First off politicians say a lot of things when they are working on
getting elected and before they become candidates.
Follow through is not very good. (Matter of fact it sucks!!!!)
Once a politician gets elected they go into re-election mode. Which
means many of their ideals get tempered.
OK on the Mackey thing. Yes I did read it, and he has some great
things to say, HOWEVER.
You must have government mandate minimums. If they do not many
companies will try and fly through with a bunch of worthless insurance.
Instead of removing mandates, make them nation wide. At present we
have 50 states that have 50 different standards. Cant do what Mackey
wants without mandates. (By the way at present my health plan comes
out of Minnesota while I live in Alabama so whose mandates am I covered by?)
Mandate all companies of a certain size be required to offer
insurance and allow like companies (food service, grocery etc.) to
form co-ops to purchase coverage.
I know the local guy who owns a Dairy Queen nice guy, but tighter
than all get out. He will never offer insurance to his folks unless
he is mandated to, or he an find a plan that is cheap enough to
offer. Most fast food places are franchises so that they only have
maybe 5-6 outlets and not enough purchasing power to get a decent
plan for a decent amount.
Even my own church body had to go with a few other church bodies and
negotiate rates with providers (Typically with a large entity we are
self insured but contract out the processing of the insurance to get
better rates and coverage,)
What will we end up with at the end of this present process? Who
knows, but there is a lot of improvement that needs to be made. I do
not see a single payer or a mandated minimum or coverage for all at present.
Just an illustration of how bad some of the coverage is. At present
my wife takes Mobic (Generic) which is a type of Cox2 inhibitor for
Arthritis. She has been diagnosed Rheumatoid Arthritic for the past
5 years. She has been taking medication for it. Recently she
started to develop GRD (Gastric Reflux Disease) which can be caused
by many of these anti arthritis pain medications.) In talking with
her primary physician about this he said a change of pain meds would
be a good idea, and changed her to Celebrex as it is not free from
problems but will aggravate her stomach less. Doctor gives her a few
weeks of samples to see if it improves and helps.
Lo and behold condition improves GRD dies down and she decides she
should change permanently the Pain meds. Calls doctors office to get
prescription to get it filled. They call it into pharmacy. We go to
pharmacy a day later to pick it up and they tell us the prescription
plan company would not authorize it. So off to home we trek without
prescription and I get on phone. (Now before this I have gone over
my formulary (you know the list of APPROVED and non approved
medications and checked to see what it says) I get a pleasent lady
on teh phone who tells me the doctor needs to call and get prior
authorization for this medication because it is a STEP
medication. (What that means is that you must have gone through
required steps, over the counter, generic) before going on the name
brand. So now we have to wait till Tuesday to call the doctors
office and hope he will call the prescription company to get
authorization to prescribe a needed medication for my wife. Oh it is
this or my wife gets put on anotehr stomach medication to counter the
reflux problem. (Nexium is a STEP medication so she cant get that either)
Now before you think this is some fly by night company they are one
of the 3 largest mail order pharmacies in the US. Many of you use
this company but in order to save money and make sure we do not spend
too much on medication I an required to go through these steps to get
a medication on my formulary that my wife needs. (I am told my plan
requires these things)
What we need is more health plans like this right????????????????
Stewart
At 06:37 PM 9/6/2009, you wrote:
Search youtube for obama single payer, should be the first hit posted
by nakedemporer. I'd post the link but I still can't copy/paste.
Sent from my iPod
Rev. Stewart A. Marshall
mailto:popoz...@earthlink.net
Prince of Peace www.princeofpeaceozark.org
Ozark, AL SL 82
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