Health Care Thread

Merlin_sl said:

Your so ignorant.

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"I'll take unintentional irony for $800 Alex!"

Recently some higher ups at major insurance companies discussed hc costs. Basically the system stands weakly on the foundation that people don't get all the healthcare they should.
If everyone got their potential PT for joint/muscle pains, everyone got their appropriate screening colonoscopies , etc, the system would go broke almost instantly.
The best patients are the ones who don't see doctors (naturally) or those on their way out, from insurance company pov's. Hospice is relatively cheap. Trying to treat an incurable, widely metastatic cancer can be overwhelmingly expensive. Giving that same patient morphine and letting him pass is very cheap.

Oh forgot one important point - there's a lot of conjecture that preventive medicine can result in decreased healthcare costs because treatment can occur earlier and presumably the at less cost. This certainly aounss plausible. Unfortunately this is difficult to prove and the literature isn't helping the case for this argument either. Instead what seems to be happening is in the course of performing routine/screening care, healthcare providers run into incidental findings/uncertain results which are most likely benign /harmless, but because of the litigious atmosphere in this country and a general attitude of CYA, results in more testing and more healthcare costs - for something which normally would never have been found and never been a problem for the patient.
This is in addition to the patients who are found, thru screening, at a point where treatment may be attempted. As opposed to a more typical presentation where a disease is discovered at its terminal point (ie littl cost to healthcare)

That was a very odd post.

What ^^ said

Pasteton_sl said:

Recently some higher ups at major insurance companies discussed hc costs. Basically the system stands weakly on the foundation that people don't get all the healthcare they should.
If everyone got their potential PT for joint/muscle pains, everyone got their appropriate screening colonoscopies , etc, the system would go broke almost instantly.
The best patients are the ones who don't see doctors (naturally) or those on their way out, from insurance company pov's. Hospice is relatively cheap. Trying to treat an incurable, widely metastatic cancer can be overwhelmingly expensive. Giving that same patient morphine and letting him pass is very cheap.

Oh forgot one important point - there's a lot of conjecture that preventive medicine can result in decreased healthcare costs because treatment can occur earlier and presumably the at less cost. This certainly aounss plausible. Unfortunately this is difficult to prove and the literature isn't helping the case for this argument either. Instead what seems to be happening is in the course of performing routine/screening care, healthcare providers run into incidental findings/uncertain results which are most likely benign /harmless, but because of the litigious atmosphere in this country and a general attitude of CYA, results in more testing and more healthcare costs - for something which normally would never have been found and never been a problem for the patient.
This is in addition to the patients who are found, thru screening, at a point where treatment may be attempted. As opposed to a more typical presentation where a disease is discovered at its terminal point (ie littl cost to healthcare)

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Which "HC industry higher ups?" are you talking about here - are they the same ones that are trying to justify 40% of their costs going to "administrative costs" like refusing service due to a corner case and just people to run and harass people about getting paperwork perfectly before they pay out?

You're literally talking about a large portion of the problem that create the entire clusterfuck because of them wanting to force a ridiculously high profit margin and non-service related employment into the product.

And on "if you got all your necessary screenings" nonsense - that's complete fabrication, barring preexisting stuff or stuff that starts to show on a general physical the general recommendation is a physical every few years assuming there's nothing going on that's the start and the end of the line until you're getting old. [And when you're old, you're Medicare and not the general healthcare industry's issue - just like if you've got an incurable cancer, you get a free pass to apply for Medicare quickly if you've got something terminal which your example likely is included to help curb costs]

So in short, you're listening to the criminals that started the entire problem because they wanted to profit off of people's health and believing them.

