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This actually has nothing to do with pot but I thought my fellow stoners would find it amusing.


So I joined an activist group and today we were trying to get people to sign for a petition for free health care (or maybe it was improved health care I can't remember which) in North Carolina.

So immediately some homeless guy walks up and starts asking questions and we answer him but then he questions our answers very arguementatively and asks us to take him to our leader, but we didn't have one. and then the guy just kept getting more belligerent so then Ben, one of our activists, decides to tell the guy to leave. And the guy freaks out and starts telling everyone that's walking by that we're a cult. sweatdrop So then just as Ben is getting ready to call a security guard (cause the security guards apparently love our little group) I start to talk to the bum and he calms down (this is quite a feat for me since normal people scare me and earlier he backed me into a corner and asked me to smell him...)

So then I ask him about his day and he tells me that he works digging holes and breaking up concrete and he asks me how much he ought to get paid for doing that and i told him that it sounded like hard work so around 15 dollars an hour. He said he got paid 6.25 gonk gonk gonk

So I proceeded to preach about the evils of capitalism and the system thrives off of making a profit by screwing the working class and he got all happy and started talking about how he could be the poster child for our little group thing so then I moved the subject back to health care and reforming it. And he agreed to sign our petition thing!




Anyway, so I only got that guys signature so I wasn't totally productive. >.> but all the other activists thanked me because I'd basically saved the day by talking to that guy.

I felt really needed. Cause I was the only one who would talk to him. It was so cool! T.T

haha. thats actully kinda funny! go yoou for talking to a crazyed bum!

i bet. i wish i was good at that.

WOW! What an insperation you are!!! razz I wish more people could see them as just people like you did and look at them as decay! Well done....Well done!! blaugh

Damieon, I'm not sure you really understand what U.S. healthcare often means. The insurance industry is... well, look at it this way. They don't render any practical service, and bill you. They also charge doctors. And pharmaceutical companies. Basically, anyone who wants to be covered by health insurance must pay a premium, or a membership fee, or a listing fee. In any other business this would be called bribery.

I can very honestly tell you that I have paid less for office visits and prescriptions and was able to be seen much more promptly after I was no longer covered under my parents' Blue Shield and signed up for the California Health Access coverage.

Do I want the government dictating my health care? No. Do I want an insurance corporation dictating my health care? No. The only person who should be telling me what medical services I do and do not need is my doctor. If insurance companies operated as one imagines they ought to -- paying for the medical care of individuals who've signed up for coverage and pay the premiums -- that would be one thing. Taking the money from their members and then denying coverage when it's often actually needed is a whole nother story.

*shrugs* No I haven't lived in a Socialist nation, however I've seen Sweden (which I believe is a healty mix of socialist and capitalist) and Venezuela (under the rule of Hugo Chavez has moved toward socialism) and they seem to be doing alright when the US isn't trying to thow him out for not catering to our every interest.

I don't believe that pure soicialism is acheivable and I'm actually not a socialist. I believe in what they're trying to do on small levels but I'm not sure about large scale economic reform.

As for free health care Every canadian I've ever spoken to hasn't had too big an issue with the health care system, but the reason I'm for it is that I just found out I have HPV and I can't afford all the pills I have to take to keep from developing cervical cancer and my anti-depressants and my birth control pills And in the furture I believe, if I understood the doctor correctly I'll have to pay to get my cervix shaved so they can test for cancer and this will have to happen every few months. In fact I stopped buying my birth control pills so I could pay for the rest of the s**t.

As for my jab at capitalism with the bum. The only reason I'm upset about that issue is because there are other people doing the same job getting paid the same amount that aren't homeless, and that's s**t.

I agree, no business person or government should tell you how to live your life and use doctors. That should be determined between you and you're doctor.



Oh I understand there are other options out there, but the proposed options given by canadates who say they want to have universal health care arn't proposing those options. They want to raise taxes, make lofty claims that the Tax breaks for people who had children should have never been given and wants to not just take back the tax breaks, but then raise taxes... YOUR TAXES.

Do you have any examples of where concierge health care has been implemented on a large scale? It sounds logical but then again put the burden of hypochondriacs and other people who use the doctors office often. Then you have to wonder, who is going to emplment and regulate doctors being fair... the government?



No, I have not seen YOU question about the health care options given by either Obama or Hillary, but EVERY other time I have heard people mention health care reform or free health care, they usually are dangling from the democrats nuts, who play the card like they care, when really they are actively perusing keeping more power and control over the people of the nation.

