We’re on a pretty different page about this and I’m not into the conspiracy theory aspect but it’s not probably meant for this forum. We all operate with the intention of staying out of the hospital. Sadly it doesn’t always work out that way and I have a couple of family members who are a testament to that and the associated costs that they would be saddled with had they not had insurance. And yes, they are now well thanks to doctors and “Big Pharma”. All I can say is good health and good luck but I’m keeping my health insurance. David Love David I think you might be missing the point of Susan's rant. Although Susan didn't have it, we all do need insurance. My wife broke her ankle a year ago, and even though she had some limited insurance, we wound up paying almost $20,000 out of pocket, out of a nearly $40,000 bill. What Susan is right about, however, is that medicine, which used to be basically no-profit, is now become a corporate giant, which only cares about profits, and not the heath of our population. Doctors are forced, by the HMO's they belong to, to order test after test, most of which are unnecessary, not because there might be something wrong with you, but because the HMO is covering their backsides, to protect them against lawsuits. They order the tests because there is money to be made by them, which makes the HMO's bottom line look better. The tests, in turn, are charged to the insurance company which then raises rates to cover the expense. And round and round it goes. Now the government want to get involved, which means our taxes are going up. All because of the greed of the HMO's, Big Pharma, and Insurance companies. Yes, there are some very good thing happening in medicine, but don't get me started about some of the meds that are absolutely useless, and/or dangerous. Just listen to all the "side effects" of some of the med commercials. These aren't "side effects". In most cases, these meds are causing more harm than good. This might not be directly related to piano work, but in a sense, it is related to how much we make tuning pianos. When insurance rates go up, we have to charge more to tune pianos. But when we charge more, customers are reluctant to get their pianos tuned, which reduces our income. This is why it is imperative for us to stay healthy, and vote for the candidates who will work to reduce our health costs. end of rant. Wim -----Original Message----- From: David Love <davidlovepianos at comcast.net> To: pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Sun, Oct 31, 2010 5:59 pm Subject: Re: [pianotech] Medical costs (OT!) was: billing dilemma with pitch raises We’re on a pretty different page about this and I’m not into the conspiracy theory aspect but it’s not probably meant for this forum. We all operate with the intention of staying out of the hospital. Sadly it doesn’t always work out that way and I have a couple of family members who are a testament to that and the associated costs that they would be saddled with had they not had insurance. And yes, they are now well thanks to doctors and “Big Pharma”. All I can say is good health and good luck but I’m keeping my health insurance. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Susan Kline Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2010 8:42 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Medical costs (OT!) was: billing dilemma with pitch raises On 10/31/2010 7:22 PM, David Love wrote: Health insurance is expensive but getting out of a hospital stay with only a $30,000 bill is cheap. It could easily be in the $100,000s plus. You insure against catastrophe. Warning: RANT in progress: David, this is true, as far as it goes. However, the very act of insuring changes the medical system, and not just the fee structure either. The kind of medicine practiced changes, especially once legal defensibility, peer pressure among doctors, and the pressure of Big Pharma get scaled in. What costs the most is what you end up with. So, not enough "primary care physicians" and more and more specialists. Research only gets funded if it leads to more expensive and more chronic pharmaceutical use. Very useful low cost treatments and protocols have no defenders, because no one will get rich from them. Whoever stands up for them will get bashed about by those who make a lot of money from the lucrative alternatives. In the end (and we're nearly there) society ends up with a system so expensive and dysfunctional that most of the time people would be better off if it didn't even exist. Statins, for instance, a big money maker based on the total myth that cholesterol causes heart disease, which has been disproven for decades. (If one had to pick a single cause of heart disease, it would be FRUCTOSE.) Statins are medically dangerous, ineffective for their announced purpose, and expensive. Lipitor is the #1 prescribed drug in America (if I remember what I read correctly) and it is medically useless and harmful for all but the tiny fraction of the public who have hereditary super-high cholesterol. On the neurology site I found, the one with a very effective "nerve support formula" for myelin problems (which were what I had), a whole section of the testimonial page was filled by people who got neuropathy only from taking statins. They go to neurologists, who only give them painkillers like gabapentin, with a zillion side effects, which do nothing to heal nerves, but the docs leave them on the statins causing their nerve damage. Meanwhile, the website is selling a formula containing benfotiamine (a form of Vitamin B-1 known for lessening the pain of neuropathy), and methyl B12 (a highly absorbable form of Vitamin B-12, also very helpful for myelin.) It really does work. The pain in my hands lessened