President informed that Obamacare may not be affordable

originally posted by: Sremmos80
Can't wait for the gop to fall over backwards when they do nothing to this law after screaming at the top of their lungs about it.
They work for the same interests and once this cash cow got put in place it isn't going anywhere

Exactly!

When one half of the people (i.e. the GOP supporters) finally get a glimpse at the little man behind the curtain, how far can the other half (i.e. the DNC supporters) be behind?

This country is only free in name. The slow & progressive changes have steadily downgraded us to being a socialist country with the greatest military might. The capitalism part that is left is not for the large majority of us. It is for the very rich who don't even hire Americans to do their work. The best thing that can happen is the facade falls down around us & we demand all constitutional rights be reinstated . We demand jobs be brought back to this country or the business owners can go live in the countries they outsource their jobs too. That can be a start to becoming America again. Just cause we wave the flag & sing patriotic songs doesn't mean we are still America.

originally posted by: peskyhumans
My fellow Americans, welcome to socialized medicine.

The ACA is not socialized medicine; It's corporate medicine in a shiny new box.... That may be the problem.

But do you like the new box?! It's really shiny!

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Right...and there is a spectrum between boob-job, lipo-suction all the way to triple-bypass, stent etc.

In the case of breast cancer and reconstructive surgery, we can look at boob-jobs as relatively necessary.

In the case of heart stents and bypasses...surgeons make big money for those procedures and we should make sure that doesn't bias a surgeons recommendation and otherwise carefully examine whether the surgery will do good.

An interesting (and exhaustive) study was released recently examining thousands of patients across the country that went to the ER for heart problems. They measured how many died within a few months. The fascinating conclusion? If you went to the ER with heart problems during a weekend when there was a big conference for cardiac surgeons going on...leaving your care to the regular docs and academics..without a cardiac surgeon immediately available...ON AVERAGE...more of those folks lived when cardiac surgeons were out and attending conferences...and by a significantly higher number! Those numbers suggest that in certain cases (not all) Cardiac Surgeons go for Stents or Bypass as a "go to" when in fact with certain patients, the risk of death outweighs the "wait and see" or less invasive procedures. By rushing to their "go to" operation, some of those patients die from complications and if you have a heart issue when the cardiac surgeon isn't immediately available....Statistically...you have a better chance of living! Not saying we shouldn't do stents...but we should be thinking more before those operations and doing more careful diagnosis.

Just an example...A specialist surgeon makes money doing his specialty...and surgeons and doctors tend to think that most problems can be solved through their area of expertise. I once had a herniated disk in my neck...took 9 months to diagnose what was going on...every doctor I saw thought they could fix the throbbing pain in my head and shoulders...The optometrist put plastic plugs in my tear ducts (attributed headaches to dry eyes)...My GP diagnosed stress headaches and recommended anti-depressants (which I declined) the dentist thought it was tooth infection (I needed a crown anyways), the ENT thought it was an "allergic Cyst" in my sinuses that he wanted to remove surgically...It wasn't until I demanded an MRI that the neurologist spotted the herniated disk in my neck compressing nerves! And yes...I got a fusion with hardware...problem fixed...but every specialist I saw raced to do their "go to" rather than step back and THINK before surgery.

Sorry for the ramble, but if you think that boob jobs are the only unnecessary surgery going on in this country, you are very wrong. I like to imagine a world where doctors are compensated for OUTCOME...improvements and actual cures...rather than paid 30k-150k for everyone they perform surgery on. They would think differently about diagnosis before operating or prescribing.

a reply to: stosh64

Life isn't fair, things happen, and I'm very sorry for your unfortunate accident.

HOWEVER,

That does not in any way mean that as a country, we need to adopt ridiculous laws and simply both band-aids on our problems. These problems simply fester and become even bigger ones down the road.

It's not Unicorns and Rainbows brother, it's called LIFE.

a reply to: StoutBroux
From the stories I hear, paying the fine for many years and paying out-of-pocket for any actual doctor's visits will still be MUCH more affordable than the deductibles people have; they're winning either way. Either the insurance companies get your $, or the government gets your $ through the fines. It's a win-win situation for them.

originally posted by: stirling
GET THE MEDICARE PROVIDERS OUT OF THE EQUATION.....NATIONALISE THE DOCTORS SALARIES AND CUT THE HOSPITALS ALLOWED PROFIT MARGIN.....
THE ENTIRE SYSTEM IS PRACTISING MEDICAL USERY ON THE PEOPLE...ITS A GODAMN SCAM

It's more than that. The prices have been deliberately fixed to leave us with no choice but to either go along with whatever the government wants or be called crazy.

Somebody figured it out that if you scare the hell out of 300 + million people with the prospect of a medical emergency bankrupting them, they would probably do your bidding for you. Nobody really believes a 12 hour operation should cost 11 grand except the people who need it to scare you.

Think about this. Every other industry finds a way to innovate and make it's services or products available and affordable to basically everyone without having the government get too deeply involved. It is only this one area of the market (for now) that doesn't seem to be able to figure out how to give someone a few stitches in their hand for less than $500.

