Letters to the Editor
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GHI is a PPO/HMO
Rudy got care from PPO network providers, or, like you can, went outside the network for a different provider and paid out of pocket. I don't think that's such a hard concept to grasp, is it?
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I would just like to point out that WAL MART
has a nasty little history of telling it's own employees to seek Medicaid from their local DHS offices for their basic healthcare. That's because they don't want to fork over the cost of basic health coverage for anyone who is not management. Who is footing the bill in this case? That would be you and I: Joe Taxpayer.
Now, who's subsidizing who here? Yet we certainly can't have "socialized medicine" in the Good Ole U.S. of A. That would mean businesses couldn't pay their executives crimimal amounts of money. OUR money, BTW, that we give them with our business.
http://www.ips-dc.org/projects/global_econ/walmart_pay_gap.htm
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Rudi's lies - about as low as you can go
This story illustrates why so many NYers hated Rudi, up until 9/11, anyway.
What's interesting is how the MSM practically genuflects to the "Good Rudi", while conveniently ignoring the "Bad Rudi".
That any candidate, no matter how conservative would, demonize health care for all Americans is mindboggling enough. That Rudi would tell out and out lies about it, shows how confident he is that the media won't call him out on it.
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No real mystery...
There is no real mystery about this. Rudy is just throwing out certain titbits that he believes, probably correctly, will make his supporters salivate. He is not really trying to engage in any serious debate on healthcare. He is not suggesting that a Giuliani administration will privatize the Veterans Administration, a huge socialized medical system run by the federal government, so that former military will have a better chance of surviving prostate cancer.
All the presidential candidates do this. None of them engage in any substantive discussion of current issues of interest, because they all know that this thing is primarily a beauty contest and that they can only win by being all things to all people and having a good dentist.
To be fair, you cannot say that Rudy is lying any more than the rest of the pathetic crew. That is not to say that they are not capable of substantive discussion, but unfortunately WE are to blame, because we don't demand more. I know you can say that the mainstream press and TV people play softball, but they can only get away with that because WE don't really care enough to turn off the TV. OK, maybe we do. I don't even have a TV. But when I say WE, I mean us voters en masse.
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@ No real mystery...
Nice try but no cigar.
>b
As it stands now, more and more people are losing their coverage, because their employers no longer include it in their benefit package. And anyone with a pre-existing condition (like Giuliani's prostate cancer) can't get it at all, at any price.
According to Wikipedia:
Health care and insurance coverage Democrats call for "affordable and quality health care," and many advocate an expansion of government intervention in this area. Many Democrats favor a national health insurance system in a variety of forms to address the rising costs of modern health insurance. Some Democrats, such as Rep. John Dingell and Senator Edward Kennedy, have called for a program of "Medicare for All."
Some Democratic governors have supported purchasing Canadian drugs, citing lower costs and budget restrictions as a primary incentive. Recognizing that unpaid insurance bills increase costs to the service provider, who passes the cost on to health-care consumers, many Democrats advocate expansion of health insurance coverage.
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Rudy, meet "James"
Rudy:
"Even if you want to quibble about the statistics, you find me the person who leaves the United States and goes to England for prostate cancer treatment, and I'd like to meet that person."
Then he should meet my friend. I'll call him James. He's a old friend of mine, English guy, living in LA. This is an absolutely true story.
Back in 1999, James developed a lump on his throat. He didn't have any medical insurance, so he postponed having it looked at. When he did, visiting a doctor in LA, the doctor looked at James' non-insured status and decided that his problem was an abscess. He prescribed antibiotics.
This went on for 8 months. For 8 months, James took different dosages and medicines prescribed by this doctor, and the lump only got bigger. Finally the doctor said, "Let's lance that abscess. Give me $5,000."
As James is a British citizen, he decided to save the $5k, and fly home to Britain to have the abscess lanced. He got back to London, went to the doctor, and their first comment was "this could be cancerous. Let's do some tests." A quick test later, and James was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. (Not prostate, sure, but still deadly.)
So James stayed in London to deal with this. The government put him up in a flat and paid for healthy food for his recovery, recognizing that his chances would be better if he didn't have to beg on the street. On days when he had a chemo treatment, he would be picked up and dropped off in a taxi, as the understanding was that after chemo, he would be in no state to drive. After about 6 months of this treatment, James' cancer went into full remission. He's now back in LA.
Checking if James' lump was cancerous should have been a standard procedure for the LA doctor. My own doctor checks me for cancerous lumps each visit. However, because James would have not been able to pay for cancer treatment, the doctor decided there was no point in even going down that path. Had James not had access to the British NHS, he would now be dead.
Rudy and James need to get together for a beer.
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@ Rudy, meet "James"
Great story, thanks.
Sorry about my last post being all bold, I only meant for the second paragraph to be highlighted.
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The public always pays for it
On the one hand, you have these lying bastards on the right screaming “socialized medicine” when healthcare is funded publicly, and fairly, that is, based on somewhat progressive taxation. They categorically ignore the fact that healthcare is funded publicly, and unfairly, in many ways.
- By the general public, aka consumers, in the price of everything they purchase from companies that provide health insurance as part of their employee compensation.
- By taxpayer subsidies to outrageously expensive emergency-room and other care used by those who cannot afford health insurance.
- By insurance-premium-payer subsidies to the freeloaders who can afford insurance but would simply rather spend that money on a new SUV.
On the other hand, you have otherwise sensible folks on the left who parrot the nonsense in Sicko about how healthcare in single-payer environments is "free". They make themselves fodder for right-wing cannons who like to claim that liberals think publicly funded anything is like manna from heaven.
Healthcare ain't free, under the U.S. system or single-payer. The public always pays for it, see above. Always. The question is whether there is some fairness in the way that they pay for it. And, I might add, in how much of what they pay goes to healthcare and how much of it goes to pure waste: mountains of red tape, empires of paper pushers, armies of lawyers fighting other armies of lawyers.
Guess which country’s citizens pay the most for the waste, by far and away?