jamest wrote:

crank wrote:What a pathetic bunch of putzes, pulled the bill because they screwed themselves so badly. Trump threatened the house members directly, and still couldn't get the vote. That will hurt him down the road, probably seriously, his impotence on display for all to see and snicker at.

Anyone who has to use threats to get their policies passed through 'the house' is a danger to said establishment. The point is that policies should pass or fail on their own merits. If that's what Trump is doing (is he?) then he should be kicked in the balls and told to fuck off. Now. Impeach the cnut and get rid.

That's not really how things work, there are shitloads of threats going on all the time. LBJ was well known to be a fantastic seller of his desires to congress, usually with phone calls of arguments, pleading, deals, etc, but if necessary, he started with the arm twisting, it's politics The GOP, dire threats are SOP. It's out in the open about Trump threatening to unseat reps [by not supporting them but a challenger, directing where money went, etc,] and remove them from committees/demote them from chairmanships, etc. It's not all that unusual, it's more about when and why and what stakes might lead you to resort to what threats.

crank wrote:

jamest wrote:

crank wrote:What a pathetic bunch of putzes, pulled the bill because they screwed themselves so badly. Trump threatened the house members directly, and still couldn't get the vote. That will hurt him down the road, probably seriously, his impotence on display for all to see and snicker at.

Anyone who has to use threats to get their policies passed through 'the house' is a danger to said establishment. The point is that policies should pass or fail on their own merits. If that's what Trump is doing (is he?) then he should be kicked in the balls and told to fuck off. Now. Impeach the cnut and get rid.

That's not really how things work, there are shitloads of threats going on all the time. LBJ was well known to be a fantastic seller of his desires to congress, usually with phone calls of arguments, pleading, deals, etc, but if necessary, he started with the arm twisting, it's politics The GOP, dire threats are SOP. It's out in the open about Trump threatening to unseat reps [by not supporting them but a challenger, directing where money went, etc,] and remove them from committees/demote them from chairmanships, etc. It's not all that unusual, it's more about when and why and what stakes might lead you to resort to what threats.

Sorry, I'm an idealist in both senses. I guess that's why I bypass politics for the most part, which isn't of course a mirror for an indifference with politics. Anyway, if things are the way you paint them then you've only served to enforce my own feelings about politics. I mean, don't you think that it's a fucking joke that the president of the USA gets to bully the house which is there to issue checks & balances on his/her presidency almost to the point that the house becomes obsolete and a democratic president gets to don the uniform of a fascist? Even if you're not an idealist in any sense of the word? Because from where I'm standing, Trump likes the look of that uniform.

25 Republican dudes debate gutting maternity care, with not a single woman in sight


The lack of even a token women in a photo tweeted out by U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence on Wednesday drew immediate criticism from opponents, and the Internet.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017 ... sight.html

Misogenic proto theocracy ....founding fathers..

purplerat wrote:

crank wrote:

purplerat wrote:

Agrippina wrote:What really gets me going about American health insurance is the business that you can't take it across state lines. Well that's what it sounds like to me anyway. Surely if you buy health insurance, you should be able to claim against it, anywhere in the world, let alone in your own country? I don't know but that just wrong that you can't carry it across borders within your own country.

You can take it wherever you want (in theory at least). It's just that you can't buy it out of state.

If I understand it correctly, it might be better to say the companies have to sell policies that are state specific, because they are still regulated by state law, the federal law sits atop the states' laws, mandated minimum coverages and other restrictions and requirements,. The companies cannot sell a plan to anyone that isn't a resident of the state. If you are traveling, you are still covered, but could likely face difficulties if you don't get all kinds of shit preapproved. Like, if you're not unconscious, get approval before you get in an ambulance, if having a heart attack, get approval before you so to a hospital. It'll be even worse if you out of country. I don't know about moving to another state, not sure how that would work.

Yes that is how I understand it.

The getting approval part though, for many you have to do that no matter where you are. It's not like having insurance in X state means you can just go to any doctor in that state. At least that's not the way it works for many.

***ETA***
That's one one of the arguments for not allowing insurance to be sold across state lines; that doing so would exasperate that situation whereby it would be harder for people to get approval even within their own state as they would be dealing with an out of state agency to find local access.