Does that sound like an artificially (and deliberately) inflated price to anyone else?

Normally, when something is outlandishly expensive, someone will come along and offer a better price. This basically doesn't happen in medicine. Why?

Insurance. Are we so sure the insurance companies weren't part of the plan all along? Why was basic insurance coverage pretty much completely unavailable of you had a preexisting condition? They couldn't figure out how to take calculated risks? They couldn't figure out how to reduce costs somehow other than having the government force everyone to pay them? This sounds pretty suspect to me from a species that can engineer a new microprocessor every couple of years.

It sounds like a carefully planned method of backing people into a corner and telling them you'll let them out if they cooperate.

originally posted by: riiver
a reply to: StoutBroux
From the stories I hear, paying the fine for many years and paying out-of-pocket for any actual doctor's visits will still be MUCH more affordable than the deductibles people have; they're winning either way. Either the insurance companies get your $, or the government gets your $ through the fines. It's a win-win situation for them.

Just like the good old days before racketeering was (supposedly) made illegal.

I always think its hilarious ( in a tragic sense) to hear things like this..........

Really , the president has to be informed this by someone else? Hes that far detached huh? I mean really his common sense is so far defunct that he couldnt parse that one out?

We hear all the time about him learning about things "in the news"

I feel like this guy is doing nothing more then "House Sitting" until we get a real president......

a reply to: Ahabstar

Somebody in the mold of John Brown protesting ObamaCare instead of Slavery , Yeah its not that unforeseeable. Although I do think that peoples anger and resent will fester for a number of years yet before anything like this happens. originally posted by:


Skadi_the_Evil_Elf

Having lived in countries with socialized medicine, I can honestly say Obama-care doesn't even live in the same ball park. Obama-care is nothing more than a federally mandated extortion racket by the medical industrial complex. It did not aim to make healthcare universal, but force people to buy something they couldn't afford in the first place.

Obamacare did nothing to address the real problems with healthcare in this country: ridiculously sky high costs beyond the reach of most people, the influence of big pharma and the over-medication of America, and the problem with the declining health in this country. You didn't need an idiot Like Ted Cruz to point this out.

The Only reason it made it past congress is because congress if full of out of touch morons getting paid by lobbyists to pass it.

Take a bow , as that is the best summary of Obamacare that I have read. Obama Care is nothing like the health system's that can be found in Australia and New Zealand. I have no problem with anybody who wants to debate either of those health systems on a factual basis. Obamacare also feeds into the legal industrial complex with law graduates sure to be make careers out of specializing in the thousands of pages of regulations. Returning to the focus of the topic obamacare I am remind of why the cost of housing in New Zealand is so government legislation/regulatory frame work has interfered with the free market and driven prices sky high.

a reply to: stirling

...I would add remove the doctor's unions and/or college - make sure they don't get too much power on what IS medecine and what is scam... You will end up with the system we have now: pills and a industrial-pharmaceutical complex running the show. There are alternate medecine that works, and need to be available. Not pills, but care.
To fund it all, just legalize ALL drugs. And tax all wars profiteers.
...Of course we can't afford socialized medecine, but we can afford stealth bombers, space based weapons, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines...

Sad thing is, the only way to get Affordable Healthcare (what a lie!) is to have a super huge deductible, in which case the policy is pretty pointless and useless.

ACA was a joke from the outset and everyone (except the gullibles) knew that from the start.

I am so sick and tired of the govt thinking they are going to fix things and all they do is scew it up even worse.

originally posted by: Indigo5
a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

paid 30k-150k for everyone they perform surgery on.

and that right there is the real issue with medical care. that and overpriced medications, and medical equipment etc. THAT is what they should have dealt with, not forcing everyone to buy insurance which is only guaranteed to drive prices even higher.

just look at price differences around the world for stuff. for example to get a tooth pulled here is about $10, in Canada 20 years ago it was about $500. now some of that difference is due to different values of money/wages. but on the other hand what about the cost of things like Novocaine, and dental instruments/equipment? surely not almost all of that $500 in Canada was for the dentist's fees. or even the fact that you can buy the exact same medications from the same pharmaceutical company, yet here i pay much less than in the US, in Canada i pay a bit less than the US. why is there any difference in price at all? in truth anything "medical" is grossly over-inflated price wise, because with insurance (and that also includes "socialized medicine" by the way) "the market will bear it". in other words it is insurance that has caused the price of medical care to be so overly expensive. therefore making insurance mandatory will only make the problems worse. eventually it will cause the same problems places with socialized medicine have. namely things like severe cuts in things covered to save money like in Ontario where things like Physiotherapy is no longer covered, and caps on the number of patients a doctor can see leaving a shortage of doctors because of the system going broke and they needed to cut costs. or Britain where if a baby is born under a certain weight it is just left to die. seriously premiums and deductibles really can't go too much higher considering people are leaving the country because they can no longer afford to live after the severe expense of the mandated insurance.