And that's exactly my gripe .. slobs have no penalty for choosing to pig out, for choosing to be couch potatoes, for choosing to not exercise. They'll get the same rate as someone who works out 6 or 7 days per week. So they (slobs) are being rewarded financially.
Uhh, because I've had 2 doctors who said "if all my patients were as healthy as you I'd be out of business". Ohhh my God ... are you really as stupid as I now think? Why the hell you posted something about insulin and lymphoma I have no clue. Until NOW ... I stated I had a l-i-p-o-m-a removed. Do you know the difference between a lipoma and lymphoma? Holy shit. A lipoma is a small collection of fatty cells directly below the skin. A surgeon goes in and removes them. They can occur randomly on the body and can appear as a blob of fat-like substance. They are not serious. The procedure I had was elective. And I'm healthy because I've run for 38 years, have a resting pulse of about 45 and at age 59 take no prescriptions at all. I see a doctor once a year for a physical and when he finishes he says "see you in a year".
RICTER thinks a lipoma is the same as lymphoma per his later post suggesting I must be on a high insulin diet for my (supposed) lymphoma. The words aren't even close in spelling and I assumed most anyone educated would know these are not the same.
Way to go man, no use getting too worked up over something you have no control over. Sounds like you got the health deal worked out regardless of the money end of it.
Well, it certainly would put pressure on insurance company earnings, AND anyone unlucky enough to get seriously ill, or be involved in an accident. Bankruptcy lawyers would love it, however. That's essentially what we did prior to WWII. We went naked. Perhaps a little U.S. Healthcare history is in order. Prior to WWII, and in the War's aftermath, most people paid for medical services out of pocket. A few hospitals set up advance payment plans that were the forerunners of our HMOs. Most physicians were in private practice, and they made house calls! They adjusted their fees according to one's ability to pay. There was, of course, a tiny fraction of the paper work that we have now, and malpractice suits were almost unheard of. A surgeon in private practice (almost all were) would typically have two employees running his office. (female physicians were rare!) A receptionist/bookkeeper and a registered nurse. If a person got sick over the weekend, they did not go to the emergency room. They called their doctor, who usually had an answering service. An M.D., would commonly take calls directly at home, at all hours, or sign-out to his answering service. Then he would check in with the answering service periodically and get his call back numbers. It was unheard of for a physician to be completely unavailable without having a colleague cover. It was common for physicians to visit their hospitalized patients twice a day, in the early morning , and again in the evening. During the depression, national healthcare was contemplated, but the AHA and AMA adamantly opposed it as "socialism." Costs did not start to escalate until Medicare and Medicaid came in, mid-1960's. Still, few had private insurance, but many were covered by employer plans. In fact large employers often hired physicians and ran small clinics for the benefit of their employees. Just as they do today, for medicare patients, physicians billed the approved medicare amount and an additional amount on top of that to bring the charges up to what they would charge a privately insured patient. Later, Medicare began to dictate the maximum amount they could charge for various services if they took a medicare patient. Before medicaid, most physicians did some pro bono work, and that is how the poor obtained care. Hospitals did the same, and wrote off their expenses for charity patients. Though it is now illegal for a hospital to turn away an emergency room patient who can not pay, they now typically provide only stop gap measures to get them stabilized and send them home. During the time that most physicians were in private practice, however, few hospitals or physicians would turn patients that could not pay away, even though they had no legal obligation to treat them. They generally gave them the same care, pro bono, they would give paying patient. After WWII, clinic practice crept in and the number of physicians in private practice began a long decline, until today their are relatively few in private practice. In the 1950's physicians in private practice had a tendency to look down their noses at those in clinic practice, believing that they weren't good enough to maintain a private practice. Today, physicians do relatively little pro bono work; they will bill but may not get paid. However many indigent patients are covered by either medicaid or medicare. Nevertheless, there are many poor who can't qualify for medicaid because they have no dependents. (This is our clever way of encouraging the indigent to have children!!!) This may change in the States that choose to expand medicaid. In the 1950s, and prior to that, indigent patients would have had reasonable access to full medical care, pro bono. Today they are mostly limited to emergency room visits, with some exceptions of course, or small charity, day clinics with limited capabilities. It is fair to say that, despite many wonderful advances in medicine, today's typical patient has longer wait times, much less contact with a physician, and far less personal attention then in the first 75 years of the twentieth century. And today's poor, whether young and healthy or old and sick, have no virtually no access to preventative care, but often some access to subsidized care through community clinics. All too often their only access to medical care is through the emergency room door. This is costly and inefficient and is one of the many defects in current U.S. healthcare that Obamney care was intended to address.
Wow! That's amazing you're beating 45bpm at age 59! I'm 41, exercise/weights, and mine is higher than yours. You must run at close to max heart rate for extended periods of time, and of course, eat clean.