Healthcare... America and the rest

[Tero]

I never said there was. Obamacare is run by healthcare and insurance. They have no intention of bringing down prices.

The stuff you don't know.

I can spell it out for you. The entire healthcare industry is set up to give too much care to those with insurance. They bill it to thec rest who never use insurance and their employers.

Why isn't this obvious to you? Because you want to blame Obama. He had no Republicans to work with. So you get this, with subsidies. Insurance always backed it.

[Forty Two]

I'm not blaming Obama for anything except the ACA. If you agree it sucks, why don't you say so?

[Tero]

I did not say it sucks.

One thing that sucks: too much healthcare. For those with insurance.

[Forty Two]

Yes I remember when Obamacare was being passed. They sold it partly on the idea that people who were buying insurance were getting too much healthcare and paying too little. Lol.

You know , 85% of the country had health insurance before bamacare ...So your theory is that they were getting too much health care. Lol. Really?

Now 90% are covered. And the democrat supporters are creaming in their pants. $1 trillion well spent! And your theory is that now 90% have too much healthcare.

Guess we have to cut benefits and increase the cost to make sure it's improved even more.

[Tero]

Don't blame Obama for anything other than keeping insurance companies in business, and failing to force them all to use the same claim form!


INSURANCE companies are not going to do anything about this stuff. A single payer system would:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/why ... id-cutler/
...one example, Duke University Hospital has 900 hospital beds and 1,300 billing clerks. The typical Canadian hospital has a handful of billing clerks. Single-payer systems have fewer administrative needs. That’s not to say they’re better, but that’s just on one dimension that they clearly cost less. What a lot of those people are doing in America is they are figuring out how to bill different insurers for different systems, figuring out how to collect money from people, all of that sort of stuff.

The second reason health care costs so much in America is that the U.S. spends more than other countries do on many of the same things. Drugs are the most commonly noted item, where a branded drug will cost much more in the U.S. than in other countries. But, for example, doctors also earn more for doing the same thing in the U.S. than they do in other countries, and a lot of suppliers charge more for things like durable medical equipment in the U.S. than in other countries.

Paul Solman: And that’s not only doctors being paid more in this country, but the United States making the decision as a government not to buy drugs in bulk and therefore to bid down the price that pharmaceutical companies can charge.

David Cutler: The lowest prices for pharmaceuticals, and a variety of other medical devices and payments to physicians, are in government plans. So Medicaid gets the best prices on pharmaceuticals. In terms of physician payments, Medicaid payments are the lowest. Medicare payments are above that and private payments are above that. The more leverage the buyer has, the lower the price they get. That’s true in every industry. In health care, the United States doesn’t utilize that leverage as much as other countries do.

Paul Solman: Okay, so that’s two and what’s the third reason?

David Cutler: The third one is Americans receive more medical care than people do in other countries, not so much in terms of doctor visits, but if a person has a heart attack in the United States, they’re much more likely to get open heart surgery than they are in most other countries.

Go back to Canada. In all of Ontario there are 11 hospitals that can do open heart surgery. Pennsylvania has roughly the population of Ontario and it has a bit over 60 hospitals that can do open heart surgery. So there’s no way you can operate on as many people in Ontario as you can in Pennsylvania even if you operated around the clock.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/why ... id-cutler/

[Forty Two]

I never said there was. Obamacare is run by healthcare and insurance. They have no intention of bringing down prices.

Funny, when I hollered about how Obamacare would raise prices, the pro-bammycare folks were telling me I was wrong about that....did you expect the price increases during the run-up to Obamacare? Were you all like "I'm for Obamacare, even though it will raise prices...?"

The stuff you don't know.

I can spell it out for you. The entire healthcare industry is set up to give too much care to those with insurance. They bill it to thec rest who never use insurance and their employers.

The whole idea of insurance involves spreading risk, so yes. The way insurance companies make money is collecting premiums based on risk and setting the premiums at a level that they take in more than they pay out.

The biggest driver of all these costs, though, are things that all the leftists want included in "health insurance" coverage -- i.e., non-risk based items.

Why isn't this obvious to you? Because you want to blame Obama. He had no Republicans to work with. So you get this, with subsidies. Insurance always backed it.

What's not obvious? The notion that insurance companies want to take in more money than they pay out is common sense. That doesn't change the fact that Obamacare jacked up prices like we've never seen before.

He had no republican to work with? He wouldn't work with Republicans. And, what would working with the Republicans have done? Would it have been a plan that didn't jack prices through the roof?

