It must feel good to know that your insurance company will stand by you for the rest of your life. Even when you can’t afford it. Its good to know that you have great confidence in an American financial institution. Its good to know that you won’t ever lose your job.
I have good health insurance now that doesn’t cost me anything in premiums.
My incentive is to drive down healthcare costs for myself, my company, my country, my countrymen, people I care about, people I don’t care about, and complete shitty monsters who deserve a punch in the face. My incentive, as I’ve already stated, is to improve the economy, keep people working, decrease the burden on ERs, decrease costs, and keep people alive.
Catsix, Walter Reed is an ARMY Hospital, not VA.
Well color me thoroughly unsurprised by this. :rolleyes:
I applaud your honesty. This attitude seems to be much more prevalent in the US than in other countries. It also explains why I simply don’t believe people when they say that we should not have any form of wealth redistribution because we can rely on charities.
Western societies have decided (democratically) that we MUST take money from people like Antinor and catsix because we cannot rely on them to know what the greater good for society is; they are more interested in “how will this benefit me”.
As a functioning society, the majority have realized that there are great benefits to having a healthy population that is at least minimally fed and housed. Most people realize that while there will be some that abuse a “safety net” system, the benefits far outweigh the losses.
If we went with your feelings Antinor, the crowds with the pitchforks would soon be coming to put our heads on sticks. Even if I didn’t care for another living soul except myself, I don’t want that to happen.
There’s nothing that can convince you. You’ve got yours, fuck everyone else. I hope that nothing happens to you or your family that cuts the certainty of your own wealth, health and happiness from underneath you. Honestly.
That’d be me. Fortune 500 company, six figures, very good health care plans, healthy enough that my MD has complained that I’m a ruinous sort of patient, from his professional point of view. (Funny guy.)
Having lived in two European countries, I’m very familiar with a couple of models for universal health care. Having lived in the US for six years, I’m getting familiar with the phrase “There but for the grace of God.”
I know that conditions can change rapidly. A chronic, yet not life-threatening condition pops up? Sick leave runs out, and away goes the job, and with that my insurance. COBRA? We have healthy savings, but we’re talking $600+/month. New insurance? Forget it - pre-existing condition. Nobody’s fault, but it’s time to look into bankruptcy laws.
I’ve never had to worry about that before, and I don’t like it.
If you’re healthy and insured, you’re already paying for other people’s healthcare - i.e. the care of those unlucky sods who got sick. This is the ideal condition to be in, as far as I’m concerned.
Now, the US model is based on an industry trying very hard to collect money from the healthy and prevent paying it to the sick. In doing so, it has generated an army of useless bureaucrats (remember those 31% in administration costs) who shuffle around paper and forms and bills, but who do not dispense medicine, do not provide care, do not contribute to health care. Fuck, I see Kaiser Permanente’s billboards and wonder what unlucky sod could’ve gotten medicated for that chunk of cash. Cash paid by someone as part of his healthcare funds.
I have seen the amount of healthcare paperwork in Germany, in Denmark and in the US. The Europeans are not even in the running. Rank amateurs.
So, here’s the idea: Stop making business out of cutting undesirables out of the insurance pool. Make one whopping big pool and see the negotiating power you get. Cut down on the marketing budgets and the freakin’ administration costs. Regulate the snot of the health care insurance companies. (German health insurance is private, by the way. Has been since the 1860s. Also, by law, covers everyone. On a larger scale, keeping a qualified individual in the workforce is a much better idea than having him/her go bankrupt over medical costs. This is of course part of the reason that Bismarck liked the idea.) That’s economics, of course, and doesn’t even begin to cover the entire empathy thing. It’s, y’know, the right thing to do. Feeding the naked, as the good book says. As for you being in the industry, can’t much help you there. If you want to be involved in health care, become a health care professional.
Will it save you, personally, money? Perhaps, perhaps not. Will it reduce healthcare costs overall? Judging by other first-world countries, probably yes. As for me, it’ll buy me a degree of certainty that a medical turn for the worse won’t necessarily destroy me and my family financially, as well. And the knowledge that it won’t happen to others is worth a bit to me, too.