noticeably within a couple days of starting it. It works by speeding healing, not by covering up pain. So why don't the doctors give it to their patients? The only reason I can imagine is that Big Pharma would be very annoyed. You'd be interfering with their billions in profits. Some of the patients would get away, instead of taking ineffective painkillers (the analgesia wears off with repeated use) the rest of their miserable lives. Well, this is a piano list .... but I was very lucky that I had the money to pay off that bill, and my local hospital is a _good_ hospital, a teaching hospital which is well-run, and non-profit. What going to a bad hospital would be like makes me shudder. In the end, with both insurance and government welfare blunting the feedback on costs, and so many people getting wealthy off the medical system and its associated industries, and government subsidizing high fructose corn syrup which gives millions of people diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and obesity, there is no insuring against catastrophe. There is not money enough on earth to keep this whole ramshackle calamity we call "medical care" from breaking down. I turn 65 next year. I'll do my level best never to give Medicare anything to pay for. I think that doing one's best to avoid needing medical treatment is a social duty, and also a form of self-preservation. It's not like most of the common treatments WORK. My particular treatment (immunoglobulins to stop the advance of Guillain Barre Syndrome) did work, and was needed and appropriate. So I was glad it was there. Susan From: Susan Kline <skline at peak.org> Sender: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2010 19:00:37 -0700 To: <pianotech at ptg.org> ReplyTo: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] billing dilemma with pitch raises Hi, Jer A friend told me it was as if my life had pressed a great big RESET button. You know how some weeks you get so tired, and say to yourself, "if only I could take six months off!" (Beware what you ask for ...) I now feel lucky it was only five months, and it did do a good number on the chronic fatigue, just staying home. Double vision for five weeks was quite galling. $1,000 a year doesn't even get you in the door when it comes to medical insurance. I investigated it in 1981, when I had come back to the US from Canada. I was appalled. They wanted more for a month of insurance than I expected to pay for normal medical care in several years. I was broke. I just "said no." I'm sure it's only gotten worse since. I don't think I made a conscious decision about "full service" tuning (at least in a minor version.) It just seemed the natural thing to do. I hated seeing something wrong and just LEAVING it. Susan On 10/31/2010 6:30 PM, Gerald Groot wrote: I’m sorry to hear about your crisis. That really sucks. Spending what we do spend on health insurance, you are quite correct when you say you could buy a whole lot of health insurance for that but, on the other hand If we were to spend say about $10,000 a year or so with deductibles or more, in 10 years, that’s an easy $100,000. In that regard, you’re ahead of the game there. Thanks for the conversation. I enjoyed it. I do find the idea of full service quite interesting and have an open mind to it, believe it or not. J Jer From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Susan Kline Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2010 9:14 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] billing dilemma with pitch raises On 10/31/2010 5:15 PM, Gerald Groot wrote: We have phone’s, insurance, business insurance, health insurance, life insurance, some even carry ear insurance or hand insurance. We would have phones anyway. Not all of us have all that insurance. I, for instance, carry home owners insurance and car insurance, and that's it. I admit people with a family would worry without life insurance, and maybe some kind of disability or health insurance. I think that unless they are very anxious types, most single people are better off without most of those other insurances: the tool insurance, (HAND insurance??), liability insurance (which just makes your pockets deep enough for someone to want to sue you). I went 30 years without health insurance, ever since coming home from Canada. And last spring I became the poster child for what can happen as an uninsured person gets older. Here I am, aged 64, and I had a medical crisis and a hospital stay last May, and found myself with a hospital bill for $30,500 (after negotiations.) Plus other doctor bills. Okay ... my gosh, how could she do without the insurance?? Well, first, if you prorate my hospital bill for thirty years, you end up with about $1,000 per year -- you couldn't buy a whole lot of health insurance for that. Second, these days if you have been a good and faithful customer for years, paying premiums the whole time, and you suddenly have a major medical cost, the companies have whole rooms full of people whose only job is to go through your history with a fine tooth comb, to find an excuse not to pay. Now, there is overhead for you -- pay the insurance (at what I think are exorbitant rates) and THEN pay the medical costs yourself anyway, plus maybe some legal costs trying to collect. To sum up again -- I think a very important skill for a person in business is to keep overhead to the bare minimum. I don't remember Jer mentioning advertising, but that's another one which I think most really good piano techs should do without. Word of mouth does it all so much better, and is scot free. Susan Kline -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101101/b7067ae7/attachment-0001.htm>
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