If I can barely afford to GO to the doctor, when I have to, how can I afford to pay every month to NOT GO to the doctor with health care payments? And if everybody has to pay to go to a doctor, don’t you think they are GOING to GO to the doctor, needed or not, which is going to make the doctors offices a nightmare in the waiting rooms with all of the people just trying to get something for their money.
That’s what the co-pay is for. If it is going to cost you $20 out of pocket, and wait 3 hours, naked in a cold room, to see the doctor, are you going to do that if you don’t need to?
Heck, even the $20 co-pay would keep 90% of the folks out of the office if they thought a 6-pack of beer and a pack of cigs would make them feel better than the doctor.
Primary care is a very small part of medical costs. A visit to a doctor (non-specialist) may run you $100 or so. Even if every man/woman/child in the US made 10 visits a year that would run to $320 billion, about 15% of what we spend on medical care each year in this country, the other 85% would go to non-primary care visits.
The big money is in chronic care, end of life care, etc.
Since I don’t see a factual question in the OP, let’s move this over to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
That’s the problem I have with the “Cadillac tax”. (And the fact that it’s indexed to regular inflation, not healthcare inflation. The idea that people would use excess services just because it’s “free” isn’t that common in reality. This is the doctor we’re talking about, not free ice cream cones.
Have you ever considered the implications of going bankrupt due to incurring a fairly mild medical problem that requires hospitalization and surgery? I’m talking about an appendectomy or something like that which can occur at any age and has no bearing on the overall health of a young individual. These days the cost of such a routine procedure can easily exceed $20k. If it’s something a little more complex it can ratchet to over $100k very quickly. A large percentage of the bankruptcies in this country are due to a medical condition of people that are uninsured.
The sad fact is that young healthy people think they are invincible. That isn’t the way it works. So you are young and healthy and have a sports injury. Knee surgery, shoulder surgery, whatever, you would not believe the bills that the doctors and hospitals will throw at you. Because you are not part of a plan they will go for the full retail cost and make your life miserable. Until you deal with the situation you cannot imagine the costs. Get in an auto accident, bang your head and need six months of physical therapy while you are unable to work. Good luck to you, fella. I won’t even talk about cancer treatment which is an illness deadheaded teenagers bring on themselves because smoking is “cool”.
So, if you think going to the emergency room is a good option for your knee surgery be my guest. Just be sure you have the number of a good bankruptcy lawyer.
Apply that logic to fire insurance.
I’ve heard anecdotal evidence (I’m thinking it was an NPR story) to the contrary. Would you have something firmer than that to help me solidify my understanding?
Most Americans already have insurance giving them health care that is essentially free. Do they already swamp the system going to the doctor when they don’t need to “trying to get something for their money”?
The meme OP recites is more right-wing gibberish. The Americans who already have insurance are Freedom-loving Gun-toting Patriots who love their Job Creators, and would support churches offering free health care to the uninsured if the liberals didn’t hate successful people and steal their money. These Americans would never abuse their health insurance. The Americans who will get health care under ACA are anti-Freedom teat-suckling Islamo-Marxists who would jump at the chance to hurt America and its Job Creators.
Bah.
I guess once everyone is forced to get healthcare horses will start to eat each other, so not much to worry about I guess 
But no, seriously, people going to the Doctors is a good thing, and yes, you’d need to pay for it somehow.
Also, GP visits are only a part of it, but not the biggest part, more important is cancer and other large operations, which no one would just decide to get because it is free.
I have never in my life ever met someone who went to the doctor without needing to do so. If anything, even the insured tend to put off going to the doctor even when they should.
Heavens! I’m against the enforced government insurance plan, but the OP is just silly!
Like most people who already have insurance, if I go to the doctor, I have to pay an amount in the form of co-pay. My monthly insurance cost is over $300 dollars a month (and would be far worse if I weren’t single). Our company sent us information on the new system and it is actually more per month than if we keep our current insurance (I suspect this is true across the board). Either way, like most people who already pay too much for insurance and the associated costs, I don’t go, even if I really wish I could. I just can’t afford it, so it’s rare that I do, and only if desperate. Most average folks are going to be in more or less the same boat. Why on earth would someone spend money they don’t have just to spite the system???
In the UK we can all visit our GP entirely free of charge. As far as I am concerned I go to the surgery as rarely as possible.
It is claimed that many people make frequent unnecessary visits and the suggestion has been put forward that it would be beneficial to make a small charge.
Way back in the 70s (I think) a Labour government decided to make all prescriptions free. Then and now, people on benefits and OAPs get them free, but the rest pay (currently £7.85), regardless of what the drug is. Not long after they became free, it became evident that many people were going to their GPs for prescriptions for over-the-counter medicines like paracetamol and cough mixtures, simply to save paying for them. The cost was astronomical and the policy was soon reversed.
Whaa? I think many, many Americans have insurance that has a deductible they are unlikely to meet in a year unless there is a significant medical emergency, leaving them to essentially pay for doctor’s visits out of pocket.
I pay 20% of my gross salary to cover my 3-person family, and that gives us a $2300 deductible and an 80/20 split after that. I think that’s on the high side, but it’s not at all unheard of, and it’s becoming the norm for middle-class people.
I am not agreeing with the OP in any way, shape, or form, but please be aware that insurance is not what it was 10 years ago, when people expected to pay a moderate copay and be done.
My employer went from a copay to deductible when it changed insurance carriers a couple of years ago. It’s a two-tier system, depending if you have earned enough “healthy credits”, such as getting an annual cholesterol screening. If you don’t get all the screenings and/or you’re a smoker not actively in a quitting program, you’re automatically put in the more expensive tier.
I only had ancillary payments for my thyroidectomy because the operation itself surpassed the deductible.
I’ve put off having a few tests done because of the deductible this year. When a specialist charges $300-400 per appointment you tend to think twice if there’s no copay. OTOH it may also be putting my health in jeopardy for all I know.
My deductible shot up over $500 for 2013. I haven’t checked to see how much it’ll be for 2014 yet :shudder: I’m grateful for it, though, because if I had to purchase a plan through my state’s universal health marketplace, I couldn’t afford it on my salary.
That’s like saying that because you pay $50/month for a gym membership, your workouts are essentially free. No, they aren’t free. They cost you $50/month. Plus $5 each time you take a spinning class.
Those healthcare premiums that we Americans pay are the “membership” fees. And they’re not $50/month, but rather several hundred dollars per month on average, several thousand if you don’t have the benefit of a subsidized plan. And what those healthcare premiums gets us is the ability to go visit our GP for ANOTHER $25 per visit. Or an ear/nose/throat doc for ANOTHER $50 per visit. Or a prescription for ANOTHER $20. The most important benefit, and the reason we all keep paying our premiums, is so we won’t go bankrupt should (God forbid) we get cancer or require surgery.
I don’t think you have a firm grasp on much of anything, let alone what the right wing’s position is.
Ummm…
If you have to pay for insurance, does that not mean you are above the threshold for Medicare/Medicaid? What’s that, about $40,000 a year? Even then, don’t you qualify for subsidy if your costs are more than 9% of income? Let’s get some specifics before you whine.
If you’re in the “relatively well off” category compared to minimum wage workers and still complaining about your medical/insurance costs - maybe the problem is your money management skills. How much have you socked away for a rainy day and for retirement so far, or are you going to leech off the taxpayer for the underfunded social security for that? Or have you spent it all on beer and cigarettes, in which case you’ll need that medical coverage down the road. Oh, and if you couldn’t afford coverage, did you always always look both ways before crossing the street?
Now that I’m older and wiser, it always amazes me that I would drive across the USA back in the day, with no travel insurance, and on a motorcycle! Since Canadian fee schedules are well below American, if I’d been smooshed but lived I’d rack up a fortune in bills.
And to emphasize what others pointed out - in Canada, where a doctor visit costs nothing, most people don’t clog the system. The ones that do, and you probably have the same in the USA, are typical hypochondriacs and it’s not the “free” that makes them see the doctor. They’d probably still go if it cost them, that’s their equivalent of blowing money on weekend drunk.
My visits to the doctor are free. And yet I avoid going unless I absolutely have to. Now why is that so?
That said, there are ways to lower medical costs. For example, the current system in the US pays doctors according to the number of procedures carried out, not according to their success. And too many doctors earn in the neighborhood of a half million to a million. That is unsustainable. And hospitals are competing with luxury resorts with double page spreads in slick magazines. There is something sick about that. It used to be that hospitals were known for spartan facilities. When my appendix was removed in 1950, the hospital charged $8 a day. Sure there has been inflation since, but closer to 10 times than 1000.
Well of course, although I don’t have to have medical insurance, I do not get it free. On average, most people in the UK, except the very rich or the very poor, pay around 30% of their salary in tax.
The government spends around £1,500 pa each on healthcare.
One other thing to consider is that it saves money to have people go to a GP early. Finding a disease early, makes the treatment much cheaper than if people wait till they can’t function anymore… and then go to the emergency room for last minute heroics.