Bfgrn
Gold Member
- Apr 4, 2009
- 16,829
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Sorry but I WAS working in the industry when Medicare went into effect and saw first hand the results of that. I KNOW how we handled the poor and indigent at that time because it was my job. Nobody was turned away from necessary care, but they were expected to pay what they could to get it even if they could pay no more than $1/week. $10/month payments for a hospital stay to have a baby was quite common. But knowing there would be a bill prevented people from using the emergency room instead of a personal physician who would charge much less. That was the free market at work.
And if somebody needed an expensive operation and couldn't afford it, the local community took up collections or held fund raisers, the surgeon took a discount, the hospital set up time payments for any unpaid portion of the bill, and it was taken care of. That was America at its best at work.
Government healthcare has resulted in making insurance unaffordable for many and healthcare impossible for many unless it is provided to them free which costs everybody else much more. That is not the way it should be.
A pregnancy and hospitalization to have a baby before Medicare involved three or four days of hospitalization for mom and baby and ran about $2,200 total. My husband recently had some minor outpatient surgery utilizing the hospital for about six hours and his bill was almost $12,000. Medicare paid most of it, but that was ridiculous.
THAT is what government interference in the free market does for us.
WTF is wrong with you? I didn't just fall off the back of a turnip truck, I've been around since Harry Truman was President.
In 1965 doctors were middle class practitioners who came to your house. In 1965 a house cost $15,000, a car cost $2,500, a gallon of gas was 31 cents and a pound of ground beef was 35 cents.
You need to join reality and stop spreading your ideology driven ditzy boloney...
Here is some REAL external forces that can help explain skyrocketing medical costs.
Medical care costs in the U.S. have not always been this excessive. This year, we will spend more than $2.5 trillion on medical care. But in 1950, five years before Ray Kroc opened the first franchised McDonald's restaurant, Americans only spent $8.4 billion ($70 billion in today's dollars). Even after adjusting for inflation, we now spend as much on health care every 10 days as we did in the entire year of 1950.
Has this enormous increase in spending made us healthier? Earlier this year, when the World Health Organization assessed the overall health outcomes of different nations, it placed 36 other nations ahead of the United States.
Today, we have an epidemic of largely preventable diseases. To these illnesses, Americans are losing not only their health but also their life savings. Meanwhile, the evidence keeps growing that the path to improved health lies in eating more vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes, and eating far less processed foods, sugars and animal products.
So with all this wonderful government healthcare, free to the poor, subsidized by the government for the elderly and low income folks, etc. etc. etc., the USA spends the most on healthcare and ranks 37th in effectivenes? Doesn't that at least give you pause for thought??????????
Yes everything was cheaper in the 1950s and 60s, but healthcare was also affordable then and available to pretty much everybody. And I'm pretty sure the USA was also ranked in at least the top two to five nations in the world in quality of healthcare.
Before Medicare, 56% of people 65 and older had no health insurance. Most couldn't afford it. Before Medicare, the elderly were among the most likely to be forced into poverty. Medicare alone lifted millions of elderly Americans out of poverty, and removed the ominous threat of being one diagnosis away from losing everything they worked their whole lives for. And it gave the elderly the dignity to sustain their life without begging for help. Today, nearly all seniors have access to affordable health care and only about 14 percent of seniors are below the poverty line.
It is the BEST of what this nation stands for.
You shall rise up before the gray-headed and honor the aged, and you shall revere your God; I am the Lord.
Leviticus 19:32