Posted on 01/10/2006 8:42:26 PM PST by FairOpinion
They are NOT monitoring ONLY diabetics getting welfare or free medical care, they are monitoring EVERYONE, and MOST people have PRIVATE INSURANCE.
Please explain to me why do you think it's the government's business to monitor people who pay for their own healthcare?
Your screen name is not representing your ideology, which seems to be that the government has the right to invade your privacy.
Next thing you know, you will have to have a permission slip from the government, if you want to buy eggs, if your scholesterol is above what they consider acceptable. Do you want the government to control your life completely because "they know better what's best for your"?
And even for those who get free medical insurance from the government, do you think the government is in a better position to treat them, than a medical doctor?
New York City DOES require reporting, including names and other identifying info, of anyone diagnosed with AIDS.
You claim that most diabetics in NYC are being treated at the expense of private health insurance organizations. I seriously doubt that this is true. Can you provide some evidence for this claim? Type 2 diabetes is much more prevalent in the poor and the elderly, groups which rely mainly on Medicare/Medicaid for their health care. Read this article from yesterday's NYT, and tell me honestly how many of these people you think are covered by private medical insurance (besides the ones who are explicitly reported as being uninsured). Read the whole thing -- I live in East Harlem and was still appalled by the scale of apathy among the diabetics and about-to-be-diabetics, and of exorbitantly expensive medical care (including a liver transplant, open heart surgery, and a $300,000 amputation), provided to people who do little or nothing to try to lessen the damage from their self-inflicted disease. And the $300,000 amputee who says he'll never be able to pay that bill, but has since gotten health insurance? That's not private insurance -- no private insurer would take on a new patient in that condition -- it's a taxpayer subsidized state program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/nyregion/nyregionspecial5/10diabetes.html
And two other factors are at work: 1) Private medical insurance has total payment limits, and many diabetes patients exceed those, once all their complications start kicking in -- as soon as they are rendered officially destitute by their medical bills (usually about 5 minutes after any private coverage they had runs out, since most of them are poor and have no significant assets), they are eligible for Medicaid. And Medicare, which we think of as mainly for the elderly, actually covers anyone at any age who has permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis and/or transplant (one of the most common complications of diabetes) http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MedicareGenInfo/ 2) Illegal immigrants, who rely on emergency room and no-immigration-questions-asked publicly funded clinics.
I do NOT approve of all this taxpayer funding, per the end of my post, which you also seem to have missed:
If it was up to me, we would end all taxpayer-funded medical care tomorrow, and then people's blood sugar levels would be their own business. Many people would also figure out how not to get diabetes in the first place, if they knew they couldn't send the bill for treatment to the taxpayers.
However, I know it's not going to stop anytime soon, and I also don't hear any NYC diabetics volunteering to give up their hand-outs in exchange for not having their names reported to city officials.
Reminds me of the ADD/ADH jazz.
Many years ago I was offered a job in NYC. I went there to interview and visit my brother, he lived there for many years and loved the City. I found it (NYC) to be a toilet that was in dire need of flushing. Bandwidth is precious, therefore, I won't tell the stories.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.