[geeks] healthcare was: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro

[Phil Stracchino]

Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> Mike Meredith wrote:
>> On Wed, 21 May 2008 17:28:15 -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
>>> Socialized healthcare == RATIONED healthcare
>>
>> ROFL! Unless the US has infinite resources to allocate to healthcare,
>> it also has healthcare rationing. Open your wallet. See those bits
>> of paper with "$" written on them ? They're ration tickets. It may
>> or may not be a better rationing systems, but it's still a
>> rationing system.
>>
> 
> My point is, that you can have as much health care as you can afford and 
> the market can provide.  You get to be in charge, not some bureaucrat 
> who doesn't even have an MD.

Instead, you're subject to the whims of some accountant who doesn't even 
have an MD.  And if the accountant doesn't think you need that 
treatment, you'll pay a "full price" that no-one else does.

I personally think most of the healthcare problems in this country could 
be solved simply by requiring the hospitals to charge everyone the same 
rate.  That room that you want to charge me $1000 a day for, but my 
medical insurance company can get it for $75 a day?  Charge me $75 a day 
for it, and cut out the middleman.

If they can stay in business while charging my insurance company 
"contracted rate", then they can stay in business while charging me the 
same rate.  And if everyone was charged the "contracted rate" that 
medical insurance companies get to pay, most people would never need to 
have medical insurance at all, because they could afford their own 
medical care.  The medical insurance business as it now exists is 
little, if anything, more than a way for a bunch of accountants and 
speculators to stand in between the patients and the caregivers and 
siphon off a fat share of the money.  Let's face it - if they weren't 
making a profit off the business, they wouldn't be IN the business.  The 
hospitals are complicit in the scheme by agreeing to charge insurers 
anywhere from five to twenty times less than they charge uninsured 
private petients.



-- 
   Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
   alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
          Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                  It's not the years, it's the mileage.