<p>Beyond that, when you reminisces about “eating in the good ol’ days” do you remember there being this much anxiety about it?
No read meat, no read meat, please no read meat just this once. Hummus and quinoa, I’m being good… eek there is fructose in the pasta sauce! I’ll toss kale in the vegematic. </p>
<p>People are constantly on edge now and these food rituals have become like religious food rules with people assuming they gaining a blessing because of their belief. </p>
<p>I really dont think this stuff went on in the past. We got called into diner and there was a pork chop or a lamb chop mashed potatoes or boiled potatoes and mixed vegetables. No one worried about what it meant about them as a person.</p>
<p>I think you can call anything “Just Politics” when your own policy has gone down.</p>
<p>For us, it’s just our pocket book. ;)</p>
<p>I want people to have access to healthcare. To me, this seems to be about insurance more than healthcare.</p>
<p>I wonder how it can be possible that our government is subsidizing med school education when med school is soooo much less expensive in other countries?</p>
<p>Poetgrl, I am referring to the speculation as just politics. Whether the speculation is that the ACA will be great or it will fail, who knows. We’ve been lied to so many times.</p>
<p>Medical school is considerably cheaper overseas, but remember, those schools and health care systems have much more government subsidies than we do. I have relatives who received their medical training overseas because of the cost differences.</p>
<p>We pay more because of heroic medical measures we provide at the end of our patients’ lives. This cost is spread out throughout the system.</p>
<p>So, it’s the end of life care that raises the costs so significantly?</p>
<p>That’s interesting. I can’t figure out if our government is spending 100,000 per resident how other countries have more subsidies. Are other countries paying MORE for each student?</p>
<p>I don’t know. It’s really confusing to me when I try to look at the big picture.</p>
<p>Government is paying for the residency after med school. However, I wonder how paying for 80 hours/week of dog days by residents is considered free funding from the Government. If the 80,000 residents did not exist in the hospitals, the hospitals would come to a standstill and a large percentage would go untreated.</p>
<p>Other than NIH funding the research, med school costs are not funded by the Government.</p>
<p>I agree with that, including the hurried roll out of ACA. It’s clear now that they knew they weren’t ready to roll it out. They barely finished setting it up. Delaying it for a month or two would have been most adviable and I bet they knew so. Now we are taking emergency measures to fix it costing taxpayers more money they don’t have. For politicians it is always about power not being economic. I am uneasy handing over 20% of GDP to the gov to have a finger in it.</p>
<p>You have to wonder if it really costs $50,000 and up per year to educate a medical student. Like college, the cost of attending medical school has skyrocketed over the last decade to the point where the average medical school debt is hundreds of thousands of dollars. </p>
<p>And the government has not increased the money to pay for more residencies so that around 2,000 of these medical graduates cannot find any residency program. Here in California, in order to start a new medical school at UC Riverside, with just 50 students, the school had to get private funding for start up costs. The state wasn’t willing to spend anything to add to the number of doctors in the state. Now that they are up and running they do get state aid.</p>
<p>The history is one of secrecy and the public being lied to. Christmas Eve votes, have pass it to find out whats in it. Rule issuing being delayed. People who are supposed to be in charge telling us they are “surprised” and “disappointed” at the performance of healthcare.gov when looking at the data they had in September, it was inevitable. </p>
<p>The history of Romneycare is that it ended up costing twice as much as projected and the reductions in ER use and personal bankruptcies didnt happen the way they were sold.</p>
<p>So people are skeptical if ACA is revenue neutral- especially as a lot of the funding mechanism are in doubt. That means the premiums will have to rise.</p>
<p>And this bill certainly wasnt sold as huge numbers of people getting kicked of their plans and thrown into the ACA pool. And facing surprise price increases. </p>
<p>The overall impression of this is a history of behavior where the public wont be told upfront of any problems on the horizon. Therefor we speculate.</p>
<p>Can you really sign-up to vote on the site? Well, if it worked. And it will. And if this huge number of people are getting stuff free which obviously they will be very happy about whether they need it or not and I’m sure some do. Others, not so much. But it’s free. And the number hurt is way less than the number helped. How can it be anything but political?</p>
<p>Key quote from the article: “Only 1 in 4 19 to 29 years olds are even aware of the exchanges”.</p>
<p>If only 25% are even aware, before they see the high prices, before they see that the fine is cheaper, before they try the really bad website…the death spiral will begin.</p>
<p>And if the insurance companies see this coming, they will pull out of the exchanges for the individual markets. If they can’t make money, they’ll drop all the policies.</p>
<p>People read what they want to read. Me too so I am going to go with this. </p>
<p>From the NY Times article it states that the govt knows where the uninsured are. </p>
<p>And…</p>
<p>"Many Massachusetts residents waited until just before the state law’s tax penalty kicked in before signing up for insurance, he said. Just 123 people signed up for subsidized insurance in the first month of enrollment, and only about 2,000 in the second month.</p>
<p>Ms. Collins, of the Commonwealth Fund, also said the federal requirement to buy insurance might compel the young and healthy to sign up. “As people learn about the provisions, and become aware of them, enrollment increases,” she said. “It may be that healthy people procrastinate longer than unhealthy people.”</p>
<p>“Medicare funds medical schools. Medicaid funds medical schools in many states. Texas may be an exception.”</p>
<p>They fund residencies, not schools. Have no clue where you are getting any information about Texas being different. If you have actual links, please post.</p>
<p>Because in the US the vast majority would not be able to afford healthcare without insurance. </p>
<p>We could make it a lot more affordable for everyone if we had a health insurance system like Canada or the UK, but we all know what happens when anyone suggests that, so.</p>
<p>Page 6 is interesting.
Medicare and medicaid are the two largest explicit sources of funding for graduate medical education.</p>
<p>“While Medicaid programs are not obligated to pay for graduate medical education, most states historically have made DGME and IME payments under their fee-for-service programs.7 In fact, Medicaid is the second largest explicit payer (behind Medicare) of graduate medical education and the other special missions and services of teaching hospitals.”</p>