I heard that same line the other day here in the ole bibliotech but it was laughing gas that was the problem

IF we can just get Obama-Kennedy Memorial Socialized Medicine passed, we can ration most dental work, and therefore enduring a dental treatment won't become an issue.

Posted by nmg_no

How strange it is that you don't realize that dental (and Vision) treatment is already being rationed. Even if you have a dental/Vision plan (which a lot of folks don't as teeth and eyes are not part of your body according to the HMOs) then there is a schedule of what is covered and what the plan will or will NOT pay for.

Is that not a form of rationing?

I haven't tried this yet but someday I will. Make yer own.

Is that not a form of rationing?

#2 | Posted by donnerboy at 2009-08-28 07:10 PM | Reply | Flag:

No, rationing is where someone else flat-out blocks your care because you are not worthy (too old, wrong politics) or puts you on a list so long that you may never get treated.

This is a form of paying your own bills.

Why is it the knee-jerk response that everything you could possibly want should be paid for by someone else?

Most health plans offer OPTIONS for dental and vision care, so you can get the basic plan or pay more for better coverage.

A standard benefit might cover two cleanings and a dental check per year, but after that only 50 percent.

I've had plenty of dental work over the years, and all I ever had to do was call my dentist when the time came.

I did not have to go to my 'community coordinator' to get approval, be assigned to a dentist of the government's chosing, and put on a four-month waiting list for a root canal.

I averaged $1,700 per tooth for a root canal and crown (out of pocket). For a while there I would rootinely send my dentist a check every month and build up a credit towards the next visit.

Vernon-
re: No, rationing is where someone else flat-out blocks your care because you are not worthy (too old, wrong politics) or puts you on a list so long that you may never get treated.

But, rationing is definitely not if your ins. company drops your coverage completely or denies you care.

re: I averaged $1,700 per tooth for a root canal and crown (out of pocket)

Yes. Under a public insurance option, you would still be able to pay out of pocket (sans coverage) for whatever procedure you wished, you fucking moron.

"No, rationing is where someone else flat-out blocks your care because you are not worthy (too old, wrong politics) or puts you on a list so long that you may never get treated. "

Rationing also occurs if your insurer drags his feet for approval (as they do often in cancer patients), or your insurance doesn't cover that procedure or that drug. And it occurs writ large if you don't have insurance. Unless, of course, you're willing to bankrupt yourself. Then, you can have access to all the ERs you want!

Vernon-
re: (too old, wrong politics)

Oh. I see. You are one of those nutcases who thinks that the meager inclusion of a public insurance option will kill off the old and Republican just like Medicare did, you fucking moron.

Vernon-
re: I did not have to go to my 'community coordinator' to get approval, be assigned to a dentist of the government's chosing, and put on a four-month waiting list for a root canal.

Of course not, you fucking moron. The discussion is about health INSURANCE. You can always pay for your emergency triple bypass surgery on the installment plan if you find a surgeon who is willing to trade ignorant rants for quality medical care regardless of whether this weak bill passes or not.

(you fucking moron)

I've got to go, but did I mention that Vernon is a fucking moron?

but did I mention that Vernon is a fucking moron?

BetelG
Post it once more so we get the idea.

Sorry,couldn't resist

Under a public insurance option, you would still be able to pay out of pocket (sans coverage) for whatever procedure you wished, you fucking moron.

#5 | Posted by BetelG at 2009-08-30 02:15 AM | Reply | Flag:

Right now, under Medicare and Medicaid, it is a felony for a doctor to charge a patient extra, if that doctor treats a single Medicare or Medicaid patient.

That means that if (for example) an eye surgeon accepts $350 for an intraoccular lens implant from Medicare, he may not do the same procedure privately and charge the patient $360.

These rules are in place because the feds know that if people had the option of bypassing Medicare for superior care, they would do so. And that would undermine confidence in the government's perfect control.

The only doctors that can charge what they want have to completely forego ALL Medicare and Medicaid business for three years -- a transition that would be impossible.

Since this is already standard procedure for the government plans, it would most likely end up in the 'public option,' for the same reason. Any doc that accepts the 'public option' reimbursement rates would be limited to that rate for private-pay patients.

Of course you didn't know this, because you are a fucking moron.

Right now, under Medicare and Medicaid, it is a felony for a doctor to charge a patient extra, if that doctor treats a single Medicare or Medicaid patient.

