When it comes to your medical care, Bush wants you to think twice

February 16, 2006

Yesterday, in a speech that almost no one paid a moment’s attention to, the president visited Wendy’s headquarters in Ohio to talk about health care. He’s still on his Health Savings Account kick, but he’s still having trouble selling it.

“It means most Americans have no idea what their actual cost of treatment is. You show up, you got a traditional plan, you got your down payment, you pay a little co-pay, but you have no idea what the cost is. Somebody else pays it for you. And so there’s no reason at all to kind of worry about price. If somebody else is paying the bill, you just kind of — hey, it seems like a pretty good deal.”

I have a hard time believing that even Bush sees the process this way. And yet, it’s another example of the fact that the president believes “that the root cause of most problems with the nation’s healthcare system is that most Americans are over-insured.”

Bush’s comments are really illustrative of his entire approach to the issue. I think I can summarize the president’s message in two words: Think Twice.

Right now, a patient sees his or her doctor. Maybe the doctor recommends some tests. Think twice, Bush says — those tests and exams may be costly. Maybe the patient has a routine exam, as part of a normal approach to preventive care. Think twice, Bush says — you don’t know how much that exam costs. Maybe a patient has an ailment and the doctor recommends a specific treatment. Think twice, Bush says — you should, as he put it yesterday, “worry about price.”

For reasons that I can’t understand, someone at the White House is convinced that this is a political winner for the president. I can only hope they keep trying.

February 16, 2006 at 10:26 am

I wonder how much Harry’s trip to the ICU is going to cost, and if he wishes he had a plan where he could worry about the price.

Ask not what your country can do for your health care, ask what you can do to take care of your own damn self.

HEY! Put that cottonball back. Those thing’s are expensive. Jeez.

Damn Kali, you beat me to it!

I’m sure Harry is glad that the Secret Service didn’t stop and say: “Should we be transporting this guy to the hospital in a helicoptor? Isn’t that damn expensive? Maybe it would be more cost effective to just let him die on the dusty ground of south Texas with the Quail he loved so much.”

Nope, don’t think that was what was going through their minds.

Every time that I hear Bush open his mouth about health care it makes my blood boil. I live in a state where 90,000 people were removed from the Medicaid program if they had an income of over $75 a week. Try telling them that they’re overinsured, I’m sure if they still had their oxygen bottles that they would be laughing.

I suspect that for many people, their first, or at least most extensive foray into healthcare as adults is when they or a loved one becomes pregnant. Before my wife was pregnant I thankfully just did not have much need to go to a doctor, much less a hospital or ER. That experience taught me much about how it all works. Both the treatment and the payment sides. Since Bush was drunk and/or high on cocaine when his own wife was pregnant, he likely failed to learn much about how it all works.

I further suspect that a catastrophic illness or injury (like being SHOT IN THE FACE AT CLOSE RANGE) is the other most likely way that people wade into the healthcare mess. Since Bush wants people to think twice about getting tests or treatments recommended when they are lucky enough to even see a physician, and he also clearly has a disdain for funding and believing in research on cures for some devastating illnesses, I sincerely hope he finds himself as a patient, and soon.

I have turned the morals of the next few sentences over in my mind several times, and decided that wishing Bush a severe and debilitating illness pales in comparison to the damage he has done to individuals here and around the world – not to mention the damage he has yet to do. So fuck it. I hope Bush gets cancer. I hope he gets ALS so he can slowly lose all his physical faculties. I hope he gets Alzheimer’s with a hearty dose of dementia. And I’d love to hear that he somehow contracted HIV. I don’t want him to get one of these awful diseases. I want him to get ALL of them. Then we’ll see if patients seeking treatment and testing are just taking advantage of the system. What a stupid prick.

In addition to the diseases that Chief Osceola wishes upon Bush, I hope he gets one that makes him lose control of his bowel functions; that way when his pants are full he will know what the rest us have been living with for 5 years

I just went to the dermatoligist to look at my moles. It cost me $15 for the co-pay. It would have cost me $135 if I didn’t have insurance. Cigna reimbursed the doctor for $47. SO the doctor got $62 to see me. Would I have gone to see her for $62? Would I have been as likely to see her for $135?