I will my retort there until I get your response, I am sure you won't disappoint me with more well worded posts. smile

On a large scale, no, unfortunately... it came to my attention early this past summer when I read about it in an article in The Press-Enterprise while I was staying at my parents' house. I've since realized that the paper's website only archives its own articles, not the ones it picks up from Reuters and the AP, and haven't been able to track that particular one down again. Essentially, it was an interview with a Los Angeles area doctor who operated his own clinic and had instituted a concierge system in response to increasing problems with insurance carriers.

By contrast, a close friend of mine worked for a private medical clinic for more than three years (she left about six weeks ago) in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park. Though it's beginning to look more like neighboring Silverlake (the current "hot spot" for the pseudo-boho scenesters) over there now, it's still clearly one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, and its residents are still primarily low-income families who speak little English and send whatever income they can spare to relatives across the border. Privately insured patients were a minority there, though my friend (whose job was in the office, verifying insurance coverage and trying to obtain approval from the carriers) noted that patients without insurance came in when they felt they needed it, whereas insured patients tended to come in as a kind of last resort. HMO patients especially meant she'd be fighting with various people at the insurance company as she was transferred around, trying to get approval for basic tests and treatments.

Here's how it works from the doctor's end:

• In order for a patient to be covered for an appointment in your clinic, you must be a "member doctor" of a given insurance carrier, which means paying a fee. So you pay membership fees to Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Aetna, Health Net, PacifiCare, CIGNA, Molina, and whatever else is common in the area. That's a lot of carriers, and a lot of bills.
  
• For each office visit, the patient has a set copayment. So if I walk into your clinic with no insurance, the price just to have an appointment might be, say, $50. But someone else has a PPO and his copayment for office visits is $40. And someone else has an HMO plan, and her copayment is $20. According to your membership agreements with the carriers, you'll be reimbursed on graduated scales... generally speaking, you'll get the extra $10 from the PPO carrier, and $20 (an amount equal to the copayment) from the HMO. You're out ten bucks, but that's the terms of your membership, so you suck it up.
  
• To make diagnoses, of course you and your nurses must take the time (and remember, time is money) to take temperature and blood pressure, things like that. Material cost is negligible, since thermometers and all the rest are re-usable. Urine tests require a little more material, of course, and for more than the most basic of tests the sample must be sent to a lab (along with payment for their services) and the patient must return for another appointment when the results are back. Ditto blood tests, pap smears, or any other tissue samples that need to be examined. The dollars add up. As I have no insurance, I foot that bill. The PPO patient has a deductible and depending on which tests are being requested may have to pay some of the cost. The HMO patient's sample(s) must be tested for x, y, and z to rule them out first before being tested for what the doctor actually suspects is the problem, or else the carrier will not cover the tests at all. That takes time, of course, so although my results are back in a week, and the PPO patient's a few days later, the HMO patient's results will be back two to four weeks later... during which time the disease is either progressing untreated or being overcome by the person's immune system.
  
• At the end of it all, the bottom line is that you recommended treatment, I agreed to it, and paid my bill. You recommended treatment to the PPO patient within the restrictions imposed by his $200 a month insurance plan as well as another point or two he'd have to pay for but declined, and your cost as far as he's concerned is covered, though his treatment wasn't as thorough as would be ideal. The HMO patient can't be treated yet because the results have to come back from the lab before the carrier will approve the cost.

Soo... back to my friend's old clinic. That doctor doesn't even see HMO patients anymore. Between membership fees and reimbursement for the cost of treatments falling short of his expenditure, treating someone on an HMO was costing him quite a lot of money.

Which brings me back around to concierge medicine. If a clinic did not have to pay the membership fees, and did not have to run extra tests just to have the carrier approve treatment, the clinic's costs would drop. A doctor who's very good would have a list of patients paying that regular yearly (or monthly, or quarterly, or whatever) fee and keeping him as their regular doctor, because the quality of treatment is very good, as opposed to having selected him from a list he was on because he paid a membership fee.

If implemented on a large scale, concierge medicine could very easily prove to be better for both patients and doctors. Of course, carriers like Aetna (which reported increased profits recently, although fewer have insurance) would take a serious hit... reports say that concierge health is too expensive (but $200 a month for a PPO is $2,400 a year, so $1,500 a year for better care doesn't seem exorbitant, personally) or ethically questionable (you already know what I think of the ethics of insurance companies), so it looks like the Aetnas of the country are putting their considerable profits to good use.