Link for that?

"Right now, under Medicare and Medicaid, it is a felony for a doctor to charge a patient extra, if that doctor treats a single Medicare or Medicaid patient."

Huh? I get EOBs all the time, and I see the "normal" charge, and then the adjusted charge under Medicare. What is that "normal" charge if not what Joe Walk-in is being billed?

Oh. I see. You are one of those nutcases who thinks that the meager inclusion of a public insurance option will kill off

#7 | Posted by BetelG at 2009-08-30 02:18 AM | Reply | Flag:

No, Boyd, I put that in there as a goof because I knew some fucking moron would take the bait -- because dogs can't resist the smell of shit. Especially fucking moron dogs like you.

You fucking moron

What is that "normal" charge if not what Joe Walk-in is being billed?

#13 | Posted by Danforth at 2009-08-30 02:54 AM | Reply | Flag:

Good observation. The list charge providers use is a fiction. It is what they think they should be paid.

It's partly for negotiating purposes; if they ever lowered their fees to reality, that lower rate would become the new ceiling, and rates would be negotiated downward.

In fact, Joe-Walk-In can get a discount if he's paying cash, simply because it's real money without the bureaucratic hassle of collecting.

BTW, Dan, I don't argue with you that forms of rationing take place with private carriers. But every socialized health system in the world practices BLATANT rationing. How is that any better?

(There is also a fine distinction between rationing and Donner's example of dentistry. My dental insurance paid 50 percent of all my major dental work -- just like the contract promised)

Here in Taiwan they have a national health system, but many people (like me) also buy supplemental private coverage. I use Cigna.

Without the regulatory nightmare of the U.S. (and without ambulance chasers) the cost of care is also fairly reasonable. We're expecting to pay about $800 U.S.D. when our baby is born in a few weeks.

That's the total bill because the pregnancy was considered a pre-existing condition.

Link for that?

#12 | Posted by bruceaz at 2009-08-30 02:46 AM | Reply | Flag:

Thanks Vernon,
where it says a doctor can be charge with a felony,I don't know.Too much info,too tired.

Congrats on the new baby

I knew some fucking moron would take the bait -- because dogs can't resist the smell of shit. Especially fucking moron dogs like you.
You fucking moron
#14 | Posted by vernon

Vermin dragged himself across the dragon's blood-red Waziristani sand much as an overfed garbage eating rat snake moves after finishing its feast of pickled octopus, soggy pork rinds, panda grease, and ketchup gleaned from a tour of the rusted-out buckets, bins, and barrels -- for, as Vermin knew, the real treats, the tasty bits, the epicurean treasures to be, well, treasured lay hidden not in the all-too-obvious belly of the dumpster but in the cozier, bubbling interiors of the rusted-out buckets, bins, and barrels bubbling buckets, bins, and barrels crammed into the alley behind that place in Neihu where the waitress who looked astonishingly like the bargirl he'd refused in Bangkok, who slapped him upside his head and sent him crashing to the floor like a bovine hit with the kill-stick at a Jimmy Dean's Breakfast Sausage extermination facility because he was not, as it turned out, in Bangkok (an innocent mistake) but Melbourne and because she was not a bargirl but a girls' school headmistress who'd stampeded him from the bushes in which he lurked beside the chapel as the students entered for Sunday prayer service that Neihu place where the waitress took his order, winked at him, smiled salaciously, wriggled her hips and juggled her jugs and said, ever so sweetly, "You terr me, roun-eye fat boy, wussa word in barbarian for phlegm'?"

("Wish I'd invested my $175.67 nest egg in that restaurant and probably shoulda axed the waitress for her hand," Vermin sputtered, furious that none of the other homeskoolers and Jeebus-loving crooks and shysters he called "friends" bothered to tell him the correct thing to do, "instead of the Malaysian rayon plantation,") (because just about now he was plagued by doubt, wracked by fear, haunted by those myriad insecurities that, coupled with greed, constituted the single motivating force of his life, as he wondered whether the Malaysian rayon plantation even existed or if this was going to be another problem, like that 126-year-old, 5989-foot-long steel-wire suspension bridge he was acquiring on some convoluted installment plan), Anyone who don't know the best bits lurk, smolder, and rot in the rusted-out buckets, bins, and barrels," Vermin spat, hoiking up a loogie from hell, swirling it around in his mouth, caressing it with his tooth and running it along his tongue like an overripe oyster before deciding well, why not? -- to give it some more time to cure up real good, so swallowing it for the second (or was it the third?) time, "is a moron, and I wasn't deposited in familial breeding grounds beside the Spoonie's Omelets To-Go' paddlefish roe extraction plant's cleaning and fermentation pit abutting the zoning authority of Humptulips, Washington, yesterday."

