Questions for those on Medicare (or who have experience with it)

[Glitterati]

39. That's simply not fair

Because of ONE person, you are extrapolating that to everyone.

My husband is a classic example of having lots of skin in the game, caring about cost. As are most people.

Here's the thing you forget.

When you have a medical emergency, you can't "shop" for the cheapest doctor or hospital. You go to the nearest medical facility. Once there, you are ASSIGNED the doctor who treats you. You have no choice and you most certainly did not shop around for him/her.

Before his disability was approved, my husband was hospitalized under Medicaid. The doctors he was assigned, was angry with him for refusing to be transported to the hospital where he got sick. So, he told him he would just keep him in the hospital, regardless of need, until he transferred out.

It was only threats of turning him in for Medicaid fraud that changed his mind.

You're not concerning yourself with the true problem - the cost of medical care in this country. If the hospitals and doctors weren't so damned expensive, we wouldn't have any of these issues.

Why, in God's name, did it cost me $15,000.00 to sit in the ER, in a bed, waiting for the hospital to find a room for me to be admitted to? What part of those costs are prohibitive? It's not like I could just walk out of the ER and go "shopping" for a room with a bed in it. Do you realize the ER charges in 4 hour increments for the bed they put you in?

WHEN do the costs get addressed instead of beating up on sick people whose only alternative is to pray like hell they don't get sick!!!!!!! When?