The loving face of socialism …
Hungarian diabetics who fail to stick to their diet will be deprived of more modern treatments from July, under a government decree published Monday aimed at cutting health spending.
Diabetics undergo a blood test on average every three months and those who score high levels of glycemia more than twice a year could be turned away from treatments with analog insulin — more efficient but also more expensive — and left with the less efficient human insulin, under the new rules.
Saw that comin’.
/Jayne Cobb
What do you expect? You’re not operating the government’s property according to the instruction manual. Warranty is void, we won’t reimburse you.
Darth illustrates why this blog’s comment section needs a Like/Thumbs-Up type of button, because if it did I would be using it right there.
I have an opinion on this and it may not be popular.
But my sil used up our healthcare $$ to the tune of about 3 million (our money- remind you) with the shitty care she took of herself.
She got procedure after procedure, everything and anything she needed as she ruined her body with crappy eating, smoking and drinking.
I’m 100% this idea that taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill of people who take crappy care of themselves. 110%.
We would have paid for a new liver for her too, if she hadn’t broken down and started drinking again (she would have resumed drinking when she got the new liver anyway – which anyone would have KNOWN would happn had they asked anyone who knew her)
Public health care discourages people doing the least bit to keep themselves healthy and safe themselves money.
Why lose weight and eat right if a pill may relieve you of whatever ailment you have? A pill that costs $130 a month. If you paid that yourself, you may be able to stick to the diet.
What gets me is my family and cow-orkers that read something like this and react with “That’s horrible! I can’t believe they’d do that!”
To which my reply has always been, “It is as it should be. You make me pay for your care, then you play by my rules. And I ain’t paying one thin dime if you can’t be arsed to take care of yourself. Don’t like it? Well then, maybe you shouldn’t have signed up for an insurance program where I make the decisions.”
Yes, I’ve taken to referring to the State as “me” in a lot of arguments. Since it’s only a matter of time before bastards like me take over the machinery, it seems only sporting to illustrate to these poor electoral lambs what they’re in for.
Squid, if we go single payer system, I’m going to be a shitload better off than many of those advocating it.
Except my lectures on physical fitness make become even more annoying, since I will feel as you do.
First thing we need to do? Ban those electric carts at grocery stores- proles need to get WALKING. My dad’s only got one leg, but I’m sure the exercise can only help things.
Progressivism would be so much more fun to watch if we didn’t have to eat their just desserts along with them.
Carin, you can lead the interactive calesthenics when we get to that.
“In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false”
-Paul Krugman
Progressivism would be so much more fun to watch if we didn’t have to eat their just desserts along with them.
True dat. I’m hoping to avoid the worst of it, myself. To paraphrase a contemporary proverb: “The free man interprets tyranny as damage and routes around it.” I figure that having a surplus of brains, bullets and bourbon, and being friends with dairymen and doctors, will go some way toward assuring that I never lack for butter or basic medical care.
Well, [sniff] at least it’s fair. Certainly more fair than letting the rich buy the good stuff with the money they stole from the poor, and leaving the poor to have their feet amputated. why don’t care about teh fairness!?!
/new castrati
Car in says April 27, 2012 at 9:53 am
Carin, I’m right there with you. My point is not “HOW DARE THEY!” but, hey, look THIS is what socialism is all about. Once you give in to the sweet siren song of “Hey, we’ll take care of your every want and need, trust us” the price is that Big Daddy gets to tell you exactly how you are to live your life, right down to monitoring your blood sugar and what food you put in your mouth.
TANSTAAFL
There is no real argument against free-market medicine … it’s all emotional stuff like “how dare people want to profit from providing healthcare!”
If people like your sil want to fuck up their lives, let ’em. Just count taxpayers out of bailing her out.
It’s like I have no objections to stopping the “War on Drugs” and at least decriminalizing most drugs … as long as Welfare is cut out at the same time.
Exactly, Darleen.
Imagine a nice proggtard fresh out of University who happens to be a vegan and also is a big fan of “free” health care provided by the government. Now imagine said vegan being told by the nice government doctor, “You have a nutritional deficiency, and I’m directing you to eat 8 ounces of meat per day. Animal of your choice.”
Imaginings like that make me smile.
Of course, progressives always think government insurance is pure and innocent and not subject to the whims of unelected bureaucrats.
Whereas that evil private company insurance company that you willingly signed up with is only driven by profits and could care less about you, the policy holder.
Darth, can you give us alittle perspective from Mrs. Dr. Darth’s POV?
How many times should one be allowed to show up at the ER with stab wounds or gunshots from one’s gangsta activities before Staff shoves you out in the hall to bleed out? Extreme example, I know, but it was the subject of an episode of “Homicide: Life on the Street”. Best teevee show evah until “The Wire”.
Another thing that consistently pisses me off about this “free medicine” bullshit is that the bleaters can’t even acknowledge that what they’re asking for is completely out of the realm of every other entitlement they gobble up.
“If I don’t get health care, I’ll die!” That may be true, but let’s look more closely. On the list of survival needs, food and shelter are way the hell above health care. And for as much as you’d like to think you have a right to free food, you don’t. The State may grant you some free food because voters are too lazy and selfish to do their own damn charity work, but even at that, there are limits to the sort of free food you get. We ain’t shelling out for the poor to dine on lobster and steak every evening.
Similarly, if you don’t have shelter, you will die (pretty damn quick, too, if you’re in St. Paul in January). That doesn’t mean that the State is going to give you a mansion or a penthouse suite to live it. No, you get a crappy apartment, pretty much the same as if you were sponging rent money off your parents in college.
