Healthcare rant.

[AngryGerbil]

When I think of the current health care system in this country I see it as a giant pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the uninsured and underinsured who, when they get sick, have little if any choice and few resources. They go to free clinics or emergency rooms and, if they are desperate, they call ambulances. Or they get Medicaid. Sometimes their healthcare bills are paid; frequently they are not. The next level up on the pyramid are the working insured - you and me. Their insurance companies generally do OK - paying their bills, sometimes restricting their access, sometimes charging them huge copays or deductibles. Sometimes denying their care and forcing their providers to fight tooth and nail for their money.

Above them are the rich - rich corporations and rich insurance companies and rich individuals. They have insurance and get what they want, including adequate to excellent healthcare all the time. What they also have, however, is huge political clout. They can always blame someone else when healthcare costs spiral out of control or someone dies for lack of care (“We didn’t deny care; we only denied coverage.”) At the point of the pyramid are the providers; docs, dentists, nursing homes, hospitals, freestanding specialty centers, ambulance providers. They have to make enough money to sustain their investors, pay their bills, insure against malpractice and, above all, provide high quality patient care.

Do you see the pyramid? OK, now, flip it over. That is how our “system” works. The whole thing rests on the point, the providers. Government won’t pay? Commercial insurance won’t pay? Who pays? Who is mandated by law and public opinion to provide certain levels of care? Who gets bad publicity if they deny care to someone with no insurance or takes a deadbeat to court for their unpaid emergency care - oh boo hoo, the poor patient? Who makes it possible for President Junior and Governor Skippy to seriously consider that cutting Medicaid will solve anything? The providers, upon whom the whole pyramid rests, are the payers of last resort. How long can it go on?

The truth is that it doesn't matter how deadbeat or poor or how much of a crack-whore-baby-daddy you are, you WILL get medical care. The question is, who pays for it? I am of the opinion that we should all chip in a little. That's that. Oh, I can hear Peenix now...."Blwekfewe! But I work hard for my money and I don't want a crack-whore to get it!". Ok, fine, fair enough. Now let's examine who WILL get your money....

The crack whore will get her medical care, period. A provider cannot refuse her lest the provider be crucified by everyone. So, the provider ends up essentially giving away a free product. Now, this is a fact of life for Amercian healthcare providers...you will have to provide alot of free service, period. It is a cost of doing business. Medicaid, in it's current form, doesn't cut it trust me. Medicaid benefits need to be increased, not cut. The current Medicaid system actually takes it one step further by allowing for a sort of "shield" for the patient in which the providers cannot even BILL the patient by penalty of law, even if the service was denied.

So we have free services. How does a provider of healthcare cope with that kind of shit? The provider, having no other choice must make up for the lost money somehow. How, you ask? By charging YOU more. Who are you? You are the normal, non-crack-whore productive member of society who has working commercial insurance who can pay their bills. If a provider performs 10 services in which he must make $100 each in order to stay operable and 8 of them can't pay, guess who gets a $500 bill?

And it goes up and up every year. The cost of healthcare is going up, the Medicare/Medicad allowables are going down. So now, we'll have a situation in which the providers are sending huge bills to your insurance company. What is the private insurance company to do? Well, they either lower their benefits and stick you with a large chunk of the bill, or they raise premiums in order to keep pace with rise in healthcare. But here's the kicker, every time they do that, they cut off more and more people from being able to actually afford health insurance. So now, you have even MORE people who can't pay their bills and who are bleeding the providers dry. Now, instead of 8 people not being able to pay, now 9 people can't. If you ride that spiral to it's end, you'll have Bill Gates being the only person able to afford the monthly premiums.

I can hear the advocates of privatized healthcare now. And the thing is, they are right to a degree. A privatized healthcare system will do exactly what the advocates of it want it to do, it will prevent said advocates from having to pay for someone else's healthcare......on one condition......that they never ever get sick. Because yes, you will not be paying taxes into a social medicine program. So assuming you never ever get sick, you will never ever pay a dime for some crack-whores medicine. But, the moment you DO get sick, all those crackwhores whose medical provisions have not been paid for by anybody are going to catch up to you. The provider of your services, when you do get sick, is going to be forced to gouge the ever living shit out of you because you're the only kid on the block who can actually pay for your medical bills. How does this help? The way I see it, if you are a relatively well-to-do member of society who votes for privatized healthcare, you are shooting yourself in the foot. It's just going to take about 40-50 years for the bullet to actually hit your foot. But when it does hit, it's going to hurt a hell of alot more than being slapped on the wrist every April 15th.

The bottom line is this. Providers need to be reimbursed for the services they provide or else this shit is going to get out of control. The only way they can be reimbursed for providing medical care to a crackwhore, is through a social medical program. We all need to chip in to pay for the crackwhores medicine, or else Donald Trump is going to be the only person who can afford any medicine.

