Healthcare: There is no good reason why our healthcare dilemma should be political, yet it is...

[initforme]

True pro lifers support zero...ZERO....higher rates for pre existing conditions otherwise they are anti american fakes....case closed

 

[usmbguest5318]

​

Say what you will about O-care, Graham-Cassidy, and all the rest of the elements of healthcare in the U.S. The simple fact is that we citizens have allowed to become political what really should not at all be political.

The solution to healthcare should be very simple:

• To health insurers --> Cover everything or don't offer insurance.
• To providers --> Charge prices people can pay or do something else for a living.
• To care recipients --> Let professionals do their jobs and stop looking for ways to find fault when they are doing the best they can to heal your sick ass.

There are some 280M voting age adults in the U.S. and why they have allowed insurance companies to co-opt and control the practice and delivery of healthcare in this country is, frankly, a travesty. If health insurers cannot profitably insure people without all the "strings attached," fine, let them exist the health insurance business. What will happen when they do? Providers will be left with two choices: lower their fees or provide services only to people who can afford the high fees. The latter will mean a lot of health care providers will have to find other forms of employment because there just aren't enough rich folks to sustain the quantity of highly paid medical professionals and medical industry device producers that are currently in existence. Now may sound horrible, but it's really not. The vast majority of those people are multitalented; there are other gainful means of employment they can pursue.

Now why do I say the above? Because it's absurd that we spend so much more than any other nation on Earth and yet our health outcomes aren't any better.

​

What screws the complaint about the system is that 80 percent of the people actually make little decisions about their HC. It is done for them through their employment. So even though they pay out the nose for inferior product they are happy in their little world. And, people don't usually like change. Change is hard.

I am for a Medicare type plan 80/20. Those with preconditions and who use the system more pay more, that would seem fair. But no matter what anyone pays it should not bankrupt them. Nor should it prevent healthcare workers from making a livable wage.

no matter what anyone pays it should not bankrupt them. Nor should it prevent healthcare workers from making a livable wage.

Yes.

 

[Dragonlady]

​

Say what you will about O-care, Graham-Cassidy, and all the rest of the elements of healthcare in the U.S. The simple fact is that we citizens have allowed to become political what really should not at all be political.

The solution to healthcare should be very simple:

• To health insurers --> Cover everything or don't offer insurance.
• To providers --> Charge prices people can pay or do something else for a living.
• To care recipients --> Let professionals do their jobs and stop looking for ways to find fault when they are doing the best they can to heal your sick ass.

There are some 280M voting age adults in the U.S. and why they have allowed insurance companies to co-opt and control the practice and delivery of healthcare in this country is, frankly, a travesty. If health insurers cannot profitably insure people without all the "strings attached," fine, let them exist the health insurance business. What will happen when they do? Providers will be left with two choices: lower their fees or provide services only to people who can afford the high fees. The latter will mean a lot of health care providers will have to find other forms of employment because there just aren't enough rich folks to sustain the quantity of highly paid medical professionals and medical industry device producers that are currently in existence. Now may sound horrible, but it's really not. The vast majority of those people are multitalented; there are other gainful means of employment they can pursue.

Now why do I say the above? Because it's absurd that we spend so much more than any other nation on Earth and yet our health outcomes aren't any better.

​

Why wouldn't it be political...there is money and power involved.

And the rest of the countries with national healthcare....their systems are collapsing, they can't afford them.

That's total bullshit. The US system is the one that's collapsing because it doesn't provide for all of its citizens and too much money is being syphoned off in administration and profits for the insurance companies and drug companies which ration care.

No system is perfect. All have issues. Everyone wants healthcare which is good, cheap and fast but you can't have all three. You can have two of those three but not all of them.

Single payer countries have essentially opted for good and cheap. It's not fast but with triage, those who need immediate care get it, and those who can wait, do.

Americans have gone for good and fast but it's not cheap, and you've essentially blocked a large chunk of your population from any access whatsoever except emergency care. Others have limits to their access with caps on coverage. If your problem is to expensive, tough on you. Only the very wealthy can take advantage to the best American health care has to offer.

How they've managed to sell these ideas to the general population is beyond me. But I guess Republican dumbing down of the education system and corporate ownership of all media does have its benefits for the conglomerate.

 

[usmbguest5318]

​

Say what you will about O-care, Graham-Cassidy, and all the rest of the elements of healthcare in the U.S. The simple fact is that we citizens have allowed to become political what really should not at all be political.

The solution to healthcare should be very simple:

• To health insurers --> Cover everything or don't offer insurance.
• To providers --> Charge prices people can pay or do something else for a living.
• To care recipients --> Let professionals do their jobs and stop looking for ways to find fault when they are doing the best they can to heal your sick ass.

There are some 280M voting age adults in the U.S. and why they have allowed insurance companies to co-opt and control the practice and delivery of healthcare in this country is, frankly, a travesty. If health insurers cannot profitably insure people without all the "strings attached," fine, let them exist the health insurance business. What will happen when they do? Providers will be left with two choices: lower their fees or provide services only to people who can afford the high fees. The latter will mean a lot of health care providers will have to find other forms of employment because there just aren't enough rich folks to sustain the quantity of highly paid medical professionals and medical industry device producers that are currently in existence. Now may sound horrible, but it's really not. The vast majority of those people are multitalented; there are other gainful means of employment they can pursue.

Now why do I say the above? Because it's absurd that we spend so much more than any other nation on Earth and yet our health outcomes aren't any better.

​

Why wouldn't it be political...there is money and power involved.

