Common sense says , screw those old americans who were paying taxes their whole life. We need to give free medical care to those young illegal immigrants first. We, the government, hope you understand that we don't need your old tired body anymore.
the problem is that technology will soon be able to replace every part that fails on a human with cost being the only limiting factor. at what point do we stop? as i mentioned earlier my mother in law was in a nursing home for 10 years. in those 10 years i got to visit that home every couple weeks. many of the residents line the halls sitting in restraining chairs totally out of it mentally. some were there 10 years. do we give someone in this condition a heart transplant? most in the home were there on state aid plus they all had medicare. who decides. the way it is now they just keep them going as long as possible even if they want to die.
It seems that is what we are hearing now. The illegals have the ER's jammed up as it is. The average Wait is about 4 hours to be treated in an ER - unless you die first, then it's longer.
Everyone here expressing moral outrage doesn't get it. I'm just as outraged as you all are. Yes, the banksters ran off with the money. Yes, Big Pharma bleeds Medicare. Yes, lawsuits also bleed the system. But let's assume that we stop/reverse illegal immigration. We introduce tort reform. We shake down Big Pharma... We do everything else we can to cut costs. Guess what? It's a friggin tsunami in healthcare costs that we are facing. No I can't quantify it right now, but let's make an assumption: THERE IS STILL NOT ENOUGH MONEY. So enough of the moral outrage. Assume we reach a point we can't pay it - WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST? Acting like a left wing tree hugging hippy aint gonna help pay for it. There is only one solution I see (aside from the cost cutting) and that is - raise taxes like crazy, or give up the military empire thing where we no longer spend 10X more on our military than China does. Practical suggestions anyone?
sorry, but when people demand expensive care when they theyselves do not have to pay fir it, then I hvea no sympathy for you I now my mother has been in a coma for 10 years and doctors give her no hope - I demand that the state/hospital/insert-other-entity-besides patient continue to keep her alive Sorry, I don't agree. Medical care should be for reasonable expenses. I also do not favor the "gee, I know she is 4.5 months premature and only has a 1% of surviving, spend the million to keep her alive anyway!!!" Or the drugs that costs $10,000s a year and are only marginally better than older cheap drugs We are severely afflicted with damn the cost, I don't have to pay for it mentality. Bringing up child, grandma, etc. etc. has nothing to do with it. 50 million people are uninsured and med care is prohibitively expensive in part, because WE don't have to shoulder the costs in those situations where there is little hope or benefit to expensive routines.
Let's begin with congress and how they spend. If they budgeted like my family does, they would find 10's if not 100's of billions of dollars. Let's get rid of some of their benefits until they learn how to be frugal with OUR money. That alone would give them the funds to set up community centers and such for those who want but cannot afford healthcare without dumbing it down for all. That would be tax money well spent.
Point well taken, however in many cases someone who is out of it mentally would not be eligible for something like a heart transplant and many of these folks are DNR, still it is a valid point as they certainly receive other high cost care from drugs to ED and ICU visits. Usually it is the family that is making decisions for them by that point. But before I would have the government trample in to that family's decsion making process I would rather they stamp on the neck of a lawyer like John Edwards who made tens of millions in malpractice awards, or the neck of the guys making multi million dollar annual salaries in HMOs. I would 1st like to enact tort reform that didn't cost the taxpayer a dime so that all sorts of expensive tests were not done each day for 1 in a million diseases just because of the need for a physician to practice defensive medicine before I stuck governments arbitrary nose in to the situation. This is the beginning of a slippery slope folks, you might think, oh its just the crinklies that will bear the brunt, but if history teaches us anything it is that when you give the government an inch they take a mile. Before long it will be you that is in the cross hairs of some low level bureaucratic with a chip on his shoulder and an actuarial heart.
Health care Legal system needs a huge flush. Lawyers and insurance companies are just too onerous and that makes healthcare costs go way high. PREVENTION is non existent in this society when ignorant people confuse the "freedom of choice" with "individual irresponsability". Physical education should be obligatory in high school, people with BMI higher than 30% shouldn't be allowed to graduate (obviously there will be exceptions for special medical/physical conditions, but the rule will educate most kids). BMI cannot be changed over a 2 week "starve myself" diet, it needs a long term approach that encourages long term healthy life habits of regular excercise and measured/balanced diet. High sugar sodas should be banned from vending machines/cafeterias at schools. (if a kid/teenager wants it then he brings it from home but schools do not support the unhealthy soda consumption habit). Fried food tax: You can still continue killing yourself with the supersized fries at McDonald's everyday but you'll pay an extra tax that will go straight to cover heart disease issues. No harm to anyone, all the options are still there for those who want them. With the BMI proposal even parents may get involved in the process and do something positive for their own health at the same time. Result: You won't find as many 10-12 year old @ 300 pounds and in 20-30 years the cases associated with heart disease, diabetes,etc will diminish drastically and so would the healthcare expense associated with them. Most of resources will be focused to diseases for which we do not know how to prevent. Now, if you think that intoxicating yourself everyday with big macs, supersized fries and 2 liters of soda coupled with a daily schedule of 10 hours of video games/TV is your "right" and everyone else has to suck it up and "pay" through medicare for your high blood pressure medication beggining in your 35th birthday do not bother to reply to this post...
I disagree, if we were able to reduce health care costs by even 15% and keep the current pay ins the system would have another 50-60 years before it went insolvent vs the current 10. If we were to reduce costs by 30% we are talking about hundreds of years.