And a quick reminder: This is about Medicine only. I'm not talking about Social Security or Socialism in general. Just medicine. Because it is one area in which we all have a stake, it is one service in which we all will use. Medicine is not like Plasma TVs. I agree with the capitalist view that only the hard working decent well-to-do members of society should be able to afford the luxury of a Plasma TV. I do not agree that they should also be the only ones who can afford healthcare.

Thoughts?


*edit: dotted an i

[EnigmaticParadigm]

Whether you love him or hate him, isn't Michael Moore's next "documentary" going to be on insurance companies and the state of health care in the United States? Thought I had heard that.

[AngryGerbil]

No takers here eh?

I figured at least Scorp would reply. Oh well. I'll be sure to bump this next election year

[Kilivek]

i disagree

[AngryGerbil]

2/10

[Ashes Emberblade]

I made a rather lengthy reply, but apparently hit the preview button instead of submit, then closed the window.

[Phoenix]

The problem isnt crackwhores or mishandled socialism.

The problem is people. So many people rely so much on medication. Maybe there is a reason people get arthritis, strokes, cancer, or the other myriad of human diseases/conditions.

There is a difference between existing and living. We need all to wake up and realise it.

[Darus Grey]

The solution to most the above problems is greater fiscal responsability on the part of consumers(patients).

People use insurance as a crutch for thier own inability to manage thier money, this causes massive bloating in the system.
We could all live without insurance , afterall its a for profit business, you put more money into the system over a lifetime then you get out of it.

I simply pay my medical costs out of pocket, over the 7 years I've done it, I've saved about $27,000, my actual medical expenses during that time have been a whopping $1200

If your dellusioned into thinking you absolutley must have insurance then be smarter about it, pay for things like checkups, etc out of pocket, and take out a policy that only covers expensives greater then $40,000 with a $20,000 deductible or similar, your payments will be stupidly low in the off chance you get an extreme injury and don't forsee it as being possible to have saved $40,000+ in cash.

Also haggle(for lack of a better word) with your doctor, in my experience its easy to get a "discount" by as much as 50% if you tell them you can pay right now in full, in cash.
Many doctors/hospitals love the idea of not having to deal with an insurance company(and the risk of getting coverage declined).

So..my solution to the bloated system is..to get rid of the system, or at least use it in a smart way.
We can certainly operate without it, the key is better fiscal planning to save as consumers and to not bloat the system up.


PS: as to the above post..I agree...I can proudly say I've never taken any medication (especially antibiotics..YUCK) my lifetime outside that which was administered to me as a child.
I Havn't gotten sick in 5 years, my family/friends often get sick 4 or 5 times a year, and I just shrug it off because I actually give my body a chance to build immunity to a virus, not frickin gimp myself over with a "fast" solution.

[AngryGerbil]

Originally posted by Phoenix
The problem isnt crackwhores or mishandled socialism.

The problem is people. So many people rely so much on medication. Maybe there is a reason people get arthritis, strokes, cancer, or the other myriad of human diseases/conditions.

There is a difference between existing and living. We need all to wake up and realise it.

When your mother or your sister goes into kidney failure and has to be put on bi-daily dialisys, you be sure to post about it here so I can tell you to fuck off and get over it. Would you like me to also spit in your face or would you prefer I just kick you in the balls right now and we'll call it a day? Perhaps we can hire an elite team of ninja snipers to sit on top of city buildings and start popping anyone that doesn't appear to be in 100% tip-top health...

Is this seriously your answer to this problem? "Just let the old fucks die, it's too expensive to keep them alive anyway." wtg!

Darus:

Your proposal is downright naive. "Do away with insurance, if we're all smart with our money (and incredibly lucky), we'll never need it!"

Yes. Yeah, that's a very realistic approach to the problem, gj. In fact of the 50 million (or however many) people there are in this country, I'm sure it is perfectly reasonable to expect that, well not only is everyone as good with money as you claim to be, but also, everyone can easily go 5 or more years without getting sick, and only ever have about oh, $5,000 in medical bills in a given time.

Yeah.

You haven't gotten sick in 5 years, you are impervious to infection, you can afford a sudden $20,000 deductible, and the only medical bills you HAVE had, only total $1,200. Ok, let's take a show of hands as to how many other people in this country can claim the same. Shit, I had a dental visit 2 weeks ago that was $1,600 just by itself. I had 2 cavities on the upper left side of my mouth. Uh oh, I shouldn't have said that out loud, now I had better watch out for those ninja snipers on my way home today....

Does anyone have any actual input to this subject or do we all just gobble up what our patron talking-heads spew in while we snort anthrax, kill elderly, and dodge bullets like Darus and Phoenix?

