Hawaii should be a free and a self sufficient island like it was. We have the resources to take care of ourselves and this should include doctors too. Doctors should want to live in Hawaii so that they can provide their services for their own profit to the people of Hawaii who should be willing to pay a reasonable price for them. If people can't afford these services then maybe some people and doctors with plenty of aloha might find it in their hearts to give charity voluntarily. However people should not want to not compensate these fair Hawaiian doctors themselves if able and depend on charity or worse forced charity. We should find a way to care for ourselves and our loved ones because that is how nature works. Depending on politicians in Washington DC to take money by force from people and then give the money to private insurance monopolies, who are then expected to pay the hospital monopolies and then the doctors(who need to be ludicrously insured themselves) is crazy and completely lacking in aloha. I hope Hawaii can find a better way to care for itself, because the current path will not help or benefit Hawaii and will in fact leave us with a shortage of affordable healthcare and lacking in means to care for ourselves.
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quote:
Doctors should want to live in Hawaii so that they can provide their services for their own profit to the people of Hawaii who should be willing to pay a reasonable price for them.
Agree 100%, but the insurance companies have made it their business to interfere with the doctor/patient relationship, and I can't afford both doctor bill and insurance premium.
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For those thinking the penalty would be cheaper than insurance, well when I was a healthy 38 year old male, I had a little pain in my arm one day. That little pain turned into a quadruple bypass due to genetics. By the time I was through with all the tests, the 2 trips and stays for stents, then the bypass, my bill was easily 1 million dollars. I would STILL be paying that (and would be the rest of my life) if not for insurance I had at the time. Instead of being broke, I still own my home and am able to support myself without help from welfare/etc. am still alive and have now retired.
You may think its cheaper, until you really need it. Without any warnings bad health can strike in an instant. Those who think the ACA is bad, are just clueless because it hasn't happened to them...yet.
You think the procedure actually cost a million dollars, yet you call others that believe the ACA is a scam clueless? There is no medical procedure that costs a million dollars(well maybe some obscure cutting edge thing) that is all insurance, hospital and government markup. I bet the same procedure could be done in Mexico for 20k. Now I don't want to downplay your point about catastrophe, even though I am in my twenties, a catastrophe could befall me and that is why I need some insurance.
Insurance is supposed to be for catastrophe, the idea that insurance should be the middle man for every healthcare cost is one main problem of why we are where we are today and cant afford our healthcare. I think that we should have a direct patient doctor relationship in Hawaii with Aloha for most healthcare, I believe insurance(socializing large payouts) makes sense in the case of catastrophe and that small accountable insurance companies either for profit or not is perfect for this. We should be buying our insurance from companies from and in Hawaii. We should socialize our costs with out neighbors voluntarily. I do not support large monopolistic mainland insurance companies and hospital chains using their influence in Washington DC to force us to pay them and their outrages healthcare costs. This is where the ACA is a crock of **** and has no Aloha for Hawaii. It does not help the people of Hawaii get any closer to a doctor and the healthcare they need in Hawaii. There is no Aloha in forcing someone in New York to pay for you and vice versa all the while politicians, insurance and hospital big wigs making out with a majority of the capital invested and you making out with the minimal healthcare and a complete lack of doctor patient relationship, or even maybe not a ****ing doctor at all as the case may actually be in Hawaii.
I remember watching open heart surgery in a teaching hospital in Virginia just outside of DC. It was truly amazing, the pinnacle of our medical technique and technology all coming together for an easy 4 hour surgery, cutting veins out of the legs and all. There would have to be some crazy crazy accounting going on to make that surgery cost a million dollars. As the doctors explained it was routine and something they did all the time for fat lazy Americans. That was in 1998, I'm sure that surgery is even more routine and cheaper now, I bet they have a robot that does it, now that robot might cost a million or two,maybe more, I would believe that.
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You think the procedure actually cost a million dollars, yet you call others that believe the ACA is a scam clueless?
Last time I went in for some labs, they were $120, until I said "paying cash" and suddenly the tests were $30 -- which somehow left enough margin that the lab didn't go bankrupt.
