Reply to post: Re: Disinfection

Re: Disinfection

To the individual who downvoted this post. I counter your downvote and offer the following response-

One of the biggest expenses among health care providers (I'm talking about the hospitals, clinics, and private practices that actually DO the *medical* care part of health care.. not the insurers..) is doing the paperwork.

Managing the sprawling vast, mind numbing, incomprehensible, Kafkaesque, bureaucracy set up by our "Health Care" industry (the insurers) costs the average hospital 25% of their expenses.

A quick google and here's a link from 1993:

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/05/us/study-links-paperwork-to-25-of-hospital-costs.html

There have been a rash of clinic and health care walk in locations which have opened up here in the us WHICH DO NOT TAKE INSURANCE AT ALL as it raises the cost of providing their health care significantly. I heard about this from NPR a few years back.

They take cash, check, or credit card much as most dentists do here in the great states of 'Murica. If they take insurance, they have to add a whole division of paper pushers and phone monkeys to manage the mess, and reimbursement for their work may come 6 months to a year down the line. IF they get their payments at all.

Also. Because the hospitals often get reimbursed for only part of what they ask for, they inflate their prices routinely so they will get enough to actually cover their costs. But if I go into a hospital and offer to pay cash if I'm uninsured, the hospital will charge me the same hyper-inflated price they bill the insurance providers due to legal reasons; but, unlike the insurance folks, I do not have the leverage to pay only part of the bill without it going into collection and affecting my permanent credit record.

This is why, when I went into an emergency room to get a contact removed several years back (total 6 minutes spent on my care versus an hour and a half of waiting in a completely empty facility), I got a call from my insurance provider (mine is state run) asking me to verify details of my treatment that day. I was floored to find out that the hospital had submitted a bill of over $2,000 DOLLARS to my insurance for those 6 or so minutes. [The reason for that was the ER was empty that morning and the hospital MUST cover costs in some manner to keep the doors open.]

This fact *alone*, [Let's ignore the profit based insurance companies which take their cut of monies flooding through their systems and redistributing it mostly upwards to obscenely paid executives, CEO's, and lobbying efforts in Washington DC to keep this whole lurching horror running,] is reason for a dramatic change.

When the 2012 London Olympics was held I watched the opening ceremonies as I usually do.. However, I now search out a video stream days after the fact, from other places in the world (BBC and Australia are good places) as I'm fed up with the stupidity of overpaid announcers and cuts to the program for advertisements and sensibility reasons.

You guys in Europe have no idea how bad TV has gotten here.. I mean, the Olympics are not broadcast live or anything where you have to cut things out if you are going to extol the virtues of McDonalds or Nike.

In the US, they cut out your "Poppies" remembrance segment out of the closing ceremonies completely except for the last few bars of music in coming back from an important advertisement.

http://gawker.com/5934199/here-are-the-closing-ceremony-performances-from-the-who-muse-and-ray-davies-that-nbc-didnt-broadcast/

I was also not shocked to see the part of the performance where your NIH was praised by the stadium announcer saying something along the lines of "..our wonderful socialized medical system" (sorry, I'm paraphrasing here) and this part ended up being discussed briefly on FOX news over here.

Yes. There were things in your program that were completely indigestible to the minds of some here in the US.

It's shameful.

Unfortunately completely unreported here in the US mainstream news, was the fact that anyone attending those Olympics, whether local, or foreign born, were treated by that same NIH while they were in London if they had a medical problem. Not only the athletes mind you, but the spectators! And they payed the same almost non-existent cost that you folks do.

The opposite is NOT the case.

Micheal Moore made the film "Sicko" a few years back where he pointed out that friends and family from Canada (another Communist nation according to Fox) simply must buy special medical insurance before visiting these great grain swept fields of the US because if (deity forbid) they have an injury or a health problem HERE, they can be put into bankruptcy.

We do have one (actually two) socialist medical system(s) here in the US. It's the Veterans Administration system here in the great states..

A quick google gives this:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/08/va_hospitals_vs.html

..the second socialistic medical program here in the US is the one the Senate, Congress, and the President get after working here in our government!

It beats the alternative as spelled out in Sicko, where they have camera footage of a hospital dumping a patient out of a cab in front of some building (still wearing their medical gown) because the insurance system would no longer pay for their upkeep at the hospital.

Sicko. Go watch it. Still pertinent.

I thank you for your time in viewing this rant.

Ps. A discussion from one of your own (sorry about the source. Make sure you have AdBlock or alternatives up..), about the NIH controversy:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2180227/London-2012-Olympics-Some-Americans-left-baffled-tribute-NHS-Mary-Poppins-Opening-Ceremony.html

Pps. I sure wish we had Weekly Wipe over here..