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Post by timfarney on Feb 4, 2019 6:46:34 GMT -5
Bruce, you frequently cite your high Medicare costs and I totally believe you are accurately reporting your experience in your location. However, my experience here in central Indiana is much different. My Medicare Advantage plan covers all my drugs. I pay $10 to see my primary care physician, $45 to see my cardiologist or other specialist. Only monthly charge is the Part B premium of $136. My plan also includes access to an exercise facility and money for over the counter supplies. So, while your experience is true, it is not universal. This sounds like my experience, living in a market with two huge university heath care systems. From my point of view, Medicare is great. Better than any work-based insurance I’ve had, and that includes a couple of Fortune 100 companies. Medicare is proof that not only can single payer work in America, it does, and it provides excellent healthcare in doing so. It’s also our best shot at getting America’s runaway healthcare costs under control. The massive power of private insurance and Pharma lobbying and political contributions are what stands in the way, nothing else. The VA system, by the way, demonstrates that even “socialized medicine” can work, though Medicare makes it clear that we don’t need to take it that far. |
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Post by timfarney on Feb 4, 2019 6:58:20 GMT -5
Oh, and while I’m at it, I have a monthly experience outside of Medicare coverage for comparison. My cat needs a tiny little bottle of eye drops, a product normally prescribed for humans, every month. They were $14 until I went in last week. They had raised the price to $42. Having a fair amount of corporate management experience, I have to ask myself how the folks sitting around a table at Amici Phamaceuticals decided they should, or even could raise a price from $14 to $42 without losing a huge chunk of market share. The only logical conclusion is that they are the market, have no competition, and the customer has no alternative but to pay the price or go without the medicine they need.
Thus is the state of free market healthcare in America.
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Post by dradtke on Feb 4, 2019 10:38:33 GMT -5
I'm not a veteran but I have a number of relatives who have both praises and condemnation stories about the VA. (And I've heard similar praises and/or condemnation stories about private medical care as well.) Oddly enough, I've noticed a correlation of VA complaints coinciding with periods of VA under-funding, and vice-versa.
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Post by lar on Feb 5, 2019 8:47:43 GMT -5
I tend to agree with Terry's assessment. The VA hospital I go to is affiliated with the Medical College of Wisconsin. I've been very impressed with the level of care. This is the first time I've ever been treated at a teaching hospital and I must say that the residents have been impressive as well.
My last experience with the VA was when I was just out of the service. I spent a few weeks at the VA hospital in Grand Island, NE. It was a fairly small hospital and it wasn't long before they sent me to Omaha because they didn't have the facilities to treat me. The VA hospital in Omaha was much larger and seemed to have better resources. Still, it didn't compare with the care I experienced this past year here in Milwaukee.
It didn't occur to me until know but I may have been at the VA hospital in Omaha at the same time Terry was there. It was the fall of 1969. I finally talked my doctor into discharging me as I didn't see my condition improving and it being during the war and all I figured they could use the beds and I could get on with my life. I'm not saying that Terry had anything to do with that, though. LOL!
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Post by Marshall on Feb 5, 2019 9:43:17 GMT -5
Oh, and while I’m at it, I have a monthly experience outside of Medicare coverage for comparison. My cat needs a tiny little bottle of eye drops, a product normally prescribed for humans, every month. They were $14 until I went in last week. They had raised the price to $42. Having a fair amount of corporate management experience, I have to ask myself how the folks sitting around a table at Amici Phamaceuticals decided they should, or even could raise a price from $14 to $42 without losing a huge chunk of market share. The only logical conclusion is that they are the market, have no competition, and the customer has no alternative but to pay the price or go without the medicine they need. Thus is the state of free market healthcare in America. Probably because the product is normally prescribed for humans, they have a deal with insurance companies that will pay that without passing the bulk of the direct cost to the consumer. Only those mammals outside of health insurance coverage will see the brunt of their greed. |
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Post by TKennedy on Feb 5, 2019 10:08:14 GMT -5
Hey Lar, quite possible I was there. The University of Nebraska and Creighton University med schools shared the place so depending on the ward you could have had care from either place. I remember for internal medicine we were on 8E and 8W. If you were on our ward lucky you left. Since we were all learning to do proctoscopy the rule was every patient got a procto no matter what was wrong with them! It was an unpleasant experience that involved shoving a rigid 12” metal tube up your ass and looking around. Hope you dodged that one. I thought the care was good but the delivery system was incredibly inefficient and buried in red tape. We used to joke that the VA was a poster child for why socialized medicine would bankrupt the country.  I have a funny story about that place. In 1977 my brother in law got married in Omaha. We were having a party at a hotel and he was pretty drunk. Someone said I should put him in a cast. I had just finished my ortho residency at the Minneapolis VA. I wondered where I could get some plaster and thought of the Omaha VA. After spending damn near a year and a half there I knew the place perfectly. I went over there about 11 right at shift change, snuck into the OR dressing room and got some scrubs, paged the nurse supervisor and told her I was a resident from the surgery ward and needed to get in the cast room for some stuff to put a splint on a guy on our ward. She opened it up, I got the plaster, and headed back to the hotel. We got the cast on and he spent the next day in a bathtub trying to soak it off. You could never do that kind of stuff now. |
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Post by timfarney on Feb 5, 2019 11:38:25 GMT -5
Oh, and while I’m at it, I have a monthly experience outside of Medicare coverage for comparison. My cat needs a tiny little bottle of eye drops, a product normally prescribed for humans, every month. They were $14 until I went in last week. They had raised the price to $42. Having a fair amount of corporate management experience, I have to ask myself how the folks sitting around a table at Amici Phamaceuticals decided they should, or even could raise a price from $14 to $42 without losing a huge chunk of market share. The only logical conclusion is that they are the market, have no competition, and the customer has no alternative but to pay the price or go without the medicine they need. Thus is the state of free market healthcare in America. Probably because the product is normally prescribed for humans, they have a deal with insurance companies that will pay that without passing the bulk of the direct cost to the consumer. Only those mammals outside of health insurance coverage will see the brunt of their greed. I doubt that, but no have doubt that all large insurance groups have negotiated substantial discounts, so those without good Pharma coverage will bear the brunt of their greed. Where they’ll really make their money, though, is on Medicare, where the law prohibits negotiating Drug prices, ensuring that big Pharma gets paid full retail. Your Government at work, representing your best interests and exercising great fiscal responsibility. |
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Post by Marshall on Feb 5, 2019 14:33:19 GMT -5
That's sort of what I meant. They (pharma) have a segment (medicare?) that will pay whatever they say their product is worth. Thus the value gets artificially jacked up for anyone that doesn't have the muscle and wherewithal to fight back.
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Post by patrick on Feb 6, 2019 23:14:24 GMT -5
If you were on our ward lucky you left. Since we were all learning to do proctoscopy the rule was every patient got a procto no matter what was wrong with them! It was an unpleasant experience that involved shoving a rigid 12” metal tube up your ass and looking around. Hope you dodged that one. You know what the definition of a proctoscope is? A long metal tube with an asshole at either end. |
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Post by TKennedy on Feb 7, 2019 0:09:14 GMT -5
I probably should have said rigid sigmoidoscopy. |
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