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Fixing Health Care
Townhall.com ^ | February 19, 2017 | Bruce Bialosky

Posted on 02/19/2017 6:54:22 AM PST by Kaslin

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1 posted on 02/19/2017 6:54:22 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Love it! “Phantom number” = fake news!


2 posted on 02/19/2017 6:55:42 AM PST by browniexyz
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To: Kaslin

Trump should tell Schumer to put up a plan within 30 days that would keep obamacare from becoming a complete train wreck. It is clearly crashing. Put up or shut up, Chuckie.


3 posted on 02/19/2017 6:59:10 AM PST by boycott
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To: Kaslin

How about “11 million illegal aliens?” That will also turn out to be Very Fake News, because TX has about 2 million and CA has at least 3 million, so 11 million is far too low.


4 posted on 02/19/2017 7:00:25 AM PST by txrefugee
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To: Kaslin

As long as the government is in it, it is un-Constitutional.


5 posted on 02/19/2017 7:07:51 AM PST by onedoug
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To: Kaslin

I beg my doctor to just tell them I was there, give me the prescription and bill me, but no. That is what happens when government bureaucrats and policy wonks make up health care rules.

This. I have a condition that every once in awhile flares up and I need antibiotics. My doctor knows it. I know it. But can I just call and get the same antibiotics they give me every time? No. I have to do an office visit which gets billed to my insurance for a 5 minute visit. Ridiculous.


6 posted on 02/19/2017 7:10:49 AM PST by sheana
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To: Kaslin

Free markets for insurance including choice. Free markets in the supply chain that support healthcare. Tort reform. All necessary for the repeal of the ACA. Yet none of it will solve our so called healthcare crisis until published prices for hospital and physician care can be brought into reason. I have recently had a relatively simple ER visit priced at $7K and a 30 minute outpatient surgery priced at $67K. Even negotiating those price down would leave an average person broke. Will market reforms drive those prices down? Thoughts and opinions appreciated?


7 posted on 02/19/2017 7:21:58 AM PST by buckalfa (I am deplorable.)
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To: sheana

Don’t forget the fraud factor. I read somewhere that 32% of Medicare is fraud charges. I know this first hand from a local hospital. When my dad died mom was going through the bills. There was a doctor’s charge of $5,000 she had not heard of. She back checked and found the doctor had died 7 years earlier and the hospital was still billing for his time. Private insurance companies are more likely to check the bills sent.

The other ruse is the “old boy network” We’d go to a “SPECIALIST”. After a 5 minute interview with him he would say- “I can’t help you but I know a doctor that might be able to” and bill Medicare $5,000 or more only to be repeated by the next doctor.


8 posted on 02/19/2017 7:22:54 AM PST by oldasrocks (rump)
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To: Kaslin

Somebody please explain how insurance cost will be reduced when a hospital charges $8,000.00 per hour for a wrist surgery? 3 hours in and out, 30 min. pre-op 90 min surgery and 60 min. post op. Total hospital charge was $24,000.


9 posted on 02/19/2017 7:24:41 AM PST by Colo9250 (Time to dump the trash and there is a lot them)
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To: Kaslin
They now say (Robert Reich/MoveOn.org) it will be 32 million losing their insurance. They are unhinged.

So long as Little Robbie and the crew at MO.org are among the 32MM, I'm OK with that.

10 posted on 02/19/2017 7:27:34 AM PST by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: Kaslin

#2 - I reject anything that ‘requires’ me to buy insurance. I’d do it for my family, to secure their position while protecting my health, but to subject, key word being ‘subject’ anything to buy something ‘because the crown has decreed so because you are breathing’ is unacceptable.


11 posted on 02/19/2017 7:52:15 AM PST by Caipirabob (Communists... Socialists... Democrats...Traitors... Who can tell the difference?)
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To: sheana
For the 9,548th time, the biggest problem with Obamacare was it increased demand, but did nothing about increasing supply (doctors, nurses, hospitals). There may not be a need for more hospitals as stays are shortening, but it does no good to have insurance if you cannot see a practitioner.

Our medical system was designed a hundred years ago for the benefit of doctors who had few useful tools to treat people. It hasn't changed.

If banking hadn't changed we'd still be walking into banks and having 'a banker' OK our withdrawals - a banker who knew us by name - AND IT WOULD COST A FORTUNE ...

