Posts by SaltyClownNY

Quote from Bill Martin

If you remove the profit factor from the equation what is the incentive for the best of the best to spend 8 years to become a Dr. If the government starts to drive the Dr’s profits down so everyone can afford it - great American healthcare will evaporate. The whole thing has grown into a (pardon the pun) incurable condition!!!

What is so great about being in 37th place in the world? Some 3rd world countries have better healthcare than us. Not to mention if none of us can afford the insurance and or able to afford to use it... how is this a "great American healthcare" system? I don't see it... not about this topic. The thing is, is the issue really due to Dr. not making a profit or because of larger health insurance companies? I hear all the time Dr. complaining that the insurance companies are sucking the life out of them because the insurance companies are making all the money. Get rid of this overpriced billing process and get back to helping people. Not going to be easy, but something has to give.

@Bill Martin... sorry to hear, but really, is there ANY fix that involves private for profit companies? I don't see it just for this reason. If someone can come up with a fix that involves what we have, then great, but I don't see how anything is going to get better until you remove the reason the fees keep going up, and that involves taking the profit out of the service. And there's going to be lots of issues in doing so and I'm sure our government will screw it up, but as long as you have companies that need to make 5% over last year, it's not going to get batter.

Quote from SaltyClownNY

Question is why, but also title doesn't say much about the "amid increasingly desperate measures to plug a funding black hole. The restrictions will apply to standard hip and knee operations". I'd question why is funding in a black hole and then I also don't go off of one source as it's bad juju. I do have a friend of mine who lives over there and will follow up

Spoke to my friends. An interesting issue and one to avoid here. Apparently, they went ahead and privatized the base medical and now for profit companies are coming in and changing things around in order to make a profit. This obviously is NOT what I was recommending. I'm all for companies making a profit, but that's why our medical insurance companies and our medical we have today is in the shape it's in. DO NOT PRIVATES THIS. I mean really, lets go back to the definition of insanity as if it doesn't work today the way it's set up, it wouldn't work the same way in the future.

Quote from Orangeman

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Obese patients and smokers banned from routine surgery in 'most severe ever' rationing in the NHS

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Question is why, but also title doesn't say much about the "amid increasingly desperate measures to plug a funding black hole. The restrictions will apply to standard hip and knee operations". I'd question why is funding in a black hole and then I also don't go off of one source as it's bad juju. I do have a friend of mine who lives over there and will follow up

@SlingRider... good luck!

As someone who has been in the hospital for months over the last 5 years, I have no issues with a single payer system if it's done right. Issue is taking into account the government incompetence and the fact that the infighting between our two party system. I hope we can get it done and done right. America is a great country, but having a medical system that ranks 37th in the world is shameful. What we have today doesn't work and has not worked for a very long time (well before ACA). It NOT going to get better by keeping business as usual.

Quote from Bill Martin

Well I gotta say that ranks right up there on the most unfair statements of the month list

That statement can be taken multiple ways though and I'm not sure how it was meant. But the meme is a small moment in time just like the one with Hillary though. Does a picture tell a thousand words? Sure, but does it tell always the correct story? Nope, not all the time. History hopefully judges us all on many things. Hell, knowing Trumps ego a bit more, he'll do almost anything to create news about himself. Lately, it's been when he doesn't say something that is telling. Have to see how this next year goes, but I'm not sure I have much hope for things turning around.

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LOL... @Orangeman... Congress aren't idiots. They are living high and on the people. They know exactly what they are doing and getting all the perks. WE are the idiots!

As far as Congress and benefits. Not sure if anyone looked into exactly what they get, but I did many years ago. I actually had better benefits than they did in the job I had at the time. They actually chose their medical just like you do in most jobs, but they were good packages and they had a selection of many different ones. What I think we need to do is that they need to go on whatever they replace the ACA with and they have to stay on it. THAT is how we fix medical in this country... whatever they come up with in the next year is what they get moved to.

@Spudinator ... I am NOT for government oversight and I want the government to generally stay out of my life. But yes in deed... how do you do that. If folks remember as I do the oil companies driving up gas prices over $4/gal in GWBush times... even though they were making record profits they kept saying it wasn't them. BS. They have the country by the balls and can do what they want. Hell, I can't even change my diesel engine over to burn vegetable oil due to government regulations and they force you to have no other option but to buy overinflated gas and pay the state taxes on it. I can't even rent out a room in my home without issues and oversight.

All good things. I'm fat... should I pay more for my healthcare because of it? I pay more for my life insurance... I'd say yes, but just like my life insurance, I can go back and get the discounts once I loose weight. But what do you do with people that have medical issues that cause them to be fat? It's a never ending if... This is the reason I believe in one medical that covers say major medical and basic checkups and then you can choose the insurance over that.