Deductibles beween $2,500 and $5,000, no coverage for prevention or pre-existing.
Yes. That reduced the cost by about 20%. Which helps but does not entirely solve the problems.
I also negotiate with doctors. I have gotten fees reduced betwee 20 and 50%. Even so, the cost of his care, if done to “standard of care” exceeds our monthly income. Not our NET income, it exceeds our GROSS income.
Let me explain this one more time.
If my husband, today, required an amputation (as an example of a major procedure) YOU WOULD PAY FOR IT. Not maybe, not hypothetically - it would be written off as bad debt (because we can’t pay it) and the cost covered by other revenue - prices charged to the insured, tax money to cover the indigent, etc. I can’t understand why people don’t grasp that - you are ALREADY paying for the uninsured who can’t cover their bills. For that matter, as an uninsured person who DOES pay her bills, so am I!. As a society we don’t let people die in the gutter. We have made it ILLEGAL to deny care necessary to preserve life, so such care is given… and it must be paid for. One way or another.
Now, really, given that the care WILL be given when the situation gets extreme, it is in everyone’s best interest that that situation be avoided. The only way to do that is to find a way for him to get at least the minimum care called for under present medical standards. Which just happens to be a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for amputation, blindness, kidney failure (dialysis is ALL paid for by Medicare - YOUR TAX DOLLARS) and all the rest.
That, to my mind, is one of the strongest FINANCIAL arguments for single payer. We WILL pay, either through higher costs to cover bad debt or tax-funded initiatives, or through an above-board system that removes the profit motive.
What about people like my husband, who, due to birth defect, were born “unmarketable” or at a distinct disadvantage? Is it somehow his fault he was born with spina bifidia?
What if you’re crossing the street in an entirely legal manner, get hit by a car, and are now a paraplegic and now “unmarketable”? You think disability will come to your aid? Ha! Your hands still work, you can type, answer a phone - get a fucking job, you slacker! Except you will now be at a distinct disadvantage getting hired and you’re really fucked as far as getting insurance on your own.
Your viewpoint requires that you are unbreakable. This is not realistic.
Cheap until you lose your job. Which may happen no matter good an employee you are.
So you’re OK with letting people starve to death or freeze on the sidewalk in the winter time?
You ARE a selfish bitch. Of course, it is your right to be a selfish bitch. And my right to despise you for it.
Until you lose your job. Then you may be paying $150 a week because, unlike Canada, you will not have the ability to negotiate with the pharmacy for a lower bulk rate.
So… you will NEVER be laid off from your present job? You’re industry will NEVER suffer a contraction leading to job cuts? Are you willing to bet your life on it?
Insurance of any sort is like the fire department - you pay for it, but hope to god you’ll never actually need it. Sure, the fire department runs programs on how to stay safe and conducts inspections that aren’t, strictly speaking, fighting fires but rather preventing them… just as decent health insurance pays for preventive care and screenings. But mostly, you pay and hope you’ll never need it… but you pay for it, because one day you MIGHT need it.
Please tell me you don’t have children, because the notion that you will insist they provide for themselves from day one simply appalling – or don’t you consider children to be people, too? If parents don’t care for their children should we just let them starve or die rather than have the state intervene? Or are you relying on the neighbors to save abused and neglected children?
You’re not only a selfish cunt, you’re blind to the fact that YOU may become so disabled as to be unable to care for yourself, or make decisions on your own behalf.
As I said earlier, I have been through that. Because of illness I lost my job, then my house and got to the point where I couldn’t take 20 bucks from the ATM. So in essence, yes I am willing to bet my life on it because I have before.
Part of my hesitation to support such an effort is because my industry is insurance. Some of the various UHC proposals could cost me my livelyhood.
Again, the VA system is quite successful.
Did you have health insurance while losing all that?
UHC does not necessarily prevent people from going broke if they suffer a debilitating illness. That’s where the surrounding social support net comes into play.
