First let me say that I had a kidney transplant and the “little quality of life” that you describe is hardly little. I was only 21 at the time I was placed on dialysis and rest assured, I continued to work. I was not like some of the patients that were unable to work or some who could and didn’t. My quality of life was great and my funds did not come from the government. Yes, patients are given medicare for 3 years post transplant, but let me tell you first hand that it certainly paid nothing for me. So before you start discussing this issue, I would like to know what your difinition of wuality of life is.

Of course, unless you were placed in this siutation you might think differently.

this is the outrage that goes on and on, because there are no cost controls. and it keeps escalating and escalating, as there are no brakes. the insurance companies pay w/o question, as medicaid/medicare pay without question, they are the biggest fish. and what about all the medicaid/medicare fraud — the single payers are contributing to price escalation by being asleep at the wheel and corrupt and lazy.

btw, in addition to competition, we need the users to pay the costs, at least for routine, non-major care. that way they’ll see the end costs, shop around. so there should be high deductibles and ins. co. should be policed, no corrupt 5 million dollar salaries for them.

CimaVax has few of the usual chemo/radiation side effects - nausea and loss of appetite.

I’m curious as to what the cost of treatment is, no price set on the drug yet, but have yet to see a cancer drug or treatment that’s cheap.

If given only a few extra months I think I’d spend my money on some good weed and beer on a little stretch of beach I know in Masachapa, Nica.

no quarrel from me there, edwin. i just thought your list of medical situations may not have been complete. and thanks for the example from your own life, it always helps to have real world examples to bring home what is meant.

Other things I forgot to state is that the other players in the med field are in on the self-enrichment blackmail scam. The suppliers, the labs, etc. No rhyme or reason for the prices. Doctors complain about syringes that cost $120, when they cost about $5 to make. The hospitals pay 10 times the reasonable price for supplies like bandages, IV bags, what have you, and then turn around and charge you 20 times that price, and then on top of that double-bill (bilk) and triple-bill you for the same item. (Their billing “mistakes” are NEVER in the direction that they take a hit, it’s a mafia operation, and the govt assholes wasting our tax dollars don’t bother to regulate and fine and yank licenses). You need to hire a lawyer to go through hospital bills to try and recover the money stolen from you. Doctors too – if you’re insured, they’ll bill the insurance co. for imaginary or inflated things, I’ve seen it happen to me when I had insurance — X-rays charged for that were not performed, size of benign growth removed increased to double its actual size on the insurance form, etc.).

Other signs of monopoly are abundant. For example, new patients pay more to see a doctor – in competitive fields they give you discounts to be their customer. You can never get information on the costs, on what ails you, etc., such an arrogant stance. Try asking ahead of time how much something would cost, even an office visit. They give you a bullshit, ambiguous answer. And then you get hit by lab fees which they didn’t tell you about, or didn’t themselves know about, fees which are several times the reasonable ones, or fees which are several times what you paid a year ago for the same thing but a different provider. (example: $55 for a pap smear test for my wife 2 years ago from provider A and $189 for the same thing this year from provider B). And the doctors, you have to pull information with pliers out of them, run after them asking questions as they hurry out the office to see another patient and make more money.

Cuba approves, makes available lung cancer treatment

Cuban scientists said on Tuesday the first vaccine to extend lives of lung cancer patients has been approved by Cuban authorities for use and is available in the island’s hospitals. The drug, CimaVax EGF, has been shown to increase survival rates on average four to five months and much longer in some patients, they said in a news conference at Cuba’s Center of Molecular Immunology. In contrast to chemotherapy, the traditional treatment for lung cancer, they said CimaVax EGF has few side effects because it is a modified protein that attacks only cancer cells.

p.s. there was no slavery in the U.S. 70 years ago (1938) you would have to go back about 140 years.

i am sure if we had a nuclear war and killed everything and everybody, the world will go on just fine. yeah, let’s do things the way they were done 70 years ago. let’s go back to slavery, etc., the world went on just fine.

old people don’t have other needs, beside terminal care? and younger people don’t sometimes have serious conditions, not just colds and broken bones? it seems you’d discard (maybe euthanize) everyone who’s consuming too much resources, anyone who’s not an uebermensch, aryan race? unless of course, YOU needed that, then you’d change your mind and make an exception.

And they also fix prices, too — so a de facto monopoly in something that’s vitally important to EVERYBODY. Woe is it to a Dr. who significantly undercuts his/her peers. He’ll be delisted.

EXACTLY. But how do you do it when they’re through and through the system, they’ve corrupted everything — the state med boards, for example, who say you have to know how to operate on colon cancer if you’re an eye doctor, who say you have to see a Dr. for every small thing, who say you have to be RICH to be a DR., and spend a fortune and a lifetime till you get a license and can be gainfully employed. How do you fight this TOTAL corruption?

the root cause is the blackmail of the medical community — if you don’t pay up whatever we ask, we’ll leave you by the side of the road to die like a dog. that’s what we’re dealing with. and lack of competition in the med field is the other synergistic half of this.

“Baucus is trying to pass legislation that will prevent physicians from taking a 10.6 percent Medicare cut, which is expected to take effect July 1. Lobbyists representing doctors warned that if the legislation goes through doctors would no longer see Medicare patients.”

this is what i mean — blackmail. except they probably won’t do it, medicare/medicaid is too much of their biz, and they are actually the enablers of this blackmail.

we’re uninsured, so we see the outrageous prices for the littlest things, and no price standards. and of course double and triple billing, padding the bills with unnecessary things, etc. no rhyme or reason for these prices, it’s putting the gun to your head and saying pay up, that’s what it is. (and they’re the “epitome of morality and goodness” — NOT). look at your insurance statement when you go to the doctor.

i came from socialized medicine. months with severe toothache with no relief in sight — have to wait in an endless line. passed out in dentist chair cause they didn’t use any anesthetics. recently asked dr.’s in canada about my wife’s gyno exam (we live near the border). yes, it’s cheaper, much cheaper, but guess what — she needs a referral from a general practitioner (for the annual ob-gyn exam!!) and then she has to wait A YEAR, or at least several months, depending on the doctor!!!

and everybody’s affraid to say the obvious — what i’ve just said, that the emperor has no clothes, that we’re being raped by the med establishment, that they’re preventing any competition (why does a podiatrist need to know brain surgery?)

and by the way, u — who’re insured — are already paying thru the nose, regardless — it’s being taken out of your paycheck, just cause u don’t see it u don’t complain. but it’s thousands and tens of thousands of dollars per year.

so, either way, no good. radical changes necessary, above all COMPETITION so that this BLACKMAIL ceases. and stop the scandalous nonsense alogans about single payer solving everything.

Let’s limit government payment for drug to off patent drugs only That would be all drugs available in 1988.

Let’s end the AMA monopoly. De-regulate health care providers.

“The GAO has recommended tax increases and spending cuts to deal with the issue.”

Of course, that means more tax on the little sheople and trimming the fat, so to speak, from other programs, i.e. education, disaster relief, infrastructure… as we know “they” will not touch Defense funds b/c of the “war on terror.”