Posted on 03/08/2013 9:31:33 AM PST by EXCH54FE
Today, when the poor get sick — even with minor ailments — they are often forced to go to the hospital emergency room, handing taxpayers a giant and unnecessary bill. The average cost of such visits to the public is around $1,000.
“At our clinic, all with donated services — the physicians and nurses donating their time, and all the support services are donated — it’s only $13 per patient visit, paid for by private donations with no taxpayer money,” Dr. Eck explained, adding that her clinic operates very efficiently and does not cost the public a dime.
“The Medicaid system is extremely broken,” she explained. “It is frustrating for both patients and physicians.
"So, it frustrates the physicians, because so little resources are going to pay for them to be able to provide the medical care, which is the whole purpose of the Medicaid system in the first place,“The Medicaid system is not the solution, and expanding it would not provide more medical care.”
Dr. Eck and others like her — doctors on the front lines treating poor patients — believe that there is a better way to deal with the problem. The solution, she said, is expanding the number of free clinics set up and run by volunteers, not the government, all across the state, and eventually, the nation.
“We have an innovative solution to get more physicians to volunteer,” she said. “That would be to ask the state to cover the liability of any physician in their private practice who donates four hours a week in a non-government free clinic such as ours. This would increase the access to care for every specialty, it would provide a solution without involving the taxpayers, and it would save the taxpayers billions of dollars.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...
All a waste of time. Unless the citizens actually rise up ObamaCare will remain. The Democrats are all for this and the Republicans just proved they also have no interest in eliminating it.
BTT!
Not entirely true. Many skip their free clinic appointment and come or end up in the ER. They don't care whether its a free clinic or a free (to them) ER visit, because they aren't going to pay the bill either way.
In fact, many have discovered that calling 911 gets them a free ride and let's them be seen immediatley, instead of having to wait and be triaged.
In California people on MediCal, California’s medicaid, have actual insurance thru Blue Cross, etc.
They are not forced to go to the er’s, they can have actual doctors just like the rest of us.
They choose to go to the doctor or er’s if they have the dam sniffles. They also are constantly hauling their kids, babies to the doctor and er for the same ailment.
If it doesn’t cost them a dime they take advantage of the system, just like anything else.
Health food stores report that their suppliers are being ordered by, I’m told by one, “this maniac” to stop production on many supplements.
There won’t be any of that preventive health care under Bo, The health care system has itself to blame. It
s a sick system that has been taken over by parasites.
For decades, with Medicare and insurance, MDs have or had, at least, taken advantage, financially, of this payment system. Our health care system is not a health care system at all. It thrives on illness. It obstructs preventive health care (ask any doc if they took a nutrition course in med school).
At this stage, in any physician visit, prescription drugs is the entire conversation.
The AMA is a pro choice organization.
That should say it all.
So why can’t ER’s staff a walk in clinic - maybe with Nurse Practitioners so that when Medicaid pts. show up in the ER with the sniffles they could be told - “Go next door”.?
But let's say it really is $1k vs. what, $100 for a regular doctors visit. If that's the case just set up a clinic outside of the ER and throw anything that's not an emergency to that clinic.
Or is the cost simply cooked? Like the cost of a hospital aspirin or x-ray compared to getting it in the free market?
Who ever thought that Obamacare was supposed to be about health?!
It’s about death! Killing the population to keep them at controllable levels. The peasants need to know that they are expendable assets of The State!
Americans are kind, caring and generous. This would work if the government would just go away and leave people alone.
Not much chance of that happening.
“This doctor will be prosecuted by the feral government for something... anything... very soon.”
Or maybe an armed drone strike will put him out his misery.
Hospitals and their machines that go bing.
BO shows no intention of fixing the system. Talk is something else, so is money.
Preventive medicine is the way we can heop ourselves because that’s what was missing from the system to begin with.
BO is now interfering with that.gsd
So many good responses here.... The biggest are:
1. Medicine is broken. Nothing is worth 20% of the economy. NOTHING.
2. The books are cooked. A doctors version of finance is money coming in more than going out = good. Medicine has an excuse for how much everything costs and it is the party line though nobody understands it.
3. Free anything will be used until it no longer exists. It does not matter what it is or even how bad it is.
Not a brass farthing will go to anyone from me as a donation for health care. I already pay well more for medicare and medicade than I do for my own health insurance and I pay all my own basic health care cost out of pocket and often do without health care that these people get for free and mostly don’t need. That is more than enough. If they need help I have some brush clearing, scraping, painting and cleaning they can do for wages.
We actually have a hospital here with an attached medi center where they do exactly that. You see a trauma nurse first who puts you in a line for either the hospital or the medi center.
Oh, Wait...
:-/
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