President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

So your opposition to this is Obama didn't enact it sooner?

 

The greatest people:

 

O/U on when NC is the third person to post this tonight?

 

I have an uncle who I see once a year at a family reunion. He is one of my favorite people and talking with him is always a highlight. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met. He's a history buff who has spent retirement traveling to places he has spent his entire life studying about. He fought in Vietnam and while he doesn't like to talk about it, he struggled with alcoholism for years when he returned home. He's also not in the best of health anymore.

Despite all of this, I wish I would have seen your post before the reunion a couple of week's back. Even though I hold him in the highest regard and would be inclined to hold my tongue on political differences out of respect to him and to prevent sullying a once yearly meeting with a pissing, apparently I should have told him he was a fucking dumbass because he happens to be quite conservative.

 

To your last point, here's the thing about my gall bladder surgery that actually struck me the most.

This was, in the scheme of things, minor surgery. Keyhole surgery, one night in hospital. It cost $48,000. Okay, that's crazy. What's cancer cost? But because I have the great fortune of being Canadian, the Ontario government negotiated with the hospital. They got the bill down to $21,o00 and paid that instead.

Now, surely, the hospital was still making money at $21,000. They wouldn't agree to a fee that cost them money, right? Quite a markup.

That's first. Second, the government paid my now reduced bill and then told me: They will come after you for the rest. Don't pay it. They agreed to this reduction, but they're going to come after you as though they didn't. Tell them you're not paying.

Sure enough, collections agencies started calling me. $300 for this, $800 for this, a few thousand for this. Every time they called, I said, I'm not paying. They agreed to less. They got it. Now fuck off.

Eventually the calls stopped. But I remember thinking: These are people who are supposed to take care of sick people. And when, through no fault of my own, my gall bladder decided to pack it in, they tried to overcharge the shit out of me, and then they tried to shake me down for the rest of a ridiculous fee, even though they had agreed to a reduced payment.

Americans will never see it, and I will never understand why: Your healthcare system is the definition of sick, top to bottom. It is unique in the Western world in its moral deficiencies, in its costs, and in its elevation of misfortune into tragedy. And you will never, ever fix it. Because profit.

 

The decision in that case is one of the worst that I've read in my 20 plus years as an employment lawyer. Two other notes -- first, Obama should have promulgated this reg with an effective date years before the election. Second, the decision places the Trump administration in a weird position. They have to argue that the court is wrong and they can change the regs but they then have to say that the regs were too generous.

 

The threshold was originally $20K and was set in the 1970s. Had it kept up with inflation all these years, it would have been in the $50K range now.

The threshold was meant for professionals like doctors and lawyers to not get paid overtime, not the assistant manager at the Kwick-E-Mart.

 

This is absolutely true on a number of fronts. I worked family practice health care for years, and the stories I heard...

I think what chaps me most is what hospitals do to the uninsured. Blue Cross insures about 85% of my state, and they have the leverage to screw their providers down to the last nickel. If you are not on Blue Cross here you might as well close the doors, so providers take rock bottom reimbursement for anything Blue Cross... but private pay patients, the uninsured, boy, they are a free fire gouging zone. A lab that costs BCBS $13 will cost a private patient $54, $75, whatever. That's top to bottom for doctors, procedures, prescriptions, you name it. The people who are least able to pay are the ones who get billed the most. Standard procedure.

As to hospitals trying to double collect, that is very common, and most of the time they get it because people don't know any better. Where this really hurt my heart was with elderly patients. They pay their bills... if it comes in the mail, they must owe it, and so they pay these unscrupulous bastards. Cocksuckers.

 

You never met my folks. They have spent/will spend an hour on the phone quibbling over a bill for $2.

That being said, your point is a good one.

 

I understand that. Just explaining my real world experience with more than a few managers panicking and planning how to cut back hours and pay, which will end up hurting people who can't really afford the reduction.

For example, one college assistant athletic trainer I know makes just over $38K. She is responsible for a couple sports and easily exceeds 40 hours a week if you include the team travel. If this "upgrade" had happened, she was going to have to not work a couple days a week, which would mean no team practices on those days, since a licensed trainer has to be present during any physical activity.

Now, you could say the school should be paying more than $38K for an assistant trainer, but that ignores the economic reality of a lot of sub-prime NCAA programs.

 

Young Fred Trump speaks to local Boy Scout troop

 

One thing to remember: Not sure if this is a universal practice, but once I said, "I'm self-paying," everything was slashed by 33 percent. One bill didn't seem to show this discount, and when I called and reminded them that "all other bills have been cut with a self-pay discount," they cut this one, too. Of course, they likely were slashing from a ridiculously overpriced figure to begin with, so . . .

Heh. Our FIRST choice was this huge Urgent Care building only 5 miles from the house. Very large building, the kind you think might be open all the time (especially since it's always lit up).

Fucker was closed. At 9:30 p.m. WHEN you get sick really does make a difference.

We're saying you are READING the nonpartisan CBO estimate incorrectly. Journalists really deserve a failing grade for how this has been reported.

It says 32 million more will BE without insurance. That INCLUDES all the people TODAY who do not have insurance (there are millions, in spite of the mandate), all the people who will CHOOSE not to have insurance (there will be millions more), and finally, the people who will LOSE insurance (a significant number, but nowhere near 32 million).

And this will not happen until 2026, after the population grows by 20 million more. And a lot of young, healthy people enter the workforce --- and decline insurance.

The important figure --- the people who will LOSE insurance that they desperately want --- is the one that needs to be discussed. And as long as "32 million" is your starting point, honest debate is impossible.