This is the premiere installment of This-N-That Sunday and I have no idea where it is going as I write these words. I’m just going to fly by the seat of my pants so to speak. Forgive me in advance if it seems like a mishmash, but that is as it was intended to be wasn’t it? Let’s get down to business. Global Warming It … Continue reading This-N-That Sunday
“Best doctor in the world is a veterinarian. He can’t ask his patients what’s the matter. He’s just got to know.” – Will Rogers This quote from Will came to mind recently while my wife was going to doctors trying to determine the cause of her recent ailments. In the last couple of months, she has had three emergency room visits, two of them by … Continue reading The Best Doctor In The World…
Socialized medicine seems to be dirty words for many of my RedAmerica friends. To them, it and communism are one and the same thing. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Since there seems to be nothing in this world that isn’t a simple black or white to them, I’m not sure they will ever accept any other definition but that doesn’t stop me from … Continue reading The Thing About Socialism..
Medicare is a system that has been in place for 50+ years. Its approval rating is well above any competition and it keeps the costs of healthcare down. Paperwork which drowns the private sector insurance is very well managed to less than half in Medicare. So, why should we be experimenting with other often radical solutions to our healthcare network in the U.S.? I will … Continue reading Medicare For All… It Just Makes Sense
Before the surgery, I really had no idea who Dr. P was or what he looked like. (I am not using his full name here as I don’t have permission from him and don’t want to intrude on his privacy). Looking at him when he delivered the good post-surgery news I discovered he was a sixty-year-old or so guy with white hair and a neatly … Continue reading My Personal Experience with Brain Trauma – Part 3
In the last post, I left off just before my consult with a brain surgeon. When the ER doctor told me I had a chronic brain bleed because of my fall that scared me more than I have been in a long time. When the surgeon told me he needed to go in and fix it and to relieve the pressure, my life didn’t flash … Continue reading Personal Experience with Brain Trauma – Part 2 Off To The Operating Room
There seems to be many opportunities cropping up on this first day of a new administration for resistance to draconian change they intend for our democracy in the upcoming years. I am particularly happy to see Christians in this mode. No, not all Christians are among the 81% of Evangelicals who pushed the current administration in office. In reality they are a small percentage of that … Continue reading People of Faith For Resistance..
A threat by the nation’s largest health insurer to pull out of ObamaCare is a sign of the industry’s growing angst about the viability of the federal exchanges, sources close to the industry say. UnitedHealthcare’s warning sent new shockwaves across the healthcare sector after weeks of mounting anxiety among private insurers whose participation in the exchanges is critical to the viability of the president’s signature … Continue reading Why Are We Crippling Obamacare with Private Insurance Companies When Medicare Can Do The Job??
Shinseki reiterated other steps he’s taken, including putting the leadership at the Phoenix facility on leave and ordering a “nationwide audit of all other major VA health care facilities to ensure understanding of, and compliance with, our appointment policy.” Some question whether removing Shinseki would address the core problems at the VA or simply serve as a distraction for now.”Is him resigning going to get … Continue reading VA Hospital Problems….
Anyone who has read some of my posts know that I am an advocate for universal single-payer healthcare. After all, it is very efficient and cost containing system used in much of the rest of the world. Many of our citizens in the U.S. including this one are currently on a single payer system known as Medicare. After being on it for two years now … Continue reading Back Door Universal Healthcare…
Just a quick note to say I just watched a video of a town hall meeting opposing Obamacare. There was an elderly lady who ranted on and on about it. She was totally convinced that if we allow it to be implemented that it would certainly cause the downfall of the entire country. She finished with the following statement. “I realize that Obamacare does not … Continue reading LOL Moment….
A central reason U.S. health care spending is so high is because hospitals and doctors charge more for their services and there’s little transparency about why. There is no uniformity to the system, in which public and private insurers have separate, unrelated contracts with hospitals and doctors. The result is a tangled, confusing and largely secretive collection of forces driving health care prices higher and higher. … Continue reading Why Our Health Care Lets Prices Run Wild…
A hospital in Livingston, N.J., charged $70,712 on average to implant a pacemaker, while a hospital in nearby Rahway, N.J., charged $101,945.In Saint Augustine, Fla., one hospital typically billed nearly $40,000 to remove a gallbladder using minimally invasive surgery, while one in Orange Park, Fla., charged $91,000. In one hospital in Dallas, the average bill for treating simple pneumonia was $14,610, while another there charged … Continue reading Hospital Billing Varies Wildly….
Source: Paul Ran’s new Medicare plan could be tip of the iceberg (+video) – CSMonitor.com. A parallel factor is rising income. As a society grows richer, it tends to spend more of its income on health care. Add in demographics (an aging population) and a lack of competition among health-care providers in many markets, and you have a recipe for more people to consume more … Continue reading Paul Ryan’s new Medicare plan…
Source: Top six myths about Medicare | Reuters. MYTH FOUR: DOCTORS WILL NOT ACCEPT MEDICARE BECAUSE OF ALL THESE CUTS Facts: Most Medicare patients do not have trouble finding doctors who will see them, but there is growing concern about access to primary care physicians. This issue is monitored closely by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent Congressional agency charged with advising Congress … Continue reading Being Denied Coverage….
