Join Our Newsletter

New? Free Sign Up

Then check our Welcome Center to a Community Caring about Sleep Apnea diagnosis and Sleep Apnea treatment:

CPAP machines, Sleep Apnea surgery and dental appliances.

CPAP Supplies

Latest Activity

Steven B. Ronsen updated their profile
Mar 5
Dan Lyons updated their profile
Mar 7, 2022
99 replied to Mike's discussion SPO 7500 Users?
"please keep me updated about oximeters "
Dec 4, 2021
Stefan updated their profile
Sep 16, 2019
Profile IconBLev and bruce david joined SleepGuide
Aug 21, 2019

I'll preface all this by saying SleepGuide.com is probably the only place on the internet where you can have an intelligent discussion about anything that might cast CPAP in a negative light, given the financial interests of the other venues out there for education and support (read: people who want to sell you CPAP).  But I went to my doctor the other day and we got into a debate about whether if my next sleep study shows that my weight loss has reduced my AHI to acceptable levels, whether I should get off CPAP.   I argued against it, since my perception is that everyone has obstructed breathing at some point when they sleep and that positive airway pressure can only help keep the body oxygenated and healthy, even if the level of obstruction does not rise to the clinically approved definition of an apnea or hypopnea event.  The doctor disagreed, saying that reliance on CPAP reduces muscle tone in the tongue and that it can actually make you worse off.  He likened it to wearing a cast on your foot that keeps the foot immobilized -- sure that is needed at times, but when you don't use those muscles, you lose them.  

What do you all think?

Views: 2302

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Somnonaut, I got it....you don't like capitalism and you MAY prefer a wealth redistribution economic system.   I to agree that those expenditures are a misproportionate amount of our annual budget, but they cannot happen unless Congress approves those tax dollars being spent that way.   So, you see it's a symbiotic relationship.  The supposed 'zealots' and other silly words bill the gov't and they gov't signs off on those bills.   Congress receives campaign contributions and votes accordingly for bills/expenditures.   Therefore, it's unfair to point the issue solely at private enterprise.   The 'Bridge to Nowhere' was likely a giveback for contributions from a construction conglomerate.  It goes on and on.

Somnonaut said:

Oh and things such as the $700 toilet seat in the Defense Dept. expenditures was because of:

1) Greed of the company making the object

2) Loss of oversight of the DOD from overzealous right wing capitalistic whacknobs

3) Politicians who made promises for things they could not provide. (ala: bridges to nowhere for a small group of people (8900) that did not like to wait for the ferry service.)

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2005/10/the-bridge-to-nowh...

Jay Polatnick said:

Well, I barely even tried nor got going.  Where's the motivation to hold fraud down by the gov't ?  The answer is little to none because the primary motivation is to buy voting blocks by making promises that cannot be kept.  Your metaphor 'capitalism = greed / gov't run = efficient' doesn't pan out.  Try spending some time in Greece and Spain.  The Buffalo teachers union has a terrific gov't subsidized healthcare program.   Here it is in action....'It estimates the current annual cost at $5.2 million, down from $9 million in cosmetic surgery in 2009.'

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/why-does-buffal...



Somnonaut said:

Jay,

FRAUD is made by persons defrauding the government. Do you not think there is fraud in private health insurers? Of course there is. They just do not report it in the newspaper.  Maybe if greed wasn't so rampant in this capitalistic system, with the push to deregulate everything and we would be better off silliness. Yes, go after the fraudsters more fervently, but it does not mean the program is not the most efficient healthcare provisioning program ever designed and enacted by humans. Overhead = 2%. No other program can match it. And catching the fraudsters will only drive that overhead number lower making it show that it is MORE efficient. So, you go baby, catch those criminals. 

This also shows that privatization is not a good thing.

Good try though. ;)

Im sure they are some well educated, as well as good looking teachers. I am also sure that they know how to hire a contract or union/labor lawyer. This brings up many questions for me. How did it happen? Is the state actually paying or the "underwriter"? Do the teachers deserve a small perk like this? The only one I can answer at this time is the last and it is maybe. However as I inch between the lines of this very interesting link I still don't see the connection to medicare?

 

Your link estimates that $60 billion dollars in medicare fraud was commited in 2011. How did 60 minutes come up with that figure? I had was not aware that 60 minutes had joined the consulting or accounting industry. What about all thefraud that was caught and reapiad through the new laws and programs such as "whistleblowers." I think in evaluating the gov't's ability to run this system we should look at actual facts and not fictional projections from journalist whose profit is based on their ratings. Regardless this type of fraud is the product of a devious mind and not our gov't. They have enough corruption and other issues.

