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I assume you mean the cost, but privatized basic health care can be provided at little to no cost. There are thousands of free clinics around the nation that provide these services and don't charge a dime. Give me back the huge portion of taxes that goes to healthcare and let me give it to organizations as I see fit that can provide higher levels of service and much lower costs.




I agree and let the nurses, patients, social workers, and therapists figure it out with the business people.

I know of one in all of Ramsey County (ST PAUL MN) As a Social Worker for mentally ill people, I see this issue quite a bit. People in poverty generally can get medicaid from the state or counties. Most are still being excepted (at least in my state) Medicaid funds most of our MI services and assistance. You will always have to have a certain amount of medical assistance to keep the public safe from epidemics that tend to start with the poor. IE TB, Typhoid, Plague, Mental Illness, etc.

However the biggest issue isn't poverty level clients. What I see is people who are working very hard, possible at Min wage, some even 80 hours a week. These jobs don't provide benifits as people are forced to work 20-30 hours at each job. This is because Health care is so expensive, as a result, these people tend to have more health issues from stressful lifestyles, ie obese from eating fast food, smoking, drinking, and other chemically dependent issues from the stress of it all. When they get sick the wait unitl they are deathly ill and go to the hospital. Free clinics are non existent here (TC)anyway, and most are only a few hours during the day in a homeless shelter 1-2 times a week. This is extremely expensive. Generally the people get so sick that they lose there jobs and start the cycle all over again, getting Medical Assitance (which won't pay for the intial ER and hospital visit BTW) and unemployment. This is a worst case scenario but not all too uncommon.

Another issue is preventitive maintenance stuff. I.e. paying for health club memberships and making it a requiremtn to go at least 2x a week to get discounts in benifits and other incentives. It seems that health care agencies don't push these enough. I do like the trend towards using nurse call lines and such. I use these services frequently.

Another complaint I have is directed at Mental Health and CD issues. (sorry have to rant a bit) People who work and do get enough physical benifits often find that thier MH benies fall very short. I have a guy who had a 45 day lifetime MI hospital stay. He had a period of 2-3 wk hospitalizations for over year and ended up with a $60k bill that will most likely get eaten up by the hospital. When he got really sick he was just as sick as any cancer or heart disease patient. Insurance would have paid for those diseases but not MI. Hmmm. I guess they want psychotic people on the streets.

Anyway I heard today on NPR that 2/3 of the average life medical expense is in the last year of a person's life! That's a lot. Sooner or later, we're going to have to figure out what to do and what we shouldn't do. Cost is a major thing. Most of us don't know what anything costs, nor can we chose between prices of anythign in the medical field, (except OTC meds) If something doesn't happen soon, our insurance companies will start to decide what our elderly can and can't have.

Medicine has become a wonderful thing but sooner or later we will have to attach a monetary value to life or it'll price us out of existance.

This will sound really cold but eventually we'll have to determine whether or not a $500k treatment to make grandma live another 6 months is worth it or not.
Anyway I'm done ranting, night.

Last edited by jlanger; 10/20/04 04:20 AM.
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