And the rest of the countries with national healthcare....their systems are collapsing, they can't afford them.

That's total bullshit. The US system is the one that's collapsing because it doesn't provide for all of its citizens and too much money is being syphoned off in administration and profits for the insurance companies and drug companies which ration care.

No system is perfect. All have issues. Everyone wants healthcare which is good, cheap and fast but you can't have all three. You can have two of those three but not all of them.

Single payer countries have essentially opted for good and cheap. It's not fast but with triage, those who need immediate care get it, and those who can wait, do.

Americans have gone for good and fast but it's not cheap, and you've essentially blocked a large chunk of your population from any access whatsoever except emergency care. Others have limits to their access with caps on coverage. If your problem is to expensive, tough on you. Only the very wealthy can take advantage to the best American health care has to offer.

How they've managed to sell these ideas to the general population is beyond me. But I guess Republican dumbing down of the education system and corporate ownership of all media does have its benefits for the conglomerate.

Americans have gone for good and fast but it's not cheap

I don't think anyone is looking for flat-out cheap (though nobody'll complain about paying less), but there's plenty we do in the areas of administrative processing, prescription drug pricing and basic practicality/efficacy that would notably lower the costs:

• Administrative -- When my wife was battling cancer and seeing doctors and getting treatments "left and right," the statements we'd get that explained what the insurance company had paid for were effectively useless. To us, she went to the doctor.
  
  The doctor or other professional treated her or performed a procedure. They gave her some medications. The damn statements we got telling us that had all sorts of things that time and time again, we asked ourselves "WTF is that?" That's just nuts. When the doctor says, "we're going to do a transfusion," and then the insurer sends a statement, I want to see "transfusion." I don't need to see thirty odd things that are all the detailed procedures doctors, nurses and techs did to get the transfusion done.
  
  And here's the key to that foolishness: it doesn't need to be that way. In principle, all those little procedures and gizmos are no different than is a manufacturer's "bill of materials." Manufacturing systems allow users to "pick" what one might call an assembly (or subassembly) and the system automatically knows "A, B, C, D, E, etc." are the component parts and activities associated with that assembly The user merely says customer A bought assembly "123" and assigns it to the customer's invoice, adding "one-off" additional items -- maybe a few hours of extra labor or an odd item here or there -- which is then sent electronically and automatically to the paying customer. Depending on the customer's requirements, their bill can be at the assembly level or the "bill of materials" level. There is no reason the same concept cannot be applied to medical services...and yet, based on the statements we received, it is not.
  
  (Maybe things have changed. I don't know because other than routine visits, dental cleaning, etc., I and my kids haven't since my wife's passing over a decade ago needed medical care. The closest I've come is about five years back reaching the point where I needed contacts. With any luck, I'll be like my dad and not need a damn thing until I'm 88.)
• Prescription drugs -- There is little that gals me more than U.S. patients effectively subsidize prescription drugs for patients in other counties. Much of what is keeping drug prices high isn't or should not be political.
  • We've been doing so since at least the 1970s! So when people start on about O-care, to the extent any of their "price bitching" pertains to the cost of meds, O-care doesn't have a damn thing to do with it. O-care didn't fix this problem, and for not fixing it, I'm fine with one griping. But O-care is not the source of this aspect of the high medication costs we incur as Americans.
  • The cost paid for statins in the U.S. for people younger than 65 years, who were insured by private companies, was approximately 400% higher than comparable costs paid by the government in the U.K.
    
  • We now have medications to fix things that probably don't need fixing.
    
    Acid reflux is the thing that comes to mind for me. Ever since whoever it was came out with and advertised the hell out of their acid reflux medication, every time someone has heartburn they think they have acid-f*cking-reflux. People have probably had acid reflux since "forever." What did they do about it? They changed their diet or drank some vinegar or took some baking soda. What'd that cost? Next to nothing.
    
    Depression is another thing that strikes me that way. What remedy did my grandmother use for depression? She went shopping or threw a party. LOL It worked like a charm. "Back in the day" people had all sorts of solutions for depression. People don't need Prozac; they need to get out of the house or get laid. Between 1999 and 2010, the suicide rate for U.S. adults between the ages of 35 and 64 jumped a full 28 percent. Now, tell me please why the hell are people killing themselves more yet, in addition to all the "old school" remedies, we also have all these new meds that are supposed to "cure" depression?
    
    The point of my "rant" on the meds is that we are paying for the development of the damn things and we're not realizing any notable benefit from it.
  • 5 Reasons Prescription Drug Prices Are So High in the U.S.
    
  • Other examples (click on the images to access more details):
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Efficacy/practicality -- For some reason we Americans feel like we need a specialist for for "everything" or "the best" or "latest" this or that, be it a doctor, a machine or a medication. Quite often, one just doesn't. From watching my parents get old and need increasing levels of care, it's become very clear to me that a better doctor isn't going to help. With my wife, the same was so; she was doing to die when she died no matter what doctors or devices or regimens were tried. Does a person really need to live into their 90s if all they are is breathing, but not really living -- they have dementia, they can't move about on their own, they may be incontinent, etc?
    
    We're at the point where we use our healthcare system to make too many individuals' lives last far longer than they "naturally" would, and yet our overall life expectancy isn't notably longer than is that of people in far less-costly-healthcare nations. Part of that is because we're using our healthcare system for stuff it really shouldn't be used for.

Only the very wealthy can take advantage to the best American health care has to offer.