I was told that I probably should see her once every 6 months but at least see her once a year. Now, I am no expert but if I should see a dermatoligist more than I do then forcing me to pay $135 instead of $62 or $15 is a way to discourage me from doing the right thing.

I might be willing to self insure and have a HSA only IF I could pay what the insurance company pays. The doctor got less than 50% of her ‘normal’ charge from the insurance company and me. Why would anyone agree to pay more than double outside of a tradition plan???

I agree. But something else he said — and correct me if I’m wrong because I was listening to snippets of his speech on the radio as I drove somewhere yesterday.

He said that until people take responsibility, including financial, for their healthcare, they’re going to continue to have illnesses brought on by “life style.” I’m using my words, but my impression is that he was getting at the problem we all know about, and that’s the extra pounds, the sugar lunch, the lack of exercise — all that stuff — which mounts up and makes medical care increasingly necessary and complicated and costly.

That’s something we need to factor into the national healthcare system I’d like to see: the importance of self-care. Oh, and insurance coverage, please, for alternative medicine and exercise programs — not currently covered. In other words, give us a break when we take care of our health.

Think twice before you have that funny mole looked at. Think twice before bringing your sick child to the doctor. Think twice before having an annual physical. I don’t think there’s anyone out there who doesn’t consider the cost of medical care before seeking it, and that is a unhealthy state of affairs. How many lives are we loosing? How many lives are we loosing? Thinking twice before seeking medical attention will, in reality, raise the cost of medical care. We already know that diseases are far easier to treat when caught early. Forcing people to wait to seek medical attention results in more damage to the body, and thus longer and more expensive treatment. It is the same concept as not going to the mechaninc to find where that funny squealing sound is coming from, only to have your breaks fail. I don’t understand how anyone can throw out the idea that Americans are over-insured. About a year and a half ago, my brother got very sick – running a fever, vomiting, the works. His work didn’t provide health benefits to him at the time. Knowing that he needed medical attention and aslo that we would be paying expenses out of pocket, I called my doctor to scedule an appointment. The doctor would not even see him without insurance. This forced a far more expensive trip to the emergency room. So yeah, think twice about your healthcare.

“It means most Americans have no idea what their actual cost of treatment is. You show up, you got a traditional plan, you got your down payment, you pay a little co-pay, but you have no idea what the cost is. Somebody else pays it for you…’

I find it amusing to no end that Bush confuses “down payment” with deductable.

Scary thing is that he’s right. I go to my doctor and don’t find out what I was billed until the paperwork ricochets between my doctor and insurance carrier a few times and the final bill ends up in my mailbox months later. HSA’s do no more to address that than Bush’s Social Security Scheme did to address SS’s future shorftalls.

Bush is looking for a “free market” idealogical fix that simply doesn’t exist. Lacking price transparency, there is no free market in health care.

Bush was talking about “life style” illnesses at Wendy’s?

And another thing. “Somebody else pays it for you”????? How about the thousands of dollars we pay in premiums each year to that “somebody”? What a fucking twit. Do insurance providers pay our bills out of the goodness of their hearts? No. They pay (when they deign to) because WE PAY THEM TO DO THIS!!!!!! It is the business these companies are in. Uggh!

As for President Assface saying that we don’t think about the cost, I beg to differ. Most people lucky enough to be insured have to think about that cost every two weeks when they see their premiums taken out of their paycheck – week in and week out whether they are sick all the time or never.

And as another poster pointed out, the companies pay less for these services on our behalf than any individual would be charged.

“Bush is looking for a “free market” idealogical fix that simply doesn’t exist. Lacking price transparency, there is no free market in health care.”

This is the primary issue. Bush could be suggesting legislation that provides that transparency for consumers so they could make better choices, but instead he’s suggesting that we simply not go to the doctor at all.