A few web searches suggest that the going rate for surgeons is $100-110/hour. Round that up to $125 (just to be sure), multiply by a four-hour procedure, then multiply by 10 to capture the costs of supplies and other staff... nowhere near $1M.
Where does all that money go? HMSA can afford a big new office building in downtown Keaau, which they will fill with "administrative staff" -- does their ability to process more paperwork result in higher quality care?
How does airfare affect the cost of healthcare? Remember, all the "specialists" are on Oahu, what's my co-pay for the $200 roundtrip?
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afwjam, as coincidence would have it- I actually worked on a unit in Albuquerque that took care of CABBAGES. (coronary artery bypass pts). The surgery cost 400,000 dollars 12 years ago- and I had 2 Mexican nationals in particular- that had family in NM who made the trip up - North of the Border to have the surgery at my hospital! They paid cash- and they did this because they could not trust care/get the best care- in Mexico! We have it good in this country! I actually learned to practically speak spanish fluently, just by working in that hospital. Anyhow, the cheap rate that I just got at Kaiser in Hilo, also includes free preventative care of one physical per year- and so - this means that I actually did just access a greater level of healthcare than my previous policy with them that cost over 200 per month.
Well he paid a million, you say $400k, Healthcare bluebook says an average of $144k for the US, the medical tourism resource guide says $30K for a world class hospital in Mexico. Whats a few hundred thousand here or there? Its a lot, its waste that we can't afford in Hawaii. With our world class technology in this country we should be able to do it faster, better and cheaper then the rest of the world. Beyond the ridiculousness of catastrophes such as open heart surgery which apparently can very up to a million dollars in cost, our healthcare in Hawaii is abysmal. We have a shortage of doctors, why? Don't they get paid enough? What could possibly be gumming up the works so bad that a doctor would not want to live and work in Hawaii?
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Doctors don't come to Hawaii because they aren't compensated competitively, the physician shortage makes the workload insane and the hospitals outside of Oahu are substandard. They are outdated both technologically and in care delivery. They also don't like hospitals with inadequate staffing. More mistakes and lawsuits occur in those and malpractice insurance premiums reflect that. At least this is what several doctors I know have told me. Having been a hospital staff nurse for twenty years I could go on indefinitely about healthcare. The real problem is that healthcare is about money, not people's health. Lots and lots of money going into lots and lots of pockets which always trumps the needs of the citizenry in a capitalist economy.
life is short. enjoy it
life is short. enjoy it
I want money to go into the right peoples pockets, I hope you do to, this is common sense. Doctors, nurses and the rest of hospital staff should not have to work for free, especially in Hawaii. They deserve compensation for their expertise, training, capital and the care they give us. I believe that there is a market for healthcare in Hawaii and the amount we have to pay for healthcare would more then compensate the people directly involved in our care. I think that this relationship of resource exchange is natural and would occur freely and at the best possible price and payment for all if it was not interfered with. In Hawaii, how many insurance companies do you really have a choice of? How about hospitals? How come small clinics can't survive in Hawaii if people have more then enough money to pay the salaries of the workers at the clinic and the doctor? What other element is at work getting between the patient and the doctor taking what should be a simple and affordable transaction and making it ludicrously expensive and Infeasible for all involved? Simple capitalism would be the Doctor and clinic/hospital amassing the capital necessary to provide healthcare services to a consumer at the price the consumer is willing to pay. Capitalism is not what we have in healthcare today, especially in Hawaii. There is another element at work here, it is the forceful extortion of cronyism between large corporations and government getting between the doctor and the patient in Hawaii. The money is there, it is just being wasted on things other then healthcare, because healthcare just does not cost that much. It is our money and us with a lack of healthcare so we should be concerned in Hawaii and try and find a way for our money to go directly to the doctor involved in our care and keep the middle man out. Those that truly can't afford need charity, however charity is not force. We should have small local clinics on our small local island, maybe even small local insurance companies to help socialize the costs of catastrophe with our neighbors in Hawaii. We should even start a small local charity or better yet choose as individuals to give to those in need of healthcare. I promise you if we did this, it would be real common sense capitalism and we would really be getting the healthcare we need at a price we could afford.
The path we are on now will leave Hawaii with less healthcare at a higher and higher cost.
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