Yes, in some ways that's somewhat so. If one wants to look young and have perfect teeth, for example, one needs some "coin" to make that happen. If one is of a mind to die dirt poor, regardless of how wealthy one started out, one can use the healthcare system to live damn near indefinitely, but that takes a hell of a lot of money. On the other hand, if one is content to live a natural and healthy lifestyle, aside from accidents and unusual circumstances, one doesn't need much intervention from the healthcare system.

One need only look at the top things that make one healthier don't require healthcare of any sort. And yet how many people live a lifestyle that keeps them fit? There's no reason not to be fit and healthy at any age, and yet in the U.S. we have one of the most preventable epidemics known to man: obesity. Quite simply, everyone's health, thus lack of need for healthcare, would be much better if most people it important to be fit when they are young and be a MILF/DILF when they are over 50. All one has to do to make that happen is eat right and exercise, and one of those things inexpensive and the other is free.

 

[Dragonlady]

​

Say what you will about O-care, Graham-Cassidy, and all the rest of the elements of healthcare in the U.S. The simple fact is that we citizens have allowed to become political what really should not at all be political.

The solution to healthcare should be very simple:

• To health insurers --> Cover everything or don't offer insurance.
• To providers --> Charge prices people can pay or do something else for a living.
• To care recipients --> Let professionals do their jobs and stop looking for ways to find fault when they are doing the best they can to heal your sick ass.

There are some 280M voting age adults in the U.S. and why they have allowed insurance companies to co-opt and control the practice and delivery of healthcare in this country is, frankly, a travesty. If health insurers cannot profitably insure people without all the "strings attached," fine, let them exist the health insurance business. What will happen when they do? Providers will be left with two choices: lower their fees or provide services only to people who can afford the high fees. The latter will mean a lot of health care providers will have to find other forms of employment because there just aren't enough rich folks to sustain the quantity of highly paid medical professionals and medical industry device producers that are currently in existence. Now may sound horrible, but it's really not. The vast majority of those people are multitalented; there are other gainful means of employment they can pursue.

Now why do I say the above? Because it's absurd that we spend so much more than any other nation on Earth and yet our health outcomes aren't any better.

​

Why wouldn't it be political...there is money and power involved.

And the rest of the countries with national healthcare....their systems are collapsing, they can't afford them.

That's total bullshit. The US system is the one that's collapsing because it doesn't provide for all of its citizens and too much money is being syphoned off in administration and profits for the insurance companies and drug companies which ration care.

No system is perfect. All have issues. Everyone wants healthcare which is good, cheap and fast but you can't have all three. You can have two of those three but not all of them.

Single payer countries have essentially opted for good and cheap. It's not fast but with triage, those who need immediate care get it, and those who can wait, do.

Americans have gone for good and fast but it's not cheap, and you've essentially blocked a large chunk of your population from any access whatsoever except emergency care. Others have limits to their access with caps on coverage. If your problem is to expensive, tough on you. Only the very wealthy can take advantage to the best American health care has to offer.

How they've managed to sell these ideas to the general population is beyond me. But I guess Republican dumbing down of the education system and corporate ownership of all media does have its benefits for the conglomerate.

Americans have gone for good and fast but it's not cheap

I don't think anyone is looking for flat-out cheap (though nobody'll complain about paying less), but there's plenty we do in the areas of administrative processing, prescription drug pricing and basic practicality/efficacy that would notably lower the costs:

• Administrative -- When my wife was battling cancer and seeing doctors and getting treatments "left and right," the statements we'd get that explained what the insurance company had paid for were effectively useless. To us, she went to the doctor.
  
  The doctor or other professional treated her or performed a procedure. They gave her some medications. The damn statements we got telling us that had all sorts of things that time and time again, we asked ourselves "WTF is that?" That's just nuts. When the doctor says, "we're going to do a transfusion," and then the insurer sends a statement, I want to see "transfusion." I don't need to see thirty odd things that are all the detailed procedures doctors, nurses and techs did to get the transfusion done.
  
  And here's the key to that foolishness: it doesn't need to be that way. In principle, all those little procedures and gizmos are no different than is a manufacturer's "bill of materials." Manufacturing systems allow users to "pick" what one might call an assembly (or subassembly) and the system automatically knows "A, B, C, D, E, etc." are the component parts and activities associated with that assembly The user merely says customer A bought assembly "123" and assigns it to the customer's invoice, adding "one-off" additional items -- maybe a few hours of extra labor or an odd item here or there -- which is then sent electronically and automatically to the paying customer. Depending on the customer's requirements, their bill can be at the assembly level or the "bill of materials" level. There is no reason the same concept cannot be applied to medical services...and yet, based on the statements we received, it is not.
  
  (Maybe things have changed. I don't know because other than routine visits, dental cleaning, etc., I and my kids haven't since my wife's passing over a decade ago needed medical care. The closest I've come is about five years back reaching the point where I needed contacts. With any luck, I'll be like my dad and not need a damn thing until I'm 88.)
• Prescription drugs -- There is little that gals me more than U.S. patients effectively subsidize prescription drugs for patients in other counties. Much of what is keeping drug prices high isn't or should not be political.
  • We've been doing so since at least the 1970s! So when people start on about O-care, to the extent any of their "price bitching" pertains to the cost of meds, O-care doesn't have a damn thing to do with it. O-care didn't fix this problem, and for not fixing it, I'm fine with one griping. But O-care is not the source of this aspect of the high medication costs we incur as Americans.
  • The cost paid for statins in the U.S. for people younger than 65 years, who were insured by private companies, was approximately 400% higher than comparable costs paid by the government in the U.K.
    
