Something positive for a change

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Uncle Al
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Something positive for a change

Post by Uncle Al »

This sounds promising :D

Regeneron Gets Emergency U.S. Clearance for Covid-19 Therapy
I really like the last statement:
The company has said it will make its therapy available at no cost to patients.
I hope this post DOES NOT GET TURNED INTO POLITICAL KNIFE STABBING
AS SOME OF MY OTHER POSTS HAVE BEEN. This is for information and
hope for a brighter future.

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Re: Something positive for a change

Post by crfriend »

Uncle Al wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 5:51 pm This sounds promising :D

Regeneron Gets Emergency U.S. Clearance for Covid-19 Therapy
I really like the last statement:
The company has said it will make its therapy available at no cost to patients.
That is wonderful news indeed, and quite astonishing given the do-eat-dog world we now live in. BRAVO! It's nice to see that altruism still exists.

It's all too easy to get extremely cynical in these trying days. If this holds true I may have to eat some crow (which actually isn't bad well prepared as a barbecue).
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moonshadow
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Re: Something positive for a change

Post by moonshadow »

While that is good news....

*sighs*

I guess I'm gonna have to be "that guy" here...

Somebody's got to pay for it, and the evidence seems to indicate that "somebody" is going to be tax payers...

I hope many will see where I'm going with this [double standard]...

I will stop here as I do hate to rain on parades, and I do appreciate the positive thread.
crfriend wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:08 pm It's all too easy to get extremely cynical in these trying days. If this holds true I may have to eat some crow (which actually isn't bad well prepared as a barbecue).
I'm afraid this small shot of good news won't be enough to pull my cynicism up by the roots...
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moonshadow
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Re: Something positive for a change

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Uncle Al wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 5:51 pm hope this post DOES NOT GET TURNED INTO POLITICAL KNIFE STABBING
AS SOME OF MY OTHER POSTS HAVE BEEN. This is for information and
hope for a brighter future.
In an attempt to steer this [my last comment] back into optimistic territory, it would be nice if endeavors like the one posted here may actually spring board a serious conversation, and dare I say, bipartisan support for universal healthcare in this nation.

It seems rather pointless to charge off a patients covid expenses to tax payers, while allowing them to succumb to the financial woes of the countless other diseases that plague our society.

At east with UHC, there would be a taxing mechanism in place to pay for such covid expenses, among others.

It's time to catch up with the rest of the world.
-Andrea
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Sinned
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Re: Something positive for a change

Post by Sinned »

UA, you'll get no downtick from me - it's extremely good news. It's expected that jabs will be offered starting next month and the operation completed by Spring 2021.

Moon, don't be so pessimistic - our COVID vaccines, although free on the NHS, will ultimately be paid for from our taxes so that would be no different to you. The upside to them offering it free is that it puts the pressure on the other suppliers to do likewise which may be a good thing. Hmmmm, let me see, which vaccine will I choose - the free one or the one costing $600? Now that would be a difficult choice. I understand that over here the vaccine is being offered to the Government at cost.
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Re: Something positive for a change

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Sinned wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 10:44 pm UA, you'll get no downtick from me - it's extremely good news. It's expected that jabs will be offered starting next month and the operation completed by Spring 2021.

Moon, don't be so pessimistic - our COVID vaccines, although free on the NHS, will ultimately be paid for from our taxes so that would be no different to you. The upside to them offering it free is that it puts the pressure on the other suppliers to do likewise which may be a good thing. Hmmmm, let me see, which vaccine will I choose - the free one or the one costing $600? Now that would be a difficult choice. I understand that over here the vaccine is being offered to the Government at cost.
Yes, I suspect the covid-19 vaccines will be "free" to U.S. citizens as well, after all, many tax dollars have already been poured into the endeavor.

This is a matter of principle. The vaccines will be "free" to get the economy back chugging along again. It has nothing to do with the well being of the populous, for if that were the case, we'd have had a UHC system in place decades ago.

This is not a "good Samaritan" act on the part of the health care industry...the elite just know that ridding themselves of this blasted pandemic by eating the cost of vaccination will cost less than having the economy continue to crumble otherwise.

When this is over, people will just go back to having their wages garnished, and losing their homes and other property over massive medical bills due to various cancers, diabetes, emphysema, etc etc... and let's not forget the prescription cost.

I recall Trump saying a month or so ago "no American should have to pay for covid treatment or vaccines, because no American asked for this".

True, but show me one single American that asked to get cancer.... Whether your dying of covid-19, or pancreatic cancer, sick is sick, and nobody "asked for it"...

The ground is very fertile right now to start moving towards true UHC in this nation. However doing so will require a fundamental shift in American politics, as currently NOT having UHC has broad bipartisan support....