Vermin reached out tentatively and touched what he fervently hoped was, finally, the object he sought, much like the Grail -- which a long, personally humiliating (for reasons he dare not contemplate lest his bum break out in a nasty rash), and fundamentally futile search of cathedrals, mosques, convents, drainpipes, pawn shops and Chinese acrobat training camps told him, too harshly, that the damned thing probably didn't exist (but, he consoled himself, hope does spring eternal, especially for the righteously ignorant and, after all, he blushed, tomorrow was another day) yes, much as he'd relied on blind faith and deep ignorance in his search for the Grail, he was flying (well, not so much flying as groveling and crawling) blind (metaphorically speaking), for his eyesight was impaired, he hoped not permanently, by coconut wine he'd smuggled into Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas inside the voluminous folds of his sumo wrestler's diaper.

As Vermin reached out with his right hand, clutching his black-and-white checkered porkpie hat (a la mode d'Pincus Leff) with his left, he felt pity for himself (as was his wont) and bemoaned the winds of fate that somehow vomited him up here, in the hell-hot sands within sight and one or two rural route postal delivery zones of the adobe squalor that is Spinkai Raghzai, not far from the road to Jandola, in the middle of Wazir tribal territory where blood feuds punctuated the silence that enveloped this gawdforsaken zone of horrors when then the tribes and the Pakistani doughboys weren't blasting away at one another.

So he reached out and -- yeeeeessss! -- there it was: his missing yellow mesh Chinese bathroom slipper, the one that went missing, the one that brought back those memories that made his leg tingle with images of

"I knew some fucking moron would take the bait," a man (or perhaps bearded lady's) voice muttered, gravelly like sharp stones grinding against gravel and gravel grinding against more sharp stones andwell, gravellywith a soupcon of humor and enough menace to shatter John Deere 9870 Combine (US$ 285,000.00 used, if picked up from the lot in Sandusky), "because dogs can't resist the smell of shit."

"Especially fucking moron dogs like you," the man (or bearded lady) growled, for Vermin realized -- as he watched a felt boot slam down on his hand, nailing his fingers to the lost and found yellow mesh Chinese bathroom that the voice was that of a bushy-bearded man (or lady) wearing a sweat-stained white turban, "because dogs can't resist the smell of shit."

Vermin tipped his hat to the bearded man (or lady) and tried to clear matters up by sputtering, "Sir, uh, madam, uh, sir, uh madam, flummoxed, because he understood man's (or woman's) words, which was, frankly sooprising, because of the languages he spoke more or less fluently English, Chinglish, Goggledegook, and Jabberwock not one of them was even remotely related to the Waziri's melufulous Wazirwola. But, yes, he did understand, for the next thing he heard was the guy (or gal) laughing at him as he (or she) took a ball of opium from the breast (or tit) pocket of his (or her) coat of many colors, pop it into his (or her) mouth and snarl, "You fucking moron."

#19,20,21 Posted by Doc Sarvis

I gotta say one thing for ya', Doc. You may be a knee-walkin', snot-flingin' leftist-socialist but DeadPud has no business claimin' the title of the DR literary Nobelist. You win hands down. I'm glad you don't double space every sentence too.
You must have done some extensive research to discover a town in Washington named, Humptulips...no?
'Nother question...do ya'like bustin' Vernon more than hatin' Palin?

"'Nother question...do ya'like bustin' Vernon more than hatin' Palin?"

Flip a the coin, son, flip a the coin.

:>)

"Dan, I don't argue with you that forms of rationing take place with private carriers. But every socialized health system in the world practices BLATANT rationing. How is that any better?"

It's a false argument.

Show me, via the macro numbers, how we're going to give 'damn the costs, full speed ahead' care to the baby boomers. Rationing is in our future whether we have UHC or not. Pretending otherwise is a fool's errand.