[EnigmaticParadigm]

I think I love you, Cavuto. Baby making machine... **ACTIVATE**

[Eomer]

I have this to add: private health care is an incredibly poor system when it comes to the health of a nation, IMO. It leads to higher costs, unaffordable procedures, and a whole shitload of other problems. Now, I just know that someone is gonna come here and say "well in Canada you have to wait 5 years to get a broken finger set," and I will call bullshit on that in advance. While there may be some longer wait times for certain procedures, if you desperately NEED it, you WILL get it.

And I am sure that Phoenix will come forward with something about how socialized medicine costs so much money and it's a waste and so on. That's a complete falacy, one that I think most people would be surprised to hear. As a percentage of GDP, the US spends more on health care than virtually any other nation in the world. This is overall, private and public funding (health care premiums, government funding, so on) in total. Couple that with the fact the US has one of the highest GDP's per capita in the world (and if there's any countries with a higher figure, they're tiny little oil rich nations or something), and you can see that the US spends much more than anyone else for health care.

And don't give me some crap about "yeah well our system is just THAT much better than anyone else's." I will again call bullshit. While the US does have an excellent medical system (for those who can afford it) so do numerous other nations, all of which have longer life expectancies than the US. Canada, Japan, UK, France, Germany, half a dozen or so Scandanavian countries, and so on all spend less on health care, have universal access, and have healthier populations.

It's really a shame that the US continues to hang on to the private model because of ideology and ignorance, but I doubt it will change any time soon.

[Darus Grey]

Your proposal is downright naive.

Nope, you ignore the fact that, again, your putting *more* money into the insurance system then you ever get out of it, thats how it works , its a for-profit business, an unnessccary middle-man.
Theres no denying that fact, the current rising cost of medical care is due to the bloating of insurance and legalities, if in some alternate universe it was done away with or never existed, its not hard to believe costs would be alot more reasonible then now, highlighted by as I said the fact that most doctors/hospitals will take large cuts off your bill if you'll pay it in cash.


Theres a single period in someone's life between the age of 17-22 that insurance is beneiftical, and thats only assuming they need a major surgery thats coveres during that period.

Theres also the minority that DO get more out of the system then they ever put in, if your cronically plagued by illness and prone to accidents then by all means go for it, though chances are your rates will (eventually) get matched to your clumsiness.

If your telling me by age 25 or so that everyone does not have the means to have saved or even the ability to simply finance $20,000 then those people are just plain wasteful.

You don't have to be incredibly lucky to be in good health if you know how to take care of yourself(its no surprise that virtually all my family and close friends are equally healthy because we all share similar habits , and we all follow similar fiscal responsability).

Again for last time, the vast majority of people put in more money then they get out of it, so how can you argue its needed?.

I don't hold any dillusions that this sytem will be going away anytime soon, but it *is* the major cause of our troubles, which is what you were addressing.

[AngryGerbil]

Originally posted by Darus Grey
Theres no denying that fact, the current rising cost of medical care is due to the bloating of insurance and legalities, if in some alternate universe it was done away with or never existed, its not hard to believe costs would be alot more reasonible then now, highlighted by as I said the fact that most doctors/hospitals will take large cuts off your bill if you'll pay it in cash.

Wrong. Healthcare costs are going up because there are so many people who either cannot or will not pay their medical bills. And as I explained before, it is a downward spiral with no end in sight.

Having big rich insurance companies has jack and shit to do with the price of healthcare, it has everything to do with the price of health insurance. Blanket social baseline coverage and government regulation of said coverage is the only way you are going to lasso this beast. Either that or the privatized insurance companies choose to operate at a loss in order to give coverage to the poor. So which will it be?

As for the rest of your post, you're right. If we were all perfect, non-sick, independently wealthy, angels, then yes, we would not need health insurance. You win.

[Kilivek]

you have no arguments because that post is correct.

That and it's too damn long, i played the puzzle games for an hour before i broke down and read it.

[Renolin]

It is unreasonable to expect people in this country to take responsibility for their finances (ie social security). But, if you did play your cards right, you wouldn't need vehicular insurance, health insurance, life insurance, or any of these give and take systems.

I have never been in an accident, but I'm not naiive enough to assume that I will never cause a multi-car accident with a $75,000 Hummer and $60,000 Mercedes. Healthcare is the same way. I went multiple years with no cavities, while finding five in one particular visit. You never know with healthcare, it's a pure gamble. You can't protect yourself from most diseases and illnesses. A simple heart attack can keep you in a hospital for more than a day. $20,000 dollars won't save you there.

Now if I had $200,000 in the bank? I would drop my auto insurance and scale back my medical. It takes an intelligent person to handle this stuff and your cushion needs to be enormous. But! If you play your cards right, you'll have more money left over than you'll know what to do with (that's an exaggeration, but insurance absolutely murders your income).

~Renolin