Fabulous business model. Have nurse practitioners replace doctors as much as possible, then have medical assistants do as much nursing as they can legally get away with. One patient complained that she had a receptionist telling her how to take a medication.
I’ll take euthanasia before Private Equity gets me.
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I think I mentioned this example in one of the previous discussions on MA plans and their insidious creep (shouldda done if I didn’t)…
Shortly after we moved here to Colorado my daughter asked me to pick up some paperwork for her from her PCP’s office. Whilst there … amid all the hustle and bustle of a Grand Central station environment … I spotted a sign that read that the practice ONLY accepted Medicare Advantage plans for senior members. I couldn’t understand why … seeing as what I thought I knew about MA plans and their low rent nature back then.
Articles such as this and in the concurrent thread started by Wendy spell out the advantage to the corporate owners of just this individual puzzle piece that I wondered about … a $400 billion gravy boat in which the big corporations (**Optum, in the case of my daughter’s former PCP practice) are free to dip their crusts.
Unfortunate that the slant appears to focus on Medicare and its beneficiaries, as credulous and unimaginative youngsters can get sucked into the notion that this siphoning off of the healthcare dollar (or $400 billion in "savings"
) is confined to us Chronologically Enriched. It is not. This has the potential to have an impact on all age groups.
On Optum’s website I see that their tentacles reach overseas… with a strong presence in the UK’s sell off of NHS assets.
The problem with relying on Euthanasia as medical care is you might end up having to do it yourself. Also, if you are in a condition that takes that option away you’ll have to wait till they’re ready for it.
And “they” will never be ready for it. That’s because “they” are pulling in $1000/day (or more in many cases) in profit while you are lying there connected to all those machines. If you stop breathing at 11:55pm, “they’ll” keep you going until 12:05am, so “they” can bill for one more day.
This isn’t a new thing. My grandmother who died in the 70’s from widespread cancer had all sorts of things (gall bladder removal, leg amputation, etc) done to her in the last two weeks … that were billed for of course. Meanwhile, it was absolutely clear that she was dying and that nothing they could do would extend her life, or her quality of life, at that point.
That is just so not true. You are a lawyer not a doctor. With that attitude most doctors will steer clear. Most doctors are very cognizant of how people die. In fact there are elements of euthanasia in the US that have gone on all along. Patients are quietly assisted.
Jack Kevorkian was making a legal point for the profession to make it legal.
It is like saying abortion wont happen if it is illegal. Life and death happen regardless of legalities.
Doctors do not keep people alive to milk the system.
Now lawyers will go into meetings and purposely not resolve any of their cases. Many legal problems can be solved in two minutes. Even the most complex legal problem could be solved in two seconds. Slavery in 1859…“sure we know what is right we will give up the slaves”. But politicians read legal or lawyers…would rather fight the most destructive war in our history than simply do the right things.
Doctors aim to do the right thing unlike many lawyers. In this particular regard.
Part of the problem is that doctors don’t decide everything on their own. There are institutional procedures that the doctors have to follow or they will shortly find themselves not working there anymore. Did you even know what a “code” is? They regularly do this procedure on people in their late 80s and in their 90s, riddled with cancer or some other dread disease that has already reduced quality of life to a very low level. Can you tell us what the point of resuscitating someone who’s going to die in the next week or the next month? And will spend that entire week or month hooked up to various machines keeping them “alive”? This happens every day in every hospital all across the USA … how would you justify those actions?
Also, why would you think I am a lawyer? I’ll ignore your snide deprecatory remarks that you used the “lawyer” thing to make. I’m neither a lawyer nor a doctor, I am a retired engineer. Anyone who’s frequented these boards for any length of time should know that, I’ve been on these boards since the mid-90s, the old Motley Fool site didn’t even have an exact date because I predated their record keeping.
The TV series “ER” was the most popular show on broadcast television in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Anyone who watched “ER” knows what a “code” is.
If you fall over from a heart attack outside of the hospital, you have about a 10% chance of being resuscitated. The odds improve to 25% to 40% if you’re already in the hospital. A USC study revealed that TV medical dramas performed successful resuscitations with about twice the frequency of actual hospitals. No doubt another result of Private Equity involvement.
https://news.usc.edu/85642/cpr-may-usually-save-lives-on-tv-but-not-in-real-life/
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