Replying to a message of Bob Klahn to Ross Cassell:

 RS>>>> Official announcement from DC + bureaucrats + politics = Massive
 RS>>>> botch.

 JM>>> Yet you believe these are the people that should be put in charge of
 JM>>> our nation's health care?

 RC>> I detect a "but thats different" coming on because it was
 RC>> championed by Obama.

 BK>  Not necessary. The govt does no worse than the private sector in 
 BK> most cases. Look at the Indiana Toll Road I-Zoom website.  Private
 BK> sector, screwed up royally.

 BK>  Oh, and the govt runs the most successful part of our health
 BK>  care system, medicare. At least before the right got their
 BK>  claws into it.

Medicare FORCES providers to give care to the elderly for whatever reimbursement
the government decides they can have.  The elderly are NOT allowed to contract for
health care outside of the Medicare system, even if they can easily afford
to pay cash
for any treatment (they can, of course, travel to other countries and
receive the care
there - at their own expense, of course).  Medicare is a great deal for the
patients and
a horrible situation for the providers - which is why increasing numbers of
providers are
quietly dropping out of the Medicare system.

For well over 25 years Medicare has been infamous for paying late (if at
all), disallowing
perfectly valid charges and writing itself huge discounts.  When providers
billed the patients
for unpaid charges, Medicare got congress to make 'balance billing' illegal
(so those unpaid charges get factored into everybody else's bills and the
price of health care goes up for 
everybody))  Medicare was doing that sort of thing back in the 1980s.



 BK> BOB KLAHN bob.klahn{at}sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

 BK> ... Ah'm Leghorn of Borg. Prepare, ah say, prepare to be assimilated,
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