In "Medicare's Victims", David Hogberg recounts the intimate stories of patients and physicians who have struggled with Medicare – and then examines the particular Medicare policy that has caused their plight. Patients who are victims of Medicare are often the sickest of the sick – whether they are the disabled who are on Medicare's two-year waiting period; seniors who fell into Part D's donut hole; or individuals who are harmed through too much treatment or not enough. Physicians who are victims are the ones who struggle to provide the best care for their patients while Medicare's reimbursement system, in effect, punishes them for it. There clearly is one thing all of them do have in common: the lack of political power.
Medicare’s Victims
Pressuring elderly folks to take meds is a big problem. Folks are not told about the side effects or non pharmaceutical alternatives. Folks are dying from meds like statin drugs and this needs to be addressed.
Pushing surgeries is really a problem. Older folks are given unrealistic assurances for dangerous tests and procedures and surgeries. Support for making difficult lifestyle changes should be advocated. Seniors are sitting ducks.
Unless this hack also writes a book on the victims of private insurance who dwarf the Medicare victims nobody should take him seriously.
+MsZeitgeist85 The United States has not operated under a true free market privatized model for several decades if ever. The system prior to Obamacare was a hybrid of national and private health care system that gives you the worst flaws of both options. With Obamacare all the problems we had with our previous hybrid system have been exasperated with increased expenses and inefficiency across the board as well as general inequality in the application of benefits. All of it is mute because economically the united states cannot continue to fund any of it’s entitlement programs. It is not if the programs will be defunded it will is when will they and how much debt will be inherited by the younger generations of the United States after they are.
+Rudolph Malmgren That is because a market based system for primary care is not workable. That is why no other country uses it or even has thought about putting it in place. The way health care economics works is that you have to have universal non profit primary care with cost control with companies and providers. This country is the only one that does not do those 2 things and that is why we have the most ineffective health care system in the world.
+MsZeitgeist85 No modern country has ever used a market based medical system so we have no real world examples if such a system would fail. More so democratic nation use public health care as an issue to manipulate the voter base. However every country that has a national heath care system has financial issues with that system. In Canada you have to purchase supplemental insurance or you don’t get service at most medical facilities. What is the point of having a national health care system when it can never be run efficiently because of the bureaucracy and complications of politics. In a free market system, Hospitals and insurance companies would need to become highly efficient while providing the quality experience. More so in a Free market system medical plans could be bundled with other insurance products allowing companies to mitigate unexpected medical costs by profits generated by the other bundled products, such has auto and home insurance. But under current regulations in the United States such options cannot be explored. More so in a free market system the national population can retain the taxes imposed on them by a national system which allows them more freedom in how to deal with medical expenses such as using those funds for a financial portfolio that could generate income that over the long term could allow medical expenses be paid directly out of pocket. Even now you can get a large deduction in costs by prepaying for impending services or paying cash in full up front.
+Rudolph Malmgren First. Canada’s provincial Medicare is far more efficient and effective than our for profit insurance. It outperforms private insurance while spending less than half what we spend. They spend 3600 per person while we spend well over 8000 and still don’t cover everybody. Second it is a fallacy to compare health insurance with car insurance because not everyone needs car insurance and no car insurance will have to cover something at the rate of over a million dollars like many medical procedures. Third Switzerland did have the Market Based health insurance model you talk about and they found it to be unworkable and they abandoned it in 1994 and switched to regulated non profit insurance and they are now working to Nationalized Insurance.