"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and ..." - Thomas Sowell
"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication, and a government bureaucracy to administer it." - Thomas Sowell
I've run the numbers and, truth be told, our current medical system BEFORE Obamacare was/is very inefficient and overpriced. They took that system and then just tried to socialized it! It can't work.
Another way to look at it is that if you completely got insurance company profits out of the picture the amount you saved would be eaten up by cost increases within a year. It's the cost increases that we have to deal with. We need to use technology to get cost decreases.
It borders on a racket. As you and edweaver say, "it's a system" for sure!
I don't participate because we never hit our deductible except for when our first baby was born with tychypnea, which thankfully resolved within hours.
Years later we took him to an allergy specialist and we were talking about some expensive interventions. The doc mentioned some inexpensive approach, something like a sealled pouch for his mattress, for $60 but he said we couldn't go that route b/c it wasn't covered by insurance. The problem resolved once we said we were private pay and had no issues with paying. But it always stuck with me that he assumed we would be willing to spend thousands on medical interventions but not $60 on something not covered. He must have many patients like that. It's amazing these people or their employeers give $10k+ to an insurance company a year and feel too broke to pay $60.
That doesn't compare to your story of their planning to bill the insurance company ten times more.
Yes. HMOs started in the Upper Midwest, in MN I think, and they are big here. The brainwashing is powerful here. I worked in FL for six years, which I did not care for, but they do not have this love of turning over their healthcare purchases to someone else. My wife worked at firm in DC for a few years, where HMOs didn't rule as they do here. We feel like we're from the epicenter of the HMO brainwashing.
By chance I saw this after I responded. I still think there're enough customers, though, who have money and willinesses to pay.
No, no. There is still a pool of peole who want to buy stuff for the going rate. If it's medical services, it's probably a larger pool than people who need a printed circuit board and embedded processor. You have the right.
It is a system for sure. Some fraud & corruption and some just a middle person that inflates cost. I wish it could go back to just catastrophic coverage with the rest pain by the consumer. Couple that with removing government and healthcare costs would likely be half of what they are.
I should not have assumed that someone on the Gulch was considering the government as preferable to insurance companies.
I think that the key issue is healthcare reform, getting government out of way and allowing us to use new technologies for people to be able to care for themselves.
A follow on is the payments authorized by government sponsored insurances such as Medicare. It's an average of the Doctors plus hospitals average billing, the areas average billings for all medical providers and third the average amount paid out by Medicare. to get the amount up to the true cost which includes the ghastly astronomicallly high liability premiums the average must be raised the billings are raised and along with them insurance premiums raised again. If the government raises or adds the number of must treat conditions or adds in the superfulous items such as cosmetic surgeries - the feel good - stuff all costs go up. Including but not limited to sex change operations. The whole thing is a racket engendered by the government in it's search for votes and tort lawyers in their search for legal fees.
You want to lower cost of medicines lower the amounts payable by juries whose sole qualification is 'if I was the plaintiff I would award millions since the rich doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies can easily afford it.' Under advise of their rich attorney's of course.
It's all about money....and that includes results of medical research. Same stuff can be had in Mexico at 40% of US Costs and other countries.
Now one of the ways doctors get around that for people they know is cash payments. Another is by having nothing that can be taken in case of being sued. Their certified financial advisers set them up with house, car, clothing, etc. all owned by an out of state LLC which is owned by another out of state LLC and so on. Win a suit the guy provably has only a few thousand in the bank and this helps by the way come tax time with allowable loopholes. So your attorney goes to the LLC in let's say Wyoming only to find out that it's controlled by one in Delaware or Nevada. Three law suits later the LLC says we'll we have to get that approved by our board of directors and the next meeting is six months from now in....all that money and property you are asking about belong to.....umpteen different ....and then you find out there is no direct liability insurance company to approach.
Oh what a tangled web is woven when first to the government we become beholden.
And all of those steps are government approved. so now the plaintiff owed the liabiltity and torts lawyer.....
Easily set u and any doctor or hospital that does not have such coverage is soon driven out of business as the direct buy your own liability insurance costs go up and up and up.....
Add to that government reneging and repudiating medical costs included as future benefits for a million man military - even one cut to 500,000. the trail always leads back to the Congress and a series of Presidents who promised one thing and gave you a never ending series of ObamaCouldCareLess flim flams. While they get full boat, no deductible no co pay coverage for life.
Seig yourself a few Heils Comrades...You DO serve the party.
The contrived and often un needed complexity of the medical system that drags out billing for months but demands instant payment and now in the case of ObamaCare cannot pay added to liability insurance at every step of the way are the target areas for correcting the situation.
Two major culprits are xray readings and stand by doctors in hospitals. Especially if they bill more than one currently doctored patient at the same time. Multiple same time billings makes sitting around drinking coffee and watching utube a very profitable business.
Take Control
Make Change
In Order
Step by Step
Cease Believing
It's all a lie
To get your votes
And taxes too
Then they watch you die.
While their living high
And your still believing
Fairy Tales
and Propagonda
Don't you feel stupid
Well you oughta
Rinos and Dinos
Leaving huge with no pain
While your whole life
Goes down in flames
But what the hell?
You lit the match
By believing their lies
and enabling their snatch
ing abilities with votes
Don't you feel stupid
you dumb ass dolts?
You should.