  • We now have medications to fix things that probably don't need fixing.
    
    Acid reflux is the thing that comes to mind for me. Ever since whoever it was came out with and advertised the hell out of their acid reflux medication, every time someone has heartburn they think they have acid-f*cking-reflux. People have probably had acid reflux since "forever." What did they do about it? They changed their diet or drank some vinegar or took some baking soda. What'd that cost? Next to nothing.
    
    Depression is another thing that strikes me that way. What remedy did my grandmother use for depression? She went shopping or threw a party. LOL It worked like a charm. "Back in the day" people had all sorts of solutions for depression. People don't need Prozac; they need to get out of the house or get laid. Between 1999 and 2010, the suicide rate for U.S. adults between the ages of 35 and 64 jumped a full 28 percent. Now, tell me please why the hell are people killing themselves more yet, in addition to all the "old school" remedies, we also have all these new meds that are supposed to "cure" depression?
    
    The point of my "rant" on the meds is that we are paying for the development of the damn things and we're not realizing any notable benefit from it.
  • 5 Reasons Prescription Drug Prices Are So High in the U.S.
    
  • Other examples (click on the images to access more details):
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Efficacy/practicality -- For some reason we Americans feel like we need a specialist for for "everything" or "the best" or "latest" this or that, be it a doctor, a machine or a medication. Quite often, one just doesn't. From watching my parents get old and need increasing levels of care, it's become very clear to me that a better doctor isn't going to help. With my wife, the same was so; she was doing to die when she died no matter what doctors or devices or regimens were tried. Does a person really need to live into their 90s if all they are is breathing, but not really living -- they have dementia, they can't move about on their own, they may be incontinent, etc?
    
    We're at the point where we use our healthcare system to make too many individuals' lives last far longer than they "naturally" would, and yet our overall life expectancy isn't notably longer than is that of people in far less-costly-healthcare nations. Part of that is because we're using our healthcare system for stuff it really shouldn't be used for.

Only the very wealthy can take advantage to the best American health care has to offer.

Yes, in some ways that's somewhat so. If one wants to look young and have perfect teeth, for example, one needs some "coin" to make that happen. If one is of a mind to die dirt poor, regardless of how wealthy one started out, one can use the healthcare system to live damn near indefinitely, but that takes a hell of a lot of money. On the other hand, if one is content to live a natural and healthy lifestyle, aside from accidents and unusual circumstances, one doesn't need much intervention from the healthcare system.

One need only look at the top things that make one healthier don't require healthcare of any sort. And yet how many people live a lifestyle that keeps them fit? There's no reason not to be fit and healthy at any age, and yet in the U.S. we have one of the most preventable epidemics known to man: obesity. Quite simply, everyone's health, thus lack of need for healthcare, would be much better if most people it important to be fit when they are young and be a MILF/DILF when they are over 50. All one has to do to make that happen is eat right and exercise, and one of those things inexpensive and the other is free.

A LOT of the obesity problem in North America is due to eating highly processed "convenience foods" or fast foods. Processing removes both flavour and nutrients. To improve flavour, salt, sugar and fats are added. Chemical preservatives are added which may impede the way your body digests the food.

And don't get me started on drinking pop. Yes I love me some Diet Coke, but I gave up drinking pop years ago. Flavoured sugar water. And diet drinks are even worse. A bottle of pop was a treat when I was growing up. Now it's a staple.

Just making a change to whole, unprocessed foods and cooking them yourself from scratch, will reduce your weight. It reduces the amount of salt, sugar and fat in your foods too, or at least lets you control them. But with two working parents, and kids involved in multiple activities, who has time?

But the biggest change you can make is to "eat clean". Buy organic, cook from scratch, nothing preprepared, processed or canned. The weight will fall off, even without exercise. I know, I've done it.

I'm 68 years old. I eat only what I cook from scratch. I have no major health problems but arthritis, and allergies to pollens and dust, and I'm about 10 pounds heavier than I was when I was 18, and modelling part time.

I had a stress induced heart attack a few years ago but no damage to the heart. The only drugs in my medicine chest are aspirin, and allergy drugs.

I don't have high blood pressure, diabetes or high cholesterol. I have lunch with friends a couple of times a week but otherwise everything I eat is something I prepared. Since I retired, I'm even doing my own canning and preserving.

Supermarkets and food conglomerates are making North American unhealthy. And big pharma and the industrial medical complex is profiting off it.

The interests of both Big Food and Big Medicine are too entrenched. I don't see any way of changing it.

 

[usmbguest5318]

The interests of both Big Food and Big Medicine are too entrenched. I don't see any way of changing it.

They don't need to be changed. All that needs to change is each individual's eating habits, and that doesn't really have anything to with the intertwining of "Big Food" and "Big Medicine."

 

[Dragonlady]

The interests of both Big Food and Big Medicine are too entrenched. I don't see any way of changing it.

They don't need to be changed. All that needs to change is each individual's eating habits, and that doesn't really have anything to with the intertwining of "Big Food" and "Big Medicine."

Schools used to teach cooking, nutrition and healthy eating in Home Ec classes. Those are long gone. Children learn to eat from their parents. If your parents didn't keep a kitchen garden or make their food from scratch, you won't either.

Lots of people don't cook at all and have take out all of the time. They know how to cook and are unlikely to teach their children about cooking or nutrition.

My neighbour has an assortment of diet related health problems. He's pre-diabetic, gets heartburn regularly, and suffers from constipation. He has coffee for breakfast. Cheap luncheon meat sandwiches for lunch, and throws a can of mushroom soup over pasta and calls that dinner. He sees no relationship between his health problems and his diet.