(And there's plenty of cases where something caught early is easier to treat - look at Strep Throat vs. Rheumatic Fever for Christ's sake - one requires amoxicillin/penicllin for a week to treat, the other generally for 3+ YEARS and can cause problems that require heart surgery to fix - all because a case of Strep Throat is left untreated. It's one of the more extreme cases, but still a pretty telling one of migration which is terrible [Most cancers will migrate if they're caught too late as well - which of course means multiple avenues of treatment being needed rather than just one increasing cost appropriately])

I think Merlin is in a state that did not accept the Medicaid portion of the ACA. So his Republican Gov basically screwed him.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

Yeah its a good thing you simply cant buy that shit otc. Im sure the government is really interested in allowing citizens to easily purchase their own medication without having to drop through a million hoops.

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Right, because before we hard pharmacy laws there wasn't things like snake oil and ink being sold as things to ingest for supposed medicinal effects.

Almost every GP I've ever heard of for any low-risk medication where it could remotely make sense, if you ask for something and have a reasonable reason to ask for it, they'll prescribe it. "a million hoops" indeed.

Hell read this:Fake pharmaceuticals: Bad medicine | The Economist

And that's WITH the safeguards in place at every single level - but sure, let's just remove them - brightest idea ever.

Ya it's pretty much bullshit that I have to go pay a GP a hundred bucks to get a frickin scrip of penicillin. Or valtrex...

Antibiotics in a false positive situation are horrible you do realize, right? If you took antibiotics every single day, you'd get really fucked up. (And you know there's some idiot mothers out there that would do it to their children)

As for painkillers anything that's not got an abusable substance as a component is OTC to my knowledge - they're generally in a formulary for prescription as well, but that's only for affordability reasons so people can get them with insurance if they opt to instead of having to shell out $40-50 for the same $5 script for the OTC variant.

And yes, there's the GNC style loophole thing - but those products can't be marketed as medicine nor all they permitted to make claims without a caveat. There's a difference between the "we claim this cures cancer but we're probably full of shit" being on the bottle and just having "cures cancer" on it instead. [And of course if you've been in a GNC most don't even bother to make any claims because of the damage the caveat does]

$100 for a GP visit? Is that even a thing anymore? Shittiest insurance I've had in my life had $25 copays.

Dumbest argument of the day BP.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

Who the fuck cares is taking antibiotics everyday fucks you up when you can buy cigarettes and or alcohol and fuck yourself up just as badly.

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Right because there's parents out there that would do the same hypothetical dosing their kids with antibiotics every day with alcohol and cigarettes. False equivalency much?

Not to mention another important reason for pharmacy law is interaction issues - penicillin has pretty gnarly interactions with methotrexate and probenecid for example. A shorter list than many meds, but even one of the "safest meds around" has those, which the interaction level is listed as "life-threatening" FYI.

Ya I was being a little facetious about antibiotics Big P, you ever heard of MRSA? That's a direct result of overprescribing antibiotics and dipshits not finishing their scrip. That's something that has a direct effect on other people's health, particularly people that are already in the hospital and have compromised immune systems. Nothing like choosing to drink or smoke.

I still think Valtrex should be OTC though...jus' sayin.

I don't get this whole "why try and prevent anything bad since other bad stuff already happens!!!111!!1" Apply that rational to ANYTHING and it still comes up as "That's real retarded, sir"

Big Phoenix_sl said:

Im also sure the idiot who would force feed their kid antibiotics 24/7 also probably does numerous other things that are detrimental to their kids health too.

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Really? Something that would just get added into a vitamin regimen (something normal and suggested) by an idiot who thought it would be better would likely do other idiotic things completely unattached? Ok. Not that it excuses the entire idiotic concept of yours anyhow.

All medicine is inherently toxic, period - and it's intended to be ingested, thus it needs to be monitored to make sure people aren't killing themselves with something they're using to make themselves healthier.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

I'm not saying let your chemo cocktail be OTC, just that there is a lot of meds out there that should be OTC.

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Name one, dumbass. I can guarantee I can check the PDR and find at least 5 reasons for any that you list. Or you're list incorrectly that they're not available OTC.