Does it make it right that medication costs hold you for ransom? Nope... how to fix? I guess a dart board is as good of a start than any as I have no clue. Businesses have a right to develop their drugs and make good money off to them, but how to control the cost over 5-10 years down the line when they can hold your life for ransom...

@sideseatdriver... sounds solid enough. How to do it all... who knows. I'm not saying the ACA has to stay... I'm saying the ACA was a start. The issue though is how to deal with Insurance companies as they are "for profit" and should be, but maybe if you have something as a competitor to them like you said... NY was looking at expanding Medicaid to everyone as a "base" medical. The F'd up part of that is my daughter had moved out of the house and according to the ACA rules in NY, had to go on Medicaid. Here I was with a wife and 2 kids paying almost $20K a year for medical on the ACA and she wasn't paying a dime AND had better medical. So hell yes, I'll jump over to Medicaid.

I don't have an answer, I just know what we have sucks and what we had sucked more... so all we can do is push forward and the entire congress is turning it into a political nightmare with no other reason than they want to make the other side look bad. Trump doesn't know how to fix crap as he just puts pressure on congress and assumes they will do what is correct when both sides can't manage their way out of a paper bag. Then in Trump style he gets involved and screws it up even more. I guess the one positive in it all is if the entire system is screwed up so bad that they have to rebuild it all... just a shame it would have to come to that over petty BS.

Good question. I don't know or have answers, all I know is if you tune out all the left and right of our politics and the fact that you can ALWAYS find people that don't like the system they have, I have lots of friends in Canada and they are happy with their system. If you don't like the fact that it may take a month to get in to see someone, you pay extra and get on the short list. Ireland is also ranked higher than ours for their medical. My in-laws have family friends over there and they had a terrible experience where a family member was basically sent home to die... but if you look into their insurance, they have secondary health insurance to get you the "full" insurance that covers everything. So who's fault is that if you are sent home with a "sorry, we can't help you" as it's not covered or is it your own fault because you didn't take out the secondary insurance? Personal responsibility? There is always going to be times the system isn't going to work and we all need to accept responsibility in that. But having people who aren't well off paying $9,000 for a test they can't afford because the health insurance companies drove that $1,000 price tag up is ridiculous. NOTHING is going to be perfect, but before the ACA... asked a friend if he was happy about paying 20% more per year in payments. It was a broke system before the ACA. The ACA... it's broke too, but we're in my mind going in the right direction. Lets make what we have better and stop just wanting to change it because it has Obama's name associated with it. Politics at it's worst if you ask me. Our government needs to be for the people and the stock markets will continue to go up as the middle class gets stronger as that is what drives our economy. If we keep screwing over the middle class, what do we have after that?

The insurance companies do this on purpose as it forces you to get insurance from them. That at least is the simple answer. I got one better... why is it that I call my insurance company on a new insurance with three months to go in the year and they can't tell me 100% how much a procedure is going to cost? I called mine and they told me a test I needed would cost $1000. I say OK to the procedure not knowing any better and they send me a bill for $3,000. When I ask why it's not the $1,000, they basically tell me "maybe" they had the billing codes wrong. If it was $3,000, I would have waited until the following year to make sure it went to my total family deductible instead of having only 3 months left in the calendar year. They knew this too, they aren't stupid. They have screwing people down to a science. I was told that the next time I go in for this, I should go with a different procedure that is less expensive and I do that the following year, to be then billed for $3,000 again. Why? Because that one was less expensive, but because of billing, it counted as two tests and not one. WTF?... even though the other one was a better test and tells you more, I'm now getting screwed at both ends. ... and it hurts my Butt... it does... I'm Butt Hurt.

@Bill Martin, I can not dispute anything you are saying. 100% accurate.

I do support getting rid of medical insurance companies and putting everyone on a single payer health insurance to cover basic needs and then having the option to purchase additional insurance over and above that for getting even better insurance. In my opinion and after looking at how other countries do it that are ranked higher than ours, it just makes sense to do that. Hell, NY state was pushing forward in the last year looking at the fact that if you ensured everyone, the amount the state was going to save in just billing would just about pay for the program. I don't know enough about all the details in that, so I'll stop at what they were looking at, but what I do know is that the hospitals charge 100X more for everything as the insurance companies give them pennies on the dollar (figuratively speaking) and the people who pay the price of that is the uninsured as they are paying the 100X more price instead of something realistic. The entire medical issue in this country is a cluster... I also can't disagree at the moment with a flat tax and just charge everyone the same rate. Some may say the's a liberal view of things... maybe... I call it common sense. Everyone pays the same amount. What's not fare about that? Maybe I'm looking at it incorrect, but many would call these social programs. I am NOT for the items you spoke of nor encouraging their usage or expanding on them. Medical shouldn't be made an issue though and everyone should have the basics. Helping people between jobs... there is a place for that. Hopefully people plan for things. Social security is a must too. It's like a forced 401K.

