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I keep hearing this rightfully earned thing going around too much.
Yes,they have a right to housing,senior discounts,medicare,..
My complaint is the way healthcare and its costs is spent on that segment of our society.
I'm not a senior hater,and yes I know we all grow old.
You all must don't know nursing homes are sad places.
OWS does have a few good ideas. corporate drug companies have most seniors on at least 6 prescription drugs that cure nothing and only provide temporary relief. these drugs are prescribed buy kickback idiot greedy prescription writers posing as doctors and all paid for by medicaid.Got my own mom off all her prescriptions 5 years ago and she is fine at 86 and still rolls her own smokes. turned out 4 of the prescriptions were to stop the bad side effects of the nasty first ones.hope she still has a liver.Thanks gov and big drug companies.
When its children who suffer the most? As a healthcare professional, I was reading an interesting blog. As a peds nurse I see many children who can't this or that done because there is no funding or they get rejected by insurance companies,meanwhile an elderly person who is 98 and on a ventilator ,and non responsive(brain dead) is getting her 5th. Hip surgery? Isn't that hip surgery unessesary at this point,meanwhile a child of 5 who is alert and has muscular dystrophy gets denied a wheelchair (and medicaid insurance) when they have a better prognosis than the elderly client? Or an elderly client who gets social security on top of getting a 3000 dollar pension and free medicare but we deny medicaid to the child who has cancer because the parents make 2000 a month? Tell me your opinions please
Several aspects to this question. The most general is why do Americans spend so much MORE on health care than other nations, while getting largely inferior results? I'd say this is a result of a largely private for-profit health care system that KNOWS how much we will pay for good health and pain relief, if we can afford it. Systemic problems like disproportional rewards to those in certain areas (like CEOs and executives of large health care organizations, doctors, and anyone in the insurance field) cause costs to go up without increase in results.
Skyrocketing health care costs also come from government intervention, to not only use taxpayer dollars to subsidize both health care AND health care insurance, but also is going to such extreme lengths as LEGALLY REQUIRING citizens to buy the products of this for-profit industry. With the bottom line a Big Government that will protect any industry that contains Big Business, there can be little hope of fiscal reform.
The next part of the question is children versus the elderly as a customer base. Why do the elderly get better treatment by insurance companies? Probably because the elderly have much more political power than anyone else in our society. And their primary insurer, Medicare, is ruled 100% by politics. Add to that the fact that elderly people also often have discretionary income to pay for what insurance doesn't cover, and they'll get served well.
Overall, kids statistically are not as likely to be dying, which is when the largest medical costs are racked up. So overall I would expect them to get less of the share of the "pie" than elderly people do. The cases when both are dying, can be explained by the attitudes of the insurance companies that pay for each. Medicare wants the political power and votes of the senior citizen voting block. Medicaid and private health insurance don't care at all about the political power of children -- or their working class parents. Those two groups have NO political, or financial power, and that is why insurance companies make the decisions they do.
A large number of children today in America are poor. The federal government has Medicare for the elderly, and Medicaid for the poor, but the elderly are covered under Medicare even if they have some money and income. Medicaid on the other hand requires you to be VERY poor with no assets, and that leaves large groups of children of the working poor ineligible. Similarly, the working poor can't really make up for the deficits left by insurance. The elderly are generally much better off, and particularly today's elderly who retired before losing their pensions and having their wages eroded away.
Our system is a strange patchwork that doesn't give us superior results, although it charges us VERY inflated prices. And the high prices of insurance can no longer be supported by the average American, now that employers have decided to destroy that benefit too. So something has to change. I expect things will change drastically over the next five to ten years, and it won't get better until it gets much worse.
