The State Of US Healthcare

Since my double diagnosis of cancer I have been watching the crap being pulled on the US healthcare system.

This subject is an ever changing one thanks to the mindless decisions made by Donny and that pack of idiots our healthcare depends upon….idiots like Oz and RFK,Jr….neither is especially bright.

Since the ill advised policies of Donny and his GOP Lackeys the strain on hospitals has increased….

Months after congressional Republicans refused to extend enhanced subsidies for Americans who receive their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, hospitals across the US are seeing a surge in uninsured patients seeking emergency medical care.

According to a Thursday report in The New York Times, executives at large hospital systems have been raising alarms over “the unexpectedly sharp rise in uninsured patients and the costs associated with treating them.”

With many uninsured patients unable to pay their hospital bills, the Times noted, hospitals are seeing “lost revenues amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars across the country’s vast health systems.”

The Times linked this surge in uninsured patients directly to the Republican-controlled Congress allowing more generous subsidies for plans purchased through the ACA to lapse at the end of 2025. Enrollment in the program has fallen by about 3 million people since last year.

“What that tells me is that there are patients who are completely unable to pay,” Laura Kaiser, chief executive of Catholic nonprofit hospital group SSM Health, told the Times. “We’re really crushing people who are desperately trying to pay their bills.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/uninsured-emergency-room-surge

And believe it or not people voted for this asshole.

Then there are the policies for those who get Medicaid….

A federal judge on Thursday denied a request by more than two dozen Democratic states to halt a Trump administration policy announced last month that would require Medicaid recipients with terminal diseases to prove they are too sick to work in order to be exempt from new work requirements that go into effect this coming January.

While introducing over $1 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, last year’s massive GOP tax and budget bill also imposed new 80-hour-per-month work requirements that states must implement for Medicaid expansion recipients, who receive government-subsidized insurance coverage at or below 138% of the poverty line.

The law specified that those who are “medically frail or otherwise have special medical needs” are excluded from the work requirement, and specifically listed people with a “serious or complex medical condition.” But it remained unclear what exact conditions met these criteria.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced a new rule stating that even if a person receives a terminal diagnosis for a disease like cancer, HIV/AIDS, or Parkinson’s, that is still not enough for them to be exempt from the work requirements.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-medicaid-work-requirements-2677293170

These are just the latest incidents……there will be more before it ever gets better….if that is even possible.

I hope people in the UK are watching these turns for their NHS is under attack and this could be them as well….down the road.

Americans need to be thinking…..Medicare For All!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

To Smoke Or Not To Smoke

OKay, Irene….where do these people plan to stop this whole thingy?

Oregon smokers have been elbowed out of bars, shooed away from entrances, and now they could get a ticket for lighting up in their own car.

The Oregon House voted Wednesday to fine anyone caught smoking with a child in a vehicle, windows rolled up or not. Minors are defined as children younger than 17 and tobacco as cigarettes, cigars or the loose stuff in pipes.

If approved, House Bill 2385 would make such smoking a primary offense, punishable by a maximum $90 fine for a first-time offender.

I can see where they are going with this and I can see where it would be a more healthy thing…but I also see where it is involving the government into the lives of a family…..child abuse? Then why not say because the government is not moving fast enough on emissions that they are also practicing a form of child abuse? We can play this lame ass game for ever.

Someone Thank A Smoker

Federal taxes also are going up Wednesday on other tobacco products, including cigars. Federal per-cigar taxes, which vary based on weight and price, used to be capped at 4.9 cents but now are capped at 40.26 cents.

The tobacco tax hikes, which President Obama signed into law in February, will be used to finance an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. The expansion, which will cost $35 million over five years, is expected to secure federally funded health care for an additional 4 million children.

Before the expansion, SCHIP covered almost 7 million children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid — the federal health insurance program for the poor — but can’t afford private insurance.

So if anyone is benefitting from the SCHIP program in the future then the smoker is helping your child get the medical care that they are needing.

Someone…somewhere…say thanks.

Smokers Now, But Who Is Next?

Beginning April 1, the federal tax will increase 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, bringing the total federal tax on a pack to $1.01. Some tobacco companies already have increased their prices to help make up the difference.

I have read a piece that said the at least one million people have stop smoking ahead of the price increase. Is that the desired outcome? The higher price will force people to stop smoking or they will have to stop eating.

Has anyone stopped to consider something else? Cigarette companies are a dying breed in the US….manufacturers. The tax collect is to offset any future drain on the Medicaid/care system from the results of second hand smoke. Cool, huh?

Are you ignorant? Maybe just thick? But that argument is just stupid! Okay, let us say that millions of people stop smoking, thus stop buying the product….will not millions go to a US manufacturer that is in dire straits? A bailout if you will. So all the cash saved from those not smoking will be eaten up by another bailout of sorts. Sounds like a sound, logical plan (that is sarcasm, in case you missed it).

So looking for another short term fix, these morons have created yet another failing industry that will most likely need bailing out. What geniuses we elected!

With smoking eliminated what will be next? Maybe everyone’s favorite liquor….or maybe those darn pesky fast food outlets. Afterall, these institutions have and produce unhealthy side effects.

Once again the US government intervenes in the people’s private decisions….congrats morons! You elected this group of idiots!

Get Government Out Of Your Life

I do not mind the government taxing me or telling me that my kid has to go to school but there are some things that they should NOT be allowed to do. These are to legislate morality or good health or good eating habits.