I've heard it said that today's children are likely to be the first generation that doesn't live longer than its parents because they're not being taught good eating habits.

I have a freezer full of frozen dinners - all stuff I've made myself from scratch, freezing the leftovers. I have friends who tell me they wouldn't go to all that bother just for themselves.

People bitched like hell about Michelle Obama's healthy school lunch program. Kids don't want to eat healthy. Let them eat what they want. Our school cafeteria didn't serve fries or hamburgers. They made us eat proper nutritional foods like fruit and salad at school. I can remember when our town got its first supermarket. Today my little town has no green grocer, no butcher shop, just two supermarkets and a small farmers market two days a week.

Big food had taken over. And not for the better.

 

[imawhosure]

​

Say what you will about O-care, Graham-Cassidy, and all the rest of the elements of healthcare in the U.S. The simple fact is that we citizens have allowed to become political what really should not at all be political.

The solution to healthcare should be very simple:

• To health insurers --> Cover everything or don't offer insurance.
• To providers --> Charge prices people can pay or do something else for a living.
• To care recipients --> Let professionals do their jobs and stop looking for ways to find fault when they are doing the best they can to heal your sick ass.

There are some 280M voting age adults in the U.S. and why they have allowed insurance companies to co-opt and control the practice and delivery of healthcare in this country is, frankly, a travesty. If health insurers cannot profitably insure people without all the "strings attached," fine, let them exist the health insurance business. What will happen when they do? Providers will be left with two choices: lower their fees or provide services only to people who can afford the high fees. The latter will mean a lot of health care providers will have to find other forms of employment because there just aren't enough rich folks to sustain the quantity of highly paid medical professionals and medical industry device producers that are currently in existence. Now may sound horrible, but it's really not. The vast majority of those people are multitalented; there are other gainful means of employment they can pursue.

Now why do I say the above? Because it's absurd that we spend so much more than any other nation on Earth and yet our health outcomes aren't any better.

​

OK, OK, but one question----->why do 53000 Canadians a year come here for healthcare, and none of us go there? If you answer that logically, we can have a conversation-)

By the way, I have a feeling you know EXACTLY why our longevity is rated where it is........just like I do, but I am gonna let you put on your superman outfit and defend your nonsense before I crush your argument-)

 

[Old Rocks]

Under the US Constitution we recognize health care as a PRIVATE issue, not a Right and definitely not a Governmental issue. If you prefer Government healthcare, I suggest moving to Europe.

As for the private insurance issue- Caveat Emptor.

Asshole, you are a liar. Show me where it says Healthcare is a private issue. Here is a link to the US Constitution;

Constitution of the United States - We the People

 

[Old Rocks]

Health care is political because ethical governments spend public money on providing it. For all its size and wealth, the USA is behind European Union countries because capitalist interests control the Federal Government and the politicians prefer to wash their hands of the responsibility and leave it up to the free market and profit motive to do the job.

federal government regulating healthcare is also unconstitutional here. The biggest reason why and you fail to mention it

(Preamble)
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Constitution of the United States - We the People

Promote the general welfare. Seems that would include healthcare.

 

[Old Rocks]

​

Say what you will about O-care, Graham-Cassidy, and all the rest of the elements of healthcare in the U.S. The simple fact is that we citizens have allowed to become political what really should not at all be political.

The solution to healthcare should be very simple:

• To health insurers --> Cover everything or don't offer insurance.
• To providers --> Charge prices people can pay or do something else for a living.
• To care recipients --> Let professionals do their jobs and stop looking for ways to find fault when they are doing the best they can to heal your sick ass.

There are some 280M voting age adults in the U.S. and why they have allowed insurance companies to co-opt and control the practice and delivery of healthcare in this country is, frankly, a travesty. If health insurers cannot profitably insure people without all the "strings attached," fine, let them exist the health insurance business. What will happen when they do? Providers will be left with two choices: lower their fees or provide services only to people who can afford the high fees. The latter will mean a lot of health care providers will have to find other forms of employment because there just aren't enough rich folks to sustain the quantity of highly paid medical professionals and medical industry device producers that are currently in existence. Now may sound horrible, but it's really not. The vast majority of those people are multitalented; there are other gainful means of employment they can pursue.

Now why do I say the above? Because it's absurd that we spend so much more than any other nation on Earth and yet our health outcomes aren't any better.

​

OK, OK, but one question----->why do 53000 Canadians a year come here for healthcare, and none of us go there? If you answer that logically, we can have a conversation-)

By the way, I have a feeling you know EXACTLY why our longevity is rated where it is........just like I do, but I am gonna let you put on your superman outfit and defend your nonsense before I crush your argument-)

Link?

 

[Dragonlady]

​

Say what you will about O-care, Graham-Cassidy, and all the rest of the elements of healthcare in the U.S. The simple fact is that we citizens have allowed to become political what really should not at all be political.

The solution to healthcare should be very simple:

• To health insurers --> Cover everything or don't offer insurance.
• To providers --> Charge prices people can pay or do something else for a living.
• To care recipients --> Let professionals do their jobs and stop looking for ways to find fault when they are doing the best they can to heal your sick ass.

