person in the country already had access to medical care, whether or not he could pay for it.
Obamacare was a "solution" looking for a problem, and failing to find one. An EXPENSIVE "solution".
Opinions are not facts.
Walking thru the ER door and perhaps being diagnosed with probable Cancer will not result in your getting treatment. The ER will refer you to an oncologist and/or Cancer Treatment Center who is under no obligation to treat anyone without insurance or the means to pay.
why? do you think that somehow the cost of health care will magically come down under a single payer system? if so then you are barking up the wrong tree. REAL competition is what will be needed to bring insurance rates and health care costs down.
The cost of healthcare will not magically come down with or without a single pay system.
The healthcare industry has been and will continue to contract, meaning less competition and higher costs.
Being a not for profit hospital does not mean a hospital cannot make a profit. Some make $ hundreds of millions in profit, each year. All it means is that it cannot pay a dividend to shareholders. Profits are used to destroy/acquire the competition and control the market and thus prices. And in the process, jobs are eliminated.
Sr. hospital management compensation is otherworldly. Nothing quite like holding the line of employee compensation and boosting the CEO's base comp to $4 million a year, in the same year.
Germany's 130 year old universal healthcare system ( ACA is not universal healthcare) does not allow ^ sort of thing to happen.
People were getting treated w/o health insurance even before Obamacare. It isn't any different now.
Patients are stabilized in the E.R. If their condition warrants they will be admitted if not they will be discharged and advised to make appts with their primary care MD.
So let's say un-insured Jane has a seizure disorder. If Jane does not have the ability to pay for her seizure medications the ambulance is going to take her to the ER when she inevitably has another seizure. Jane will be treated and released or admitted to the neuro unit for a few days. Now since Jane has no insurance, upon discharge she will not fill the prescriptions the hospital gives or make an appt with her primary care MD. So what happens to Jane? Jane has another seizure next month and then 4 more times in the same year due to being un-insured and not being able to afford f/u visits and medication.
What kind of hospital bill do you think Jane ran up? Do you think she will ever be able to pay it since she can't even afford to pay for the meds to keep herself out of the hospital in the first place?
Who should suck it up? The taxpayers or the peopel who are insured? Should the hospital just suck it up? Basically do people expect other people to provide them with something for nothing?
That's just one scenario out of many...chronic illnesses cannot be managed via the E.R.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ponderosa
The American Hospital Association says hospitals provided $367 BILLION in uncompensated care since 2000. That is a staggering number and we who had insurance paid every nickel of it in our premiums.
Unfortunately the insurance companies don't cover all of that. A lot of times the hospital has to write it off and that is why so many are closing. Treating the uninsured (along with mismanagement) was what killed St. Vincent's in New York and a lot Catholic hospitals that never turned anyone away regardless of their ability to pay.
that decades old law regarding phones was for land lines, the obama administration added cell phones and expanded the eligibility for the phones.
The Tea party/GOP Super Pacs had a field day with this gem of misinformation.
Opinions are not facts.
"The president has no direct impact on the program, and one could hardly call these devices "Obama Phones. This specific program, SafeLink, started under President George Bush, with grants from an independent company created under President Bill Clinton, which was a legacy of an act passed under President Franklin Roosevelt, which was influenced by an agreement reached between telecommunications companies and the administration of President Woodrow Wilson.
What did happen under Obama's Admin was a long overdue audit of the program which showed that carriers were not consistently qualifying recipients of free phones.
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