Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
And then yesterday, Kathleen Sebelius lied to congress about it.

Asked point blank "will the mandate deadline or open enrollment be moved back from march 31st," she replied "No sir" both times. I'm sure if confronted with that, she (or more likely, Jay Carney) will wiggle-worm their way around by saying effectively "the deadline didn't get extended, we just gave everybody another 2 year hardship waiver and removed the requirement to prove hardship. The deadline is still technically March 31st, 2014."
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

House Republicans pass legislation to force President to enforce all laws or be sued, bill on way to Senate.

So... I don't know what to think of this. On the one hand, cherry picking which laws to enforce sounds like we're just setting people up for trouble when the administration changes and it's clearly going to be a problem if a President decides that certain people are above the law. On the other, public opinion has made it very clear that the people in some areas just don't give a shit about pot and have passed laws saying so. On the other, other hand... I just don't give two shits about States Rights and think they hold back the nation as a whole.

Not that any of this matters. It'll never pass the Senate and I'm pretty sure the President can just veto it anyway.
 
Espy

Espy

jwhouk said:
The motive I'm talking about isn't a political statement. It's more a "reason why he committed suicide" thing.
Click to expand...
Well, the article you posted talks about it as a "Political Protest" (it's even in the headline) so suicide or no, it would be a weird political protest if no one knew.
 
jwhouk

jwhouk

The only angle I could see is that he (pilot or co-pilot) felt he would be ostracized at MA because he spoke up against this high-level guy, and he decided to take his "vengeance" out by suicide - and a couple hundred people with him.
 
Eriol

Eriol

Both of you, quit straw manning, and/or exaggerating way beyond the facts. Single-payer wouldn't HAVE any claims by individuals, because any payment would never be paid by an individual in the first place. So Gas's link is kind of... not applicable.

And Ash, taking a case of "insurance companies are assholes" is also not an argument that single-payer would necessarily address, or if it did, it would either create new, and also not solve all the other myriad problems in your system.


Calm down both of you!
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Eriol said:
Both of you, quit straw manning, and/or exaggerating way beyond the facts. Single-payer wouldn't HAVE any claims by individuals, because any payment would never be paid by an individual in the first place. So Gas's link is kind of... not applicable.

And Ash, taking a case of "insurance companies are assholes" is also not an argument that single-payer would necessarily address, or if it did, it would either create new, and also not solve all the other myriad problems in your system.


Calm down both of you!
Click to expand...
Unless the government takes direct control of all health care providers, somebody's still needing to get paid through a claims process. And notice that 2 year backlog is mostly for appeals for denied claims - IE, Medicare (the US Federal Govt) refusing to pay for services rendered. There's already been instances of ACA coverage plans refusing to cover some procedures, much to the surprise of those who thought it'd "fix everything" for them. So I think the "dying while waiting for a claims review" assertion is actually rather accurate.
 
Eriol

Eriol

GasBandit said:
Unless the government takes direct control of all health care providers, somebody's still needing to get paid through a claims process.
Click to expand...
In Canada, as screwed up as some other aspects are, this is straightforward: THERE IS NO CLAIMS PROCESS. When you go in for service, it is laid out ahead of time which procedures are covered, and which are not, for everybody, whether you're in a doctor's office, or the hospital. All medically necessary treatments are covered (nothing cosmetic, pretty much everything else). When in hospital, the personal TV in the room (if you request it) you pay for out-of-pocket, and pretty much nothing else. So the provider never bills the person in the first place, and the person pays immediately for anything not covered. There's no "appeal" or anything like that. Things are covered, or not. For all, always.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Eriol said:
In Canada, as screwed up as some other aspects are, this is straightforward: THERE IS NO CLAIMS PROCESS. When you go in for service, it is laid out ahead of time which procedures are covered, and which are not, for everybody, whether you're in a doctor's office, or the hospital. All medically necessary treatments are covered (nothing cosmetic, pretty much everything else). When in hospital, the personal TV in the room (if you request it) you pay for out-of-pocket, and pretty much nothing else. So the provider never bills the person in the first place, and the person pays immediately for anything not covered. There's no "appeal" or anything like that. Things are covered, or not. For all, always.
Click to expand...
How do you guys support people if their injuries/illness prevent them from working for a significant period of time?
 
Frank

Frank

AshburnerX said:
How do you guys support people if their injuries/illness prevent them from working for a significant period of time?
Click to expand...
I think most provinces have their own systems. In Alberta there are several programs such as AISH (Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped) or Alberta Works Barriers to Employment Income Support.
 
Eriol

Eriol

What Frank said, though anything resembling Welfare is a completely separate budget and implementation than things regarding Health Care, both provincially and federally. So be careful when widening the question. Employers also have standards for short and long-term disability, but I don't know how that's regulated, or if it is at all.