Reply by Somnonaut 2 hours ago

Their clients are employers who purchase insurance plans for their workers who stay with the employer for, on average now, 18 -24 months. Priv has no interest in the long term healthcare of these individuals. Only the short term expenditure of their dollars

 

Inequities and economic and social tragedies that go on and on for years and years almost always have the government behind them. Capitalists operating in a competitive market environment cannot sustain such economic and social inefficiencies because new competitors will offer something much better and the customers will flock to them. Only government can sustain such problems for years and lifetimes.

So let's look behind Somno's complaint to find the real villian. It usually helps to start with a "why" question. So why do employers' provide health insurance in the first place? Think about auto insurance. If employers provide health insurance why not auto and homeowners insurance? Would that not be a mess if everyone lost their auto and homeowners insurance when they changed jobs or lost their jobs? Of course it would. It would be a mess just like medical insurance is a mess.

But employers do not provide auto and homeowners insurance and people buy policies that they keep for years even lifetimes.

So why do we not buy medical insurance like auto and homeowners and why do employers provide employee medical insurance? It is simple. Government has made a tax policy that makes employer-provided medical insurance premiums tax free while individual policies are taxed. So here we have it again - very bad tax policy by elected officials intent upon continuing to hold office has created this situation that none of us is happy with.

The solution is simply to change the tax policy and let individuals buy their own insurance and keep their policies for years even lifetimes.

When the cause is so easily found and the solution is so simple I continue to be amazed at the number of people who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Throw out the mechanism, capitalism, which has lifted billions out of poverty and into prosperity. Throw out the mechanism and take a step back to an system of providing for human needs that has proved over and over to be inefficient and downright tragic - government.

Guys, you have IQs and advanced education. You should know better. 

Banyon,

       A primer on the benefits of true free-market capitalism.  What the critics rail against is socialism and crony capitalism in the disguise of capitalism.  Well done!

Cheers!
Banyon said:

Reply by Somnonaut 2 hours ago

Their clients are employers who purchase insurance plans for their workers who stay with the employer for, on average now, 18 -24 months. Priv has no interest in the long term healthcare of these individuals. Only the short term expenditure of their dollars

 

Inequities and economic and social tragedies that go on and on for years and years almost always have the government behind them. Capitalists operating in a competitive market environment cannot sustain such economic and social inefficiencies because new competitors will offer something much better and the customers will flock to them. Only government can sustain such problems for years and lifetimes.

So let's look behind Somno's complaint to find the real villian. It usually helps to start with a "why" question. So why do employers' provide health insurance in the first place? Think about auto insurance. If employers provide health insurance why not auto and homeowners insurance? Would that not be a mess if everyone lost their auto and homeowners insurance when they changed jobs or lost their jobs? Of course it would. It would be a mess just like medical insurance is a mess.

But employers do not provide auto and homeowners insurance and people buy policies that they keep for years even lifetimes.

So why do we not buy medical insurance like auto and homeowners and why do employers provide employee medical insurance? It is simple. Government has made a tax policy that makes employer-provided medical insurance premiums tax free while individual policies are taxed. So here we have it again - very bad tax policy by elected officials intent upon continuing to hold office has created this situation that none of us is happy with.

The solution is simply to change the tax policy and let individuals buy their own insurance and keep their policies for years even lifetimes.

When the cause is so easily found and the solution is so simple I continue to be amazed at the number of people who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Throw out the mechanism, capitalism, which has lifted billions out of poverty and into prosperity. Throw out the mechanism and take a step back to an system of providing for human needs that has proved over and over to be inefficient and downright tragic - government.

Guys, you have IQs and advanced education. You should know better. 

Very good point Banyon. While I have switched jobs several times in the last 10 years my car insurance is still the same.  Interesting

If our health insurance were personal, portable, purchasable across state lines, free of mandates (hair transplants, in one state is mandated), insurers would come up with all kinds of competitive products. It would be great because we'd have lots of choices at lower prices.

In my case, I'd take a high deductible catastrophic heath insurance plan and take darned good care of my own health. I spend heavily on natural alternatives, not medication, and even my doctor is impressed with what I've accomplished through diet alone. My HDLs, for example, last tested had reached 145. My doctor admitted: he couldn't recommend Lipitor any more, not with HDLs nearly three times higher than than an acceptable level.

Note: some will prefer a plan with a much lower deductible -- just as many choose lower deductible car, home and other insurance.products. They pay more for lower deductible products, but doesn't it make sense that they do and should?

btw, it's possible for an insurance company to design a guaranteed insurable product so that no matter what your health (if there is a serious negative change) it's still possible to buy coverage. The market can be really creative if left free to be inventive. But try, just try, telling that to Washington.

Amen to that!

