Pipe dream? Obamacare

[nw30]

[pueno]

[mac]

Do you think he mean community activist qualifies?

[uwindsurf]

[isobars]

I heard today about a man who liked his previous health care insurance. He'd had it for 25 years without ever using it. That makes sense only for focused, very low-cost, very limited coverage, catastrophic protection ... which is not an option under Ocare.

I hope he (and coboardhead at 20 years with no claims), are paying cash for their less-than-catastrophic medical care, which can't be neglected for decades.

What's their blood pressure? PSA? Blood glucose? Lipid profile? Liver enzymes? 30 other critical serum and urine parameters? What do their colons look like? Are they getting the proper vaccinations? How's their diet? Do they pay cash to find out why their gut hurts for weeks, whether that mole is benign, or why that pimple on the tip of a finger won't go away?

My medical files are huge compared to those of most people. Is that because I've overused my full coverage insurance because it's there, or because I take exceptional care of the only body I have? Have I been unlucky, or is it because I've played far harder and for far more hours than most people? Is it because they are afraid of and/or mistrust doctors, like many people (the more important my boo-boo, the more research I do to vet or dispute their diagnoses and treatments; anything less is dangerous) ... or is it because I consult doctors whenever an unexplained minor problem lingers too long, I can't explain and fix with certainty a major problem, or a problem inherently and clearly needs medical care? Anything less is risky, maybe even dangerous, IMO.

I STILL find highly dangerous, incompetent doctors, but if I avoid medical care -- claims -- altogether because of that I'd be even deader now than I am.

I'll bet thousands of people every year would not have bothered going to an orthopedic surgeon after my recent injury. After all, I drove home that day pain-free, limped around on it the next day with little pain, could adequately walk pretty well pain-free a week later, and could walk apparently normally within weeks. The only real pain in the whole episode was while trying to walk on the day I blew it out. Any macho -- remember, Spanish for "stupid" -- man would have toughed it out and been sailing within 2-4 weeks, some within days.

And would have regretted it the rest of his life.

Medicare highly restricts the necessary PT rehab already, and will probably limit it much more after Obama gets through gutting it fiscally to help fund Ocare and imposing tighter restrictions with his newly appointed IPAB bean counter knee panels. After all, old people no longer deserve expensive care.

Yeah, but we still vote!

[mogunn]

[isobars]

Thanks, Mo, but, yes ... I went through all that with the insurance beancounters at the big local hospitals, the docs, and the PT/rehab insurance people. That approach is reserved for specific providers at specific locations. I'm using the right provider hospital, but because my PTs work for that hospital at a satellite facility within X miles of the central hospital, I'm out of luck. It's a technicality they've fought for years with no success. Only by accepting lesser PTs* at the central hospital or useless (for multiple reasons including literally crippling delays) VA PT services could I get past the Medicare constraints.

* The bean counters, despite letters from orthopedic surgeons, do not understand the medical differences between any old PT and a PT highly trained and experienced in restoring full function after major joint reconstruction. That difference very often translates to the difference between an athletic outcome and a lifetime of lameness, pain, and repeat surgeries. I'm willing to pay cash, if necessary, for that difference.

My point is that these barriers may dominate our lives if and when our health insurance and health care systems are managed by any non-competitive single source, let alone a bungling, inefficient, remote, purely political bureaucracy like the federal government. If I were willing to trust even my basic mobility, let alone windsurfing, to that scenario, I'd have just had the VA fix and rehab my knee. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

I'm very fortunate that the calendar year will break up my PT, effectively doubling my cap for this injury. My PT also trusts me to do my PT on my own, reducing formal treatment in his facility to testing progress and changing my exercises ... a very rigorous year-long ACL reconstruction protocol clearly shown to be necessary. Deviation usually produces dismal results.

[isobars]

Let's assume, with a straight face, that Obamacare really will increase the number of people with actual health care insurance -- not just Medicaid -- by 30M. Let's even assume Ocare really costs only the estimated 2.6 trillion dollars over the next decade before it morphs, by force, as planned many years ago, into the totally socialized medicine Obama said he wanted within 10-15 years. Let's even ignore -- and I'm choking back tears of laughter and frustration here -- the untold billions spent on failed websites, insurance companies redesigning their entire policy structure then being told by Il Duce that they can fuhgheddaboutit for another year, the lies that may yet neuter the Democrat party, 80M-100M people scrambling for new insurance they can't find, the $740B Medicare heist, the tens of thousands of bureaucrats required to run the system, the insurance company bailouts if they don't make a profit (it's written into Ocare), and SO much more. Chalk all that up to Washington BS and set it aside.

The bottom, optimistic, line is that we have maybe 30M new people covered for something like $260B per year even if we ignore Medicare's 1,000 percent overrun.

Wouldn't it have been incredibly simpler and cheaper to just pass the hat and buy those 30M people the GD insurance, then fix what's actually BROKEN with health care piece by broken piece? 30M people X maybe $5k per head = a paltry $150B per year.

Decimal point rebuttals will go into the bit pit; we're talking concepts here, and RATIONAL numbers will almost certainly expand the cost of Ocare anyway.

[pueno]

[isobars]