Health Care in USA or lack thereof

[Marty Hamrick]

I'm a staffer.I shoot for a local post newsweek station and I supplement with freelance work.I've noticed over the last 10 or 15 years that I'm paying more and more for health insurance and getting less and less.I've been needing an MRI on my shoulder for a while now and my insurance company has been dicking me around on it.

My fiance is Canadian and says our health care system sucks a fat meat.Now I feel that since my shoulder is a major part of my job,it should be a prioity and there should be no question about MRI's or anything else.I also feel that such things as corrective eye surgery for people who's livelyhoods depend on their eyesight should be given a break.

Do any of you feel I'm asking for too much?

Marty

[Bill DiPietra]

As a New York State EMT, I know what you're talking about.

 

I know what you mean from a personal standpoint, too. My health care just shot up from $400 - $500 a month. For example, I had to camcel an appointment at my physical therapist for a while due to my change in shifts. I called the other day and found out I had to go through the entire process that I had one month earlier because "it'd been too long" and "it's a law."

 

It's a bullshit way for insurance companies to make more money.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Your healthcare system sucks fat meat.

 

My father just had some fairly major bowel surgery to remove a tumor, and he's about to undergo a course of chemotherapy. All free, all local, all done within a few weeks of diagnosis.

 

However, it's crippling the economy of the country, which is why transfer costs are two to six times more here. You pays your money and you takes your choice...

 

Phil

[GeorgeSelinsky]

I suggest that you New Yorkers look into the Family Health Plus plan. Thank God for that, it's keeping me insured right now. Otherwise I'd have to pay $300+ a month for med insurance.

 

-G.

[Jason Maeda]

yeah i had a terrible on the job ankle injury two years ago ("pop!") didn't see a dime, couldn't have afforded insurance anyway, and it pretty much ruined my financial life until about a month ago when i got back in the black (or red, whichever is better). its a really tough debate. canada gets to have universal health care because they aren't spending 150 billion a year on military...they dont have to. on the other hand, none of the europeans i know from upper middle class families use their country's care,just sucks too much. they all have private doctors, and use the health care system for routine procedures if at all. the best we can do under the present circumstances is be vigilant against insurance fraud, its a major contributor to the escalating cost of health care in the US.

jk :ph34r:

[Guest Ultra Definition]

The health care system sucks. Overall quality of health care is pretty much reflected in infant mortality. While we are somewhere at the bottom among in the western world, our costs are incomparable higher compared to other western countries.

 

Prevention, healthy nutrition and stress removal are the best ingredients for lowering health care costs.

 

Reagan's administration canceled funding for tracing of transmission source of STD infection cases. Bush administration favors abstinence before marriage to sexual education. This and other lack of controls and the fact that you go to Mexico and many other countries and you don't need prescription for antibiotics results in: Certain areas in the US and/or certain US population segments are infected with incurable form of deadly and extremely infectious tuberculosis, other with incurable ghonorhea, other with deadly syphilis. This is only a tip of the iceberg.

 

http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl...x_and_Sexuality

 

http://www.fullcirclepregnancy.com/abstinence.html

 

We have a doctor in our family and she is very prevention oriented. There is a lot more to it.

 

Now, how do you fix it? Don't concentrate on short term solutions. See how other countries do it. Concentrate on prevention. And the most important point: Keep the pharmaceutical industry lobby and personnel away from the government institutions.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Okay, I admit it, I have private healthcare. This is mainly to avoid having to wait up to several YEARS for non-life-threatening procedures like hernia repairs - not liable to be a factor at my age, but still. Older people in this country have been screwed over by the fact that by the time it became clear the NHS wasn't looking so good, they were generally 50+ and therefore insurance cost a fortune.

 

However, if you do get something life-threatening, you will receive as much treatment as you need, free of charge.

 

Phil

[Marty Hamrick]

I'm the fiance. In Canada we don't pay for general health care at all. Our benefits are 60-90 bucks per month and only cover prescriptions, eye glasses (optometry is covered), and dental. There are no copayments. Some plans cover 80%, but most cover 100%.