You are incorrect to think that the reason we have private health insurance is that simple of a  notion. Private health insurance IS the reason the price of healthcare is going up. It is a fee for service market that pays the prevailing wage and does not have price controls. Try using the internets to find things out.

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/thomasson.insurance.health.us

The government is the only thing standing between the pirates and barbarians that call themselves capitalists and the money in your pockets. Remember, that before the New healthcare law these wonderful private insurance companies were allowed to not cover you for a preexisting conditions, have caps on payouts, and other issues that are now history. YEAH!!!!

The reason we have private health insurance is because St. Ronnie Raygun destroyed Medicare by imposing the unconstitutional local regions to Medicare (HCFA as it was known). 

Banyon said:

Reply by Somnonaut 2 hours ago

Their clients are employers who purchase insurance plans for their workers who stay with the employer for, on average now, 18 -24 months. Priv has no interest in the long term healthcare of these individuals. Only the short term expenditure of their dollars

 

Inequities and economic and social tragedies that go on and on for years and years almost always have the government behind them. Capitalists operating in a competitive market environment cannot sustain such economic and social inefficiencies because new competitors will offer something much better and the customers will flock to them. Only government can sustain such problems for years and lifetimes.

So let's look behind Somno's complaint to find the real villian. It usually helps to start with a "why" question. So why do employers' provide health insurance in the first place? Think about auto insurance. If employers provide health insurance why not auto and homeowners insurance? Would that not be a mess if everyone lost their auto and homeowners insurance when they changed jobs or lost their jobs? Of course it would. It would be a mess just like medical insurance is a mess.

But employers do not provide auto and homeowners insurance and people buy policies that they keep for years even lifetimes.

So why do we not buy medical insurance like auto and homeowners and why do employers provide employee medical insurance? It is simple. Government has made a tax policy that makes employer-provided medical insurance premiums tax free while individual policies are taxed. So here we have it again - very bad tax policy by elected officials intent upon continuing to hold office has created this situation that none of us is happy with.

The solution is simply to change the tax policy and let individuals buy their own insurance and keep their policies for years even lifetimes.

When the cause is so easily found and the solution is so simple I continue to be amazed at the number of people who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Throw out the mechanism, capitalism, which has lifted billions out of poverty and into prosperity. Throw out the mechanism and take a step back to an system of providing for human needs that has proved over and over to be inefficient and downright tragic - government.

Guys, you have IQs and advanced education. You should know better. 

Somnonaut, have you taken any history or economic courses other than those taught at traditional liberal institutions ?  Are you familiar at all with any alternatives to Keynesian nonsense such as Austrian economics ?  Nixon toyed with price controls and the results were disastrous as are all centrally planned economies.   The price escalation you refer to is due to lack of competition enabled by artificial barriers to entry allowed by unscrupulous lawmakers.  Another independent factor is our overreliance on technology to treat each and every illness (i.e. MRI's for everything).  As I reiterate from a previous posting, these 'pirates' that haunt your nightmares are cronies our our Federal legislators, with may in the backpockets of Senators and Congressmen.  Have you checked your insurance premiums, since the signing of Obummercare ?   

Somnonaut said:

You are incorrect to think that the reason we have private health insurance is that simple of a  notion. Private health insurance IS the reason the price of healthcare is going up. It is a fee for service market that pays the prevailing wage and does not have price controls. Try using the internets to find things out.

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/thomasson.insurance.health.us

The government is the only thing standing between the pirates and barbarians that call themselves capitalists and the money in your pockets. Remember, that before the New healthcare law these wonderful private insurance companies were allowed to not cover you for a preexisting conditions, have caps on payouts, and other issues that are now history. YEAH!!!!

The reason we have private health insurance is because St. Ronnie Raygun destroyed Medicare by imposing the unconstitutional local regions to Medicare (HCFA as it was known). 

Banyon said:

Reply by Somnonaut 2 hours ago

Their clients are employers who purchase insurance plans for their workers who stay with the employer for, on average now, 18 -24 months. Priv has no interest in the long term healthcare of these individuals. Only the short term expenditure of their dollars

 

Inequities and economic and social tragedies that go on and on for years and years almost always have the government behind them. Capitalists operating in a competitive market environment cannot sustain such economic and social inefficiencies because new competitors will offer something much better and the customers will flock to them. Only government can sustain such problems for years and lifetimes.

So let's look behind Somno's complaint to find the real villian. It usually helps to start with a "why" question. So why do employers' provide health insurance in the first place? Think about auto insurance. If employers provide health insurance why not auto and homeowners insurance? Would that not be a mess if everyone lost their auto and homeowners insurance when they changed jobs or lost their jobs? Of course it would. It would be a mess just like medical insurance is a mess.

