Just curious to get some opinions from this forum. It seems like some sort of nationalized health care is coming. What implications do you think it will have for the dialysis industry? Should we be worried?

What this will mean is less pay more work, more people on FREE health care. If you can get it FREE who will want to work for it. It will be a gigantic step towards More government control and less freedom. End the end we as a country
will work for the government(those who will work)and those who free load. There will be no middle class. Just the rich (government) and the poor(the rest of us). I hope we all wake up
before its to late.

Guest makes a pretty good point...if anything is given free what is the incentive to work for it?

I don't see that much change. Most of our patients have 80% of the charges for their treatments paid for by Medicare already. We operate under the Conditions for Coverage established by CMS. Bundling may make things tougher for us financially.

I live in Canada and we have a national health care system. I can assure you nothing about it is free. We pay lots of taxes. That being said it is a system that I have grown up with and it is not even close to being as bad as some naysayers in the US are saying. Thats just fear mongering. It sure makes for a heated debate though.

Good topic! Is it true that they do not have or offer dialysis in Canada ?

I thought the exact same thing Dave.But then I thought about how much we rely on the 20% of patients that have private insurance and it send a chill up my spine. What if that goes away?

What it means is equal access to healthcare for everyone, it means more jobs, retraining so burgerflippers can become nurses and PCT's...god forbid even BMETS. It means cost controls and wage controls...sorry guest! It means for the first time in America you dont need to be an above average income earner to access a doctor for your sick kid. It means health education so the average person stops thinking McDonalds is a decent alternative to feed your family. I agree with North the time for scare tactics is well past due and time for some common sense debate on how to allow every person equal access non dependant on your personal income or your financial status.

Since government handled programs are such a bad think. I guess we should get rid of public schools, medicare, madicaid, wellfare, social security...
By the way you are already working for the government (if your facility has pts with medicare).
Of course, if you listen to Rush and Fox news it time to freak out.

If the defination of nationalized is as the Dems desire, and we end up with a government run insurance plan...not much will change other than the lower income people will be forced to pay another premium. Subtract that premium from their already tight budget and not much is left to cover the remaining 20% if the bill. In this scenerio I see no motovation to access the system. Add to the fact the current plan does nothing to control costs, or regulate profits and we end up with the same mess only with an additional mandated expense. Yes as the Dems proclaim pre-existing conditions will be covered, but who will be able to afford the 20% of the bill most insurance companies find already too costly to insure? The solution is as Sicko claims...a universal, non insurance based system funded by taxation, sin taxes, and alot of regulation of the profit taking that is sinking our healthcare ship. How many of you purchase machine parts? How many times a year does a certian O ring jump up another 20%, or the component crutial to getting the down machine back up running skyrocket to a point of having to decide...do really need to have this machine running now? Yes we will ALL take a personal hit financially but it is for the good of the whole. We can no longer sit and worry about ME...this country is about US!

quote:

Originally posted by Guest2009:
Since government handled programs are such a bad think. I guess we should get rid of public schools, medicare, madicaid, wellfare, social security...

Don't forget the fire dept and police. As for the post regarding dialysis in Canada, I used to correspond with an RN there, all dialysis units were ran by 100% RN's, no techs, and the nurses all made about $10 an hour more than I was making at the time. Has anyone checked to see if the unemployment rate is higher in Canada than the US?

Don't kid yourself; we are already paying for healthcare for the non-insured. Medicare, welfare and even illegal immigrants are taxing our healthcare system and we are paying for it. The problem is, people that do not have insurance will go to the emergency room and get service at a higher cost so we may as well get them covered so maybe the cost can go down a little. Did you read the article on this site where a hospital in Vegas is paying out over 250 mil a year just to provide dialysis to illegal immigrants and people wonder why healthcare is so expensive!

Already Paying...I tend to agree with the exception that a non insured citizen actually pays less than an insured one. My g/f who has no insurance recently went to the ER for Xrays...the bill was $1,200.00 when she talked to the billing dept. they told her because she had no insurance they would drop the bill to $800.00 (to make it easier for her to pay) The problem as far as non documented persons is they are impossible to trace. Therefore a non citizen can access the system and simply relocate, or refuse to open their mail (bill) and the system has no way to enforce payment. A citizen on the other hand will immediatly be turned over to a credit agency who will threaten to ruin their credit if they do not pay and as we all know bad credit in America is not going to help anyone get ahead.

If taxes start going up to pay for all this I will be better off just quitting my job let the working people foot the bill and have the government take care of me.

Freeloader...do you really believe a few extra dollars in the form of taxation will ruin your life to the extent it is more preferable to quit a good paying job? IF you did so and as you say "let the government take care of me" will it increase your sense of self worth? Will it advance our society in a positive direction? The arguement doesnt hold water and sounds a little like Rush on Oxy.