There are some 280M voting age adults in the U.S. and why they have allowed insurance companies to co-opt and control the practice and delivery of healthcare in this country is, frankly, a travesty. If health insurers cannot profitably insure people without all the "strings attached," fine, let them exist the health insurance business. What will happen when they do? Providers will be left with two choices: lower their fees or provide services only to people who can afford the high fees. The latter will mean a lot of health care providers will have to find other forms of employment because there just aren't enough rich folks to sustain the quantity of highly paid medical professionals and medical industry device producers that are currently in existence. Now may sound horrible, but it's really not. The vast majority of those people are multitalented; there are other gainful means of employment they can pursue.

Now why do I say the above? Because it's absurd that we spend so much more than any other nation on Earth and yet our health outcomes aren't any better.

​

OK, OK, but one question----->why do 53000 Canadians a year come here for healthcare, and none of us go there? If you answer that logically, we can have a conversation-)

By the way, I have a feeling you know EXACTLY why our longevity is rated where it is........just like I do, but I am gonna let you put on your superman outfit and defend your nonsense before I crush your argument-)

53,000 Canadians don't go to the US for healthcare. That's a total fiction promulgated by the Fraser Institute who want to end the Canada Health Act, and perpetuated by the US healthcare establishment who don't want single payer in the US. Their methodology is very faulty and their figures aren't correct.

The actual number is closer to 2500 Canadians seek healthcare in the US, and the vast majority of them are in the US on business or vacation when they get sick. This is based of US hospital admissions records. I personally know 1 person in my entire life who went for treatment in the US - he had terminal cancer and he is wealthy. Another friend looked into experimental cancer treatment for her daughter but the treatment had only been tried on 6 patients and 3 of them died during treatment. They decided to wait for something with a better survival rate.

Lots of Americans do try to come to Canada for healthcare because it's cheaper but our hospitals won't take them unless it's an emergency. Medical tourism is discouraged in a country where healthcare is paid for with tax payer dollars and we have waiting lists for elective surgery. Some hospitals started selling services to non-Canadians and the immediate taxpayer revolt shut that idea right down. Why should you be able to buy a new hip when my taxes built the hospital you're getting it from and I have to wait?

 

[usmbguest5318]

The interests of both Big Food and Big Medicine are too entrenched. I don't see any way of changing it.

They don't need to be changed. All that needs to change is each individual's eating habits, and that doesn't really have anything to with the intertwining of "Big Food" and "Big Medicine."

Schools used to teach cooking, nutrition and healthy eating in Home Ec classes. Those are long gone. Children learn to eat from their parents. If your parents didn't keep a kitchen garden or make their food from scratch, you won't either.

Lots of people don't cook at all and have take out all of the time. They know how to cook and are unlikely to teach their children about cooking or nutrition.

My neighbour has an assortment of diet related health problems. He's pre-diabetic, gets heartburn regularly, and suffers from constipation. He has coffee for breakfast. Cheap luncheon meat sandwiches for lunch, and throws a can of mushroom soup over pasta and calls that dinner. He sees no relationship between his health problems and his diet.

I've heard it said that today's children are likely to be the first generation that doesn't live longer than its parents because they're not being taught good eating habits.

I have a freezer full of frozen dinners - all stuff I've made myself from scratch, freezing the leftovers. I have friends who tell me they wouldn't go to all that bother just for themselves.

People bitched like hell about Michelle Obama's healthy school lunch program. Kids don't want to eat healthy. Let them eat what they want. Our school cafeteria didn't serve fries or hamburgers. They made us eat proper nutritional foods like fruit and salad at school. I can remember when our town got its first supermarket. Today my little town has no green grocer, no butcher shop, just two supermarkets and a small farmers market two days a week.

Big food had taken over. And not for the better.

Lots of people don't cook at all and have take out all of the time.

That's not a reason why one cannot eat healthily. Eating/taking out is, however, a reason why eating healthily can be somewhat more expensive, in comparison to eating in, to do.

I'm sure taking a cooking class would be helpful in some ways, one doesn't need to do so to eat healthily and know what foods and preparation methods are more and less healthy to eat. Everything any "regular" person could want/need to know about nutrition and cooking is on the Internet. If there's one thing young people, kids, know how to do, it's use the Internet. The way I see it, if one can use the WWW to find "BS," one can use it to find substantive information that one can actually use to boost one's health, and there is no excuse for not doing so.

Cooking just isn't that hard if one's cooking objective is to provide reasonably tasty and healthily nutritious meal. Though I can cook the "old school" way, I learned "new school" cooking from my kids who never took a cooking class. My oldest introduced me to microwave cooking, and as it turns out, all sorts of things I'd once have cooked in a skillet or in the oven come out really well when microwave cooked and those foods are healthier from the start because one need not use oils and fats to cook in a microwave oven (MWO).

What have I learned -- by the "try it and see" method -- to cook that way?

• Any bonefish, though I tend to go for swordfish, salmon, halibut and flounder/sole most of the time because they are the fish I like most.
• Pork tenderloin, steaks, chicken breasts and thighs, bacon, sausage
• Any vegetable I'm likely to eat for "functional eating" purposes
• Eggs, oatmeal, grits, cream of wheat
• Anything I'd boil or steam

A typical microwave meal for me might be:

• salmon filet -- season with S+P and squeeze some lemon juice in it.
• broccoli -- season with Old Bay and a bit of butter. (drizzle with balsamic vinegar after cooking)
• sweet potato, sliced when raw -- season with S+P, pinch of nutmeg and pinch of cinnamon, maybe an herb (thyme, marjoram, sage or rosemary, whichever "hits" me at the time)

Arrange all that on a plate, put it into the MWO, set the MWO for eight to ten minutes (depending on the size of the salmon filet) at half power and press start. Open a bottle of wine and pour a glass and let it sit while the food cooks. When cooking is done, wait a minute and a half then commence eating.

