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Just so you'll know, health care is rationed now
Just so you'll know, health care is rationed now
Date published: 11/30/2009 The Nov. 23 editorial titled "Prevention: 1 oz." questions whether the newly published U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations will lead to a rationing of health care, implying, incorrectly, that health care is not already rationed. The author's concern for the 41,000 annual breast cancer deaths is commendable, and one can only hope that the editors have a similar concern for the 45,000 annual deaths attributed to rationing of health care based on lack of access to health insurance. More than 75 percent of the patients seen at the Community Health Center of the Rappahannock Region have no health insurance at all. For these people, health care is already severely--potentially fatally--rationed. Two different area imaging centers inform me that the cost for a screening mammogram for an uninsured patient, including the radiologist's interpretation, is between $305 and $341. The cost to an insurance company is often less, because of contracts between the imaging center and the company, but upward of $300 is what a woman without insurance can expect to pay. Very few of my female patients can afford that, so their breast cancer screening is curtailed without regard to whether the USPSTF recommends 30, 40, or 50 years old. How to control the costs of health care Disregarding the fact that many of our neighbors are already forced into a rationed health care scenario will not help solve the problem or lead to the just, efficient, economically viable solution so many well-intentioned people desire. Donald E. Bley, M.D. Fredericksburg The writer is site director,
Date published: 11/30/2009
hey - I sympathize!!
(posted by
derarzt
, Dec. 1, 2009 4:32 pm)
I just don't know what the best way to handle the tongue-ring (or worse places) infection or overdosed substance abuser is. In every time & place the responsible have probably had to bear the burden of the irresponsible to some degree.
Rations for the HARD WORKERS...
(posted by
Wolfman_Howls
, Dec. 1, 2009 2:39 pm)
while some clown whose tongue-ring got infected and the dope-fiuend who overdosed gets his treatment courtesy of the Taxpayer! Isn't socialized-medicine "democratic"?!
Only a fool
(posted by
ColBatGuano
, Nov. 30, 2009 9:07 pm)
believes his own lies and expects others to believe them.
Good evening mustang,
(posted by
True_Bob
, Nov. 30, 2009 8:29 pm)
please allow me to show the flip side of your comment: "To render the same attention and subsequent expenditure of taxpayer money to a hurricane like Katrina as one would to a thunderstorm indicates a profound lack of perspective and of course that is a prime characteristic of the mental illness we know as conservatism." Isn't this fun?
Hey you missed my point!
(posted by
mz
, Nov. 30, 2009 8:02 pm)
I'm talking about a food stamp like program for those who can't afford health insurance. The 30 million uninsured by choice are on their own and people with insurance shouldn't have to pay for them. Simply stated : If you don't have it, you don't get it. By the way, the proposed bill is ridiculous because the special interest health care groups have loaded it up with crap.So if it does pass nothing will change.
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