The employer pays for this based on their monthly income and the number of employees. We dont have as many hospitals there as you have here, but I think it is well worth the sacrifice. My fiance needs to have an MRI done on his shoulder. In Canada this would not be a problem, but here it is a major pig fu** to get this done.

It seems to me, that the US has forgotten about the people and is concentrating on the all mighty buck.

One can only hope that congress wakes up!

Your health care system is the major reason why I will always maintain Canadian citizenship and residency.

Karen

[Rob Belics]

I thought I heard on TV (so it must be true) that the wait to get an operation could be quite a long time, though? I've not had any real problems getting in to my doctor right away when I need to but to just go in for a physical could take a while.

 

I had the same doctor for about 30 years until he passed away. Someone recommended a practice with three doctors. Two would take months or weeks to get in with but the third only took a few days. The reason, I was told, is he didn't have many elderly patients so his schedule was more open.

 

I own a restaurant that my wife runs and getting health insurance through that isn't any cheaper. Outrageous is a good word.

[Guest Ultra Definition]

And what's the worsed is that I had Kaiser for a while and you often do not see a doctor there, only a nurse practitioner. Later at the UC system it was the same thing.

 

Kaiser always had 10x less tonsils operations than private doctors. This is typical for the HMO care. Where are some ethics? It's all about money. HMO doctors get bigger checks when they don't operate, private when they do.

 

And the hospitals have so much spare capacity, and despite of that they just keept on buliding more and more.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why the medical care sucs and it's so expensive.

[Jason Maeda]

"It seems to me, that the US has forgotten about the people and is concentrating on the all mighty buck. One can only hope that congress wakes up!"

-karen

 

no, you just dont see the whole picture. the cost of providing free health care to the 300million+ citizens would be debilitating to say the least. as i mentioned before it would also cripple many other departments paid for by tax dollars: military, education, retirement funding, transportation etc. there simply is not enough revenue to pay for it. that leaves two options:

 

1. double taxes. i don't know about the rest of you but i'm paying quite enough right now.

2. get rid of something. everyone on this board should choose one government department they would like to see hacked off. and before you all say military, pull out a history book and ask yourself if thats really the kind of power vacuum you want right now.

 

now what will we get even if by some miracle we can do the impossible and give free health care to our millions of citizens? i predict we get long waiting lists, shoddy care (right now we have the best doctors in the world, believe me they will not stick around when the government paychecks start getting issued.), and a seriously lowered standard of living (remember, the money has to come from somewhere. and its hard to pay for a new television or a trip to bermuda when two thirds of your paycheck is going to pay for the 2cd rate doctors your country keeps on the payroll), and (and here is where i'm always amazed that i dont win more liberals over) A LARGER DISPARITY BETWEEN THE CARE AVAILABLE TO THE LOWER AND HIGHER CLASSES. yes of course its true. will the rich not continue to see private physicians while the lower classes are forced to sign up for the lists to receive government care? and what about the middle class? some will struggle for the privilege of private health care while others will settle for the "food stamp" system.

 

 

"Your health care system is the major reason why I will always maintain Canadian citizenship and residency."

-karen

 

sure, but our military system is the major reason why you have that option in the first place. not to mention why you dont have to speak russian/german/japanese, etc. check out the monroe docerine.

 

im not saying i dont want universal health care to be a reality, of course i do. and believe it or not, most "congressmen" do as well. but i also know that when my dad came, starving, from greece, he was able to build a life here because of the powerful economic machine in the US, not because of the easy social programs. and i know that millions of others have done the same. i also know that when i go to see a doctor, expensive as it may be, im getting the best health care in the world. all paid for by hard working people, insurance companies, research patents, etc. lets not go crazy and turn it upside down just yet. we all chose to be in the "entertainment industry", right? you give up a lot when you do that. stability and easy health insurance are two good examples. i have a family whose health care needs i dont want being put on some list we cant afford to circumvent.