Well, and the problem is, the middle is going and so is the middle class. Put yourself in the shoes of say someone that is less entitled than we are (I'm making a VERY large assumption, but based on the fact that someone in poverty isn't going out and buying Sling Shots)... If you are making $10 an hour and trying to feed a family, would you be for social programs? My answer is the more the better and I'd try to take advantage of all that I could with my own struggle to get out of that situation. Do we help them out or not? I'm not sure there is an easy answer to that and there does need to be enough people to pull that wagon. Medical and the ACA is a huge issue for this country as all our current government wants to do is exacerbate the issues and not fix the issues... all while the US is ranked #37th in the world for it's medical system. It's really NOT a hard problem to fix, but as long as congress is taking bribes from special interest groups, we'll never fix it.

First off, if anyone truly believes that ISIS can be eradicated, I'd like some of what you are smoking. If it's not ISIS, it will be another group just as militant. The world has to stand up together and say enough and there needs not be countries that these groups are protected in. Second,the country was in the toilet when Obama got it after 2 terms under Republican rule, a war we really shouldn't have been in (Iraq), and the debt it caused. I said it before, we needed to go after bin Laden, but going into Iraq was just stupid. I'll reserve judgement on Obama in another 10 years, so not sure on that one as I know they used history to try and get us out of the mess we were in and history dictated spending the money they did, but on the flip side, it was implemented wrong. Both parties are having significant issues and I think both for similar reasons. The Republican party started going down hill way before Trump. I believe where is started going down hill faster was the ideal of the Tea Party movement. The thing was, I really liked the Tea Party at first as the overall idea was great, but then it went WAY right and a lot of it's members ended up being crack pots. Same in the Dems where the left started becoming even more left. This is the reason for the polar issues being so severe in this country right now as we have less and less of a middle. We need more middle and we need to start ruling with common sense.

True That. Depends on the impeachment and how bad the situation is. I was never a "never Trump" as for a while I would have voted for him, but then the wackadoodle started coming out more and more and the ego and outlandish lies and total fabrications... he lost me. I'm NOT saying the other side didn't have them, what I'm saying is he took it to a new level. If they impeach and remove from office, that is much more severe than what Bill Clinton had happen. Will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

What is up with this group and Butts? Is this a redirect for factual arguments or do you just like butts? LOL Personally, I'm as ass man, but it's a bit weird here... kind of... maybe I like it... haven't made my mind up yet.

LOL... @Orangeman. You are proving my point with the meme. My point is that one side points to the other. I'm pointing out the hypocritical meme that was posted with Hillary. I'm not in any way saying the other side isn't hypocritical. They all are. But I get tired when it's not pointed out as to me, the Republican't stand up and say how they are conservative with conservative values and for what? So they can run around and do what they want... like saying "our bar is so much higher than yours". It's all BS. The props I give the Clinton's... and I do give them this one... we the taxpayer have spent over 100 million dollars trying to convict the Clinton's of something for over 20 + years and what have they been convicted of? If we spent just 1 million on 100 members of congress... lets just say 50 dems and 50 republicans... we'd be locking half of them up. I don't believe the Clinton's are special and just more slippery than the others. Lets just cut threw the BS and call out any hypocrisy. Hell, I can't stand going to Church these days as in a small local town you know half of them there are committing adultery... but you know, they are better than others as they went to church once a week. I call BS. Just like the hole sanctuary of marriage and marriage is between a man and a woman... why? Because the over 50% divorce rate is being put up as something to shoot for? Really?

@Bill Martin, can't agree with that one. How is Hillary Clinton married to a "sexual predator" (and yes, I'm focusing just on that fact in the post)? Lets just look at the fact that Bill was accused of a lot and convicted of what? So now lets look at the hypocrisy of the fact that Bill, after millions of dollars spent of tax payer money is proven that he got a BJ in the oval office by a willing participant and lied about. I find the amount of tax payer money spent on this offensive <snort> all on it's own, but really... those are the facts, correct? And yet here we have an ass hole who ADMITS himself on tape that he's pressuring woman and grabbing at them... no investigation needed and what happens? We elect him as president... really? It's hypocritical. I'm not against a Republican in the white house, but I'm very against Trump being there. "We" elected a racist and sexual predator to the white house and knew it before the vote was done. ... Just calling the hypocrisy of it out. I don't see Weinstein or Trump any different. Sorry. Maybe Weinstein should just learn to use Twitter better and blame everyone else while taking credit for the sky being blue.

Quote from Orangeman

Definition of libertarian
:an advocate of the doctrine of free will
:a person who upholds the principles of individual liberty especially of thought and action

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I do have many liberal views, yes. I also don't believe in social free-bees and think hard work should be rewarded. I believe in God and country, but don't think others should agree with me as I really don't give a crap if you do or don't. I think it's more about not giving a crap more than anything LOL.