(10-17-2019 03:48 PM)bobdizole Wrote:  

(10-17-2019 01:46 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-17-2019 01:17 PM)Claw Wrote:  I strongly oppose the concept of health management accounts. It is not necessary to give the government control of my money to get a tax benefit. No. Simply no. I want freedom for my money. I have no intention of giving the government control of how I spend my money to save a few dollars on my taxes.

Not just no.

Hell no.

These accounts exist today for state and federal employees and in many corporations. They are not mandatory. What they do benefit are those with chronic illnesses and those facing major costs for possibly terminal illnesses.

I would doubt that in this bill, or plan, that they would be mandatory. Tackling the pharmaceutical loopholes is a huge plus, as is permitting the purchase of insurance across state lines. Capping frivolous law suits against doctors (actually their insurers) would also be a huge plus.

The existing laws, like so many of our problems, are a collusion between lawyers who profit by all of this, and big medical corporations like the pharmaceutical industries, who rake in huge profits from the pricing structure even though they sell their products abroad at a much reduced rate. So our companies are raping the citizens of the U.S. and playing sweetly with everyone else, which is a direct result of their lobby in Washington.

The whole affordable care act was nothing more than a boon sweetheart deal to insurers after they helped to bailout the libor crisis of 2007-8. It got them off the hook for payouts at a time when Boomers were hitting retirement age.

At least this plan relieves the system where the issues are, at the doctor's level, and at the patient's level. Restore that and the quality of healthcare goes up.

Hell the HEPA laws were just a cover for a myriad of new charges to the patient not the least of which is the charge for your provider to retrieve your own damned records.

I hope they do put this forward.

What do air filters have to do with medical records?

Kidding, HIPAA is far more than just a cover a myriad of new charges just like PCI compliance is a lot more than a cover for selling new payment software. HIPAA/PCI are both the safeguards to force providers to protect your personal information and to punish them when they don't. In the day and age when everything is on the internet that is invaluable. I don't work with HIPAA, but I work in credit card security and it would make you sick to see how lax a lot of these mom-and-pop restaurants are with credit card security. Until they fail a PCI audit and the credit card companies start fining them until they secure their customers information.

Same thing with your family doctor. If they have unsecured electronic records or leave their hard files unlocked for anyone to steal their should be laws and punishments for that.

I agree those aspects were good, but buried in that bill were many add on charges for the health care industry. I've even been in advocate situations for people who had reason to sue a doctor over misdiagnosed tests results or in one case a patient who received a diagnosis of melanoma and was never told. In both cases records were filed outside of he Dr.'s office and he/she never revisited the files, even though they were also recorded electronically and in the case of the melanoma incorrectly recorded electronically from the actual lab report. Had records been kept at the office, or hospital, as they once had been the original paper trail would have been easily followed and mistakes caught. In the case of the melanoma a 43 year old father of two died from a small mole behind his ear which had been tagged by the biopsy. To add insult to injury when the wife acquired his records she was charged 10 bucks for the retrieval of records that should simply have been her husband's property. When you pay for a doctors visit it is implicit that record keeping is a part of that charge.

It also paved the way for having biopsies sent off to an extant lab for reading. That way the Hospital or Dr.'s office can charge for external reading instead of paying a lab tech on site to read it. It save's them overhead and adds to the billing for the mailing and testing.

Your dog can go to a vet and get an X-ray read on the spot. You can't go to your doctor and even get an X-ray, let alone have it read. At most hospitals it takes 3 days to get human results as the X-ray tech may be on duty to take the shots, but the radiologist may not be available to read them at that time.

In short the whole billing largess they've been given under HIPAA is the dark side of the privacy bill. And it means your dog or cat gets quicker and better treatment in many cases than you do. And I doubt your VET charges for record retrieval.