When its children who suffer the most? As a healthcare professional, I was reading an interesting blog. As a peds nurse I see many children who can't this or that done because there is no funding or they get rejected by insurance companies,meanwhile an elderly person who is 98 and on a ventilator ,and non responsive(brain dead) is getting her 5th. Hip surgery? Isn't that hip surgery unessesary at this point,meanwhile a child of 5 who is alert and has muscular dystrophy gets denied a wheelchair (and medicaid insurance) when they have a better prognosis than the elderly client? Or an elderly client who gets social security on top of getting a 3000 dollar pension and free medicare but we deny medicaid to the child who has cancer because the parents make 2000 a month? Tell me your opinions please
You haven't seen anything yet. As the baby boomers age, it'll only get worse. As a Gen X menber, I am totally convinced the Baby Boomers will suck us dry, and they'll being nothing left for those of us born after 1965. Hopefully, the government will be smart enough to limit it by then.
You haven't seen anything yet. As the baby boomers age, it'll only get worse. As a Gen X menber, I am totally convinced the Baby Boomers will suck us dry, and they'll being nothing left for those of us born after 1965. Hopefully, the government will be smart enough to limit it by then.
As someone pointed out,seniors are a powerful voting bloc.
You must not be in the healthcare field,because they would understand what I'm saying.
How is what I wrote unrealistic. What do you want me to write"the end stage cancer, demented 103 yo pt who can't talk and walk anymore and needs total care and on a vent whose fam family wants us to save her life at all costs and want these expensive tests and surgeries done when clearly she only has a few months,if not weeks,to live?
It depends on the setting. I'm specifically talking about in a ltac facility. Why can't we just let them die in peace instead of constantly subjected them to these things?(and save money) As I said,what sense does it make to keep operating on someone who is probably going to die in a few months? Fyi,most people on vents are alert and are not on any sedation,unless you are talking about. The Er.)
Well, Obama wanted this End of Life decision making to be covered in the UHC package but some brain dead (but still young and walking around ) idiot named Sarah Palin started screeching that those were DEATH PANELS!
That added to people's fear of end of life decisions....which would aid in letting people just die naturally.
However, ...who the hell are you or anyone else to determine when a human "should" die????
I was just tired of seeing posts about "obamacare was going to decide who lives and who dies and then they would talk about death panels for elderly. I see elderly who we should just let die in peace instead of doing all this expensive treatments.
When I see debates about the various aspects of health care, there is one issue that is NEVER debated. And that is the outrageous charges applied to health care, with those costs having soared at exponentially higher rates than either inflation or any other industry. The entire Obama care debate has been fixated on "who pays", rather than what is being paid for and how much.
Those that believe "Socialized Medicine" is the answer are thoroughly clueless of how Medicare has contributed to the sharp increases in costs, and how that applies directly to the your contention that children are being turned away while the elderly are getting unnecessary treatments and procedures.
The elderly have become "cash cows" for the medical industry, with 80-100% guaranteed payment through Medicare ... medical service providers are lined up in the wings to provide every conceivable procedure, and of course, the elderly are more in need of medical treatment than most younger people.
Unfortunately, there is an underlying truth that most within the mainstream medical establishment are loath to admit ... health care is not concerned about health at all. This is about money, and the highest possible volume of heath care service delivery which is covered by insurance of whatever type.
If you don't have insurance, and you are still a year away from Medicare qualification age ... see how fast YOU get the hip replacements!
As medical science has advanced, with amazing new treatments and surgeries, overall, the general health of our population has deteriorated. We may be living a bit longer, but we are living sicker ... and nothing could please the bean counters in health care more. Healthy people are of no use to an industry that thrives on delivering treatments to sick people, which is really the greatest problem regarding health we face as a society.
Few want to even admit that fundamental fact ... let alone examine the amount of illness and poor health that results from health care delivery itself. With more people dying each year from prescription medications (taken as directed) than all illegal drugs combined ... why do we not see a "War on Prescription Drugs" ?
Moreover, it is now estimated that medical treatment is now the leading cause of death in America ... eclipsing heart disease and cancer. NOBODY wants to talk about that ... we just want to make sure EVERYONE has insurance to pay.
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