Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare)

[33anda3rd]

But I'm just a poor white dirt farmer so it's ok.

No one came even moderately close to implying this.

No I am, but since I'm not black it's ok to have to go 48 min to urgent care. Maybe that's why it's so hard for me to understand you guys. 45 min is close to me, $15 min wage? I haven't made half that an hour in 6 years. Nearest grocery store, 10 miles and its certainly not chock full of healthy alternatives. Reliable transportation? My daily driver is an 88 Chevy truck. I do have a 98 buy it broke down 8 months ago and I can't afford to fix it.

My wife does have a decent job, not crazy paying but she supports my farming addiction. And I'm not using the term addiction as a joke.

Believe it or not, there are people in the world that are even poorer than you are. That does not imply that you haven't had to work hard and overcome obstacles to get to where you are. But if that's true then you should have empathy towards people struggling to survive, not look down on them.

I don't want to speak for diddy....but I don't think he's looking down upon anyone. He's just saying that his closest urgent care facility is also 45 min away and he realizes that's still a better option than going to the ER if its not a true emergency situation even if the ER is 10 minutes from his place.

Right. But do you view that as being more fortunate than others and count your blessings or do you look down on others in a worse condition? I'm not saying Diddy is doing that, just adding my 2 cents to a complex discussion about a complex issue.

[haltz]

Your wife is supporting a full-time hobby. I wouldn't really count that as being poor.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Although whether or not people are choosing smartly is one aspect, I think the more important aspect of this is the lack of access to preventative care - the kind of care that comes from regular checkups with physicians or practitioners who are familiar with the patients they see.

However, this kind of care is not available for a couple of major reasons: the lack of qualified individuals to perform the service and the cost of the visits.

It has been proven that such care saves money by identifying issues before they become problems that can only be solved by expensive care in hospitals. I believe it would be worth the investment to ensure everyone had access to this basic level of care and I think the service would pay for itself.

[pioneer98]

Although whether or not people are choosing smartly is one aspect, I think the more important aspect of this is the lack of access to preventative care - the kind of care that comes from regular checkups with physicians or practitioners who are familiar with the patients they see.

However, this kind of care is not available for a couple of major reasons: the lack of qualified individuals to perform the service and the cost of the visits.

It has been proven that such care saves money by identifying issues before they become problems that can only be solved by expensive care in hospitals. I believe it would be worth the investment to ensure everyone had access to this basic level of care and I think the service would pay for itself.

I can't find the article right now but there was a health care company out in either Arizona or California that started focusing on preventive care. Especially with older people they get really aggressive. For example, they started providing transportation to bring them in for their regular checkups. Before, when they didn't provide transportation, they would miss a checkup and miss the opportunity to find problems and catch them early. The cost of providing transportation paid for itself in all the dollars they avoided spending treating bigger health issues later. They also put in "smart" devices in the home of some of these people - scales, blood pressure checks and things like that. The data would be sent to doctors via the internet. There were certain health issues that would be preceded by a fairly sudden weight loss or gain. If they saw that symptom, they'd send the car over to get them and bring them in. There was also a whole thing about how the preventive actions made a huge difference in patients with diabetes. This article might have been in this thread many pages back. Anyway they were able to cut costs way down and get better outcomes than pretty much any other outfit.

[IMADreamer]

But I'm just a poor white dirt farmer so it's ok.

No one came even moderately close to implying this.

No I am, but since I'm not black it's ok to have to go 48 min to urgent care. Maybe that's why it's so hard for me to understand you guys. 45 min is close to me, $15 min wage? I haven't made half that an hour in 6 years. Nearest grocery store, 10 miles and its certainly not chock full of healthy alternatives. Reliable transportation? My daily driver is an 88 Chevy truck. I do have a 98 buy it broke down 8 months ago and I can't afford to fix it.

My wife does have a decent job, not crazy paying but she supports my farming addiction. And I'm not using the term addiction as a joke.

Believe it or not, there are people in the world that are even poorer than you are. That does not imply that you haven't had to work hard and overcome obstacles to get to where you are. But if that's true then you should have empathy towards people struggling to survive, not look down on them.

I don't want to speak for diddy....but I don't think he's looking down upon anyone. He's just saying that his closest urgent care facility is also 45 min away and he realizes that's still a better option than going to the ER if its not a true emergency situation even if the ER is 10 minutes from his place.

Right. But do you view that as being more fortunate than others and count your blessings or do you look down on others in a worse condition? I'm not saying Diddy is doing that, just adding my 2 cents to a complex discussion about a complex issue.

No way is Diddy looking down on them. I think he's just saying others have the same problems. I think Diddy and I have a similar experience in life being rural dwellers. When I hear that the nearest urgent care is 45 minutes a way I kind of think "ok so?" When Nic was doing some of her treatments for cancer we drove an hour each direction every day for almost two months. Fortunately we could afford it, but there are just as many people here that can't. I guess what I'm saying is there are big problems with the system, for all of us no matter income or place of residence.

[Schlich]

This:

So are people moving up or are we creating a class that relies on assistance because they don't know anything different.

The best thing for all Americans is for everyone to be employeed and contributing.

Is pretty damn condescending.

[Leroy]

I'm rich as hell and I buy body parts off dead kids.

[33anda3rd]

Right. But do you view that as being more fortunate than others and count your blessings or do you look down on others in a worse condition? I'm not saying Diddy is doing that, just adding my 2 cents to a complex discussion about a complex issue.

No way is Diddy looking down on them. I think he's just saying others have the same problems. I think Diddy and I have a similar experience in life being rural dwellers. When I hear that the nearest urgent care is 45 minutes a way I kind of think "ok so?" When Nic was doing some of her treatments for cancer we drove an hour each direction every day for almost two months. Fortunately we could afford it, but there are just as many people here that can't. I guess what I'm saying is there are big problems with the system, for all of us no matter income or place of residence.

Dreamer, I didn't say that he was per the bolded above.

My mother in law, when she was having cancer treatment at Northwestern in Chicago, was going an hour-plus each way from home in Barrington. Similar to you, my father in law was driving her. But they're, like you, able to afford the time and the expense of travel, have the means to cover the treatment, and were brought up in a culture that promoted preventative care and treatment.

Someone on the west side of Chicago or the worst part of Baltimore or in East LA, who when they were a kid mom just took them to the ER if they were really sick and who never saw a family medicine doc, for whom that's the culture, for whom $5 for a round-trip bus trip to an urgent care clinic is a lot of money, who likely doesn't even know what an urgent care facility is? It's not like you going to another rural area or my mother in law going from a tony suburb to a tony downtown clinic. That person could not even begin to relate to someone having to drive 40 minutes to a doctor, the way I think rural people without exposure to the hardships of life in the urban ghetto can't empathize or relate to that life. It really is apples and oranges, and that both things are ~45 minutes doesn't really make them the same.

[pioneer98]

[thrill]

Here is a picture of me pondering Bruce Hamilton's question: