Just got out of bed (yes, I slept until 7:30 this morning :eek: ) and woke up to anemail from an uncle:
I’m not awake enough to even think of how to begin to respond.
:rolleyes:
I’m from the economic hellhole that is known as Southern Oregon and that sort of ranting sounds exactly like something my Dad or anyone else from his side of the family would say.
Are we related!?
The delete button is always a solid option.
Wow - I’m out of work, too. I thought it was because of the sequester and the lack of effort on the part of our elected representatives to do their jobs. But apparently it’s the fault of Obamacare.
Dang…
:rolleyes:
Private for-profit cancer centers aren’t taking Medicare (and probably never have) because Medicare pays for shit and always has, because we don’t want to fund it more because OMG it’s socialist; if we’d had the originally-proposed “Obamacare” instead of the gutted version of it that we do now, maybe we’d be in a better position. Tell him to find a regular non-profit hospital to get a dermatologist to look at the thing, you don’t need to go to some “cancer center” to get a mole, cancerous or not, looked at and taken care of.
Or hit the delete button, because if you’re lucky that’ll be his response to you - if you’re not you’ll just get more “OMG Obama hates small businesses and people and wants everyone to die DEATH PANELS froth, foam” back.
Tell him you wrote a nearly identical letter to the paper about Reagan when you were a punk rocker back in 1983. 
Yeah, anyone who has decided that Obama is at fault for all of today’s ills is going to reason backward from that to whatever specifics are making their life shitty. Reason, logic and fact have nothing to do with it; DELete or nod+smile.
I was visiting my ailing grandparents in Medford once. I went outside to walk around a bit, and this buy in the next yard walked up to the rail fence. He was decked out in rodeo fashion (tight Wranglers, huge belt buckle, a multi-coloured shirt, and a black cowboy hat) and said hello. The next thing he said was, ‘These two niggers are walking down the street…’ :eek: Dude! I’m too polite, and let him finish his joke. Then I immediately excused myself and went away.
I get emails from my uncle telling me he ‘is afraid [some wingnut propaganda] will happen’. I’ve replied with reason and citations, and he’ll usually concede some of my points. I think I’ve run out of energy on this one. Maybe I just need to wake up a bit.
The SO lived in Oregon for a few years while she was going to Nursing school. She’s a devout Christian, and is a conservative. She hated the Oregon taxes, but she praised Oregon’s health care system in that it helped people like her who had no money but needed to go to a doctor. She worked in a nursing home at the time, and proposed that laws be enacted to establish a minimum amount of care for patients, and to force such establishments to hire enough staff to provide adequate care. Aside from that, she felt the health care provided by the state was ‘generous’. (She also felt Oregon’s support of education was very good.)
I consider myself a Liberal because I support equal rights, including marriage, for GBLT people. I support people paying for the services government makes available; yes, taxes. I would like to see a single-payer health care system paid for through taxes. I think that the wealthiest people should support the country that allowed them to be so successful, and that people of lesser means should have a larger share of the wealth that they created for their bosses. I want more money for schools, and I think there every class required for a degree should be offered in evening classes so that working adults can further their educations. I think science, and not mythology, should be taught in schools. Since I grew up in the '70s, I want to make sure we do not return to the pollution that was rampant then. I think we need to rein in the military-industrial complex. And so on.
The SO thinks I’m a Conservative because I have a very strong sense of responsibility and duty.
I ramble. No, I don’t think we’re related; but I have a certain prejudice about Southern Oregon.
I, for one, will never vote for Obama again. Public Health Care would take the burden off of small businesses and families.
Tell your uncle about your new job piloting a black helicopter.
Yeah! Deny him a third term!
So your uncle is on Medicare but thinks that Obamacare is turning the US into a socialist state. That’s screwed up. Plus this bit, “cancer centers aren’t taking Medicare patients” is nonsense. For many hospitals Medicare patients are the largest part of the business (maybe 40-50% of the patients are Medicare patients). That’s why when Medicare changes policies, hospitals listen.
Has anyone bothered to Google the words Medicare/Cancer/Oregon yet?
There seems to be quite a few options.
I have relatives who write the same type of doom and gloom to me from time to time. I gave up trying to argue with them long ago. Now if I answer, I usually just write something along the lines of “Nice to see you so cheerfully bright eyed and bushy-tailed this day!” and let it go.
To be fair, your uncle is scaring the rest of us.
I had to see my doctor this morning for some throbbing pain. She got paid $40 for the copay. I pay my insurance company $725 every month. For doing nothing.
Are you implying that there’s a doctor out there, including this one, who would have seen you for $40 cash?
Do you actually understand how insurance works?
My bolded emphasis
Rachel Maddow’s blog would say otherwise. It is having a major effect on outpatient oncology clinics.
The not-so-short version:
[spoiler]
Many cancer patients seek chemo treatment at outpatient cancer centers rather than at hospitals. Many chemo drugs require medical supervision to administer via IV. The necessary medical supervision is cheaper at clinics, so that is good for the bottom line. Patients often have to pay deductibles and such so it is good financially for them too.
Pre-sequester Medicare limited reimbursement on chemo drugs to cost + 6%. For example, if Doctor’s cost for the chemo drug is $2000 then reimbursement is capped at $2120 + doctor’s fee (suppose $100) for a total of $2220. Doctor is left with $2220 - $2000 drugs cost = $220 towards overhead, salaries, etc…
Sequester cut Medicare reimbursement 2%. Problem is it cut not just the doctor’s fee but also cut reimbursement for most everything billed as a part of the doctor’s office visit including the cost of the drugs at outpatient oncology clinics. In teh previous example, reimbursement is cut to $2220 - 2% = $2175.60. Doctor’s cost on the drug has not changed. Doctor now has $2175.60 - 2000 = $175.60 to cover overhead, salaries, etc…
So in this example the 2% cut is actually dropping the doctor’s after-drug-cost reimbursement from $220 to $175.60, a difference of about 20.2%. If the cost of the chemo drugs is higher then the difference is more pronounced.
(If chemo drug cost is $5000 then reimburse before was 5000 +6% margin + doctor fee = 5400. After 2% cut reimbursement is 5292. After costs that is a drop from 400 to 292. A drop of 27%. Repeat that over half your patients and it becomes a major financial problem for a oncology clinic.)
As a result, some cancer centers are referring Medicare patients to have their chemo at the hospital where reimbursement rules are different and there are higher costs for Medicare and the patient. Everybody loses. 
And none of that is Obama’s fault alone. Congress, yes both the Republican controlled House and the Democrat controlled Senate, have to come up with something they can mutually agree upon AND which will get Obama’s signature to put this sequester to an end.[/spoiler]
But the blog is saying that the sequestration cuts not Obamacare is the reason for the cutbacks at the cancer centers. The blog also says that patients are still able to get care at hospitals.