The basic technique described above is what I use for pretty much any meal I cook in the MWO. About all that varies is the time. I always go with half-power so I can check intermittently to see whether I need to add or subtract a few seconds/minutes. After cooking a few meals in the MWO, one pretty much "get it" and can cook all sorts of things that way. (E.g, cooking pork...season with S+P (I go kinda heavy on the P), slice Granny Smith apple, lay the slices on/aside the pork and squeeze lemon or lime juice over them and the pork.)

What's the "trick" to microwave cooking? One needs to like the innate flavor of the item one cooks in the MWO because the flavor that results from "browning" food isn't going to be there. I suppose one can make sauces and whatnot in the MWO too, but if healthy eating is the goal, I don't know why one would. Plain yogurt seasoned with "whatever one likes" (diced veggies, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, balsamic vinegar, herbs, etc.) is a healthy sauce and there's no need to do anything other than put it on the food. There's nothing to cook.

Of course, like anyone, I enjoy "brown" food. "Brown food tastes good." That said, just to nourish my body -- what I call "functional eating" -- I don't have to have "gourmet grade" technique-created flavor; the flavor of the food itself is quite enough. Seeing as most of the eating I do, I suspect that most people do, is functional, MWO cooking is just fine, especially if I'm cooking for just myself.

P.S.

My kid didn't so much teach me to cook in the MWO as I just saw him doing it and wondered what the food tasted like cooked that way. I tried what he'd cooked and it was slammin' good! I thought if my adolescent child can make a meal that tastes that good in ten minutes, anyone can cook a decent tasting healthy meal in a MWO. (The only reason my kid was cooking that way was because he didn't want to wash dishes when he was done eating.)​

Schools used to teach cooking, nutrition and healthy eating in Home Ec classes. Those are long gone.

I cannot say what all schools or school systems do. I'm aware that schools that consider themselves as primarily college preparatory may not have the sorts of courses you mentioned.

I don't have a lot of direct experience with public school curricula, so I just did a quick "look see" for some of the public school systems in my area and the main U.S. places I vacation. Each of the ones I looked at offers a host of home economics classes.

• Fairfax County, VA
• DC Public Schools
• Montgomery County, MD
• Prince George's County, MD
• Oak Bluffs, MA
• Eagle County, CO

If I were to guess, I'd say that it's more likely that many kids choose not to, or their parents don't let them, or school curricula/schedules are structured so they cannot take home-ec classes along with college-prep classes.

I suspect too that culture plays a huge role in whether and how many (proportionately) kids take home-ec classes. I know from my mother and aunts that back in their school days (1920s to 1940s) that all girls -- including girls at "fancy" schools that also prepared them for college -- were taught all the "homemaker" skills, mainly, it seems to me, because college or not, women were expected to know how to cook and run a household once the kids started coming along. Obviously, that is not the case these days.

If [one's] parents didn't keep a kitchen garden or make their food from scratch, [one] won't either.

I can understand how that might be. That said, one doesn't need to cook from scratch to eat healthily, though admittedly healthier eating is likely easier to accomplish when cooking from scratch. (I don't know if you consider MWO cooking as "from scratch. I kind of do and kind of don't.)

He sees no relationship between his health problems and his diet.

Well, now, that is a real problem. The cooking thing is a piece of cake to solve. Educating that guy about what it means to eat/live a healthy lifestyle is a different matter.

Frankly, I have to ask. Is the guy one of those people who have the world's information resources at his fingertips and won't use them to his own benefit? That's what his seeing "no relationship between his health problems and his diet" makes him seem like to me...based on what you've shared about him.

Kids don't want to eat healthy.

I don't think I agree with that. I think kids want to eat. Give them healthy food and they will eat it and like it. There are many food items that I wasn't keen on as a kid, but even in the calculus of my childish mind, the choice between eating and being hungry all night was an easy one to make. My dislike of hunger was far greater than my distaste for anything that ever appeared on the dinner table.

Children are like cat, IMO. I have a cat that as a kitten occasionally got table scraps from my housekeeper and another that cat that never got any -- because I scolded the housekeeper for giving table scraps to the first one. To this day, the first cat will always try to nibble whatever I'm eating. The other one always wants to sniff what I'm eating, he'll even jump onto the table or counter to do check it out, but he never wants to eat it. Kids are almost like that, though when they get older, they will eat things they never ate as kids.

I can recall as a kid, I didn't know what potato chips were until I "met" them at boarding school. We just didn't have them in the house and my folks never served them at parties. Momma says to that I and my siblings didn't get that sweet Gerber baby food. Our baby food was whatever our parents were eating, but it was pureed. That sweet stuff was for dessert, but not our primary meal food.

Today my little town has no green grocer, no butcher shop, just two supermarkets and a small farmers market two days a week. Big food had taken over. And not for the better.

Do those stores/markets not sell fresh or frozen meats, veggies, fruits, dairy, salt, pepper, a few other spices/seasonings? Does neither supermarket have a "butcher's button?" I'm sure there is someone in there who cuts the meats and places them into the refrigerated bins. Go knock on the door to the "back" and tell the butcher what you want. He may not have "odd" items, but most of what you are likely to want/need, he'll have.

Where one buys the food isn't nearly as important as that one can get it.

 

[usmbguest5318]

we have waiting lists for elective surgery.

What does Canada's healthcare system consider to be "elective surgery?" To me "elective surgery" is cosmetic surgery....nose jobs, face lifts, implants, etc.

