On May 9, 5:46=A0pm, Robin <Ri...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Kujebaku, what do you think?
>
> This is a tale of pay or die that recurs again and again all over our
> country and only in our country in the entire western world.
>
> Advised by her physician to go to M.D. Anderson for urgent treatment
> of her leukemia, Mrs. Lisa Kelly was told she had to pay $105,000 up
> front before being admitted. The hospital declared her limited
> insurance unacceptable.
>
> Sitting in the business office with seriously advanced cancer, she
> asked herself =96 =93Are they going to send me home?=94 =93Am I going to
d=
ie?=94
>
> Time out from her torment for a moment. M.D. Anderson started this
> upfront payment demand in 2005 because of a spike in its bad debt
> load.
>
> The Wall Street Journal explains =96 =93The bad debt is driven by a
larger=
> number of Americans who are uninsured or who don=92t have enough
> insurance to cover costs if catastrophe strikes. Even among those with
> adequate insurance deductibles and co-payments are growing so big that
> insured patents also have trouble paying hospitals.=94
>
> It isn=92t as if non-profit hospitals like M.D. Anderson are hurting.
> Look at this finding in an Ohio State University study: net income per
> bed at non-profit hospitals tripled to $146,273 in 2005 from $50,669
> in 2000. And you also may have noticed the huge pay packages awarded
> hospital executives.
>
> M.D. Anderson, exempt from taxation, recipient of funds from large
> government programs and research grants has cash, investments and
> endowment totaling $1.9 billion, with net income of $310 million last
> year, the Journal re****ts.
>
> Back to the 52 year old, Lisa Kelly. She and her husband returned with
> a check for $45,000. After a blood test and biopsy, the hospital
> oncologist urged admittance quickly. Then the hospital demanded an
> additional $60,000-$45,000 just for the lab tests and $15,000 for part
> of the cost of the treatment.
>
> To shorten the story, she received chemotherapy for over a year. Often
> her appointment was =93blocked=94 until she made another payment.
>
> In a particularly grotesque incident, she was hooked up to a
> chemotherapy pump, but the nurses were not allowed to change the chemo
> bag until Mr. Kelly made another payment.
>
> She endured other indignities and overcharges. Re****ter Martinez cites
> $360 for blood tests that insurers pay $20 or less for and up to $120
> for saline pouches that cost less than $2 retail.
>
> Imagine anything like Mrs. Kelly=92s predicament and pressures occurring
> in Canada, Belgium, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Holland,
> England or any other western country. It would never happen.
>
> These countries have universal single payer health insurance. No one
> dies because they cannot afford health care. In America, 18,000
> Americans die each year because they cannot afford health care,
> according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of
> Sciences. Many more get sick or become sicker.
>
> None of these countries spend more than 11% of their GDP on
> healthcare. The U.S. spends over 16% of its GDP on health care and
> does not cover 47 million people and tens of millions are under
> covered
>
> In the U.S. the drug companies charge their highest prices in the
> world, even though we, the taxpayers, subsidized them in large ways.
> In other countries like Mexico and Canada, they cannot get away with
> such drug price gouging, with a pay or die ultimatum.
>
> In the U.S., computerized billing fraud and abuse cost over $200
> billion last year, according to the GAO arm of Congress. In other
> counties, single payer prevents such looting.
>
> In other countries, administrative expenses of their single payer
> system are about a third of what the Aetna=92s and other insurers rack
> up.
>
> In other western countries, medical outcomes for children and adults
> and paid family leave are far superior to that of the U.S. The World
> Health Organization ranks the US health care system 37th in the world.
>
> When apologists in Wa****ngton hear these statistics, they say =93but we
> have the best medical research centers in the world, like M.D.
> Anderson.=94
>
> Clearly much is wrong with the nature of pricing health care.
>
> Like other hospitals, M.D. Anderson is caught in a macabre spider=92s
> web of cost allocations mixing treatment costs with research budgets,
> cash reserves, and just plain accounting gimmicks that burden
> patients.
>
> When a friend showed the Journal=92s article to a Dutch visitor, the
> latter blurted in anger =96 =93you are a nation of sheep.=94 Not a very
> flattering description of =93the land of the free, home of the brave.=94
>
> Someday, soon maybe, Americans will finally band together and say
> =93enough already,=94 we=92re going for full Medicare for all- without
> loopholes for cor****ate profiteers and purveyors of waste and fraud.
>
> Last month after being in remission, Lisa Kelly=92s leukemia has come
> back.
What is the difference between Mrs. Kelly's case, and that
of Lindsay McCreith?
http://tinyurl.com/5dfra2
I'd like to know.
And also, why do you keep foisting your crappy
Canadian socialist medicine here?
Why do you care so much?
Personally.
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