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  • From: "Lynda" <lurine AT com-pair.net>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Shaking the grid
  • Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:16:29 -0800

If they simply stopped the fraud in Medicare they could pay for health insurance for the folks that don't have it.

Now, the 31 million number is a crock. It includes illegals, people who qualify for Medicaid, children who qualify for SCHIP and people who choose not to have insurance.

And, the fraud with Medicare and Medicaid is, in part, the government's fault.

I don't know if I've shared what happened to my mother. She had COPD and eventually ended up in a convo. She woke up one afternoon to see a strange man reaching under the bedspread and picking up her foot. Weeeellllllllll, I think they could hear her in the next county. She told him in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of her room. He insisted he was there to take care of an ingrown toenail. She didn't have any toenail problems and told him so and said she took care of them herself. She called me and I went in and talked with staff.

Seems the podiatrist came in on a regular basis and went through all the charts. If someone didn't have a podiatrist listed, then he go in the room and decide they had ingrown toenails (bs!).

He billed these folks $165.

Wrote Medicare and told them what happened. They wrote back that he had properly documented the care and that it was necessary and that they would be paying him. They weren't interested in the fact that he didn't ever get near her with toenail clippers or that the work wasn't necessary. All they cared about was that he had done the proper charting.

This clown did all the convo's in that town (8 of them). I figured an average based on the numbers nursing staff gave me for the convo my mother was in. Came out to $1.8 million a year!

Just one doc and one fraud.

Don't stop with gas, beer, booze and cigarettes. Add in junk food and sodas! There are several states that tax all food. Add a federal tax on all of the above!

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- From: "EarthNSky" <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>


I'm sure your math is right, and I am really too tired to think it out,
but at first glance, I don't like your plan. I've probably missed the
crux of this thread, so my comments are just shot from the hip. If I
paid $1000 to my medical providers every time I needed care or medicine,
I would be paying $100 after the first week, and then be without
anything by the end of the month. My RA medicine alone is now
$2000/month without insurance, but I can get 3 months mail order for
$60. That is my quality of life-it keeps me functioning.

I don't know whether it was Gene or Marie who wrote the thing about gas
taxes and alternate energy, but I totally agree with that and would vote
for that Dictator anyday. I'd tax the crap out of beer, booze, and
cigarettes, too. It seems like 50% of healthcare costs are related to
alcohol use and abuse in some way, and the other 50% can be traced back
to smoking. In line with the three halves comment, the other 50% points
to drug abuse, of all shapes and sizes. That's just healthcare...I
can't even imagine how the big three impacts crime...can you imagine a
jail filled with people who were clean and sober when they erred? Or
perhaps they were clean, but grew up in a neglectful or abusive home
because of drugs and alcohol? What a world it would be.

I think I will go pop open a Mike's hard lemonade and ponder that. <g>
Hey, at least I didn't say light up...I'm still smoke free,,,since
January 2008...but I'm drinking more...more alcohol, more coffee...gave
up soft drinks though...win some, lose some, depending on what day it
is. Here lately, I'm losing pretty regularly, so the future has GOT to
be better.

B




Leslie wrote:
My version of health care reform :-)

All medical providers change their billing...

Those with health insurance pay $1000 Those without health insurance
pay $100

That simple step applied across the board would cut out the cost of
all the health insurance skyscrapers and offices, all the salaries of
the health insurance workers, all the retired insurance agents
collecting kickbacks on policies they wrote, all the long distance
faxes and phone calls back and forth to get permission to treat
patients, and so on............ It cuts out the red tape cost of
the insurance companies.

I know, none of my ideas are popular......... but do the math.



--------


"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value ZERO" ~
Voltaire 1729

________________________________ From: Gene GeRue
<genegerue AT ruralize.com> To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Tue,
February 23, 2010 8:33:51 PM Subject: Re: [Homestead] Shaking the
grid


On Feb 23, 2010, at 5:23 PM, Marie McHarry wrote:

Were I Dictator in Chief, I'd put a $1 tax on gasoline and raise it
every year till it got up to, say $10, and dedicate the proceeds
to improving the conventional and alternate energy that's
available.

It would take a dictator, though, to bring that off. Half the
CongressCritters would want to give new tax breaks, half would want
to fight a new war, and half would find some new program to fund.
Yeah, I know that there aren't three halves in a whole, but this is
my fantasy, dammit.


--
Many of our greatest American thinkers, men of the caliber of Thomas
Jefferson, Henry Thoreau, Mark Twain, William James, and John Muir, have
found the forest an effective stimulus to original thought.
Bob Marshall
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