(Contrary to rumor, most Democratic lawmakers do NOT support Universal Health Care, virtually no Republicans do either)
-Andrea
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Re: Something positive for a change

Post by PatJ »

Universal Health Care? I doubt if it will become a reality in the time that I
have remaining above ground.

However, if you stop to look at health insurance in general, it is fundamentally
flawed. Private companies take your money and then pay it out for health care.
Along the way, they must use some of your money (premiums) to cover their costs.
This makes less money available to pay those medical costs.

Many of these Insurance companies are publicly owned. They have stockholders.
Stockholders expect a return (dividend) on their investment in the insurance
company. This means that the insurance company needs to turn a profit in order
to pay those dividends. They do that by denying claims, or raising deductibles.
In the end, investors are getting income from your denied claims and / or your
good health if you have no claims.

I have been denied care by a clerk in the insurance office who did not have any
sort of medical degree. He over ruled the work (medical tests) that the doctor
had tried to pre-authorized. Do we want clerks determining the proper medical
care or doctors determining the proper medical care?

Medical insurance is in a sad state of affairs in my opinion, and I do not know
if universal health care is the answer or not. But I don't like the way the system
is operating now and people are not getting the care they need.

Any country that puts profit over lives doesn't need the Covid virus. It is already
sick enough!

I will quietly climb down from my soap box and go hide behind the potted palm.
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Re: Something positive for a change

Post by moonshadow »

PatJ,

UHC will come to the states eventually, but it's probably at least 30 plus years out before we get something like Canada or the U.K. has. (All of the boomers and a good portion of gen-X needs to die off first, as they'll never let it happen)

As it is, I will probably be eligible for Medicare before UHC arrives for everyone, as I will be 65 in just 25 more years. Biden has floated the idea of dropping the age to 60, which is fine with me, for as soon as I'm eligible, I'M DONE being told what time to get up every morning, and I will TAKE GREAT PLEASURE in taking this damned cell phone and chucking it in the GARBAGE!

No more "on call" for me, no more kissing employers asses and begging for whatever scraps they drop from the table. I look forward to retirement. If we had UHC right now, I'd probably quit and just do odd jobs for a living.

Countin' down the days.... countin' down the days...

Turn me loose set me free.... somewhere in the middle of... Montana.... give me all I got coming to meeeeeeeee! 8)

December 27th 2045.... I'M OUTTA HERE!
-Andrea
The old hillbilly from the coal fields of the Appalachian mountains currently living like there's no tomorrow on the west coast.
john62
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Re: Something positive for a change

Post by john62 »

What needs to happen is to get the lawyers out of the system. Why do doctors do every test under the sun whether needed or not because of the lawyers and because people have been trained to sue when ever possible.

John
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Re: Something positive for a change

Post by denimini »

moonshadow wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 7:20 pmSomebody's got to pay for it, and the evidence seems to indicate that "somebody" is going to be tax payers...
That is the basis of a universal healthcare scheme and should apply to all health related matters. I do hope the US gets one soon as it is hard to imagine having your life in the hands of a insurance clerk.
Uncle Al wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 5:51 pm I hope this post DOES NOT GET TURNED INTO POLITICAL KNIFE STABBING
AS SOME OF MY OTHER POSTS HAVE BEEN.
This depends on the nature of the initial post Unc. :)
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Re: Something positive for a change

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moonshadow wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 2:54 am December 27th 2045.... I'M OUTTA HERE!
You can then get Medicare, but Medicare now typically just pays 80% after you meet your deductible. 20% of a $30,000 hospital bill for a short stay is still a big chunk of change for many of us.
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Re: Something positive for a change

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Jim wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 11:10 am
moonshadow wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 2:54 am December 27th 2045.... I'M OUTTA HERE!
You can then get Medicare, but Medicare now typically just pays 80% after you meet your deductible. 20% of a $30,000 hospital bill for a short stay is still a big chunk of change for many of us.
That's the way my insurance works currently (though there is an annual out of pocket maximum).

Nevertheless, they can't garnish social security, and one can keep a small equity note on the house, so they can't touch it either.

...and once I get into my 70's, I'm not paying medical bills anymore... f--- em'! What are they gonna do? :lol: :twisted:
-Andrea
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Re: Something positive for a change

Post by pelmut »

PatJ wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 2:13 am I have been denied care by a clerk in the insurance office who did not have any
sort of medical degree. He over ruled the work (medical tests) that the doctor
had tried to pre-authorized. Do we want clerks determining the proper medical
care or doctors determining the proper medical care?
I have seen situations in the UK NHS where the medical decisions were taken by administrators: nurses were pressured into following an agenda which did not take account of the condition of the patient.