So: food and shelter, which are way more critical than health care, are understood to have limits. But Heavens forfend that our local shopping-cart-pusher should make do with the level of care everyone got when I was a child. Oh, no! That will not do at all! No, Marcy the Meth-head needs an electric scooter, and the very latest drugs and procedures to make sure that she’s in the best possible physical and psychological shape when she finally overdoses.
Wrong. You want health care that I have to pay for? You’ll make do with generic drugs and hand-me-down equipment. And if I hear one effin’ word of complaint about it, you can take a long swim in a cold river. (Unless you’re my dear mother, in which case I’ll nod and smile and take on a nights-and-weekends job to keep you happy and healthy and well-medicated and off my back.)
leigh, I will ask Mrs. Dr. Darth to weigh in herself at a later time, her perspectives are indeed enlightening and frequently entertaining. In the meantime, I feel confident relaying some of her opinions (I will defer to her future right to tell me I’m completely wrong. I live with three females, so I’m very used to that).
1. All ERs will treat you, regardless of ability to pay. That’s the law. If you show up an an ER, you will be seen. You might have to wait 10 hours if you have a cold or anything deemed by triage as “non-emergent”, but you will be seen. IIRC, Mrs. Darth’s ER collects at a rate of about 45%-50% of billables. The rest of it gets written off.
2. Mrs. Darth’s ER isn’t a Level 1 trauma center, so all the gunshot wounds and that kind of stuff gets routed to other hospitals in the area, unless they come into the ER on their own. She did her residency at St. Vincent’s in Toledo, which is a Level 1, so she’s told me of trying to treat gangbangers handcuffed to gurneys trying to get at the other gangbanger in the other room.
3. Side note: All ER docs want to write a book called, “How To Kill Yourself And Not Fuck It Up So Your Stupid Ass Doesn’t End Up In My ER But Goes Straight To The Damn Morgue”. Also, ERs have an RFB (Rectal Foreign Body) box containing the more amusing things people have shoved up their butts and had to come to the ER to have removed. If you ever find yourself waiting in an ER and want to kill some time, ask for the RFB box. And a set of gloves.
4. Mrs. Darth spends most of her practicing time in Urgent Care nowadays because a) it’s 5 minutes from our home and none of the other docs want to work this far out in the sticks, and b) it’s much less stress. When she is in the ER, however, she estimates that during a 9-hour shift she and every other ER doc writes orders for $300,000 to $500,000 of tests that she knows she doesn’t need. That’s $300k to $500k for each doc, not cumulatively. This is primarily CYA in case somebody decides to sue you.
” I’m 100% this idea that taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill of people who take crappy care of themselves. 110%.”
I think taxpayers should not foot the bill for people who take great care of themselves. Government should not foot the bill at all. But government ASKED for it knowing full well that they couldn’t do it well. Government needs to be stripped of most of its power income and kept out of people’s hair.
I mean national government. If local, regional and state governments want to screw themselves that’s not so bad since I can LEAVE them for a better place.
Thanks Darth. I remember many amusing tales of the ER you related about Mrs. Dr. Darth.
I’m glad she’s out of emergent care and doing the clinic now. It makes homelife a lot less stressful, I’m sure.
I worked for quite a while as an MT in a hospital lab and I can attest to the veracity of the number of unnecessary (but for the sake that you don’t want your hospital or your ass sued) tests that were ordered by the ER.
The phlebotomists are a great source of gossipy stories about the patients. Yeah, they aren’t supposed to, but they’re vo-tech grads and no one stopped them from talking in the breakroom. Tales of filthy pregnant women, I mean stinky filthy and they weren’t homeless, who were ordered by their OB to take a goddamn hot shower with SOAP before they came back to check on them and they better be clean as a whistle or they’d order a nurse to scrub ’em down. Kids macking on each other in the ER or texting while the nurses are trying to start an IV line. My hat’s off to the staff since my goal was to get away from the patients.
The RFB box is indeed a hoot. Lightbulbs? Really? Good times.
Fucking ambulance chasers.
I don’t have any problem with this… it’s what happens when you push the payment responsibility off onto somebody else. He who has the gold, makes the rules… and he who is paying the check at the restaurant, decides what you get off the menu.
Don’t like it? Buy you own damned healthcare.
And the $300k-$500k of “defensive medicine” Q-shift is probably just about right.
The soft “chest pain” admissions (at $30k for an overnight stay in the ICU, plus a stress test… because “missed MI” is one of the largest sources of malpractice judgment dollars against ER docs)
The unnecessary head CTs in kids who fall-down-go-boom (several of these per shift, at $4000 each)… because a brain-damaged kid is a sure-fire winner in court.
The abdominal CT scans for each and every belly pain (because “missed Appendicitis” is another big source of med-mal dollars).
The innumerable xrays (missed fractures are another med-mal fave).
The “TIA/Stroke” admissions (for CT/MRI/MRA/Carotid-doppler/Echo) to rule out stroke (for weird paresthesias and other soft presentations)… because missed stroke (particularly posterior circulation) is another killer in court.
But no… the attorneys SWEAR that their awards and med-mal insurance costs are only 2-3 cents on the healthcare dollar. The caveat in that cost estimate is that they completely omit the defensive medicine costs.
That’s fine if you leave me the hell alone to buy or not buy whatever damned healthcare I want. But if you’re making me get I the pool, you need to save my ass when I start going under. When the government decides to take my personal responsibility unto itself, it’s responsible for me.