So before you went to the doctor you didn’t really know that you needed an ultrasound? I get that you thought you did based on your research and what not and that you were correct, but
it seems possible that a doctor could have suggested a different course of action.
Ok I guess I should have said that following up on minor symptoms IN ADDITION TO any type of preventative care is prohibitively expensive for anyone with high deductible insurance.
Basically everything about capitalist healthcare is bad. Doctors shouldn’t be paid based on which procedures the do or how many patients they see in a day. Healthcare should be free or maybe priced on a sliding scale based on income or something that still doesn’t go past reasonable. Deductibles shouldn’t exist. Health insurance companies shouldn’t exist.
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Yes it’s possible a Dr. could have had me do something else, but an ultrasound is definitely the standard follow up.
I guess, but that doesn’t really address what jumped out at me about your very first posts (and Jerry’s).
It seems (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) that you think that the fact that they found nothing wrong with you informs us somehow on how outraged we should be about the high cost. That’s wrong. It has absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s not relevant to the problem at all.
The problem is that the necessary tests are extremely expensive, whether it turns out you are completely fine or they find an early stage cancer that can be treated. Either way the cost is equally ridiculous and if they find nothing it doesn’t make the cost any more ridiculous.
I also got an ultrasound for my pee thing. It was pleasant. And I had to pee into a cone when I had to go so bad it was like I would pull over on the side of the road. Not as pleasant. Doc Octopus grabber arm up the peehole - extremely unpleasant.
No I’m angry at the high cost in the first place, and that I have to choose two different prices. It shouldn’t be 35x more expensive to do the same procedure in Mexico than in the US (using insurance) with slower results. It’s insane.
I’m mostly mad at whole capitalist system we have in the US, which drives up these prices so high. I just want M4A like every other developed country.
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This topic is actually way more complex than you realize. Compare a surgeon at a VA hospital to a surgeon at regular private hospital. The first one is paid on a salary, so they are actually incentivized to do as little as possible. For a given type of surgery they negotiate to do as few as possible and still get paid their salary. If someone cancels for some reason they are not breathing down their schedulers necks to get a replacement. They have no incentive to do that. One side effect is long waits.
If you look at a similar surgeon outside the VA, they can sometimes do twice as many surgeries in the same amount of time, with quality that is at least as good, if not better. The side effect of this is that some people go too far and they do surgeries that are unnecessary or do so many that it is unsafe.
Or consider what would happen if there is a backlog. A private practice surgeon may be incentivized to work on the weekends and do more surgery. No salaried VA surgeon is ever doing that.
So I’m sure the optimal solution is somewhere in between. Hitting that sweet spot is tough.
That all seems reasonable. I’ve got no disagreement with any of that.
I’m still saying this.
Keep in mind that:
- I don’t think a M4A bill is going to get passed while Biden is president.
- The fact that Biden won the primary in the first place shows that people don’t really want it.
- The Biden administration is likely to actively hinder the process if it ever started gaining ground in Congress.
BUT, if somehow the 1 in a million chance that a M4A bill actually makes it through both a House and Senate that are both super-narrow Democratic majorities at best, Biden isn’t going to go against the will of party and veto it.
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No. M4A polls at like 70%. Anyone against it is an enemy of the people.
Private sector will solve it all
Shares of UnitedHealth Group, Humana and CVS Health each climbed more than 2% after the Haven news broke.
https://twitter.com/annalecta/status/1346198897685889025?s=21
https://twitter.com/annalecta/status/1346198931689111554?s=21
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There is something to be said with us trying to be healthier as a society but this is just tone deaf. Part of the reason we are fat and tired is the amount of stress and work people need to do just to survive topped off with a healthy dose of marketing of shitty ass foods.
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Brie on point as usual. Can’t believe that as early as yesterday I read a post claiming that Democratic voters selected Biden and thus rejected M4A
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This isn’t an attack on you or Brie, but if you’re actually trying to implement legislation (rather than generating vague enthusiasm), you have to specify what exactly you mean by M4A. And once you do that, I don’t think it’s nearly as popular as this tweet suggests, even among Democrats.
The Kaiser Foundation has been my source for polling on this issue (I’m happy to look at other sources if you have them). Their October 2020 report has some good data:
Figure 4 shows support among Democrats for “having a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-all, in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan?”:
I think you could interpret this as being consistent with Brie’s tweet. But there’s a huge difference between 77% support among Democrats (if you include “somewhat favor”) or just 48% (if you don’t). When given the choice between two options, Democrats seem to favor the more conservative approach of building on the ACA rather than replacing with M4A:
And if you compare M4A with a public option, the public option is much more popular with Democrats. 58% strongly favor a public option, while only 48% strongly favor M4A:
I think that this tweet illustrates an overly-rosy view on what Democrats actually want in terms of healthcare. Now, you can interpret that in one of two ways. Maybe it means that, actually, you should be in favor of a more conservative approach that’s more in line with public opinion. Or, alternatively, maybe it signals that you need to do a better job advocating for M4A. But either way, I think it’s a significant mistake to pretend that any specific M4A plan has overwhelming Democratic support, particularly when compared to more conservative alternatives.
This is probably one of those things where we can take advantage of being last to the party - to look at what every other developed nation is doing and pick the payment systems that seem to be performing the best.
LOL J/K - USA#1 never does that.
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I use KFF for this too and the only thing that’s ever been clear to me is that the respondents are uninformed and confused about healthcare policy (mission accomplished?). We know that their reasoning closely reflects current political messaging and that they are easily and irrationally flipped by introducing poison terms (taxes, wait times). However, this is the most revealing part:
KFF polling also shows many people falsely assume they would be able to keep their current health insurance under a single-payer plan, suggesting another potential area for decreased support especially since most supporters (67 percent) of such a proposal think they would be able to keep their current health insurance coverage (Figure 11).
Here’s what I read in these polls: the public wants universal coverage while keeping their private insurance (what?) and they want it at significantly lower costs with no other changes or tradeoffs. In other words, do something about us getting ripped off but don’t get rid of the people ripping us off. Here is the appropriate response to that:
So I think there’s a clear answer on how to move forward,
and it’s definitely not this because asking button clickers how to do major, complex policy on one fifth of GDP is not a correct answer. Instead, the doctor’s comment at the end of the article has the correct answer:
What seems to really confirm the confusion is that 22% oppose both M4A and the PO, 4% favor M4A while opposing the PO, 18% favor the PO while opposing M4A, and 48% favor both M4A and the PO even though they are incompatible programs!
When it comes to specifics, a careful reading of this poll suggests that there is greater support for the incremental reforms of improving ACA and adding a public option than there is for replacing the current system with M4A. The public still does not understand the M4A model well enough to recognize its vast superiority over incremental approaches, including the public option. We have work to do.
I’m not optimistic though. A major hurdle is that any good messaging from progressives will be obfuscated by a seemingly unlimited number of Agent Petes autospawning from the Third Way sector of The Matrix; intraparty mixed messaging is going to be far more effective at keeping Dem voters confused than anything Republicans can do since establishment hand puppets will be rhyme-styling corporate gospel in tongues, and with some autotune it sounds like Reasonable Arguments That Should Be Taken Seriously™ to low-information voters, not calls coming from inside the house.
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