This is what baffles me. Everything is on computer today, so shouldn't all healthcare insurers be in every health facility's database so it can be accessed when someone is out of their state. That's how ours works, except if we're overseas. Then we produce our insurance card to show that we are covered, it's recorded on the account, but we pay upfront, then claim when we return, or even by email while we're away. I haven't had to use it personally. When I dislocated my shoulder in Scotland, I just put it in a sling, and dealt with it when I got back home. We have travel insurance up to R1m for illness or injury abroad, if we buy the ticket with a credit card, automatic, with no charge. They'll even pay for a family member to visit or to help you travel back home. I didn't think of using this with my shoulder. I think in the UK if you visit an A&E centre as a traveller, you don't pay. I might be wrong about that.
When we travel within the country, the health provider just puts in the details on the computer, and gets authorisation from the insurer and we either have a co-payment or not, depending on the service. For teeth for example, there is a small co-payment. For everything else, we've never paid in anything. I had my cataracts done in January, at a cost of about R50,000 without paying anything. Last year I needed a new tooth to replace one that had fallen out, I paid in R180 on a cost of a few thousand. We could give up our insurance but that would mean going to government hospitals, and waiting for treatment that isn't an emergency. So for my eyes, I wouldn't have had to pay, but would've had to wait for years for my turn. My kids' dad needed a pacemaker. He got it on the government, immediately, and at no cost because he was a state pensioner, with no insurance.

Two things: that pic with him driving the toy car, his hands are too big.

The other one, with all the men around the table, we were talking about this last night. We have a feeling that these men are going to bring about the fall of women in the workplace with their misogyny. It's already a thing (and I don't want to derail the thread with this) that women who assert themselves are vilified as being "strident" and "pushy" and it seems that rape is being used more and more to shut up the women who won't go away. We need men to point out the misogyny if we don't end up going back to the 1950s and women being relegated to what they were before the invention of the pill.

We have a central health care database which all health care institutions have access. We dont pay anything up front. Waiting times are very short. I visited my GP a week yesterday about my cluster headaches and I am seeing a neurologist on Monday. That is true of all departments. I have never waited longer than two weeks for anything.

Scot Dutchy wrote:We have a central health care database which all health care institutions have access. We dont pay anything up front. Waiting times are very short. I visited my GP a week yesterday about my cluster headaches and I am seeing a neurologist on Monday. That is true of all departments. I have never waited longer than two weeks for anything.

That's because you have a properly-functioning healthcare system. We're building ours. At the moment it's free to everyone who isn't insured, or who can't afford insurance, but they're working on a proper system, like the ones in Europe, where most of the private hospitals are taken over by the NHS (that's the temp short form), and an extra tax is deducted from workers to pay for it. We'll have to pay in, even if we also opt to pay for private insurance. I doubt it will come into proper operation in my lifetime, but it is on the cards. Right now it's a leftover from the system that was in place before, where there were few private hospitals, and everyone used the government ones, which were really good, but paid a small amount for service, but nothing if they didn't have money. Our health insurance used to cover the costs so we could choose our doctors. If we didn't pay, we had no choice of doctor, or private room, etc.

It's really high time America sacked the Trump and said goodbye to the circus.

Agrippina wrote:

purplerat wrote:

crank wrote:

purplerat wrote:
You can take it wherever you want (in theory at least). It's just that you can't buy it out of state.

If I understand it correctly, it might be better to say the companies have to sell policies that are state specific, because they are still regulated by state law, the federal law sits atop the states' laws, mandated minimum coverages and other restrictions and requirements,. The companies cannot sell a plan to anyone that isn't a resident of the state. If you are traveling, you are still covered, but could likely face difficulties if you don't get all kinds of shit preapproved. Like, if you're not unconscious, get approval before you get in an ambulance, if having a heart attack, get approval before you so to a hospital. It'll be even worse if you out of country. I don't know about moving to another state, not sure how that would work.

Yes that is how I understand it.

The getting approval part though, for many you have to do that no matter where you are. It's not like having insurance in X state means you can just go to any doctor in that state. At least that's not the way it works for many.

***ETA***
That's one one of the arguments for not allowing insurance to be sold across state lines; that doing so would exasperate that situation whereby it would be harder for people to get approval even within their own state as they would be dealing with an out of state agency to find local access.