 

jk :ph34r:

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> sure, but our military system is the major reason why .... swagger, bluster, flourish, grandstand...

 

Words fail me. Well, okay, they don't. This sort of thinking is why people fly planes into your tall buildings.

 

Phil

[Jason Maeda]

phil ive heard you say that before and it was as ignorant and insensitive then as it is now. you should be ashamed of yourself. god forbid anything like what i saw from my apartment on 9-11 should happen to anyone you know. and no it isnt my opinion that causes terrorism, it is the power hunger of pseudo-islamic religious-extremist psychos.

 

as far as my vcomments on the american military goes, it isn't self-aggrandizement, it is an honest appraisal of the financing necessary to build a universal health care system. without a doubt the enormous amount of money required would have to come in large part from the military budget, and it is my opinion that that isn't such a good idea. all i'm saying is that canada can afford health care because they're sitting next to the strongest military in the world.

 

phil if you insist on acting the pathetic ass its fine as long as you keep it within the "disgruntled british videographer" persona you enjoy cultivating so much, but please keep away from suggesting it is the fault of innocent civilians for their being victims of terrorism.

 

jk

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

What dismays me more than the idea of a terrorist group knocking down a building, even a very large building with a lot of people in it, is the blank-cheque mentality to military buildup, the jingoistic, pulpit-pounding, complete and total abandonment of perspective which leads to a situation like this - a situation where any opinion other than the hyper-right wing prick-waving that's been going on is somehow deemed incorrect and unacceptable.

 

Stuff such monumental inconsequentialities as who I know - Baghdad apartment windows over the past few months have seen more and more again than anything you have, and in the knowledge that there will be no gigantic military behemoth to avenge the deaths of their friends because the attackers are from the West and that makes it all right.

 

Meanwhile the US remains unable to take basic care of its citizens because of its spending on a military infrastructrue which it seems unable to use for any purpose other than swaggering around the middle east screaming "kick me." I fear that these attitudes will eventually lead to horror on a scale which makes the catalysing act recede into insignificance.

 

Phil

[Jason Maeda]

ok, i hear you on these issues phil. but i do think the US "takes care" of it's citizens. i think americans on the whole do quite well. as far as a blank-check mentality towards military spending, i wouldn't call it that. i brought up the monroe docterin before not just to explain canada's comfortable position, but also to highlight the special necessity we have for maintaining a large military: we believe ourselves to be protectors of an entire hemisphere's worth of nations, as well as having a special interst in defending freedom, when necessary or practical, the world over.

 

and i insist that it wasn't a "jingoistic, pulpit-pounding, complete and total abandonment of perspective" that lead to our "present situation", it was the warped ideology of a group of fanatical, ultra-violent, religious-extremist fideists. i hardly feel like a "zealot" defending a military that is trying to crack down on premeditated mass-murder, especially the present scourge of terrorism based on an anger towards our aiding the only democratic nation in the middle east.

 

jk :ph34r:

[Jason Maeda]

and phil, so what if our presence in the middle east leads to more attacks? we do not believe in allowing these kinds of crimes go unpunished, and we do not consider a philosophy of intentional ignorance will solve our problems. and, please, before anyone thinks of getting cute and uses the convenient rebuttle that suggests we are doing the "same thing" right back, this war has been the most succesful deployment of massive amounts of militaristic force at the lowest cost to civilian casualties ever conducted. i hardly see it as the "same thing".

jk

[Guest Ultra Definition]

The Middle East is nothing. Wait for the China friendship to blow. We supported Bin Laden against the Russians; now we can't find him. We supported Sadam against the Iranians. We said that when we find him, the attacks on Americans will stop. They did not.

 

We have been supporting China for decades now and transfering to them top technology, including military. Did you ever watch their military parades on TV, and the Communist politbiro watching, with their red stars and communist flags.

