Gunner's Status

Ed,

I'm having a beer in the US atm. Now why is 85K good enough with insurance and

Now I'm thinking you are saying we need national health care to solve the problem. I may be wrong so pipe up if I am wrong on that since my line of thought is based on that in this thread.

Government forces health care to provide care at discounted rates and give urgent care to those that show up in the emergincy room. That causes a transfer of expense to other consumers.

Now some consumers are represented by insurance companies and have the clout to take something close to US Government discounts. Not as close, but a good discount.

The only group of consumers left are those that have no powerful group to negotiate for them. That is the guy that pays cash.

So as I see it, the distortions in health care are caused by government, fought by insurance companies, and stuffed up the arse of people standing on their own.

I hope you are not advocating we need government to fix the mess government got us into. Sounds too much like our current state of things in the financial industry.

Instead of single payer, I think we need single price. Paid by those that demand service be given.

Wes

Hope you recover well. Karl

I went into the BHH 2 months ago,..walked in the door with come chest discomfort at 8:30am. They plugged me into various machines, took lots of fluids, x-rays etc etc. I remained wired up until 5:pm, when they told me I had chronic broncities, no signs of any trouble with my heart, gave me a script for amoxycyline and a $10k bill.

Last week Id been having a slight cough all week. Saturday morning, I woke up with minor chest discomfort, tightness of chest and breath. So I used my inhalers, and even sucked on the end of the O2 hose from my welding rig as the symptoms got worst. Broncitis attack?

Had a lady friend take me to the local county hospital where they took one look, a fast ekg and told me I was having a heart attack.

Im quoted as saying "Heart attack? No, cant be. Other people have heart attacks. I was told a couple months ago mine is just hunky dory" In fact..I have the paperwork that says that.

They looked at me like an utter idiot, stuck me with morphine and I dont remember much after than until waking up on the rotorrouter machine looking at the blockages in the monitor and the worried looks on the techs who told me they couldnt handle what was going on, and I needed to be abulanced to the University cardiac care hospital..stat. The surgeon went with me in the ambulance and told me to hang in there...I think there were at least 5 people hovering over me in the meat wagon. I woke up at some point and they were doing unpleasent things in a very rapid fashion to my right leg...with "we are losing him" a clear quote.

The BHH and the Loma Linda University hospital are two seperate entities

Perhaps your ICD manufacture told you that yours is good to go, but didnt think it was necessary to put batteries in it, before you set out on an trip down the Amazon?

Gunner

Whenever a Liberal utters the term "Common Sense approach"....grab your wallet, your ass, and your guns because the sombitch is about to do something damned nasty to all three of them.

A better analogy would be that you took in your Piper Cherokee because of a slight miss and they didnt bother to tell you that the carbies were filled with s*it, and sure..go ahead and fly cross country over the Nothern States in mid winter....and charged you the Full AP/AF shop rates

One doesnt go from "good condition" to 2 of the most important being

Gunner

Whenever a Liberal utters the term "Common Sense approach"....grab your wallet, your ass, and your guns because the sombitch is about to do something damned nasty to all three of them.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Fred

From a casual poster to this group, I am personally glad to hear you are back in business. I've always enjoyed your posts and especially your sigs. Too bad we live on opposite coasts as I would like to meet you in person.

Bill N4ZZO

Gunner- sorry to hear you went through that, but it's good that it turned out well. We all gotta go some time, but it's not your time yet.

Anyway, I think I owe you a Mountain Dew or something.

Rubbish. The US spends more per capita on health care than any other developed country, but still has relatively poor outcomes in terms of mortality (eg, Cuba has better infant mortality rates).....

Its a bit like your banking system (remember when you had one?) where the CEO's skim off billions before any benefit accrues to the "customers" - now, that was a spectacular failure and had to be bailed out by "government intervention" - . Oh, and BTW - seems like the CEO's of the banks were STILL paying themselves 35 billion dollars in "bonuses" while grabbing the Gov. cash to bail them out....it would be cheaper for you all if you got rid of your ideologically driven health system that, like the banks, is clearly not working by any standard of objective performance.

Andrew VK3BFA

On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:40:08 -0800, the infamous Gunner Asch scrawled the following:

T O O M U C H I N F O R M A T I O N !

So, how long will you be hanging around the homestead, watching Obama and his new (reverting to damnear the entire Clinton cabinet is "change", is it?) regime start things rolling? What a way to recouperate!

-- Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys. -- Gail Pool

On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:52:39 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress" scrawled the following:

Here, too. How in the F*CK can the hospitals get away with that kind of s*it? If you're -not- covered by insurance it costs EIGHT AND A QUARTER TIMES MORE MONEY?

-- Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys. -- Gail Pool

On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 03:36:32 -0800, the infamous Gunner Asch scrawled the following:

True. BTW, have you quit smoking yet?

-- Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys. -- Gail Pool

The only thing that hasn't happened in this thread so far is for TMT to blame Bob's wife's brain cancer on Bush.

You're slippin, T.

You got a fever or somethin'?

Wow, do you generate commentary! Gunner, sorry to hear that it happened, glad that you pulled through, waiting to hear more.

Bert from Burke

God dammit my old aversary, I an really sorry to hear of your health problems, I am delighted to see you are on the road to recovery. Get werll soon and get back on line so we can continue the international mass abuse scheme we all had going.

Well said, Andrew!

Yeah, but isn't his whole family pretty much on the dole now? Wife and son's wife and kid on social security disability? Living in that environment, he must feel like he'd be a fool to pay for his own multiple and progressively more expensive hospital events. He probably hasn't even made a dent in paying for the last one, and he'll just throw up his hands if he sees a bill for the latest escapade. Oh wait, I see in another post that he's hiring a lawyer. If he scores in the judicial lottery, you just know he'd only blow through it in a few months of wasteful spending.

Well sure, but you have to understand that there simply isn't room in his budget for insurance premiums, what with the high cost of his health regimen of cigarettes and Mountain Dew. Which reminds me, years ago he claimed that he'd simply die before accepting free life-saving care. Just another empty claim like all the others he pounds out every day. Spend those hours at a part-time job and send the money to his docs? Not a chance in hell. He'll feel even less like working now, and instead probably increase his Usenet ass-time. Which will lead to more smoking, more soda, and before long, his own application for a disability check... so that he can do Usenet full time!

Exactly. He'd tell that kid to pull himself up by his bootstraps, even if he was barefooted. Then he'd spend a few more hours advocating for endless war that costs trillions in borrowed money, and in another thread, argue against deficit spending. He makes Rush Limbaugh look like a deep thinker.

The hypocrite of the century.

Wayne

Gummer once threatened the daughter of one his Usenet opponents. Wrote that he might give her name to some unsavory characters or some such. Why anyone believes he's a decent person is beyond me.

Wayne

No kidding. Considering the logic that Gummer deploys here day in and day out, nobody should be surprised that he hopes for a windfall from a lifetime of refusing to take responsibility. Regarding that lawsuit, I got news for him - the normal presumption that a jury will feel sorry for the poor disabled guy doesn't apply here. A good defense lawyer will be able to use Gummer's Usenet posts to paint a clear picture of an irresponsible lifestyle, and a hypocritical attitude about courts and jury awards. And any lawyer who looks at those posts and realizes how much work it will be to defend against them, isn't going to very enthused about taking gummer's weak case on a contingency basis. Karma can be a bitch.

Wayne

Hawke wrote: (snip)

Believe me, chest pain knows no politics. You do what you must to survive. I recall a lawyer "friend" of mine who immediately adopted a whole new, and much improved, attitude towards me about the time I restarted his heart and took away his chest pain.

Jeff