Emphasis mine. How many uninsured?
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/health/uninsured/whoaretheuninsured.html
Try 46 million with another 25 or so million “underinsured” that have plans that don’t cover near enough.
Your problem is you don’t fucking think and you believe right-wing echo chamber bullshit. For fuck sake, ignorantly spouting lies makes you look stupid.
You really can’t be this much of an idiot. Seriously. You’re pulling my leg, right?
No. I’m pointing out something that anyone with an ounce of common sense can figure out for themselves.
That doesn’t mean I want the government running everything; just necessary services that private industry can’t or won’t provide. That includes defense, emergency services and healthcare.
Okay seriously. Riddle me this. Where does the profit in the insurance industry come from?
It comes from the people who pay for health insurance. If a health care company has to choose between a medical procedure and profit, what do you think they’ll do?
You can run an industry where people make money that isn’t motivated by profit. Police chiefs make over 100k a year, but the department itself isn’t run for profit. If it were that money would be taken from the services they provide.
Do you think that firehouses should be private? Do you think that police departments should be private?
If you’re not smart enough to understand this you should be pushing a mop for a living.
BULLSHIT! the 46 million uninsured is a LIE, and frankly I’m tired of it. If you read the census report that that number comes from, you’ll find that 33% of those people have coverage available to them from the government that they don’t currently take advantage of. They’re not uninsured. 20% of the 46 million are illegal aliens. They don’t have any right to government provided health insurance. 37% make more that $50K/year,and 17% more than $75K. These people are uninsured by choice. They can afford it, they chose not to have it. That leaves…around 10 million people uninsured, less than 4% of the population. THAT’S the real figure, not the false one used to scare people into supporting a huge government entitlement program.
If it’s covered by the policy, they’ll pay for it. A health insurance policy is a contract. It’s legally enforceable. Each state has an insurance commissioner that is responsible for regulating the insurance companies doing business in their state. From a purely profit driven perspective, it is cheaper for an insurance company to pay almost any claim than it is for them to fight the state and risk the fines imposed. “Insurance companies don’t pay claims” is a myth. Complaints about health insurance usually boil down to one of two things: Either the client wants something paid for that the insurance policy excludes or they opt for treatment that exceeds the policy’s limits. Both of these things can be solved by the client beforehand by reading his policy and only buying one that provides the coverage he wants.
But even aside from that, your argument makes no sense. Many of the insurance companies in this country are run as non-profits. They have just as many complaints as the for profit ones. Also, when did profit become a bad word? I want my insurance company to profit, if it does well I can buy stock in it and share the profit, even if I chose not to do that it’s providing jobs for people in the community and paying taxes to the Feds and the state.
And to RNATB specifically: The bureaucratic costs of government sponsored health insurance are far, far in excess of any profits made by private companies. Answer me this: The next time your kid has the flu, would you want to take him or her to the DMV for treatment? I sure wouldn’t, but that’s what UHC entails. My wife, in rich Alberta, with about the best provincial health care system in Canada, a country that does UHC better than any other, still had to wait 2 months, in pain (but nothing life threatening, just…painful) for an operation that would have been performed in 2 days here in the US. THAT is what UHC means everywhere in the world that it exists.
In socialist Canada, about 70% of the total health expenditure is financed by the government compared to about 45% in the United States. However, the U. S. spends about $ 2,500 more per person each year on health care than Canada.
I submit that this is evidence that Universal Health care is cheaper.
Ah, but you get what you pay for, right? Well we certainly have waiting lists for procedures like knee or hip replacements. You can’t buy your way into better care here. You have to wait right along with the unwashed masses.
However, we do seem to be healthier, according to the World Health Organization:
Adult Mortality Rate (lower is better): Canada 72, USA 109
(probability of dying between 15 to 60 years per 1000 population)
Infant Mortality Rate: Canada 5.0, USA 7.0
Life expectancy at Birth: Canada 81 (78 men 83 women) USA 78 (75 men, 80 women)
Years of life lost to communicable disease: Canada 6.0, USA 9.0
And many, many others…
… if it had been performed at all.
Now you’re just talking out of your ass. The insurer doesn’t have to fight the state unless it is being investigated for fraud. And insurance companies choose not to pay “covered” procedures all the time. I make a good living thanks to litigating insurance claims, and we don’t pay for a damn thing unless a conservative physician deems it medically necessary.
I am educated on the subject. Now how about you tell me what happens to the people who are uninsured when illness comes? Why they get it anyway at emergency room prices. Christ on a pogostick you’re fucking dense.
Then you’re fucking stupid. Each penny in profit that comes at the expense of needed care is a fucking abomination.