What UHC does is provide health care for all, including people who otherwise could not afford it.
A nice side benefit is that UHC often makes the difference between a person going broke due to huge medical costs, or simply suffering a recoverable financial hit due to lessened income during treatment and recovery.
Extremely stressful having to worry about your coverage, loss of earnings and resultant financial ruin along with being sick - not condusive to regaining your health.
I’m privileged to have been brought up under the British system where my dad died of motor neuron disease many years ago - for the last four months an NHS nurse drove 17 miles to care for him at his home every day. Due to his wartime experiences he had a terror of hospitals and was granted his request to die at home. Obviously there was some financial struggle for my mum (I was a kid) but the old man was the only true tangible loss.
Socialist and willing to stand up and be counted too.
One thing that the pro private medical insurance proponents will argue is that they have choice compared to somewhere like the UK.
Except that this is just such fucking shit, you are insured with one company, you will find the majority of policyholders are tied to certain groups and healthcare outlets, and if you live in Podunk. Arizona the reality is that there is perhaps only one or two healthcare providers, there isn’t any competition worth the name.
In the UK, I can go to any healthcare outlet in the country, and this is rarely practical to go further than my nearest large hospital since standards are generally very similar - however we have folk who are willing to go on to Continental Europe for operations - paid for by our NHS.
When it comes to specialists, if I state I am prepared and able to travel, then I can readily go to other hospital whose queues are shortest, and if a condition is rare, then I can travel to where the specialist happens to be, or have local specialists treat me with direct guidance from the mentoring facility.
Perfect, nope, far from it but you do not ever hear of a medical condition on its own bringing someone to bankruptcy.
Virtually everyone will require life enhancing medical intervention, and most will need life saving intervention, we decided long ago it amounts to a human right, but the battle to implement this was hard.
…however, before all you left wing sweethearts rush into UHC, some things you might need to consider.
When we brought in our NHS system back in 1948, there was no real concept of the amount of unmet need.
The demand had a bit of a jump start, eased off a little, and then a tidal wave of demand moved in, slowly, but a tidal wave nonetheless.
The estimated costs were dwarfed, staffing levels and skill levels were not up to this demand. It didn’t take long to realise that you cannot have UHC without completely reforming medical training, and all these years later, we still haven’t come to terms with it fully. Our nation was very class stratified and each class defended their level to the best of their ability - the most senior medical practioners were the most successful and this has delayed reform of the training process.
What do I mean by reforming the training process? well our junior doctors until recently were working 70 hours a week, this was the norm - can you imagine having E.R attention from someone who is into the 18th hour of their shift?
The next aspect was the attempt to control the supply of senior medical staff, until the last decade, it was very difficult to become a practitioner at that level as the number of posts were rationed by total numbers instead of qualifications and ability.
Another thing that limited the number of medical staff was the lack of training places, which continues to this day, and is partly exacerbated by the export of our medical staff to the US (to be fair we are no better than the US, medical practitioners from other less fortunate nations come over here for higher wages, when they are desperately needed in their nations of origin)
Whatever medical system the US decides to operate in the longer term future, and however it is funded, do not underestimate the problems that UHC will raise, these are immense and probably unmeasured, demand will ramp up and continue - this demand will not rise then peak and fall away, our experience is that demand rises, and expectations of what can be done, along with what must be done will increase.
These will make the system subject to political interferance - however the interferance will be based around value for money vs quality. Once you go to UHC, it will become political suicide to propose the dismantling of it.
When time passes, employers will be able to get rid of their very expensive insurance schemes, the labour marker will be freed up as staff beome more mobile - not being tied to employers through medical insurance, and the immense purchasing power of the healthcare authorisation will drive many costs down.
Ultimately it will cost more but you will get very much more in return, but nobody will want to go back, and sure there will be wailing and tears over various performance issues - thats how it works.
No, I lost my health insurance when I lost my job.
Thanks for the excellent post, casdave.
I just want to point out that this happens all the time in the US system. Patients are routinely treated by physicians who are working shifts as long as 24 hours. It’s nuts.