I blame Obama because this was his baby. Why shouldn't we blame him? They didn't need to work with Republicans. They could have just made a plan that made sense. If Romney was President, I'd be blaming him. The reality is, you don't want to blame Obama for anything, because you think he's a dreamboat and you don't want to criticize him. Nothing is his fault.

[Tero]

LOL - do you believe you make sense?

The reason insurance plans drop states and Obamacare is that they lose money. Insurance companies don't have patients.

The corporations with 5000 or more patients, I mean employees, are self insuring. They are no risk at all to insurance companies. They get fees for handling paperwork. They absolutely do not need us. Get that!

They are absolutely not self-insurance. They have group plans through major insurance companies.

It's not a question of "need." Insurance companies leave the marketplace when they can't make money. They don't give a fuck about who they need or don't need. They care about making money. If the total premiums and other income in a region can't pay for the claims such that they make a profit in accordance with their business plan, they will shut down and stick in regions that they are successfully operating in. Aetna left Florida because they weren't getting enough insureds to buy their policies -- and their operating costs were too much for the premiums they were collecting. That's it.

You seem to think you make sense here. O.k. so you have some corporations with 5,000 or more employees. What do you mean they are "no risk at all to insurance companies?" They get fees for handling paperwork? Do you mean that the insurance companies don't want to sell policies outside of these large corporations because it's too much trouble or something? That's absurd.

The stuff you don't know. Dow Chemical, Dupont, Ford etc are all self insuring. It looks like you have an Aetna plan, and as far hospitals go, you do. But the entire cost of healthcare is paid by the corporation, employer. The insurance co does paperwork and makes sure the corporate client is not overbilled.

[Tero]

List here
http://www.lni.wa.gov/ClaimsIns/Insuran ... e/EmpList/

[Tero]

If you start with your standard conclusion "Obamacare is the cause of everything", you can't actually learn about healthcare.

[Tero]

We want governmnet subsidised healthcare. Nearly all of us, except 42.

This, of course, has been the GOP's biggest complaint about the Affordable Care Act — that it amounts to big government and government-run health care, ballooning costs and resulting in poorer care than the free market would provide. But now the impending repeal of Obamacare, combined with a big-government-loving Republican president-elect in Donald Trump, seems to have moved the needle toward government-involved health care — at the very same time as Republicans look to get rid of it (and replace it with their own, possibly scaled-back version).

A Pew Research Center poll last week showed low- and middle-income Republicans, in particular, have warmed to the idea of a government role in health care. A majority of GOP and GOP-leaning voters making less than $30,000 a year — 52 percent — now say that they think the federal government should make sure all Americans have health coverage. That number is up from 31 percent in March of last year.

Among those making between $30,000 and $74,999, the number has risen similarly, from 14 percent to 34 percent. Overall, 60 percent of Americans would like the federal government to guarantee health-care coverage, up from 51 percent just 10 months ago.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... f049587c52

[Scot Dutchy]

I thank everyday I dont live in a mess of a country like the USA. I would commit suicide. I need plenty of health care and I get the best in Europe and probably the world.

[mistermack]

I thank everyday I dont live in a mess of a country like the USA. I would commit suicide. I need plenty of health care and I get the best in Europe and probably the world.

In any insurance scheme there are winners and losers. The losers pay for the winners.
Your "plenty of healthcare" is paid for by others who by no fault of their own, are healthy.

The better the healthcare for the winners, the more the losers have to pay.

[Scot Dutchy]

I thank everyday I dont live in a mess of a country like the USA. I would commit suicide. I need plenty of health care and I get the best in Europe and probably the world.

In any insurance scheme there are winners and losers. The losers pay for the winners.
Your "plenty of healthcare" is paid for by others who by no fault of their own, are healthy.

The better the healthcare for the winners, the more the losers have to pay.

We have a healthcare system. Spot the difference? We all pay the same.

[mistermack]

We have a healthcare system. Spot the difference? We all pay the same.

No you don't.

[Scot Dutchy]

We have a healthcare system. Spot the difference? We all pay the same.

No you don't.

Another clever dick. Go on tell me why we dont pay all the same?

The basic rate is fixed annually by the committee of the insurance companies, health inspectorate and patient reps as is the personal amount we have to pay for certain treatments. No insurance company can charge more than the basic rate but they can charge less (to attract more clients).

As an individual you can take on more insurance to increase cover but that is entirely your choice.