Based on the pre-insurance bills for a couple of emergencies I’ve had, you’re off by a couple of orders of magnitude.
Besides that, unless I’m completely misinterpreting him, it sounds like he’s saying, “Hey, insurance is just for big ticket items, like cancer and plastic surgery for rich people, all you poor people who want to go to the doctor for chronic issues like diabetes or mental health issues just suck it up and deal with it.”
At the risk of sounding like I know what the Swamy is saying, I think that he meant that more costs should be borne by the wallets of the insured, rather than insurance companies. One way to do this, of course, is to dramatically increase the deductible. Which may not be a bad option for some, if the premiums were also to dramatically decrease. But for the disadvantaged, it’s a terrible idea.
Everybody loves a good paradox.
There absolutely are government employees who think that way. Not a lot, but I can certainly see one seeking out Vivek to express it. Although I’m certain she thinks she is one of the ones who be retained, “if I get fired, I’m ok with it” not to the contrary.
Funny - I’d put that at 90-95% rather than 30%.
I guess this all depends on what one considers “best” doesn’t it? For some people, it’s a matter of taste. For others, it’s all about the temperature. Still others value convenience. Certainly, for some values of “best” it is conceivable that 7-11 coffee does work for some people (perhaps even more so for this CEO).
It has been my experience that, in general, people are much stupider than they are given credit for, most people, in particular, are much smarter than they appear.
It’s still early for me and I may be embarrassed in asking, but what does this mean?
It is a sort of ouroboros. Assessing intelligence is extremely difficult, because people are more stupid than we think they are but not as stupid as they appear to be.
(In fact, intellgence is not one-dimensional: people have it in varying degrees in various realms, so calling a person “stupid” or “smart” is a fool’s errant.)
Some time ago I was on the registration desk at a local Mensa gathering, and one of the speakers (motivational-type) asked if I could suggest a “hook” for this particular audience. I gave her a riff on “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” — “If you’re so intelligent, why ain’t you smart?”
Nothing in the intervening years has disabused me of this notion.
A little deeper than I intended.
What I meant is that as a group, people are stupid, much stupider than one expects.
Each individual, however, is likely much smarter than most people assume.
My guess is that he’s promoting the risk pool bullshit. The idea being that in the same way you can’t get fire insurance if your house is currently on fire, you shouldn’t be able to get health insurance if you have an expensive chronic condition.
Read in a different light his statement could be interpreted as insurance for health doesn’t make any sense and we should join the rest of the civilized world in having government sponsored single payer, but I kinda doubt that is what he’s advocating.
I would agree with this sentiment. What we have is health care payment arrangements that we call insurance, because we can’t 100% predict all the medical issues any particular person will experience.
It is the wrong model. But I’m not on board with either the “insurance should only be for the severe expected conditions, and routine health problems and chronic conditions should be paid by the patient,” or with the “deductibles should be higher,” or “risk pools should be prorated,” positions.
The health insurance industry really took off when businesses started offering it as a benefit to employees. What it has become isn’t insurance, it’s “regulate costs and then pay for a chunk of all my medical expenses.”
If you don’t have one of those arrangements, the costs are much higher, because those companies discount large portions of the listed price of medical service.
The only thing it “insures” is that the middlemen get paid.
Yeah, I could see a case to be made that insurance should be geared toward unexpected, catastrophic events. If they really want American health care to follow that model, there are some other changes that should go along with it. As health insurance covers fewer things, the costs that insurers charge their customers should go down, too. Since most people have their health insuance through their employer, employers should pass those savings along to the employees in the form of increased pay, so the employees can afford to pay for the routine health care, like yearly checkups, that are no longer covered. And the whole health care system should have transparent pricing, so consumers can shop around and get the benefits of comptition. If Ramaswamy really wants to reform things, let’s hear him talk about all those other issues, as well.
And there’s one more thing he doesn’t take into account. If people have to pay for their own checkups, but insurance covers major illnesses, I think a lot more people will neglect their routine appointments and let their health degrade until it becomes bad enough for insurance to pay for it.
He doesn’t. He wants to increase profits for the ultra-rich and to let the rest of us eat cake.
At which point the insurer has an economic interest in the insuree getting preventative care.
Statins and such are cheaper than triple bypasses and such.
The former governor of Maryland reports the constellation Orion as a formation of drones over his house.
As I was home that day and trying to keep up with the new I happened to watch that video live - @EddyTeddyFreddy has the right of it. What the Republicans are doing is disgusting.
Not sure you understand - people on her side of the door were shouting “he’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!” A chaotic as the situation was, it wasn’t just a barricade.
She acted like she was the star of an action movie equipped with plot armor. I recall that when she fell backward, bleeding, she had a surprised look on her face, like she was dumbfounded that she had actually been shot (because, as I said, I was watching it live and there wasn’t any pixelation)
Well, that’s a tactic used all the time by authoritarians, fascists, and oppressors. Now that the new administration is being loaded with people known to be advocates of that sort of thing I expect we’ll see more of that. Unfortunately.
Things are going to get real shitty in the near future for anyone who doesn’t pass the Trumplikin purity test(s).
Ha-ha-ha… no, not gonna happen. No way premiums come down.
^ This.
I’ve watched it, though it’s been a while. I know it wasn’t just a barricade. My response was somewhat flippant that if you are crawling over/getting boosted over a barricade through a door window you had to break, you’ve given up the right to claim you weren’t sufficiently warned not to do that.