Now, I’m sure his response to transparency is that it doesn’t get at the crux of the matter, the fact that the healthcare consumer doesn’t pay the bill. Well, we do pay the bill – in the form of higher insurance premiums and lesser coverage if we use more services. And that’s if we’re lucky enough to have employer-provided coverage.

But as a political choice, Bushes message seems incredibly dumb. I’m insured through my employer, but I’m relatively young and rarely use the healthcare system. I have to imagine that there are lots of people like me who are incredulous about the President accusing them of carelessly spending other people’s money on health care. Unless this is intended to be another of Rove’s wedge issue campaigns (beware those using healthcare because they’re liberal elites driving up your health insurance costs – and they’re Islamofascists too!), Bush demonstrates once again his tin ear for policy.

Republicans believe that health care is a
commodity, like television sets or automobiles
or food. They don’t believe it should be a right
granted to all citizens. They also realize that
for American corporations to stay competitive,
they have to get the cost of health care off the
backs of business. Their solution – HSAs and
threadbare catastrophic health care insurance.

The rest of us believe that health care should
be a right, but we do understand that American
corporations can’t bear the cost when the rest
of the civilized world provides these benefits
through taxes and government. So our solution
is national health insurance.

Polls show 75% of Americans are “the rest of us,”
but unless something changes in this country,
we’ll not get our way. Neither will the Republicans’ –
that plan is doomed just like Social Security privatization.
It’s one of the few things the American people can see
through.

So we’ll just go on like this, health care/insurance crisis
becoming ever worse. Unless the corporations themselves
push for national health insurance. Then it could happen.
Why would they object? Just out of plain old mean spiritedness? I know the rich can’t stand the idea of the poor seeing the same doctors and getting the same medicine that they do, but does big business care?

The Democrats should be working toward getting corporate
American behind national health insurance.

It’s really too bad 59 million people didn’t “think twice” before they voted for this idiot.

Here’s a question: Many people factor in insurance as part of an overall compensation package. So if employees are asked to assume a greater percentage (or all) of healthcare costs, surely Bush and the Republicans favor a corresponding increase in wages (which have been stagnant for a while) right? Or is Bush asking for the American people to accept less compensation for their work?

Bush is looking for a free market fix?

Private insurance is a free market fix! It’s supposed to prevent people from losing all their savings or being indebted for life because of a serious illness in the family.

We pay twice as much of our gross national product then other developed countries for ‘health care’ because we have private health insurance, which raises the overall cost BEFORE the insurance companies take out their profits.

Medicare Part D was supposed to use the free market and competition to reduce prescription costs. That would be great if there were four to six plans per state with the buying power to get discounts across the board from pharmacitical companies. As it is, there are 40 plans per state, none of which will give seniors discounts on all their drugs, none of which is powerful enough to get real savings in size or leverage.

All Bush has done with Part D is create another way for con men to take money of the overly rich elderly.

I would be very much interested to know the real cost of treatment, and the cost of the insurance bureaucracy that delivers it. Also, is Bush trying to insinuate that we are getting something somewhere for free ? Those of us that stay well for a while are paying for those that are sick – that’s the way insurance works. These companies are not giving a dime away.

I’ll wait until the President, Vice-President, and Congress switich to an HSA before I do. I’d like to see how it works out for them. Then again, I’d like their current personal health care system myself…

Hark suggests that Health Care should be regarded as a right and not a commody.

Health Care should be regarded as a governmental responsibility because our current practice, of delivering just enough care to keep people moving, is long term dangerous and expensive.

Particularly, the practice of giving patients anti-biotics and sending them home to self-medicate is creating drug resistent deseases that are going to be able to overwhelm us in the future. Tuberculosus is becoming more and more dangerous because mostly poor immigrants get it, so we don’t hospitialize them and force them to take the full regimen of drug therapy, and they are creating resistent strains. And this is what our ‘private’ health care system is causing.

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