I know that for my own job that if I'm hit by a car and am out of work for two months, my job IS waiting for me when I get back, but my pay will have been less in the meantime through long-term disability. Pretty sure that's handled through a private insurance company though. But I'm way WAY outside of my "I know this" stuff about Canada at this point.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Eriol said:
Things are covered, or not. For all, always.
Click to expand...
That scares a lot of people south of the 49th. They've coined the term "death panels." Because they decide whether or not your grandma gets the treatment she needs to live, or just a painkiller to make the end more pleasant. And they've already come out and said in almost as many words that old people need to get comfy with the idea of dying.
 
Frank

Frank

Eriol said:
What Frank said, though anything resembling Welfare is a completely separate budget and implementation than things regarding Health Care, both provincially and federally. So be careful when widening the question. Employers also have standards for short and long-term disability, but I don't know how that's regulated, or if it is at all.

I know that for my own job that if I'm hit by a car and am out of work for two months, my job IS waiting for me when I get back, but my pay will have been less in the meantime through long-term disability. Pretty sure that's handled through a private insurance company though. But I'm way WAY outside of my "I know this" stuff about Canada at this point.
Click to expand...
Yeah, there's that too. I'm going to be well taken care if anything happens to me besides PTSD (and that's finally changing).
 
Eriol

Eriol

GasBandit said:
That scares a lot of people south of the 49th. They've coined the term "death panels." Because they decide whether or not your grandma gets the treatment she needs to live, or just a painkiller to make the end more pleasant. And they've already come out and said in almost as many words that old people need to get comfy with the idea of dying.
Click to expand...
Procedure or not, not patient or not. Boob jobs are not covered. Hip replacements are. Whatever screwed up stuff you guys are thinking of, who knows. I've heard of it happening that if somebody is 85+ that their DOCTOR will recommend against things as it has a higher chance of killing them than helping them, or saying "it's not better" for things like joint (knee) replacement due to the amount of time to recover, but that's up to the doctor and the patient, not anybody else.

There is no policy that I or anybody else in Canada has heard of that says "we don't do X Y or Z because they're too old, or whatever." It's across the board for everybody for if something is medically necessary or not.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Eriol said:
Procedure or not, not patient or not. Boob jobs are not covered. Hip replacements are. Whatever screwed up stuff you guys are thinking of, who knows. I've heard of it happening that if somebody is 85+ that their DOCTOR will recommend against things as it has a higher chance of killing them than helping them, or saying "it's not better" for things like joint (knee) replacement due to the amount of time to recover, but that's up to the doctor and the patient, not anybody else.

There is no policy that I or anybody else in Canada has heard of that says "we don't do X Y or Z because they're too old, or whatever." It's across the board for everybody for if something is medically necessary or not.
Click to expand...
Canada may not, but America will, as we have 10 times the population to cover. There's been tacit admissions that rationing will be necessary to control costs under single payer. 100 years old and need a pacemaker? Too expensive given your age. Have a painkiller and wait to die.
 
Covar

Covar

GasBandit said:
Canada may not, but America will, as we have 10 times the population to cover. There's been tacit admissions that rationing will be necessary to control costs under single payer. 100 years old and need a pacemaker? Too expensive given your age. Have a painkiller and wait to die.
Click to expand...
Why gas surely you must be exaggerating and reading into things! There's no way something like that would have been said by a high ranking politician and proponent of the ACA.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
There's been tacit admissions that rationing will be necessary to control costs under single payer. 100 years old and need a pacemaker? Too expensive given your age. Have a painkiller and wait to die.
Click to expand...
Don't worry, Gas. I'm sure some private company will step in and take up the slack.


--Patrick
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Covar said:
Why gas surely you must be exaggerating and reading into things! There's no way something like that would have been said by a high ranking politician and proponent of the ACA.
Click to expand...
Why Covar, you old so-and-so. Surely this is genuine naivete and not a tissue-thin setup to prompt me into posting the following video.

 
tegid

tegid

GasBandit said:
Canada may not, but America will, as we have 10 times the population to cover. There's been tacit admissions that rationing will be necessary to control costs under single payer. 100 years old and need a pacemaker? Too expensive given your age. Have a painkiller and wait to die.
Click to expand...
You also have 10 times the GDP, don't you? I'm actually not sure there is no merit to the idea, but in any case it's obvious that when you need to ration you just cover less things. Just look to the countries that have single payer already, that's what they do... Maybe they can't use these as examples because socialism :p
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
tegid said:
You also have 10 times the GDP, don't you? I'm actually not sure there is no merit to the idea, but in any case it's obvious that when you need to ration you just cover less things. Just look to the countries that have single payer already, that's what they do... Maybe they can't use these as examples because socialism :p
Click to expand...
Also because cancer survival rates. Also because, let's face it, the US is already covering Canada and Europe's defense budget - who's going to cover ours so we can not have to have a military either? And the expenses (and the bureaucracy) don't scale linearly. And because it's now apparent that, even given 3 years to work on it, our government can't even make a website that works, much less a health care system.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top