This is what baffles me. Everything is on computer today, so shouldn't all healthcare insurers be in every health facility's database so it can be accessed when someone is out of their state. That's how ours works, except if we're overseas. Then we produce our insurance card to show that we are covered, it's recorded on the account, but we pay upfront, then claim when we return, or even by email while we're away. I haven't had to use it personally. When I dislocated my shoulder in Scotland, I just put it in a sling, and dealt with it when I got back home. We have travel insurance up to R1m for illness or injury abroad, if we buy the ticket with a credit card, automatic, with no charge. They'll even pay for a family member to visit or to help you travel back home. I didn't think of using this with my shoulder. I think in the UK if you visit an A&E centre as a traveller, you don't pay. I might be wrong about that.
When we travel within the country, the health provider just puts in the details on the computer, and gets authorisation from the insurer and we either have a co-payment or not, depending on the service. For teeth for example, there is a small co-payment. For everything else, we've never paid in anything. I had my cataracts done in January, at a cost of about R50,000 without paying anything. Last year I needed a new tooth to replace one that had fallen out, I paid in R180 on a cost of a few thousand. We could give up our insurance but that would mean going to government hospitals, and waiting for treatment that isn't an emergency. So for my eyes, I wouldn't have had to pay, but would've had to wait for years for my turn. My kids' dad needed a pacemaker. He got it on the government, immediately, and at no cost because he was a state pensioner, with no insurance.

It's not about whether a healthcare provider knows if you have insurance or not. It's about whether your insurance will be accepted at by a given provider. It's a fucked up system which I'm not defending it but simply being insured in the US does not mean you're covered everywhere.

Agrippina wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:We have a central health care database which all health care institutions have access. We dont pay anything up front. Waiting times are very short. I visited my GP a week yesterday about my cluster headaches and I am seeing a neurologist on Monday. That is true of all departments. I have never waited longer than two weeks for anything.

That's because you have a properly-functioning healthcare system. We're building ours. At the moment it's free to everyone who isn't insured, or who can't afford insurance, but they're working on a proper system, like the ones in Europe, where most of the private hospitals are taken over by the NHS (that's the temp short form), and an extra tax is deducted from workers to pay for it. We'll have to pay in, even if we also opt to pay for private insurance. I doubt it will come into proper operation in my lifetime, but it is on the cards. Right now it's a leftover from the system that was in place before, where there were few private hospitals, and everyone used the government ones, which were really good, but paid a small amount for service, but nothing if they didn't have money. Our health insurance used to cover the costs so we could choose our doctors. If we didn't pay, we had no choice of doctor, or private room, etc.

Yep it sounds like the situation we had before the major change in 2004. We used to have a mix of private or state (ziekenfonds) health care. Everyone paid for ziekenfonds but if your income was over a certain limit (not that high either) you had to take private (particular) health care. It was not cheap but you could phone up a hospital and make an appointment with a specialist without going through your GP. This lead to great confusion. Your records were very local and nobody knew what treatment you had been given. Now private health does not exist. Everybody knows your details even your pharmacy (you have to be registered by one).

purplerat wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

purplerat wrote:

crank wrote:
If I understand it correctly, it might be better to say the companies have to sell policies that are state specific, because they are still regulated by state law, the federal law sits atop the states' laws, mandated minimum coverages and other restrictions and requirements,. The companies cannot sell a plan to anyone that isn't a resident of the state. If you are traveling, you are still covered, but could likely face difficulties if you don't get all kinds of shit preapproved. Like, if you're not unconscious, get approval before you get in an ambulance, if having a heart attack, get approval before you so to a hospital. It'll be even worse if you out of country. I don't know about moving to another state, not sure how that would work.

Yes that is how I understand it.

The getting approval part though, for many you have to do that no matter where you are. It's not like having insurance in X state means you can just go to any doctor in that state. At least that's not the way it works for many.

***ETA***
That's one one of the arguments for not allowing insurance to be sold across state lines; that doing so would exasperate that situation whereby it would be harder for people to get approval even within their own state as they would be dealing with an out of state agency to find local access.

This is what baffles me. Everything is on computer today, so shouldn't all healthcare insurers be in every health facility's database so it can be accessed when someone is out of their state. That's how ours works, except if we're overseas. Then we produce our insurance card to show that we are covered, it's recorded on the account, but we pay upfront, then claim when we return, or even by email while we're away. I haven't had to use it personally. When I dislocated my shoulder in Scotland, I just put it in a sling, and dealt with it when I got back home. We have travel insurance up to R1m for illness or injury abroad, if we buy the ticket with a credit card, automatic, with no charge. They'll even pay for a family member to visit or to help you travel back home. I didn't think of using this with my shoulder. I think in the UK if you visit an A&E centre as a traveller, you don't pay. I might be wrong about that.
When we travel within the country, the health provider just puts in the details on the computer, and gets authorisation from the insurer and we either have a co-payment or not, depending on the service. For teeth for example, there is a small co-payment. For everything else, we've never paid in anything. I had my cataracts done in January, at a cost of about R50,000 without paying anything. Last year I needed a new tooth to replace one that had fallen out, I paid in R180 on a cost of a few thousand. We could give up our insurance but that would mean going to government hospitals, and waiting for treatment that isn't an emergency. So for my eyes, I wouldn't have had to pay, but would've had to wait for years for my turn. My kids' dad needed a pacemaker. He got it on the government, immediately, and at no cost because he was a state pensioner, with no insurance.

