Our Healthcare in this country is an absolute
- Thread starter CU1TruTiger4Life
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I'm good...served as an Air Force Officer and worked in the Intelligence Community for 10 years...I have nothing to prove to TI "experts" and I'm not repeating what I heard on cable news. What I typed in previous post is unclassified and can be found with simple Google searches.
No Sir, promise that I'm not upset...it's all good...we can't take this chat board too seriously. The evidence is available with a quick Google search. I no longer work in the IC, but I did work there during the AFPAK surge.
Go Tigers!
There's also literature out there that says that all of those players are at increased health risk because of their weight. There is literature that says overweight fit people suffer worse health outcomes than normal weight slouches. The literature that you're referring to also tends to state that's its a staggering minority of people who are so ripped that they're healthy. Most people who tend to think their weight is healthy because they hit the gym are wrong.
Yes it is. Took 20 years to earn it. But I dropped Blue Cross like a slippery rock and saved $400 a month. And the Tricare becomes the worlds best supplement next year when I start Medicare.
I know you’re not actually being serious, but there’s obviously a difference between someone getting Tricare because of their military service and just a regular citizen.
Who is deserving? Does someone who serves 4 years and gets out deserve free VA care for forever?
I think that service members do need to have some incentives beyond regular citizens for their service. I may think the benefits are too generous overall but that's beside the point. I also think that a lot of people who don't support "entitlements" for other people think that they personally have earned what all assistance is given to them.
With healthcare, at least, I think everyone is deserving.
I am technically in the overweight category in BMI but low body fat so it didn't count against me. They only use BMI as part of a bigger equation. That said, I don't think there is much wrong with using BMI as just part of an equation, the number of people that are exceptions in my building might be... I dunno 4-5 out of 400.
Those players are probably in the 0.01% of muscle to body weight ratio's. Outliers rarely make an argument better.
Only because people aren't interesting in having a good faith discussion about it. I agree that people on here aren't open to it.
Of course. 21 years of military service. And many many thousands of dollars in Medicare taxes that I still pay and will pay until I actually quit working at about 70. Plus co-pays. Plus my Medicare part B premium will be $350 a month.
Motherfvcking right I earned and deserve it. So have you.
It was always a struggle keeping some Sailors and Marines qualified when they were extremely fit lifters. The sea services used weight for height and body fat calculated from neck and waist. Some obviously fit people had to struggle for waivers or get an immersion body fat, not readily available. I’ve been retired since 2003, I hope they do it better now.
Bad post, I'll start over. Also I may have been misunderstanding what @semperfiger was trying to say when he was talking about his healthcare.
There is a tendency for people to feel like they are personally entitled to whatever government benefit they are granted. They've earned it. However there are a lot of "others" who these same people don't feel are deserving of similar benefits. It strikes me as hypocritical that someone who has received astonishing government healthcare for years (TriCare and, again, I could have misunderstood semperfiger) could say that it's a handout when someone else would like something similar. For something as important as healthcare, I'd prefer to stop trying to decide who all is worthy and just make sure that everyone has their essential healthcare needs taken care of.
As a separate point, I think that the military's benefits are too generous overall and that our society is so afraid of doing anything that might be perceived as critical of veterans that we can't even discuss it.
EDIT: And for clarity, I don't think anyone should lose their military benefits that they were promised when they enlisted. I also don't think anyone should lose SS or Medicare when they've been paying into it for decades. It's more that I'm bothered that some people think that Medicare is something that they deserve but those poor people can just go die because they're poor. Or have pre-existing conditions.
I'm just trying to understand you because I made an assumption early on that I probably shouldn't have. Are you saying that we all deserve Medicare if we've paid into it?
Also are you generally opposed to universal healthcare (not necessarily single payer specifically)?
It seems like his (@FLaw47) argument is that viewing any federally supplied medical care/insurance as a good thing means you must view all federally supplied medical/insurance as a good thing; if you like Tricare, it's because you like federal health care, therefore you'll really like Medicare for All. The problem with that is that he's ignoring the fact that people who've served in the military are a special subsection of federal employees. They're basically just being provided with insurance/care for life after a certain amount of service to their employer, which happens to be the government. It's also just not a winning political argument to say that people who've had a career in the military and injured veterans don't deserve Tricare and VA, respectively, any more than the average citizen deserves Medicare for All.
