the new health care?

[Daseal]

I'm not pissed that we have poor people. It's the choices that SOME of the poor make that pisses me off.

And while many of the poor are making those annoying choices, it should be noted that not all do. Most do, but most should not be generalized into all. So I'll say that.

But getting back on topic, I can't stand how many of the poor decide to wait until the sniffles turns into bronchitis which turns into pneumonia before ever going to see a doctor. Hell, if you're going to abuse the ER and not see a primary doctor, at least do it before the illness turns into something serious. By the time it gets to pneumonia and they get off their ass to get to the hospital, they're in such bad shape that they need to stay in the hospital for 7 days. If they showed up at the ER during the bronchitis stage they could be sent home same day with antibiotics.

Happens here at our hospital all the damn time, and we have to write a lot of it off, and then jack up the rates we ask the insurance companies to reimburse us just to get by. So when the poor do that, it directly affects your insurance premium.

Schneed -- the current health care system not only works like this, it promotes it. I am not insured. There is no way I'm going to the doctor at the first hint of being sick like I may with insurance. A simple doctor's visit for us uninsured can easily cost 250 bucks just to get in the door.

I was uninsured and went through treatment for Lyme disease. Each blood test cost me out of pocket 550 bucks to get the labs necessary to tell if I had Lyme and how to treat it. How much does this exact same test cost for the insurance company? That's right, 225 bucks. That's not how much the insured person pays, it's how much the lab charges. How in the hell is this fair? A service should cost a set amount regardless of if a person is insured or not.

45 minutes in a hospital left me with a 9000 dollar bill. Not including the 900 dollars a week for medicine x 8 weeks.

People are petrified of getting these types of bills for a reason. Hospitals are ridiculously expensive, there's a reason why people don't come in when they're starting to feel bad. Granted it compounds the issue the longer you wait, but you have to understand that people sit down and have to weigh bankruptcy with getting fairly basic health care in this country. That is not okay, in my book.