It's not about whether a healthcare provider knows if you have insurance or not. It's about whether your insurance will be accepted at by a given provider. It's a fucked up system which I'm not defending it but simply being insured in the US does not mean you're covered everywhere.

That's just wrong. You should be covered anywhere in the world if you have insurance.

Scot Dutchy wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:We have a central health care database which all health care institutions have access. We dont pay anything up front. Waiting times are very short. I visited my GP a week yesterday about my cluster headaches and I am seeing a neurologist on Monday. That is true of all departments. I have never waited longer than two weeks for anything.

That's because you have a properly-functioning healthcare system. We're building ours. At the moment it's free to everyone who isn't insured, or who can't afford insurance, but they're working on a proper system, like the ones in Europe, where most of the private hospitals are taken over by the NHS (that's the temp short form), and an extra tax is deducted from workers to pay for it. We'll have to pay in, even if we also opt to pay for private insurance. I doubt it will come into proper operation in my lifetime, but it is on the cards. Right now it's a leftover from the system that was in place before, where there were few private hospitals, and everyone used the government ones, which were really good, but paid a small amount for service, but nothing if they didn't have money. Our health insurance used to cover the costs so we could choose our doctors. If we didn't pay, we had no choice of doctor, or private room, etc.

Yep it sounds like the situation we had before the major change in 2004. We used to have a mix of private or state (ziekenfonds) health care. Everyone paid for ziekenfonds but if your income was over a certain limit (not that high either) you had to take private (particular) health care. It was not cheap but you could phone up a hospital and make an appointment with a specialist without going through your GP. This lead to great confusion. Your records were very local and nobody knew what treatment you had been given. Now private health does not exist. Everybody knows your details even your pharmacy (you have to be registered by one).

That's what we'll probably get to. I think that the jobs that will be lost if we switched too soon is probably a huge factor in why it's going to take time to change. We already have enough unemployment for us to have thousands of insurance workers laid off. So we'll probably have two systems, for at least my lifetime.

It is very typical in many health systems. Almost all European systems have a parallel private and public system. Here was recognised as a major reason for inefficiency and a waste of money. Although there was a great outcry when private health was scrapped now nobody would want to return to the old mess.

Paging Dr. Freud:

Scot Dutchy wrote:It is very typical in many health systems. Almost all European systems have a parallel private and public system. Here was recognised as a major reason for inefficiency and a waste of money. Although there was a great outcry when private health was scrapped now nobody would want to return to the old mess.

The Canadian system works by pooling money to purchase goods and services from the private health care sector. This allows a tonne of negotiating leverage to keep prices down. This is what some call socailism and is against free-market values. The funny thing is Walmart and Amazon use the exact same tactics with their suppliers in an apparent free market system.

felltoearth wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:It is very typical in many health systems. Almost all European systems have a parallel private and public system. Here was recognised as a major reason for inefficiency and a waste of money. Although there was a great outcry when private health was scrapped now nobody would want to return to the old mess.

The Canadian system works by pooling money to purchase goods and services from the private health care sector. This allows a tonne of negotiating leverage to keep prices down. This is what some call socailism and is against free-market values. The funny thing is Walmart and Amazon use the exact same tactics with their suppliers in an apparent free market system.

We dont have private health care. The health service, health inspectorate, insurance companies, and patient representatives together negotiate prices as one national service. Why is it not free market? There is only one customer so suppliers can take it or leave it.

Agrippina wrote:

purplerat wrote:

crank wrote:

purplerat wrote:
You can take it wherever you want (in theory at least). It's just that you can't buy it out of state.

If I understand it correctly, it might be better to say the companies have to sell policies that are state specific, because they are still regulated by state law, the federal law sits atop the states' laws, mandated minimum coverages and other restrictions and requirements,. The companies cannot sell a plan to anyone that isn't a resident of the state. If you are traveling, you are still covered, but could likely face difficulties if you don't get all kinds of shit preapproved. Like, if you're not unconscious, get approval before you get in an ambulance, if having a heart attack, get approval before you so to a hospital. It'll be even worse if you out of country. I don't know about moving to another state, not sure how that would work.

Yes that is how I understand it.

The getting approval part though, for many you have to do that no matter where you are. It's not like having insurance in X state means you can just go to any doctor in that state. At least that's not the way it works for many.

