41–50 of 134 posts
While he still needs money, they did find a doctor to perform the surgery. But don't let that stop you from donating, if you're able.
He also answered a question that I had: he's a veteran, so he should qualify for VA medical assistance. According to his post above, the VA system moves too slow to stop his rapidly spreading cancer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, in a nation like USA (or actually anywhere, but let's be realistic) no one should die because they can't afford a standard treatment. I am from Italy and the first times I couldn't believe it.
The danger is that people will over-use the public system. Governments can solve this by offering a really bad customer experience (Soviet architecture, putting an experienced nurse at the front desk rather than a cute 20-year-old girl, bad food, less choices, and so on). People often prefer private hospitals, even when public hospitals offer superior treatment. This takes the load off the public system, allowing it…
How does that work exactly?
I'm trying to think of how I could even deliberately overuse health care, in the event that I decided health care were something desirable rather than something I tend to avoid because it's boring. The best I can come up with would be to hit myself with a hammer occasionally, necessitating treatment of the injury. I'm not sure why people with a public system would deliberately do something like that.
I'm not really trying to be facetious. This seems to be one of the ways in which health care isn't like any consumer product: people really do not want as much of it as they can get. In terms of preventative medicine, just getting them to use it can be quite a chore. In terms of treatment of disease or injury, I don't see how using it for its intended purpose qualifies as "overuse."
SSI disability payments should not count against Medicare income limits. The United States fucking sucks sometimes.
As an update: http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/it-started-with-hopele... While he still needs money, they did find a doctor to perform the surgery. But don't let that stop you from donating, if you're able. He also answered a question that I had: he's a veteran, so he should qualify for VA medical assistance. According to his post above, the VA system moves too slow to stop his rapidly spreading cancer.
All this takes time for the VA to consider. And worse still, there's a HUGE backlog of claims right now (for obvious reasons).
Just pointing this out in case anyone declines to help out cause you're hoping the VA will come through. I mean, they will, it will take time though. And he doesn't have time.
As an update: http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/it-started-with-hopele... While he still needs money, they did find a doctor to perform the surgery. But don't let that stop you from donating, if you're able. He also answered a question that I had: he's a veteran, so he should qualify for VA medical assistance. According to his post above, the VA system moves too slow to stop his rapidly spreading cancer.
SSI disability payments should not count against Medicare income limits. The United States fucking sucks sometimes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The danger is that people will over-use the public system. Governments can solve this by offering a really bad customer experience (Soviet architecture, putting an experienced nurse at the front desk rather than a cute 20-year-old girl, bad food, less choices, and so on). People often prefer private hospitals, even when public hospitals offer superior treatment. This takes the load off the public system, allowing it…
> The danger is that people will over-use the public system. How does that work exactly? I'm trying to think of how I could even deliberately overuse health care, in the event that I decided health care were something desirable rather than something I tend to avoid because it's boring. The best I can come up with would be to hit myself with a hammer occasionally, necessitating treatment of the injury. I'm not sure wh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Germany has Europe's oldest universal health care insurance system, with origins dating back to Otto von Bismarck... I wasn't aware that a government-sponsored healthcare system this old existed in the world, because it's always seemed to me that such programs are fundamentally unsustainable. So what I want to know is, how do they keep it sustainable? For example, if there's no longer a market where demand responds…
I'm not sure about Germany, but in Denmark it's just a service of the state. Doctors' salary, and hospitals' equipment needs, are assessed and negotiated the same way as with other sectors of the public-safety apparatus, such as the police department, fire department, and military. You'd like to keep your hospitals well-stocked, your fire engines maintained and modern, your air force state-of-the-art, etc., but witho…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The danger is that people will over-use the public system. Governments can solve this by offering a really bad customer experience (Soviet architecture, putting an experienced nurse at the front desk rather than a cute 20-year-old girl, bad food, less choices, and so on). People often prefer private hospitals, even when public hospitals offer superior treatment. This takes the load off the public system, allowing it…
> The danger is that people will over-use the public system. How does that work exactly? I'm trying to think of how I could even deliberately overuse health care, in the event that I decided health care were something desirable rather than something I tend to avoid because it's boring. The best I can come up with would be to hit myself with a hammer occasionally, necessitating treatment of the injury. I'm not sure wh…
Since emergency rooms cannot turn patients away, there are a lot of people to come to the emergency rooms for things like pains in their big toe, menstrual cramps, and so on.
This is why the emergency room is so absurdly expensive in the United States. Health care here really isn't very expensive so long as you go nowhere near the emergency room.
Sources: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/09/25/1839726/state-decid... http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/print-edition/2011/09... http://birminghammedicalnews.com/news.php?viewStory=1275