With respect, Starving Artist, you have made several posts in this thread describing life (as you see it) in “Other Countries” as being drab, boring, lacking in personal choice, with people living in tiny houses, driving tiny cars, accepting “adequate” as being good enough, and so on.
That’s not me making up things I think you think for the purposes of mockery and dismissal (and I say that as the SDMB’s resident Emperor of Hyperbole) but pointing out how actual things you have said just are not correct.
What sort of thing would convince you? There are posters in this thread saying “UHC is great, it works, and here’s why”. What else do you need?
It certainly sounds like the kind of disaster the lobbyists and AMA were imagining ;). Which, BTW, is also why Republicans are blowing so much fucking smoke about healthcare. Much like in the case of prisons, the “for profit” model may be inhumane and inevitably lead to abominable results but by god the money’s there to keep it going !
It’s different in that what SA described does not happen in UHC countries.
People in UHC countries may be denied coverage for things which are considered experimental, more risky than the possible benefit are worth, not applicable… They may be denied something such as “a doctor in Boston claims he can cure my child’s rare illness by a treatment neither him nor anybody else have ever used before, I want the UHC system to pay for that including taking my child and me there in a medicalized plane, stay for both of us for as long as I believe the doctor’s claims, etc.” (It’s an actual case).
But they may also get a call saying “we just got approval for tests on something which applies to your previously-untreatable condition, when can you come in?” and the treatment will be fully covered.
Travel insurance from Spanish companies covers all countries except one and indicates you’re covered for “any non-elective procedures”, where the reference is “what the UHC system covers”. Bigger boobs because, not covered; reconstructive surgery after mastectomy, covered. Braces for aesthetic reasons, not covered; braces because upper palate is too narrow and produces digestive problems, covered. The one country where you can’t apply those insurance policies is the US: for there, you need a laundry list.
One of the reasons UHC is better than Medicare? Neither the patient nor the healthcare provider need to demonstrate eligibility for treatments (either in general or for specific treatments), because everyone is eligible. That clears a lot of bureaucracy right out of the way.
Hey crazy! Blaming liberal boogeymen isn’t a panacea for curing all the world’s ills. The reasons for poverty and homelessness are much more complex and varied than an abandonment of values. You think the millions of poor in Asia and Africa are a result of removing prayer from their public schools? You think divorces occur because the husband and wife didn’t go to church enough?
Our current president has been married multiple times, habitually lies, has no interest in attending church, and has had numerous affairs. He’s a teetotaler and doesn’t do drugs, or so he claims. As president, he is considered the paragon of American values. You think a liberal value system produced Trump?
Times change, like it or not. There’s no reason to expect the J. Edgar-approved nuclear family to stay frozen in time. And what makes you think liberals are the only ones who do drugs? Can’t you hold alcohol accountable as well? Conservatives have been known to be stiff drinkers.
Could we please please please get back to the actual thread topic? If Starving Artist wants to lecture everyone for the umpteenth time on his peculiar notions about “Liberal Permissiveness™”, or Universal Health Care, or whatever, he’s perfectly capable of launching a new thread.
Good genes. Seriously - I’m 6’3, around 230 pounds, pushing 60, eat a lot of crap, don’t exercise much and my numbers are all great. At my last visit, my doctor told me that he figures I’ll outlive him (20 years or so younger) and will need a doctor.
I’m in worse physical shape than you and my numbers are still fine. For now! My doc said it is possible to be a healthy fat person, but I’m not assuming I’ll be that lucky forever.
It’s what Republicans want. It helps them fix their Medicare and Social Security funding problems, without having to bother the plutocrats with higher taxes.
Regarding the cognitive testing, it’s hard to memorize them to “cheat” if you actually have dementia. That is why we use the same ones repeatedly to show changes in a patient’s function over time. In addition, it is not like this is the only standardized cognitive test. (Just off the top of my head, there is the Montreal, MMSE, 6-CIT, SLUMS (and when I look them up I also remember the GPCOG, mini-COG, ACE)). I currently use the MMSE or the 6-CIT (there is one insurance company that requests it on Medicare patients) but my electronic record has the SLUMS built in. In short, unless the President was informed ahead of time, he wouldn’t necessarily know which test the doctor was going to use. In additional some of these have variations (the MMSE lets you choose the words you ask patients to remember or which you ask them to spell backwards-I alternate between WORLD and EARTH). So not only would he have the memorize multiple commonly used cognitive tests but he would also have to have the cognitive ability to pass them, which is not easy with dementia.
I saw that and posted about it in another thread. He is not the healthiest president (or person) that ever lived, despite what he wants people to believe. It goes along with his insistence that he has certainly never failed at anything - anytime anything he tried went wrong, it was somebody else’s fault. He is the most fabulous [fill in the blank here] the world has ever seen. And he can’t just be in “good” physical or mental shape, he has to claim he runs rings around everyone else in every category ever. That’s why I’m so skeptical that he got such a good physical report, even if it’s from a previously reputable doctor.