 

[bripat9643]

Health care is political because ethical governments spend public money on providing it. For all its size and wealth, the USA is behind European Union countries because capitalist interests control the Federal Government and the politicians prefer to wash their hands of the responsibility and leave it up to the free market and profit motive to do the job.

federal government regulating healthcare is also unconstitutional here. The biggest reason why and you fail to mention it

(Preamble)
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Constitution of the United States - We the People

Promote the general welfare. Seems that would include healthcare.

That's the preamble. It's not a legally enforceable clause.

 

[Dragonlady]

we have waiting lists for elective surgery.

What does Canada's healthcare system consider to be "elective surgery?" To me "elective surgery" is cosmetic surgery....nose jobs, face lifts, implants, etc.

These are medically necessary surgeries which aren't life threatening. You can have the surgery now or chose to postpone. I need a knee replacement. I could have had it done last year but I chose to wait because my knee isn't bothering me and I didn't want to do it in the winter. That's an elective surgery because you can chose when to have it. Hernias, cataracts, that sort of stuff. If you have cancer, there's no waiting.

When I had my heart attack which was on a Friday, they sent me for an angiogram on Tuesday and had I needed stents, they would have done them right then and there. It's a triage system. If you need care now, you get it.

Yes, non-necessary surgeries such as cosmetic surgeries are elective but they're usually done in private clinics, not publically funded hospitals.

In regards to your response to my food post, and my disdain for supermarkets, for me it's a freshness and quality issue. When I lived in Toronto, I shopped at St. Lawrence Market which is heaven for cooks. Anything you might think you want to cook is available and very affordable. My greengrocer went to the Ontario Food Terminal every morning for fresh produce for her stall. The produce didn't spend days being trucked to a warehouse to be packaged and shipped back out to the stores. It was fresh off the farm truck that morning.

But it's my butcher I miss the most. The quality, freshness and flavour of his meat is so much better than even the expensive supermarket in town. I actually made a special trip to Toronto a few weeks back just to go to St. Lawrence Market for things I can't buy here, not the least of which were masala spices to make some Indian food and fresh lamb for the curry.

The supermarkets here only sell white peoples food because that's who their clients are. I especially miss Greek food, Indian food and Pad Thai. I'm learning to cook ethnic because I don't get to the city often. T

One of the attractions in moving to Foodland Ontario was being able to get the freshest produce, except the supermarkets here aren't buying from the farmers here. They're buying from the corporate distribution centre, and I don't have a car to go cruising for farm gate vendors. I do go to the farmers market and I'm getting to know some of the farmers who are there regularly.

 

[usmbguest5318]

we have waiting lists for elective surgery.

What does Canada's healthcare system consider to be "elective surgery?" To me "elective surgery" is cosmetic surgery....nose jobs, face lifts, implants, etc.

These are medically necessary surgeries which aren't life threatening. You can have the surgery now or chose to postpone. I need a knee replacement. I could have had it done last year but I chose to wait because my knee isn't bothering me and I didn't want to do it in the winter. That's an elective surgery because you can chose when to have it. Hernias, cataracts, that sort of stuff. If you have cancer, there's no waiting.

When I had my heart attack which was on a Friday, they sent me for an angiogram on Tuesday and had I needed stents, they would have done them right then and there. It's a triage system. If you need care now, you get it.

Yes, non-necessary surgeries such as cosmetic surgeries are elective but they're usually done in private clinics, not publically funded hospitals.

In regards to your response to my food post, and my disdain for supermarkets, for me it's a freshness and quality issue. When I lived in Toronto, I shopped at St. Lawrence Market which is heaven for cooks. Anything you might think you want to cook is available and very affordable. My greengrocer went to the Ontario Food Terminal every morning for fresh produce for her stall. The produce didn't spend days being trucked to a warehouse to be packaged and shipped back out to the stores. It was fresh off the farm truck that morning.

But it's my butcher I miss the most. The quality, freshness and flavour of his meat is so much better than even the expensive supermarket in town. I actually made a special trip to Toronto a few weeks back just to go to St. Lawrence Market for things I can't buy here, not the least of which were masala spices to make some Indian food and fresh lamb for the curry.

The supermarkets here only sell white peoples food because that's who their clients are. I especially miss Greek food, Indian food and Pad Thai. I'm learning to cook ethnic because I don't get to the city often. T

One of the attractions in moving to Foodland Ontario was being able to get the freshest produce, except the supermarkets here aren't buying from the farmers here. They're buying from the corporate distribution centre, and I don't have a car to go cruising for farm gate vendors. I do go to the farmers market and I'm getting to know some of the farmers who are there regularly.

n regards to your response to my food post.....

TY for the clarification....

 

[Anathema]

Asshole, you are a liar. Show me where it says Healthcare is a private issue. Here is a link to the US Constitution;

Let me try using small words so they might penetrate that block of granite perched on your shoulder...

Article I, Section 8 shows us the full list of things that Congress has the power to make laws regarding or spend money on. The list starts by classifying these items as necessary for the common defense and general welfare of the NATION (Not individual citizens) then goes on to list them.

The Founders then include the Tenth Amendment which states that ANY power not specificallt given to the Federal Government in the Constitution belongs to the States and The People.

So, to explain it in the clearest way possible - Since Article I, Section 8 doesn't imbue Congress with ANY powers relative to medicine, healthcare, insurance, etc... The Federal Government has no legitimate power related to those issues. Hust like it doesn't have any legitimate power related to education, housing, social welfare and a ton of other things.

That power is reserved to the individual States (If their Constitution provides for it) at most.