My suspicion is that a few years ago the NHS became a gravy train for incompetent admin types who were being made redundant in large numbers by computers.  When the money for health care began to run short and they were required to show some initiative, they panicked and tried to build up empires that made them indispensible by creating more and more complex administrative systems and paperwork.  Now a lot of that is being farmed out to private firms with even less contact with reality and needing an even more ponderous control structure.

There are vast numbers of skilled, sympathetic and hard-working individuals in the NHS, but the phrase "Lions led by donkeys" comes to mind.

Whenever you get a large organisation, it can finish up like this unless the people at the top are exceptionally competent and driven by the right motives.
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Re: Something positive for a change

Post by rode_kater »

PatJ wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 2:13 am However, if you stop to look at health insurance in general, it is fundamentally
flawed. Private companies take your money and then pay it out for health care.
Along the way, they must use some of your money (premiums) to cover their costs.
This makes less money available to pay those medical costs.
This applies to any form of insurance though, that's not what makes health insurance special.

The issue with health insurance is that (a) everyone is going to use it at some point, (b) at the moment of use you generally don't have the time to think about your options and (c) the costs are barely related at all to your income or wealth. So whereas for example home-insurance you're talking about the pooling of risk (most people never have their house burn down), for health-insurance you're more talking about smoothing out the payments over your lifetime. It's a redistribution problem.

The only way you can get insurance companies to work efficiently is stiff competition. This should be easy since insurance companies fundamentally don't actually offer different services. Yet somehow this doesn't work in the US? I guess the US the bundling of health insurance with employment means that it doesn't happen?

Here we have insurance companies but the government has put them in a special role. Namely, because they basically all offer exactly the same product, there's quite a bit of competition. So the only way for them make more money is get health providers to charge less. The insurance company can't refuse treatment, they have to pay out for anything an authorised health provider bills. All they can do is try to get the prices down.

Whether it's working is up for debate. Health costs keep going up, but the baby-boomers keep getting older and using more health services. We don't get to do alternative timelines so we don't know if it would have been worse otherwise. The issue is not so much that procedures are too expensive, the insurance companies got that under control. But whether people are get unnecessary procedures, that's quite a bit harder and not something the insurance companies can easily fix.

As for UHC in the US, I wonder if such a large change could happen. I'm generally more of an evolution rather than revolution person. The ACA was a good start, taking smaller steps that way seems more likely to work.
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Re: Something positive for a change

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rode_kater wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 10:33 pmThe only way you can get insurance companies to work efficiently is stiff competition. This should be easy since insurance companies fundamentally don't actually offer different services. Yet somehow this doesn't work in the US? I guess the US the bundling of health insurance with employment means that it doesn't happen?
The problem in the US is that the entire "insurance" industry is a for-profit venture, meaning that they skim as much as they possibly can from the actual provision of care. The reason it doesn't work in the US is that there's so much money floating around in those companies that they can mount massive propaganda campaigns that sway the minds of the unsuspecting. There's also the ethical problem that profiting from another's suffering really doesn't cut it -- yet that is what these companies do, and that's where all the money that ought to be being spent on care goes -- into the pockets of the fat-cats. So, what we've got here are companies that charge exorbitant "premiums" but deliver no service (or paltry service) for those "premiums" paid. Not only are they overcharging the subscribers, but they're underpaying the providers -- all in the name of the almighty buck. It's criminal, pure and simple -- with the basic charge being fraud.

For what it's worth, the strong-arm tactics of the "insurance" industry were already being felt during the 1970s here. The cancer had set in. Now it's fully metasticised.
As for UHC in the US, I wonder if such a large change could happen. I'm generally more of an evolution rather than revolution person. The ACA was a good start, taking smaller steps that way seems more likely to work.
It'll never happen as long as the profiteers are allowed to run the show. Full stop. The "ACA" is Massachusetts' "Romneycare" warmed-over and instituted as a national system (to the glee of the fat-cats who run the show). Note that each time overturning it has come up, it's been a carefully-scripted approach so it appeared that it was "close". It wasn't; it was agreed upon beforehand to retain it. When it was confined to Massachusetts, it was (then governor) Mitt Romney's gift to his billionaire buddies in the "insurance" industry and immediately triggered a massive increase in premiums and a decrease in the actual care delivered per dollar. It was an overt disaster. At the national level it's been even worse. Again, all in the name of "profit". We need a way to get the profit-motive out of that sector (and a few others).

I am fairly convinced that proper reform of the way that care is provided cannot lie in a purely capitalist for-profit system; it pretty much needs to be handled in a non-profit way, which is the way that governments are supposed to operate. Especially with something as important as health care, the ethos needs to be the best care possible within the constraints of what's realistic and possible.
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