Sectorgame

liberator wrote:You're missing the point. The question is how much and what the government covers.

Obviously any cosmetic surgery is right out, except in the case of reconstructive surgery after an accident or major illness. That extends to any elective surgery, from boob jobs to pectoral implants to Godonlyknowswhat.

Understand, I don't actually oppose the government providing some guarenteed level of level of care as long as the patient has the option of seeking additional private care.

What I fear is a bunch of lowlifes, doctors and patients, milking it like they do medicare and the welfare system.

It makes me sick to drive by government housing and see all these people living in cinder block houses by the hundreds, and yet not one of them drives an older car(like me) and every single inhabited building have ****ing Direct TV. They live better than I do(appoximately 60 sqft to call my own,and even that belongs to my dad), don't do a damn thing to get off of welfare, while I scrape and scrimp on a minimal stipend from my parents and can't even get a job and ****ing Wal-Mart.(And people wonder why I'm depressed sometimes.)

How can you abuse medical care? By definition, you only get it when you are sick, and why would you want it otherwise?

aldo wrote:

Black Wolf wrote:

Hunter wrote:The wheel certainly turns doesn't it. I bet WCSAGA are pulling their hair out now

Muah ha ha...

Castor: Welcome to SG, but, err... why is your vasudan blue?

He has no helmet on. In space.

Hehe, right
It can also get bit cold here in Finland this time a year

(sorry for derailing the thread, btw)

to leech off the free money...

Hippo wrote:to leech off the free money...

What free money?

If america did it, there'd be some half-assed way that a scammer could get money. Believe us.

If it's run by a beauracracy, there are at least a dozen ways a 6th grader could scam the system, let alone a 30 year old professional scammer.

There are women on the government rolls who make more money having children than they could at a legit job with their level of education.

That's the problem, the government welfare systems are filled with lowlifes who think the public owes them a living.

But how?

You go in, you get checked out, you get (listed for) an operation / prescription and you're done. (simplified, obviously)

I can see potential problems with abuse of prescription drugs, but that's not been a particularly major issue in the UK in the time that I can remember - especially if the system checks ID and issues drugs which only have a theraputic value and which are needed by the recipient.

It's really quite easy, you go into one facility with one ID complaining of something and then go to another facility with a fake, though equally legal, ID and complain of the same malady, usually intense generalized pain. Therefore you get a double helping of medication for something that you might not have needed anything for in the first place.

The only viable solution is global biometric identification(retina patterns), which will never happen given the political climate in the world.

liberator wrote:It's really quite easy, you go into one facility with one ID complaining of something and then go to another facility with a fake, though equally legal, ID and complain of the same malady, usually intense generalized pain. Therefore you get a double helping of medication for something that you might not have needed anything for in the first place.

The only viable solution is global biometric identification(retina patterns), which will never happen given the political climate in the world.

Centralised medical record keeping. Also, anyone complaining of an intense generalized pain would likely be sent to A&E for a checkup and a series of tests - bloodwork, possibly CAT or x-ray. Most doctors don;t dish prescriptions out like sweeties, and those that do would find themselves hauled up sharpish.

Besides which, the nature of medication is such that a 'double helping' would have bad side-effects - and the nature of presecriptions is such that as long as a patient needs ia medicine, they can get it.

Besides which, why would you want to?

no one gave me the welcome banner when I appeared...

sod yas, I'll do it myself

Unfortunately aldo, to sell. Perscription painkillers have a reasonably high street value, from what I understand.

Though there is a lot of overlap here between goverment-supplimented healthcare (Medicare/Medicade) and Welfare. Unfortunately, the former has been lumped up with the "welfare state" generalization, and so attacking welfare somehow responds to the (often inadequate) state of affordable healthcare in the United States. The myth of the welfare queens (as Liberator has refered to, though not so explicitly), while I'd argue was a political sham, has nothing to do with the argument, but it's the most common response you're likely to get.

I don't know of any doctors who's primary goal is to reap in money, by and large they want to help people. It's long hours, a ton of pressure, and at least 10 years of life spent on education, so that will deter most of the cracks long before they could cripple a health system.

Which brings me to the reason that government-provided healthcare will not come about in this country: insurance, liability, and the great American lawsuit. Something like 60% of a doctor's income (not profits, mind, actual income before medicines and bills and all of that good stuff) goes directly to malpractice insurance, so that he and all of his relatives don't lose everything they have to face a malpractice suit. And that's for your average family doctor, who at worst can perscribe a medication that gives someone an adverse side effect. The more risk involved in a doctor's work, the higher the proportion of income that insurance takes away. America is becoming crippled in liability, and that very real prospect must be removed before the government can realistically think about getting together a working universal healthcare system.

The cracks are coming in at the top, i.e., politicians.