But employers do not provide auto and homeowners insurance and people buy policies that they keep for years even lifetimes.

So why do we not buy medical insurance like auto and homeowners and why do employers provide employee medical insurance? It is simple. Government has made a tax policy that makes employer-provided medical insurance premiums tax free while individual policies are taxed. So here we have it again - very bad tax policy by elected officials intent upon continuing to hold office has created this situation that none of us is happy with.

The solution is simply to change the tax policy and let individuals buy their own insurance and keep their policies for years even lifetimes.

When the cause is so easily found and the solution is so simple I continue to be amazed at the number of people who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Throw out the mechanism, capitalism, which has lifted billions out of poverty and into prosperity. Throw out the mechanism and take a step back to an system of providing for human needs that has proved over and over to be inefficient and downright tragic - government.

Guys, you have IQs and advanced education. You should know better. 

See Jay how silly you sound. YOu think Congress approves every bill that is sent it. No, they have  trust in the companies to do what is correct, and when you try to count on companies, you cannot trust them as they have shown time and time again.  That is why strict and robust regulation of all industries is important. You cannot let an industry self regulate, they are too concerned with their own bottom line to worry about how well the industry is functioning within society.  And, they do not have the legislative corporate mandate to worry about anything except the returns on investment of the shareholders. PERIOD. 


And Banyon, the Car and home insurance analogies are so far afield they are laughable. employers liked to pay for health insurance as it gave them a bargaining chip in wage negotiations. Can you even imagine the employment field if the worker no longer had to worry about his and his family's health insurance because it is provided by his employer? It would be glorious to be able to consider being mobile and leaving a job for better wages easily, and not have the specter of little billy's asthma to have to worry about. It is unbelievable that we have allowed this disgusting practice of making money on human suffering for so long. 

Private Health insurance provides no healthcare service, so why should it be allowed to extract billions per year from the populace? It makes no financial sense, except to those apologists who may have a vested interest in the health insurance industry. We never know do we? The private health insurance industry has run its course. It is time for this "civilized" society to join every other first world country and have mandated universal healthcare.We are the last one to have it. Un-friggin believable we have allowed the pigs at the trough for so long. 

Jay Polatnick said:

Somnonaut, I got it....you don't like capitalism and you MAY prefer a wealth redistribution economic system.   I to agree that those expenditures are a misproportionate amount of our annual budget, but they cannot happen unless Congress approves those tax dollars being spent that way.   So, you see it's a symbiotic relationship.  The supposed 'zealots' and other silly words bill the gov't and they gov't signs off on those bills.   Congress receives campaign contributions and votes accordingly for bills/expenditures.   Therefore, it's unfair to point the issue solely at private enterprise.   The 'Bridge to Nowhere' was likely a giveback for contributions from a construction conglomerate.  It goes on and on.

Somnonaut said:

Oh and things such as the $700 toilet seat in the Defense Dept. expenditures was because of:

1) Greed of the company making the object

2) Loss of oversight of the DOD from overzealous right wing capitalistic whacknobs

3) Politicians who made promises for things they could not provide. (ala: bridges to nowhere for a small group of people (8900) that did not like to wait for the ferry service.)

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2005/10/the-bridge-to-nowh...

Jay Polatnick said:

Well, I barely even tried nor got going.  Where's the motivation to hold fraud down by the gov't ?  The answer is little to none because the primary motivation is to buy voting blocks by making promises that cannot be kept.  Your metaphor 'capitalism = greed / gov't run = efficient' doesn't pan out.  Try spending some time in Greece and Spain.  The Buffalo teachers union has a terrific gov't subsidized healthcare program.   Here it is in action....'It estimates the current annual cost at $5.2 million, down from $9 million in cosmetic surgery in 2009.'

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/why-does-buffal...



Somnonaut said:

Jay,

FRAUD is made by persons defrauding the government. Do you not think there is fraud in private health insurers? Of course there is. They just do not report it in the newspaper.  Maybe if greed wasn't so rampant in this capitalistic system, with the push to deregulate everything and we would be better off silliness. Yes, go after the fraudsters more fervently, but it does not mean the program is not the most efficient healthcare provisioning program ever designed and enacted by humans. Overhead = 2%. No other program can match it. And catching the fraudsters will only drive that overhead number lower making it show that it is MORE efficient. So, you go baby, catch those criminals. 

This also shows that privatization is not a good thing.

Good try though. ;)

Jay,

Obettercare is better.

 "Have you checked your insurance premiums, since the signing of Obummercare ? "

 

My health insurance is free since Obama came into office. Just saying.   

Reply to Discussion

RSS

© 2024   Created by The SleepGuide Crew.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service