What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people. 21 December 1932 Will Rogers Speaking about money not being wisely spent this morning got me to thinking about Will’s quote above. If you have read much on this blog you will know that I am a proud social progressive but also a fiscal conservative. In … Continue reading Living As Cheaply As The People……
Source: Mr. 3.75 Percent – By Daniel Altman | Foreign Policy. One political leader who likes to plan for the really long term is Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for U.S. vice president. By 2050, Ryan’s budget plan would reduce federal spending outside health-care programs and Social Security to 3.75 percent of GDP, down from 12.5 percent last year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. … Continue reading Mr. 3.75 Percent
Here is another poll that shows when it comes to making cuts in Medicare or Social Security a big percentage of people think we should cut our bloated defense spending instead. If we could somehow manage to get our war machine budgets in line with the rest of the world, yes I mean the other 95% of the world, then most of our budget and … Continue reading Military Spending Cuts…….
Source: Mitt Romney video fact check: Is 47 percent of US ‘dependent’ on government? – CSMonitor.com. That is one of the questions that has been raised after Mother Jones magazine on Tuesday released a video of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaking to donors at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser May 17. “There are 47 percent who are with him [President Obama], who are dependent upon government, who … Continue reading I Guess I Am One Of Them…. Or Maybe Two Of Them….
Elections are a good deal like marriages, there’s no accounting for anyone’s taste. – May 10, 1925 Will Rogers You did it again Will. You perfectly described an election eighty-seven years in the future. There is just no accounting for the taste of the people who will be voting Republican this year. But then again we will have to wait to see just how many … Continue reading Taste…..
It was 1965 when Medicare was enacted. I was just entering college so I still have some vivid memories of what went on around it. I remember the conservatives in congress were saying such things as: We’ve got to repeal this law, it is bad for the country. Its Socialism. It takes away choice. It will bankrupt the country And the most typical comment that … Continue reading Get Rid of It!!!
What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people. – December 21, 1933 Will Rogers I have often on this blog mentioned that I am a proud social-progressive but I probably don’t as often proclaim that I am a fiscal conservative. For that reason this post as a general rule rings very true to me. Our government should learn … Continue reading As Cheap As The People….
Is the Republican Party insuring its own demise by it continuing to focus on a narrower and narrower core group. I want to believe this is the case as the alternative is that we as a country are now dominated by exclusion. Being against things, particularly different groups of people, is what has been driving the Republican primaries lately. It has pushed their final candidate … Continue reading Is the Republican Party Insuring Its Own Demise??
I see the Republicans have yet another “front-runner”! This time it is Rick Santorum. This makes every one of the eight or so wannabes that has moved to the front of the pack. But when that happens they soon seem to fizzle out like a flash in the pan. They get on the front burner of public attention and the heat becomes too much for … Continue reading Another Flash in the Pan….
Today is the best of times and also the worst of times. Today my medical insurance is costing me half of what it did yesterday… Today I am officially a senior as I am now on Medicare… Continue reading It is the Best of Times and the Worst of Times…
This is the second of two posts about my experiences with recently joining the Medicare System. The first post gave you the types of plans that are offered to those who turn 65. There are a number of decisions that have to be made during this enrollment process. I have to warn you up front that this is really pretty boring stuff. I put it … Continue reading Medicare Here I Come … (Part 2)
I will soon move onto the Medicare roles. It has been quite a journey to get here so that is what this and the following post will be about. I hope the post might help some of you out there who will be going through the same thing in the coming months or years. I want to make it very clear that I am not … Continue reading Medicare Here I Come…. (Part 1)
No this post is not about how to gut Medicare as seems to be the topic of today. Instead it is about my personal travels of getting signed up for it. As I announced before I am at the head of the herd of the Baby Boomers so I will be joining Medicare this year. As a result I am starting to try to figure … Continue reading What To Do About Medicare??
A couple of posts ago was about the so-called Republican plan to change Social Security. It is championed by Congressman Ryan. As I mentioned in that previous post this new social security is supposed to empower seniors to get the best plan available but they limit the choices to private insurance companies. I personally have had enough dealings with those for-profit insurance guys to know … Continue reading If It's So Great Then…..
It is heartening to see that seniors medical care means something to the nation as a whole. After the Republican defeat in the very conservative district in New York on Tuesday maybe they will get the message. Why do so many politicians, almost all of them of the same party, think that the solution to Medicare is to end it and put seniors out on their … Continue reading Don't End It; Fix It…..
It is heartening to see that seniors medical care means something to the nation as a whole. After the Republican defeat in the very conservative district in New York on Tuesday maybe they will get the message. Why do so many politicians, almost all of them of the same party, think that the solution to Medicare is to end it and put seniors out on their … Continue reading Fix It Don't End It….
I worked over forty years of my life. During that time I paid social security taxes on almost all my income. Of course I realized that much of those taxes were used to pay my father and grandfather’s social security income and medical expenses. That was fine; that was the way it was supposed to be. After all there is a social contract in our … Continue reading Are Commitments to Social Contracts Dead??
With all the Republicans around today chanting the fiscal spending mantra you would think that must be part of their very core. I am just a simple fellow but I have been around long enough to know that their new found fiscal religion is just that, new found. I know how all those Washington types love their graphs so I though I would, as usual, … Continue reading Republicans and Their Deficits….
RJ's Corner 