SAME WITH MEDICAL CARE.

It costs a fortune and doesn't work well because it has NOT been brought into the modern world. Your medical records should be kept on a heath care computer designed by Bill Gates and you should be able to access it via your computer. Every 5th prescription of antibiotics might require a visit to a computerized health center... where after a machine diagnosis a live doctor will look at you and confirm the machine's choice.

Yes, the world is ready for ATM machines at banks and they're ready for computerized medicine. Hello Bill Gates - REALLY want to help the world? Set up the software system that uses the questions the best diagnosticians use to diagnose disease and program it into computers.Bruce Bialosky is on the right path - he just doesn't go far enough... Medicine should be better, cheaper and more accessible... to all.

12 posted on 02/19/2017 7:53:54 AM PST by GOPJ (The swamp is much deeper than any of us suspected... Freeper jimwatx...)
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To: Kaslin

I hope to GOD Republicans are not just looking for another nanny-state replacement for the ACA - Obamacare lite, without all the IRS enforcement. This is why the Left always wins in the end.

They MUST return health-care to the market. Give tax and regulatory benefits to those doctors and patients who deal directly in CASH, with payments and costs made between themselves.

ANY 3rd party system, whether government or private insurance, will, in some way, distort the process. Government will distort it badly, but large-scale private insurance, especially if complex, does the same.


13 posted on 02/19/2017 7:58:37 AM PST by PGR88
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To: Colo9250
Somebody please explain how insurance cost will be reduced when a hospital charges $8,000.00 per hour for a wrist surgery?

This is the destructiveness of 3rd payer systems (particularly government) and also highly complex mandates on pricing and transparency. When medicaid declares they are only going to pay at 50% of published rates, and make doctors and hospitals wait 150 days for their money - what would your response be? Double listed rates.

14 posted on 02/19/2017 8:01:19 AM PST by PGR88
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To: sheana

CASH, CASH, CASH!

Allow and create tax and regulatory benefits for patients who buy treatment directly from their doctors - with no one else in-between. Do not dis-incentivize anyone to buy treatment, in cash, directly from the source - whether doctors, hospitals, or clinics!!!

Prices will drop IMMEDIATELY.


15 posted on 02/19/2017 8:04:33 AM PST by PGR88
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To: PGR88

Health insurance should be like car insurance. Everyone pays their own routine maintenance and anything over and above that would be through insurance. The prices would drop like a rock.


16 posted on 02/19/2017 8:06:12 AM PST by sheana
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To: PGR88

I was watching Fox News Sunday, and Chris Wallace had Rush Limbaugh on. He was bitching to Rush that at this time that arrogant pos former occupant of 1600 health care had already passed totally ignoring that it was pushed down the people’s throat and that not one republican voted for it. He also said his tax reform was passed. He also ignored that rats had the majority in both houses. I finally went outside because I couldn’t stand his ranter.


17 posted on 02/19/2017 8:15:48 AM PST by Kaslin ( Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible)
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To: GOPJ
...Our medical system was designed a hundred years ago for the benefit of doctors who had few useful tools to treat people. It hasn't changed. ...

I am no fan of doctors, trust me, but nowadays most of them are just little cogs in the wheel of really, really big Big Medicine.

18 posted on 02/19/2017 8:16:09 AM PST by gloryblaze
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To: gloryblaze
Yes, the ‘machine’ you speak of is ‘health insurance companies and their corrupt democrat crooks’. Think the marriage ‘Grubber and Pelosi’.... corrupt marries stupid ...

Doctors have a right to be concerned.

A few years back some ‘brilliant’ insurance group decided that a three day hospital recovery for people with pneumonia was adequate and they would not pay for ‘day 4’ without reams of paperwork and pleading from doctors. The insurance company bean counters didn't understand that a 3 day recovery was an average... Some people would be able to leave the hospital after a day or two... some people needed to stay for a week. Doctors were right to be outraged.

So, no I'm not taking the side against doctors...

19 posted on 02/19/2017 8:32:42 AM PST by GOPJ (The swamp is much deeper than any of us suspected... Freeper jimwatx...)
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To: Kaslin

I remember when Gore came up with a plan to take care of the health of a few thousand kids - the money he wanted to use would have insured a million or more....it’s the Democrat way - throw as much money away as possible to do the lousiest possible job.


20 posted on 02/19/2017 9:00:24 AM PST by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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