lol top o' tha thread to ya! 🤣

4 minutes ago, Paul852 said:

It's also devoid of humanity but that's an entirely different discussion.

Yeah I'm avoiding that conversation cause I don't see Vikas and I seeing eye to eye on that part. And he's not entirely wrong. People abuse the medical system, especially the ED. It's annoying as all hell, but also unavoidable to a certain extent. There are measures in place to curb it. Our office gets decreased compensation from the local health system for too many patients with unnecessary ED visits, so we're incentivized to have more evening hours, patient information resources and nursing triage lines etc. So there's that.

I didn't know you dealt so much with erectile dysfunction. 😀

25 minutes ago, DEagle7 said:

How do you tell the flu from pneumonia? Or a sprain from a displaced fracture? You can't with evaluating the patient. You'd have to put in legal protection for the front desk staff who triages out patients in case they get it wrong and someone dies. Even then most emergency doctors would be incredibly uncomfortable with that arrangement. It's simply not feasible.

I went to the emergency room in June because I was extremely nauseated and it was a Sunday. What I thought was something minor ended up being pancreatitis...

6 minutes ago, Bwestbrook36 said:

I went to the emergency room in June because I was extremely nauseated and it was a Sunday. What I thought was something minor ended up being pancreatitis...

My wife, who is also a doctor, went in for what she was convinced was a gall bladder attack. Turns out she had a pulmonary embolism. Literally could have died. Triaging isn't easy. There will always be errors.

2 hours ago, vikas83 said:

Hospitals should be allowed to turn people away if they can't pay.

Yeah forget that whole oath they take to saving lives. Should they ask accident victims to Venmo them before performing life saving cpr on the side of the road?

🙄

1 hour ago, Bwestbrook36 said:

I went to the emergency room in June because I was extremely nauseated and it was a Sunday. What I thought was something minor ended up being pancreatitis...

I had many visits to ER because of right arm going numb thinking heart attack or stroke symptoms. It was a compressed nerve. Finally needed neck surgery to fuse C3-C5.

In other shocking news…

58 minutes ago, Talkingbirds said:

I had many visits to ER because of right arm going numb thinking heart attack or stroke symptoms. It was a compressed nerve. Finally needed neck surgery to fuse C3-C5.

Damn, talk about one extreme to the next. Hope all is good now

I found all yall mother cuckers! 😂

Rent a Crowd becomes Geriatric Gig Economy.

7 hours ago, Paul852 said:

Let's try it. I doubt it's going to have the outcome you expect (affordable healthcare)

I have no interest in affordable healthcare. I am interested in quality healthcare and am willing to pay for it.

6 hours ago, vikas83 said:

I have no interest in affordable healthcare. I am interested in quality healthcare and am willing to pay for it.

Ok. I misunderstood where you were coming from. You really have no interest in an actual solution for the entire country.

I am confident I will be able to manage self-paying for my care. I am thankful my tests were done in October and are clear. The folks at Penn are helping me navigate thru. I've been reading my clinical notes and see they have tried to see if I would qualify for any sort of program I don't know about. So far, nothing. They'll be calling me in Jan to give me a quote on next appt. From what they told me, it's doable. Just hope nothing goes wrong with me. I'm telling you if all goes as planned this is thousands cheaper than being signed up on a ridiculous plan.

4 minutes ago, DiPros said:

I am confident I will be able to manage self-paying for my care. I am thankful my tests were done in October and are clear. The folks at Penn are helping me navigate thru. I've been reading my clinical notes and see they have tried to see if I would qualify for any sort of program I don't know about. So far, nothing. They'll be calling me in Jan to give me a quote on next appt. From what they told me, it's doable. Just hope nothing goes wrong with me. I'm telling you if all goes as planned this is thousands cheaper than being signed up on a ridiculous plan.

Best of luck. It's a ridiculous system.

9 hours ago, vikas83 said:

I have no interest in affordable healthcare. I am interested in quality healthcare and am willing to pay for it.

Well labeling nurses, NP, therapists etc as non professionals and cutting the funding these non professional need to get educated is certainly a great strategy to assure we have quality health care.

There are a lot of really hot nurses out there.

3 hours ago, Paul852 said:

Ok. I misunderstood where you were coming from. You really have no interest in an actual solution for the entire country.

I don't think you can achieve the "solution" you want (universal coverage) by trying to manipulate a market based system that will ration based on price. If you want universal healthcare, then pass universal healthcare and have the government run it with no profit motive. I think that's a bad idea, and would opt out, but that's the only way to achieve what you want.

You can't get altruistic/public policy results from a market based system. And when you try, you make things exponentially worse.

To be clear, depending on how it would be funded (if everyone actually paid as opposed to just taxing the rich, I'd be OK with it), I wouldn't be against a universal healthcare system that people could opt out of or supplement. So in LA, maybe some hospitals are government hospitals, but higher end care like Cedars-Sinai would require payment.

But trying to have the government manipulate the insurance and provider markets is a disaster that makes everything worse.