***ETA***
That's one one of the arguments for not allowing insurance to be sold across state lines; that doing so would exasperate that situation whereby it would be harder for people to get approval even within their own state as they would be dealing with an out of state agency to find local access.

This is what baffles me. Everything is on computer today, so shouldn't all healthcare insurers be in every health facility's database so it can be accessed when someone is out of their state. That's how ours works, except if we're overseas. Then we produce our insurance card to show that we are covered, it's recorded on the account, but we pay upfront, then claim when we return, or even by email while we're away. I haven't had to use it personally. When I dislocated my shoulder in Scotland, I just put it in a sling, and dealt with it when I got back home. We have travel insurance up to R1m for illness or injury abroad, if we buy the ticket with a credit card, automatic, with no charge. They'll even pay for a family member to visit or to help you travel back home. I didn't think of using this with my shoulder. I think in the UK if you visit an A&E centre as a traveller, you don't pay. I might be wrong about that.
When we travel within the country, the health provider just puts in the details on the computer, and gets authorisation from the insurer and we either have a co-payment or not, depending on the service. For teeth for example, there is a small co-payment. For everything else, we've never paid in anything. I had my cataracts done in January, at a cost of about R50,000 without paying anything. Last year I needed a new tooth to replace one that had fallen out, I paid in R180 on a cost of a few thousand. We could give up our insurance but that would mean going to government hospitals, and waiting for treatment that isn't an emergency. So for my eyes, I wouldn't have had to pay, but would've had to wait for years for my turn. My kids' dad needed a pacemaker. He got it on the government, immediately, and at no cost because he was a state pensioner, with no insurance.

There's all kinds of shoulda about our health care system. I've had to go to a lot of office visits with my mom lately, and they make her fill out forms everywhere with the same info, over and over, it's absurd. There's been a big push to standardize all of this crap, and that seems to have hardly made a dent at most clinics/offices/hospitals. What we're doing to ourselves is insane, it really is that simple. This can be seen by how often you hear about how the US has the best health care in the world, blatantly, patently false, but a big percentage of people swear it's so. Even as they pay twice as much for much less care, and much worse outcomes.

jamest wrote:

crank wrote:

jamest wrote:

crank wrote:What a pathetic bunch of putzes, pulled the bill because they screwed themselves so badly. Trump threatened the house members directly, and still couldn't get the vote. That will hurt him down the road, probably seriously, his impotence on display for all to see and snicker at.

Anyone who has to use threats to get their policies passed through 'the house' is a danger to said establishment. The point is that policies should pass or fail on their own merits. If that's what Trump is doing (is he?) then he should be kicked in the balls and told to fuck off. Now. Impeach the cnut and get rid.

That's not really how things work, there are shitloads of threats going on all the time. LBJ was well known to be a fantastic seller of his desires to congress, usually with phone calls of arguments, pleading, deals, etc, but if necessary, he started with the arm twisting, it's politics The GOP, dire threats are SOP. It's out in the open about Trump threatening to unseat reps [by not supporting them but a challenger, directing where money went, etc,] and remove them from committees/demote them from chairmanships, etc. It's not all that unusual, it's more about when and why and what stakes might lead you to resort to what threats.

Sorry, I'm an idealist in both senses. I guess that's why I bypass politics for the most part, which isn't of course a mirror for an indifference with politics. Anyway, if things are the way you paint them then you've only served to enforce my own feelings about politics. I mean, don't you think that it's a fucking joke that the president of the USA gets to bully the house which is there to issue checks & balances on his/her presidency almost to the point that the house becomes obsolete and a democratic president gets to don the uniform of a fascist? Even if you're not an idealist in any sense of the word? Because from where I'm standing, Trump likes the look of that uniform.

I pretty much despise politics, unfortunately, it seems it's something humans do, we really need to learn how to do it better. It's a function of our numbers, really, the densities, too many too packed. This particular aspect results from having parties, especially only two, and allowing them to have the power they have accumulated.

25 Republican dudes debate gutting maternity care, with not a single woman in sight


The lack of even a token women in a photo tweeted out by U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence on Wednesday drew immediate criticism from opponents, and the Internet.

Shouldn't that read "With not a single human in sight"?

Meanwhile, from the universally expected dept, Donald Trump blames Democrats for stunning failure to repeal Obamacare

Where you can read:

He added: “We all learned a lot. We learned a lot about loyalty.”

First off, I don't think Trump is capable of learning much of anything. And, second, the remark about loyalty is a continuation of the threats.