Medicare covers around 49 million persons now or about or about 16% of the population. Medicaid cover about 60 million persons or about 20% of the population."
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Sunday, January 31, 2010
Trust the Government With Our Medical care?
Medicare covers around 49 million persons now or about or about 16% of the population. Medicaid cover about 60 million persons or about 20% of the population."
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18 comments:
hmmm...interesting. yet another reason not to trust our government to do the right thing by us? perhaps we need a cap on medicare/medicaid expenditures.
Tell you what Griper. We all know that medical care for our elderly is far better and far more expensive than it was when Medicare started. When you're willing to tell your parents that in the interests of saving money they can roll around in a wheelchair instead of getting that expensive hip replacement, then talk to us about the cost of Medicare.
And c'mon dude. I get 200 visits a day on average and virtually no spam. How much are you getting that reasonable caring folk like me or Rational Nation must be subjected to comment moderation?
SJP,
and just how would you put a cap on the expenditures without contradicting the whole purpose of these programs?
TRUTH,
nice emotional appeal but it doesn't work with me.
as for the spam, i won't subject my guests to the possibility of getting a virus by allowing any spam on my site.
Griper: I hate spam as much as anyone, but the very limited type of text and HTML tags allowed in Blogspot comments prohibits viruses from being posted as comments. It's 100% safe, believe me.
I agree the costs are out of control. Some of the costs could be contained by looking closely at those in the health care industry who are getting rich off of it. Beyond that, Medicare includes a component of welfare for the rich. A handout to those who can afford it anyway. I believe in a means-testing cutoff. Use the money saved to reduce costs, and also invest soem into improving Medicare for those who really need it.
dmarks,
thanks for visiting.
i wasn't thinking about viruses being posted as comments. you can always get around that by posting a link in a comment that takes you to a site that has the virus.
medicare is price controlled. nobody can get rich off of it unless there is fraud. that is the big difference between it and private insurance.
and when you examine it closely, the premiums are higher for medicare than they are for private insurance.
of course you know that my previous comment was offered in jest... :>)
awwwwwwww shuckens, SJP, here i thought we had a good fight started. lol.
good to see ya.
Viruses? Griper, you need computer
Medicare. :)
He grins, computer medicare sounds good BB. lol
but how can we force ol' Bill Gates to accept what we can afford to pay him for providing it to us?
Griper, sad to report a healthcare story: our young church secretary, part-timer with a pair
of pre-schoolers, has been fighting breast cancer. Tough times. Last week the health insurance company informed her they were dropping her (annual
re-enrollment and now she has a
'pre-existing condition'). Nice slap in the face, huh? I understand that the carrier exists to make money, not to provide
service. Just one example of why
this old guy prefers gov't single payer.
medicare will do the same thing, just in another form, BB. every form of insurance has limitations in one form or another.
that is why i am for self-insurance. there is no limitation on it other than available cash and if a person is wise he has a backup plan to replenish the cash as needed.
BB,
money to pay for medical health is always the deciding factor regardless of how it is funded and unfortunately money is always limited, not even the government has an a source of unlimited funds.
health care costs will always lead to a state of bankruptcy if not limited. it just depends which entity is preferable to need to go thru it. and that always leads me to the individual because it has a smaller impact on the lives of others.
I guess (I know a few folks who have) it pays to shop around as well:
"In 2008, hip replacements in the U.S. cost about $45,000.
In 2008, a source quoted US$7–9,000 in India at an internationally accredited hospital; in a county in Florida, USA, from $41,597-$56,258.
Surgery costs vary from country to country, with the US typically being among the highest-priced markets, and countries like Thailand, Cuba and Argentina among the lowest."
..outsourcing our crippled hips?
...dunno..:)
BB,
just putting 10% of your paycheck into a savings acct of some sort would yield that much in the first ten years of working. and being a scientist you know and understand the workings of the odds of probability of suffering a hip injury in that time outside of the work place or an auto accident which are covered by different insurance.
very few hours in a day is covered by health insurance for injuries like that, BB.
insurance of any kind is an investment, BB. the only difference between what we call insurance and what we call investments is that in investments there is a probability of a positive return with the possibility of a negative return. with insurance there is a a very high probability of a negative return and a very low possibility of a positive return.
Did the best I could, putting 401K monies into company matching funds.
raising kids is a bit pricey as well, and I had three. They all graduated college and on to (lessee here..14 years of graduate school in total) Without
scholarships I would be dang near destitute. Odds wise, I planned my retirement savings on the fact that health insurance premiums tend
less expensive than out-of-pocket.
So far-so good. Good health is a big savings. BTW, my 89 year old
ex-farmer father-in-law suffered a
major hernia with bladder extension. Got in the truck and drove himself to the hospital.
Old farmers do that, ya know. :)
yup, gramps had to laugh at that. BB
then grandma scolded gramps by telling him he better not try that himself. lol
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