Serious Crap: Why Health Care Should Be Nationalize Right Now This Minute
Okay, this is a serious walleyed snot nosed hissy fit.
Take a gander at this load of crap.
Because of the sequester, thousands of cancer patients on Medicare are being denied chemotherapy. You wanna know why? Because the for-profit health care providers will lose money.
Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.
Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially.
Patients at these clinics would need to seek treatment elsewhere, such as at hospitals that might not have the capacity to accommodate them.
“If we treated the patients receiving the most expensive drugs, we’d be out of business in six months to a year,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York. “The drugs we’re going to lose money on we’re not going to administer right now.”
There is something so base and evil about making money off suffering that it boggles my mind that we let the marketplace determine who lives and dies. We have to put our lives in the hands of someone who looks at us by the profit we generate for them.
And then you have people like the owner of Cancer Centers of America who gave $12 million to the rightwing organization Freedom Works. Well, apparently freedom doesn’t work for medicare patients with cancer.
Remember when the Republicans were all up in arms over “death panels.” What the hell do they think this is?
Republicans are terrified of Rush Limbaugh and the NRA, but grandma doesn’t scare them in the least. There is a special place in hell for those people. I just know there is.
They can kiss my big blue butt.
Class warfare does not exist in this country only because middle-class Americans and the working poor are not fighting back. Until the middle-class and working poor fight back both the unjust distribution of wealth, the richest one percent owning forty percent, and the lack of an adequate system of health care will continue.
1What ever happened to the Hippocratic oath doctors are supposed to take? You know, the one that starts “First, do no harm.” Is it now the “Hypocritic” oath?
2The rich people are not rich enough, so they are going to let poor people die until the government gives in to their demands to make them even richer. What a racket!
3No money for chemotherapy, but the Repugs made sure the Defense Department was covered. The sequester played right into their cold-blooded hands. And nobody’s doing anything to stop it.
4I am sure the doctors would like to uphold their oath, but they are not the ones holding the purse strings.
5Any one who has had to deal with a private insurance company knows that it is profit first, patient second. Death panels indeed.
6Just returned 2 days ago from burying my husband’s ashes in his hometown. He was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer in 2010 and put up a good fight until about Oct 1 last year when what the docs at Georgetown were offering required him to come in every day for treatment forr a year. He had already been through 3 rounds of chemo and had radiation treatment. The radiation cost $70,000 and once upon a recent time the docs had to fight with the government to cover it on Medicare. By Oct 1 he decided he was too damn old and sick to go any further. He died in a nursing home Nov. 1. We are still paying the dribs and drabs that our backup and Medicare would not cover. I’m in my 70s and my doctor is very anxious that I retire sooner rather than later. For anyone to even consider creating a company that profits from cancer should be seen as a form of crime against humanity and be tried in the World Court. This is way more than macabre.
7HEY, FOLKS…….THIS IS THE FREE MARKET AT WORK.
This is what the Repubs want for EVERYTHING: healthcare, education, roads and bridges, prisons, food and water protection,…you only get what THEY want you to have. A guy’s got to make a profit, you know!!!!
And if you’re poor and sick…..”you just weren’t motivated.”
8Excellent post! I love you Juanita Jean and I totally agree with you on this.
9I was screaming at the tv when I heard this. I’d join my friend in Canada if it wasn’t so damn cold up there. My friend thinks we’re a nation of dumb asses down here.
10I have a question. This may sound stupid, but how CAN the Dr/clinic provide care out of their own pockets for all their patients? And for how long? Isn’t that what fee for service is about? Where we REALLY dropped the ball was letting Medicare and Social Security be included in this deal in the first place. And before THAT was when we let them put
11Social security onto the books to make everything look better and started borrowing against it. It should be very flush w interest BUT ITS NOT!
Maggie, I am so sorry for your loss.
12There is a second evil in this equation. Our elected reps gave Big Pharma a guarantee that Medicare would not use its collective leverage to control drug prices. So now we have chemo priced beyond Medicare reimbursement. Import this shit now!
13So these hospital honchos are CHOOSING to take their 2 per cent cut out of the the sickest. (That’s Medicare’s provider portion of the sequester cuts.)
14Maggie, I’m so sorry your husband has died and that you continue to pay for the means to help him in his fight. That’s just not right. And I agree that profit from cancer should be wiped off the face of the planet.
God help our family if any of us get sick. We have group insurance, but my husband has a small non-profit corp., so we pay the full premium. Ready for this? The week before Christmas, they told us our premiums starting in 2013 would increase by 48%. I’m not kidding. Our premiums were going to be almost $2300/month. We had the plan for the $1000 deductible. We raised our deductible, but we’re still paying about $1800/month. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.
Have I ranted about this on WMDBS before? Oh well, guess I’m going to need my insurance for that expensive dementia care…
15I swear, there are evil spirits afoot in this country. Homeless and hungry children and elders going without needed medical care is beyond my comprehension. I don’t recognize this country anymore. There is something inherently evil in this society. I’m starting to hope the Evangelicals are right. If this is the best this country can do- maybe it is time to end civilization as we know it, because there is nothing civil about the treatment of the ordinary people these days. JJ I sure hope you’re right about that special place in Hell- and they can all start leaving- now.
16Given that vets like me receive free medical care for life, it is a Constitutional deficiency to NOT have single-payor public-option medical care. No insurance underwriting and 100,000 insurance executives will be unemployed. THEY will then have to find honest employment: flipping burgers, frying eggs and mixing pancakes … just as they have forced so many others to do!
17I thought that Medicare and Social Security were not to be affected by sequestration. What changed?
18Evidently, the ass/loophole is the expense of the chemo drugs administered in outpatient facilities. That is how most chemo is doled out, these days.
Another piece of halfwitted law writing that ends up hurting innocent bystanders which makes me throw sponges at the teevee. Single payer NOW!
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