More Doctors are now taking medicare than accepting private

driftervii wrote:my quality of care has definitely went down since Obama came to office. as a matter of fact quality of life in general has went down.

The quality of life of Americans in general started going down about 30 - 40 years ago when corporations started embracing globalization and moving production to developing nations and as the supply of natural resources on our continent has noticeably diminished. It's been going down steadily since regardless of the brand of the administration. Obama is not its cause.

I go by the what I personally see theory. And what I see is that my BC/BS PPO has never been denied by any doctor, hospital, health facility or DME. Also, three of the doctors I use frequently as are considered top of their field no longer take medicare or medicade patients. I do have one doctor that has stopped taking all insurance patients except BC/BS including medicare and medicade. His practice is considered a "concierge" practice as except for BC/BS he only takes patients that can pay for services rendered out of pocket. The crazy thing is that he stays booked six months out or more and 40% of his patients travel from out of state to see him. He has some very wealthy patients in Texas, California, Canada, France and Italy that actually send their private jets to pick him up and bring him to them to consult on their cases. That kind of melted a fuse in my brain when I first heard about it. Talk about and expensive doctors visit... Just the jet fuel and pilots salaries to bring your doctor from another state country has to be staggering.

idamtnboy wrote:

driftervii wrote:my quality of care has definitely went down since Obama came to office. as a matter of fact quality of life in general has went down.

The quality of life of Americans in general started going down about 30 - 40 years ago when corporations started embracing globalization and moving production to developing nations and as the supply of natural resources on our continent has noticeably diminished. It's been going down steadily since regardless of the brand of the administration. Obama is not its cause.

In my opinion, this actually started during the "Marshall Plan" after WWII with the reconstruction of parts of Europe and Japan. It was done under the guise of rebuilding their infrastructure and economies, but was actually a backdoor way of finding cheaper labor and materials. From there, it led to other countries where cheaper labor and materials could be found.
Think about it......how many labels do you see on items with European countries, Japan, Taiwan or even Korea on them anymore?


Den

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Wulfman... wrote:In my opinion, this actually started during the "Marshall Plan" after WWII with the reconstruction of parts of Europe and Japan. It was done under the guise of rebuilding their infrastructure and economies, but was actually a backdoor way of finding cheaper labor and materials.

I don't think it was that soon. The 50's were an amazing period of improving standard of living, not only here but in Europe and Japan. But the foundation for the later decline could have been as you say. As to deliberately looking for cheaper labor for American production I don't think that really was the case. American corporations were not obsessed with cheap labor yet. Most of the cheap goods, like from Japan, came about from Japanese initiatives. Remember the first cars from Japan? They were Japanese brands, not American, like Honda and Datsun. Cheap toys were purely Japanese manufacture, not transplanted American.

I made a comment, which I can't find now, in an essay answer for a college economics course back in 1966. I wrote that as the costs of trading with Japan increased because their standard of living would increase, the American standard of living would decrease. Eventually, without some major economic disruption, our standard of living will equalize with all our trading partners, unless we find a significant new source for raw materials which will enable all standard of living to increase.