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First of all in fairness to you, I am a practing surgeon.
I am in favor of universal PRIMARY CARE only. I think the country would be immensely better off if just all diabetics and hypertensives got care. Need for Government funded dialysis would drop. As for single payer, the insurance companies have become so much like government payers the line has blurred. I am against the employer based coverage that we have, but it is entrenched. I don’t know the answer. I’m just a worker bee and I feel for my patients.
We specialist can fend for ourselves. Probably 25% of my care given is charity/written off. That is ok.
I'd refer you to my clarifying post. I think your summation mischaracterizes a few of my arguments.
BTW, I could live with some means testing for Medicare premiums. And SS. If that is what it takes. And it should be fairly high. Most of us will have a lifestyle adjustment after stopping work. Ask IPTAY.
I'd be fine with a multi-payer system like what Germany has. The energy (on the left) just seems to be behind single payer right now and in my estimation that's a huge improvement. I think that Primary care, like you said, should be covered for everyone. I just also think our healthcare for everything up to (but not necessarily including) "quality of life" should be a collective responsibility. Naturally this will require rationing (and I'd argue we already have rationing because poor people cannot afford very important care at all). I don't lose much sleep over a knee replacement requiring a longer wait, for example.
I'm also good with the idea of having supplemental private insurance that allows the more well off to receive nicer care and "skip the wait" for things like knee replacements. I don't think that being successful should be without rewards; I just think that there should be a floor for the people of our country on some things.
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For certain programs, I'd just prefer they be universal. Gives everyone a bit of a stake and then also reduces resentment. MOST people are fine with public school and I imagine that that's, in some part, because everyone knows it's an option for them. The push for vouchers would be obscene if free public schooling was means tested.
What about decoupling health insurance from work, then we get a market like car insurance. Pretty competitive these days. Would probably go a long ways in getting America more healthy to (with better wellness incentives).
Rates no longer took 10 years to double, after the ACA rates doubled in 4 years.
https://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/how-obamacare-raised-premiums
Having it separate from employment would be good but I still feel like it should be a basic right. I do not think a market approach works particularly well with something so critical as healthcare. For non emergency care it would probably be fine but you still have to do something to make sure everyone is actually getting that insurance so that they aren't going to the emergency room or ignoring big health problems. At the end of the day, it'd be cheaper overall to just do single payer. I find it generally puzzling that we seem to be unwilling to look at what's been successful in the rest of the world (and I don't find the "no one has done it on this scale!" or "those others countries aren't as diverse" arguments particularly compelling.)
Also wellness incentives haven't really been shown to work:
Bloomberg
NYT
Premiums != Spending
EDIT: For clarification, of course the ACA raised premiums. It made it so that all health insurance had to cover reasonable things. If you'd like to look at the 10 essential benefits and tell me one of those that you think insurance shouldn't cover, I'd be interested in your perspective. The larger argument is that the overall spending curve was bent, not the premiums curve.
I heard a couple of Drs. on a radio interview broadcast who were part of a Concierge Practice. Thinking there were 10 Drs in their building and they each were limited to 6000 patients for the practice. They charged $50/month. They made their own deals with the Pharma companies and sold drugs dirt cheap. Didn't hear the whole broadcast, but this idea takes takes insurance out of the equation for basic care. Takes pre-existing conditions out for basic care, etc. Makes too much sense. It is a growing concept; with more and more docs coming on board.
Sorry I should have been clear, I think wellness reward programs would work better after you decoupled work from health insurance.
I will check out the links though, thanks!
My old company required that you get your biometrics done (they paid for it) or you faced a premium hike. The incentives were based off of the results of those biometrics. My HDL was always low so I missed 1/5 every year. My (very anecdotally driven) opinion is that requiring to get the biometrics done at all was a really good thing but the incentives didn't accomplish much. I'd be very interested in the idea of insurers requiring a primary care visit annually but I'm not sure if that would just let family practices drive up their wellness visit rates.
