Health care advisers serve wealthy

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=dc4a89b41cb194f3

Health care advisers serve wealthy
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Big News Network.com Thursday 10th February, 2005 (UPI)

Health care advisers are reportedly joining investment, tax and estate-planning experts in serving wealthy families and executives in the United States.

A growing number of personal patient advocacy services are cropping up to help research treatment options and arrange health care for clients, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Most such health care advisers assist in sorting through confusing arrays of specialists and tests, handling insurance paperwork, bypassing long waits for appointments, identifying new physicians when clients move or travel, and organizing and transferring medical records, the report said.

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Why are the poor treated like dirt and these guys get preferrential treatment!!! This is not right everybody should be treated equal this is America right!!!

[w4rma]

1. The GOP servant economy. (nt)

[ArchTeryx]

2. Whatever there's a market for...

...they fill the breach. You can find such things anywhere in the Western world, really, even in those places with universal health care. To be quite honest, more power to 'em. The advisors are simply going where the money is and making a living like everyone else.

The true crime is not that the wealthy have people to manuver them through the maze, the crime is that a huge and growing number of people a) aren't even allowed at the entrance to the labyrinth, or b) get smashed by the minotaur, which in this case is medical bill driven bankruptcy.

THAT is what I'd save my outrage for.

-- ArchTeryx

[Warpy]

3. I have plenty of outrage to go around.

and much of it is for the wealthy, who seem to have an absolute horror of coming into contact with the rest of us, even when they get sick enough to go to a hospital. Most major hosipitals in big cities have special VIP wings for these scumbags. These "planners" are just parasites who make certain the poor fragile rich get a hospital room with a fireplace and Oriental carpet, and I'm not kidding about either of those.

While the obscenely rich are able to obtain concierge care and avoid dealing with the nonsystem the rest of us face, the system for everyone who isn't obscenely rich will continue to be underfunded and deteriorating, with massive amounts of money sucked out of it to make the rich richer.

If we ever get rid of Bush and get an administration with the will to tackle this and the other problems we face, we have to make absolutely certain that these "health planners" will either have to work for us all or look for a different line of work. Any system the rich can opt out of at any level will be as bad or worse than what we have now.

[rogue_bandit]

4. Sound like doctors to me.

Wasn't that the service doctor's used to offer?

What good are doctors anymore?

[Thurston Howell IV]

5. Other than the "bypassing long waits for appointments"...

most of the things mentioned can be done by anyone with intelligence, time and an internet connection. It's nice to be able to pay someone else to do your grunt work. However, if you're seriouslly ill, then many of these things are nearly impossible to do for oneself. If one doesn't have a loving friend or spouse to step into the breach, then you're SOL.

It is at this point that the inability to take advantage of these services really makes a difference.

Yet, the real major difference between the wealthy and the rest of us isn't in these peripheral services, nice as they may be, but in the quality of doctors one can obtain and the ability to pay for treatments that aren't covered by insurance.

[applegrove]

6. Exactly - government programs are about giving equal treatment

Exactly - government programs are about giving equal treatment to all. The rich can go get abortions and they can go to China and get stem cells.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrr:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: