Political Crossfire Forums

I've been saying this for years and i'll say it again. Frankly its become more poiant since the debt cealing issues really took off.

Its really not the best of times economically and from a goverment spending point of view, to reform your healthcare system.

Yes the current system is a tragedy, a farce etc.

However, not only is this expensive. but see republicans agreeing to any more and serious defence spending cuts now? Or ever getting sane tax sytem in the next term if obama wins?

First off, there is no better time than now to reform healthcare given that our costs are skyrocketing.

Second, this is kind of like a public option. You buy insurance from the gov't. It's not free healthcare from the gov't.

And the ACA is projected to lower the deficit, as far as i know, anyway. So I don't see the complaint about spending. We spend too much on healthcare. It's a big national problem that needs to be addressed (not saying the ACA does it effectively, but that it can no longer just be ignored).

Hopefully such insurance will drive down rates.

3 stories I heard over the past month.. All 100% true..

1) we took our 11 YO niece to a dermatologist.. She has 3 warts on her hand.. Saw him for 2 mins.. He sprayed dry ice on them..30 sec treatment, tops... Costs $400..

2) a friend of ours has stage 4 cancer.. She goes for Chemo every 2 weeks..Cost of each treatment...$40,000..

3) another woman we know beat cancer in the 90's.. She hasn't been back to see any of those doctors in years. So a couple of weeks ago she goes back, just for a check-up.. Everything is OK, but while she's there she notices ALL of the doctors in that group are different.. So she ask a nurse what happened to the 3 doctors who treated her in the 90's.. All 3 retired, 2 retired while they were in their 50's.. Why? All got tired of having the insurance companies tell them who they could treat, and what treatments they could use.. So much for doctors quitting just because of malpractice suits, and medicare.. Here was 3 fairly young doctors who built a HUGE practice but quit because the way it stands now they no longer treat their patients, the insurance companies do.. Funny how the anti-UHC people don't use the words 'death panels' when describing private companies..

insurance companies tell the doctors what to do. modern medicine is largely influenced by big pharma and the insurance companies.

Insurance companies tell doctors what treatments they cover for a certain patient. Often times doctors want to run the newest and latest tests which happen to be extremely expensive.

I think Prof can explain this better than I can but I think there i enough blame on both sides. Doctors who say insurance companies are the reason they quit medicine should probably say, i did it for the money and now its not there so i peaced out.