Last year the state of Mississippi tried to encat a law that would make it illegal for restaurants to sell certain foods to overweight people. You got it! They were trying to making certain eating habits illegal….like what they are doing with smoking and oral sex.

But Mississippi is not alone in this assault on the people’s right to the “pursuit of happiness” thing. Paterson of New York had his “fat Tax”. The initiative that drew the most criticism was an 18-percent tax on nondiet soda. It was dubbed the “fat tax” because $404 million in proceeds were to go toward combating childhood obesity.

The government needs to stay out of the people’s private lives…their health habits are just that…theirs. No matter how hard the government tries they cannot legislate morality or health.

Gingrich Is A Moron!

And you thought you had heard all you were gonna hear from this guy….HA!

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says Michigan should pay pregnant teenagers to take prenatal vitamins and stay healthy so the government avoids expensive costs when babies end up in neonatal intensive care units.

The Republican also told state senators Wednesday he supports paying poor children to read, and the state should consider paying girls to not get pregnant.

Gingrich is the founder of the Center for Health Transformation. He says politicians and the media spend too much time focusing on the finances of health care. Gingrich says more attention must be paid to cultural changes such as requiring students to exercise, putting grocery stores in the inner city and incentivizing people to not smoke.

Is he saying to pay teen girls to have sex but not get pregnant? I believe there is a title for that activity.

With 8 You Get Porn

I had only thought that Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and such ilk had irritated me…I was sadly mistaken….this broad and her continuing story is more putrid than the Ana Nicole drama.

This is a re post from my primary site of Info ink.

The total absurdity of this story just keeps getting deeper and deeper.

When I first heard this story I thought of the words of my 6 year grand daughter, “Eeeeeewwwwwwwwwww”!

Porn company Vivid Entertainment is offering “financially strapped” Nadya Suleman—who just gave birth to octuplets and is now the mother of 14—“a $1 million payout as well as health and dental care for all of her kids in exchange for a starring role in a porno.”

Look, said Gina Serpe in E! Online, “Octomom needs money,” and “the world needs porn.” Sure, the offer is “clearly not in the best of taste,” but it “couldn’t have come at a better time”: Apparently, the hospital won’t release Suleman’s octuplets “until she has proven she can provide them with adequate care and living arrangements,” and she’s at risk of being evicted from her home for falling behind on her mortgage payments.

Nadya Suleman certainly is “pregnant with possibility,” said Michael Musto in The Village Voice. But she hasn’t even responded to Vivid’s offer yet, and there’s a good chance she won’t do it: Let’s not forget that Suleman “popped out eight implanted embryos”—having sex doesn’t seem to be high up on her list of priorities.

About the only thing I can think of is Tom Waits song, “Whistling Past The Graveyard”.

The Story That Will Not Go Away!

Nadya Suleman apparently has bigger worries than taking care of her 14 children. Talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw says she may have to prove she can handle the load, or else have hospital officials withhold her newborn octuplets.

McGraw said the 33-year-old unemployed mother called him Tuesday, distraught that Kaiser Permanente officials told her they were concerned about the babies living at her home in suburban Los Angeles.

“What she is telling me is that unless and until she has a better living arrangement, that they are not likely to release the children to her,” McGraw told the Los Angeles Times.

“If they feel there’s a risk to a baby, they contact Child Protective Services and Child Protective Services would make a determination as to whether or not there’s a reason for concern,” Bermudez said.

A call to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services was not returned Tuesday night.

Suleman has not responded to repeated interview requests from The Associated Press. Her phone has been disconnected and she no longer has a publicist.

So let me get this right….the people of Calif. will pay for the upkeep of the children…one way or the other….is that it?

The California Medical Board and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine are curious, too. Earlier this month they announced separately that they were investigating the Suleman case, stopping short of naming Michael Kamrava, the fertility doctor thought to have aided Suleman.

While much has been said about the social ramifications of the Suleman octuplets – such as issues about being a single mother, or the impact on the welfare system – these medical organizations need to investigate the case as they would any malpractice suit: Did the doctor deliberately put eight children at risk for serious medical conditions?

A study published in JAMA in 2005 followed over 200 ELBW babies until age 8 and found 14 percent to have cerebral palsy; 21 percent to have asthma; 10 percent to have vision worse than 20/200; nearly 40 percent to have an IQ lower than 85, which approaches a mental deficiency; and nearly 50 percent with poor motor skills.

Similarly, a study in Pediatrics in 2000 found that more than 50 percent of VLBW babies and up to 70 percent ELBW babies need special assistance at school.

Beyond all that…why has no one asked who paid for the comestic work she has done to look like Jolie? Please someone make this story go away!……………………….

8 More Mouths To Feed

My first agitation is the bitch that just squirted out 8 more ankle biters to go with the 6 she already has at home…home…her mother’s 3 bedroom house with 14 kids and two adults…that is right 2 adults….it seems she is not married and still poppin’ out babies.

Question that are plague me are–1–who paid for the proceedure? 2–who is paying for the kids to live. I mean it is said that it takes about an average of $9-10, 000 per child per year. Who is gonna cough up that damn cash?

Personally, do not give a crap how many kids she has if sjhe can afford to raise them…but if she is a drag on the state because she had some abnormal yearning to squirt out babies that is her problem not the taxpayer’s. This woman is in serious need of a lobotomy and be fitted with a vaginal cork. And if she gets such urges in thefuture be tazered until she comes to her senses