 

If things go wrong with these friends, just as they turned out bad with the two other friends I mentioned, we will not have money for any health care and we will thank god if a nurse practicioner does our apendoctomy, if we could afford to pay extra for it, because at the HMO plans they'll employ butchers to do that. Of course the rich ones will be able to afford a veterinarian, who will not have any animals to treat, because the poor were hungry and ate them all. :P

[Brad Grimmett]

Words fail me. Well, okay, they don't. This sort of thinking is why people fly planes into your tall buildings.

 

Phil

For once I wish words would fail you! You're a jackass Phil! And you know very little about the world, besides what you see on your parents TV in the basement of their house. You should learn to keep your mouth shut. You're always talking about how terrible your work is and everyone here is generally supportive of you, and then you go and say stupid things like this. Well, I gotta tell ya, people that say the things you do often get their asses kicked. I know there are a couple people on the steadicam forum that would love to do just that. And I know you wore your name tag backwards at NAB last year to avoid those people seeing you. Oh yeah, everyone knew about it and we had a big laugh. If you're going to make statements like that then you better be a man about it and stand up for what you believe in. But I guess you'd prefer to be a pussy and hide behind your computer. One day those kinds of statements will catch up with you and you'll be in trouble. The world is a small place. Word travel's fast about people like you. And by the way, you won't ever work in a big budget situation (just like you always say) because word has already gotten around about you. People know enough about you already to know to avoid you, and you haven't even begun your career yet!

By the way, this is not a threat. Don't worry, I won't hurt you Phil. I can use that two minutes for much more constructive activities.

[GregIrwin]

I know with many of you the term "union" is a very bad word. However, by being an IATSE member, I receive full medical coverage paid by my employers. The only cost that I incur is my union dues. Otherwise, the members receive Blue Cross for major medical, Delta Dental and VSP for optical. It is the best insurance package that is offered by employers anywhere. So there is a positive view for becoming union. And with over 6000 members just in the camera guild alone, joining is not that hard and would help stamp out the abusive non-union producers who make all of the money and give absolutely nothing back to the employee.

 

As for Canadian medical, I was in a Vancouver, BC emergency room a couple of years ago and was appalled at the quality of service. I found the entire system over-burdened with people who did not need emergency attention and were not discouraged from taking up space from those who truely needed it since it does not cost anything. Doctors could not spend any quality time with their patients since the waiting line is so long. Emergency rooms are crowded here in the US as well but under control when compared. I also understand that specialized medicine is not readily available in Canada and most come to the USA for major proceedures.

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm personally of the belief that the USA could stand to be a little more socialist even if that means raising taxes. Maybe we wouldn't have as many billionaires running around, maybe we'd be a little poorer, but I think we've had too many years of conservatives lying to the public and telling them that government is no good for anything other than military defense, to the point where people will now no longer pay enough taxes to fix schools, fix highways, build a decent mass transit system, or now, fully fund Social Security, which I believe that something like 50% of retirees rely on to live off of.

 

It's nuts -- we now have to pass a bond measure in California to fix our schools (and our debt) because merely whispering the word "tax hike" can get you booted out of office. We're strangling off basic services in this country through under-funding. Maybe this is what the conservatives wanted all along -- break the system by under-funding it and then telling everyone "see, it doesn't work -- it should be privatized". Look at our public education system, once one of the best in the world when I was growing up.

 

But maybe we don't even have to raise taxes -- we just have to start COLLECTING them from the people how are allowed to evade them. I caught some snippets of that PBS show "Tax Me if You Can" about how a company like Wachovia managed not only to pay zero dollars in taxes thanks to offshore shelters, but the U.S. government gave them a 100 million dollar tax return. So most of us pay our fair share of taxes yet the wealthiest manage to find loopholes that allow them to pay hardly any. It's no wonder Bush is saying that the economy is on the upswing even though hardly any jobs are created - the people he really cares about have done very well by him, so of course his economic plans are successful.

