And it’s all about money. I wrote, “ A couple of reasons to cheer,” but there are some qualifications to that remark so a couple of “boo’s” are also in the mix. It looks like we American seniors will be getting a 2.7% to 3% pay raise this January. Yea! But, that will probably mean that the medicare payment will go up and if you’re on a federal food subsidy program it means that it will go down nearly the exact amount that SS goes up. Boo! Also, most of us know that our president has been trying to slash the number of government employees by making it easier to fire them if they are not performing up to a reasonable degree of proficiency. Yea! Of course, that idea was shot down by an Obama picked federal judge earlier this week (Boo!) so president Trump did an end run and canceled an across the board scheduled pay raise for all federal employees which should save the American taxpayer some 25 Billion dollars. (Yea) The office of the President of the United States is doing a very strange thing. He wants federal employees to actually EARN their pay raises! What an absolutely amazing concept; an employee does a great job and gets a pat on the back in the form of an enlarged pay check and a floater gets nada! Wow! Now, if only those in Congress were forced to live by those standards and all of the major perks like automatic full health care thrown out the window then there would be a heckova lot of room for a bunch of .....Yea’s !!! Note: For those across the pond and beyond: yeah, I know it’s yet another U.S. specific thread. I will, in the near future try to find something a bit more user friendly for all of my friends here on Seniors Only.
Europeans may have a similar problem, @Bobby Cole. I doubt that their government officials don't live by the same benefit packages as the commoners. Does the PM go to a NHS facility for medical care? I don't have any idea. Most of the Europeans live under the thumb of the EU whose representatives are not elected according to what I have been told. In the U.S., if Congress and the Executive Branch were under Social Security and Medicare, you can bet the benefits would be different.
Are PM can do and probably does. If you pay tax and NI in the UK you can use the NHS and will never be charged. Some people also have private medical insurance as well.. such as my daughter. She had a fatty lump appear on her forehead which after a couple of years got rather big, under the NHS they said they could give her an operation in about six months time as it was not serious, with her Private medical insurance they did it next day at 7am and she went on to work after the half hour op.
..but Tom, there are thousands nay probably millions who've never paid a penny in tax or National Insurance in this country who are also entitled to use the NHS for free, and of course that includes children ..but it also includes wastrels and immigrants
Yes the NHS has been ripped off but not by millions of people. Estimates its about 50 million quid a year we loses to the health tourists. The wastrels they are English nothing we can do about them, maybe their Grandfathers died in WW2 The immigrants we get from the EU we can claim the costs back if they have not done any work such as tourists or the Roma, but as soon as they get a job and paid taxes they have earned the right to free health on the NHS. I go to America a lot..They drive on the wrong side of the road so I look to my left and am knocked by a car coming from my right. Rushed of to hospital and they save my life am give a bill for a massive amount of money which I cannot pay because i'm not that rich, so I fly home without paying. The Americans will pursue me in an English Court to get their money, the NHS will not do that in a Nigerian Court
He (President Trump) should start with the post office. Specifically the man who delivers my mail. He often puts other people's mail in my box. Where he puts mine, heaven only knows. I complained at the post office and was told that they would check in to it. I think it must be difficult to fire a postal worker.
Shirley, our mail is incredibly untrustworthy, but usually not because of the Post Office. Our boxes get robbed frequently. People who get their prescriptions delivered by mail often don't get them due to theft. Even a lock doesn't help; some commercial interests here have boxes with very heavy locks on them, but the thieves use cordless angle grinders to cut out (or off) the locks, so nothing can be done to stop them. Neither the police nor the Postal Service do anything about the thefts, so much of the business goes to FedEx or UPS because they deliver to the door.
I doubt that the PM goes to an NHS health facility unless it for "show" during an election cycle. If she does, she won't get treated in the same way as you do. The UK has a two-tier system (as I understand it) so the wealthy have one system and the less-wealthy have another. Canada has only one tier, but the wealthy cross the border for urgent care or for procedures not available in Canada; the less-wealthy wait in line and sometimes die waiting to be served. In the U.S., the poor get the best healthcare and it is totally free, while the rest of us pay their bills. Drugs cost more here in part because we pick up the research bills for the rest of the world, and part due to greed on the part of Big Pharma. The biggest thing that "bugs" me is Medicare. We pay for Medicare for our entire working lives, then get limited and charged for using it when we are finally eligible. It is often difficult to even find a primary care provider who will take you as a patient if you are new or move. In addition, Medicare inflates the cost of healthcare for everyone else in the U.S. due to the way they reimburse and pay. I have several ideas to help with the problem, but no one will consider them.
Shirley, it is a bit complicated to go into here, but one thing I would do would be to institute subsidized "catastrophe insurance" which would cover all medical costs over , say, $100,000. I have seen so many people who were in an accident or developed a severe illness and the bills destroyed both their lives but their family's lives as well. Bills under the covered amount would still be covered by conventional insurance, but, since the liability of the coverage would be limited, the premiums would be much lower and there could be fewer deductibles and co-pays. I would also reform Medicare reimbursement schedules, but that is a very complex issue. Medicare reimbursement is probably the MAIN driver to medical expense in the U.S.
So, you are saying that there should be a policy for health costs for under $100,000 that would cost less. And another one for costs more than $100,000 that would cost more? About Medicare: my husband had Blue Cross insurance. After he got Medicare, he had a test done. The doctor's office was going to bill Blue Cross $1,000 for the test. When they were told that he had switched to Medicare, they dropped the charge to $750. The figures are approximate. I don't remember the exact figures.
Yep, exactly. Here Medicare generally pays only about 20% to 25% of the amount billed, and that is generally not enough to pay the overhead for services offered, so the costs are passed on to everyone else. When I had my back surgery, the surgeon billed $57,000 but was paid $7800. His PA, who did none of the surgery but assisted billed $18,000 and I had to pay all of that since it bypassed the reimbursement rules. That is the kind of nonsense providers have to do to recover their costs. Hospitals and clinics go through the same thing. The idea with the two-level insurance is that the government would subsidize/pay the bills over a set high amount. That would prevent people who had to pay their own bills from losing their house or going through bankruptcy because they (or a family member) developed cancer or some other illness, or was in some accident in which they were severely injured.
Well, they may be charging too much in some cases, but they do have overhead and school loans to pay off sometimes. Medicare just skews the "curve". It all started back in the 70s and early 80s. At that time, Medicare part B reimbursed hospitals for capital improvements based on the percentage of Medicare patients they serviced. Before that hospitals and doctors would "share services" like scanners and such. When the government started reimbursing based on the percentage of old folks serviced, everybody had to get their own machine or whatever. That meant that everything was underutilized since, while the capital investment was subsidized, the overhead was not. Everyone was then encouraged to order all kinds of tests and scans to help pay for the overhead on the machine, instrument or scanner. That changed the "Standard of Care" and doctors and such could get sued for NOT ordering a test. That then became incredibly expensive and Medicare came up with DRGs as a system to control costs and the providers and hospitals were then caught in the middle, being mandated to provide a service, but not being paid for it. This led then to "Cost Shifting" in which the costs of Medicare patients were passed on to private insurances.... As I said, it is all to complicated to be addressed here, but Medicare is the principal reason that healthcare costs in the U.S. are what they are. @Holly Saunders has spoken about having to go one place for one procedure and another place for another. That is how it used to be here, but now Shared Services is a rare thing, even in small community hospitals in the U.S.