Insurance companies are motivated by profit to deny service whenever they can. That’s the free market retard. The free market doesn’t work for social services that are a net drain.
Good Christ. I never thought anyone could have a negative IQ. You are an affront to everything this nation stands for and an abomination to every person who ever died for it. Why don’t you do your part to make the nation a better place, and move.
So your contention is that we should have a health care system that pays for treatments than physicians deem unnecessary? And this will somehow be cheaper and better? 
I don’t know what kind of “insurance litigation” you do, but it sounds like you must be the boy who gets drinks for all the smart people, because you are claiming that the office of the insurance commissioner doesn’t do what it actually does. Why don’t you ask one of the actual lawyers how it works?
I don’t understand this.
If they don’t profit, they go broke and all there customers have no insurance. They have to deny things that are not coverered by the policy. They HAVE to keep costs down.
(if they deny things that ARE covered, they should be sued into oblivion, of course)
The state insurance commissioners review claims in the event of a complaint. Most of the time, they do nothing. Sometimes, they investigate. They cannot direct an insurer to pay a claim. They cannot take an insurer to court except in cases of fraud.
If your claim is denied, and the insurer won’t settle, your only recourse is a lawsuit. Good luck getting paid off on that within three years.
Why don’t you ask someone with two brain cells to rub together how it works?
And for the privilege of getting care in 2 days, you pay tons more that we do in Canada, and have the added benefit of a large group of people that will not get the operation at all, but just live in pain.
No thank you.
My wife had to have serious (life threatening) surgery 8 years ago. She got excellent, timely treatment, and we did not have the added joy of selling our house or wondering if our coverage cut off. It gave me a great respect for our system.
Okay some people appear to misunderstand the concept of profit. Take a police station. Every person who works there makes money. Sometimes a lot of money. You can make over 100k a year as a beat cop in the bay area.
Okay so far? Okay.
Now the police department does stuff like patrolling and pulling rapists off of your sisters, daughters and mothers… good stuff I think we all agree. Are we on the same page?
If police departments were run for profit, that is to say, they had share holders and dispensed extra money over and above the salaries of their workers, then that money would have to come from somewhere.
Are we still on the same page?
Where does the profit over and above the operating costs that pay everyone’s overhead and salaries come from? It comes from the pool of money that they use for operations. Get it?
So you’ve got a private health insurance company. They need to pay their shareholders. Where do they get the money from? Why from their dues paying clients, right?
So X money is coming in. Y money is spent on overhead, salaries and actually paying for medical procedures for their clients.
Where does Z, their profit come from? Z is what they have left over from X after paying Y. Get it?
So what you have to ask yourself is, “Does it make sense for a company that sells insurance to be run for a profit? Since that profit can be increased by taking away medical procedures that people, their clients, might need.”
A government run system pays everyone involved, but doesn’t look to turn a profit by fucking it’s clients.
Make sense?
Bullshit. If your group health insurance is part of your compensation from your employer, it is covered by the federal ERISA statutes, which prohibit any lawsuits for punitive or pain and suffering damages.
Case in point: My wife has an auto-immune disorder which has a 50% mortality rate within three years. Her doctor got her approved for a stem cell transplant study, but Blue Cross refused to pay for it, so we started the appeals process. As her condition declined, her doctor said she needed chemo therapy, but that such treatment would disqualify her for participating in the stem cell transplant study. We could not afford to wait until a lawsuit was decided, she needed treatment now, so she opted for the chemo.
Fast forward nine months: her doctor tells her Blue Cross is now approving patients for the same stem cell transplant study she was denied coverage for. WTF?!? All patients for that study are examined, and all have the same disease with the exact same symptoms and rate of disease progression. All things are equal, but they denied my wife.
So we contacted a Boston lawyer who specializes in health insurance litigation. Surprise! Because of the federal ERISA statutes, her health insurance company can only be compelled to pay for the stem cell transplant they denied, which my wife is no longer eligible for because they ran out the clock!. They cannot be punished for unequal treatment, and the state insurance commissioner cannot do diddley squat, because it is covered by federal law, not state law.
So blow it out your ass, you ignorant cockslime.
Is that your version of conceding the argument?
Have you actually ever dealt with the government? In private industry, if you don’t spend at the end of the fiscal year, you might get questions about if the request was necessary, but the left over money goes into the profit. In the government, it means your budget gets cut. I’m not making this up - we made a nice bit of money one year when our government customer bought expensive training from us to use up some left over budget.
To be non-hyperbolic for a second, I’d like to say I hope your wife is okay.
I think guys like Weirddave don’t realize that their anger and ignorance are actually driving the problem.