 

As for this war, it's just a tragedy and it pisses me off constantly. I'm not talking about the war in Afghanistan against Al Quaida, which was generally backed by the world community and had some justification because they attacked us first. I'm talking about the follow-up war against Iraq which has been terrible blunder. There's a good reason that "pre-emptive" wars are bad policy -- it requires absolute assurance and accuracy in predicting an upcoming attack. Now it turns out that Iraq was not an immediate threat and we had no legal justification to attack and remove the existing government, no matter how bad that government was. Unless we are going to now have a policy of removing all people from power that are not good -- you know, that "nation-building" concept that Bush said was such a bad idea during the first campaign.

 

The war in Iraq has nothing to do with fighting terrorism -- and now it turns out that Bush was planning it before the events of 9-11 anyway. And then he had the gaul to use those deaths in 9-11 to pave the way for a war in Iraq, a war he wanted to find an excuse to have. It's obscene.

 

For the first time in my entire life, I am becoming ashamed of my own government. As much as I disliked the Reagan and first Bush administrations, I never felt ashamed to be a citizen of this country. But lately I just get depressed as I see how low we've been slipping. Now Bush is talking about amending one of the greatest documents ever written, a testament to freedom and democracy, so that a portion of the population will be denied certain rights available to the rest -- the first time a constitutional amendment has EVER been proposed designed to restrict rights rather than expand them! Why aren't people getting really, really angry over this?

 

And don't even get me started on the environment...

 

I just want my country back. Perhaps some people during the red scare and McCarthyism felt the same way. Maybe I just have to wait it out and hope for sanity to return.

[Kevin Zanit]

David I could not agree with you more.

 

Its goddamn ridiculous how low we have sunk as a country. I do feel Bush in large part put us in this direction.

 

It greatly bothers me how the Right wing conservatives will stand by their 2nd amendment; yet limit the rights of equality for others when things don?t mesh with their beliefs. Their defense tends to cite the bible, but last I checked religion and government were separate. I suppose I better look again.

 

I have always tried to steer clear of these types of rants, but it has gotten to the point that I feel Rush Limbaugh (that god damned hypocritical drug addict) is running our country, and that something needs to be said.

 

:::Why aren't people getting really, really angry over this?:::

 

I am, and I know of many more who are as well.

 

 

Kevin Zanit

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> And I know you wore your name tag backwards at NAB last year

 

....but I didn't, I had it latched on a belt loop on the right hand side the entire time. Christ, the things I have to justify.

 

Phil

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> For the first time in my entire life, I am becoming ashamed of my own government

 

I'm not sure what's worse. Being in the US, and having to feel like this, or being here, and really never having had anything to be proud of about your locality anyway.

 

Phil

[DanStewart]

'You don't know what you got till it's gone'.

 

Yes, you guys have a lot of dicks over there but you also have the highest concentration of enlightened educated human beings on the planet.

 

It comes to faith - like you said David, it worked out OK in the past. Like the march against the war here (bigger than the electoral turnout), people can and will change things when they realise those in charge are not acting in a philanthropic manner. Blair is in deep poop over Iraq.

 

The delay is their faith in people, which is worth waiting for, because you wouldn't want to lose it.

 

Dan

[Guest Ultra Definition]

As for the shool system in the US, it sucs too up to the secondary (HS) level. I'm in Europe right now and these kids study here in the 6th grade what they teach in the US in the 12th. It's ridiculous! It's not that the Japanese and the Germans are not catching up with us. We will never catch up with them.

 

Not training our people and importing tens of thousands of nurses, 100,000 computer professionals a year, etc.; now most of the manufacturing pretty much moved offshore. If it's made here, it is usually only assembled from foreign parts. The cars are an exception, except that Toyota overtook Ford and is moving fast onto becoming world's No.1 automaker. The Europeans and Japanese are investing big $ into plane manufacturing. All hardware is made offshore, software is moving there quickly too. We'll be left with Micro$oft that will survive only because it is a monopoly, and with orange fields with Mexican farmworkers. I call this a policy of doom.

 

If Schwarzeneger becomes US president one day, who will be next? Mickey Mouse? :lol: