In honor of "Health Care Takeover" weekend
darthvedder81
Posts: 688
I'm listening to "Grievance"—it's PJ's most Libertarian song.
"For every tool they lend us a loss of independence"
"Champagne breakfast for everyone!"
"For every tool they lend us a loss of independence"
"Champagne breakfast for everyone!"
So this life is sacrifice...
6/30/98 Minneapolis, 10/8/00 East Troy (Brrrr!), 6/16/03 St. Paul, 6/27/06 St. Paul
6/30/98 Minneapolis, 10/8/00 East Troy (Brrrr!), 6/16/03 St. Paul, 6/27/06 St. Paul
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
"With our thoughts we make the world"
"With our thoughts we make the world"
And my taxes might go up 30 bucks per year.
Boy, the world is coming to a fucking end, isn't it?
Insurance company profits = fucking badness for us all
wake up bitches
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
http://factcheck.org/2009/08/insurance- ... g-records/
Don't get me wrong I agree 100% that we have to do something about the high cost of premiums,but this healthcare bill will in fact raise premiums. The main reason why our premiums keep going up is because of all the frivolous lawsuits. If the Dems were seroius about this they would have added some kind of tort reform to the bill.
If you honestly think that Obama ,Pelosi,Reed and the rest actually care about you,your family and your healthcare you need to wake up cos they don't. This is about Obama and his Ideology.
That was then. This is now.
Not only do I believe they shouldn't make a profit, but they should not be allowed to exist at all.
What do they do in the health care system anyway? Do they diagnose patients? Do they provide counseling to family members who are faced with the imminent death of a loved one? Do they conduct x-ray and mammogram tests? Do they comfort a child who's about to receive a battery of chemo to treat his leukemia?
No.
All they do is take our money, take a massive cut, as much as 30% overhead, and THEN they pay our doctors, nurses, technicians, etc who actually provide us the health care we need. So the fiscally conservative and sound business approach then should be : cut out the middle man. Pool our money together in a single payer, 3% overhead system like Medicare For All, which will then compensate our health care professionals. No deductibles, no copayments, no lifetime caps on treatment, no preexisting condition denials, no recissions, vital medicine at cost, no fraud.
I would rather pay the $400/month I already pay through my employer to a Medicare type system in taxes, instead of as premiums to Blue Shield, and be able to walk into a doctor's office and leave without worrying about paying a bill of any kind. If we gave Medicare this kind of boost by allowing everyone -including younger and healthier people - to buy into it and expand its coverage, we'd have a really robust, and solvent, system.
Imagine if our police services were privately provided....would you advocate no police protection for someone getting raped in front of a police station because they didn't have police insurance?
what's the difference?
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
I know liberals like to emotionally pander and manipulate with asinine unprovable statements but man, you should get a medal or something for that doozy.
6/30/98 Minneapolis, 10/8/00 East Troy (Brrrr!), 6/16/03 St. Paul, 6/27/06 St. Paul
Aren't you just replacing one bureaucracy (health care companies/hmo's) with another (the government)? How about taking out ALL the middlemen? I agree that we rely on "insurance" to pay our bills way too much in this country. Why not go back to the days of paying with our own money services rendered to us? Sure we need some insurance for catastrophic situations but going through an insurance company for yearly check-ups, dental cleanings, 1st degree burns, etc. is ludicrous. We've removed all market forces from the equation and then we blame the market for rising costs. Amazing.
6/30/98 Minneapolis, 10/8/00 East Troy (Brrrr!), 6/16/03 St. Paul, 6/27/06 St. Paul
Insurance companies don't "provide" health care. Doctors do that. You are making the same mistake most people do when talking about health care—equating the actual service with how we pay for it.
Why are profits bad? How does your employer pay you? Charity?
6/30/98 Minneapolis, 10/8/00 East Troy (Brrrr!), 6/16/03 St. Paul, 6/27/06 St. Paul
they provide coverage to pay for the health care to be provided. if they say they won't pay for it, what then? they make money by denying payment for health care
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Profits aren't bad but maybe profit shouldn't be the primary motivator in some systems. The goal of the health care system in my opinion should be healthy people.
"With our thoughts we make the world"
Because a single payer system - like I explained earlier - will cost only around 3-5% in overhead, the way it is in Medicare, and the way it is in the rest of the industrialized world that has it. The private insurance corporations, on the other hand, take as much as 30% in overhead. We pay double what everyone else in the world pays for health care, we don't cover everyone, and we pay a lot of extra expenses on top of our premiums.
In the link I posted above, the top health insurance companies took home about $12 billion in RAW PROFIT last year - a 56% increase over the previous year - at a time when Americans are being hit with a huge recession + job losses on top of it. AND they insured over a million people LESS than they did. All that money they made is the result of screening out people who have pre-existing conditions, and dropping people they deem to sick to cover by combing over their policies and looking for reasons to drop them (recission) and just simply issuing blanket denials of reimbursements for doctors or patients. Ask yourself why that's so much better than having single payer, which will cost us far less out of pocket AND cover everyone.
If "socialized medicine" is good enough for our seniors and our military, why shouldn't those of us who WANT it be allowed to buy into it?
I agree. But there's advantages to pooling all our money together in a system instead of going at it one person at a time.
For one thing, if we simply pooled all our money in a single payer system, we wouldn't have to worry about paying the bills. You walk in, get your treatment done, and leave without worrying about whether you can buy groceries or pay your mortgage as a result of having gone to the doctor. You or your employer won't have to pay multiple agencies - such as Workmen's Comp and State DIsability Insurance - to cover you in case of illness because there would only be one system to pool into.
Your doctor bills the government ONCE instead of begging for payment from insurance companies multiple times. Your doctor doesn't have to spend all his or her time arguing with insurance companies about whether they will be reimbursed for treatment, and they don't have to track individual patients one at a time to bill them several times, thereby reducing their workload and saving time, stress and money. They won't be forced to take ever larger numbers of patients in shorter amounts of time just to make ends meet.
The government reviews the paperwork, then cuts a check for your doctor, and it won't spend countless hours trying to squeeze the rest of us for money to pay their CEOs multi million dollar paychecks and dividends to their shareholders who sit by the pool all day.
Our drugs wil be cheaper because the government can leverage better costs, just like the VA, who routinely spends 35-50% of what we pay for drugs.
And how exactly have we removed all market forces from the equation when the only public health insurance systems - the VA, Medicare, and Medicaid among others - cover less than a third of the population? And thanks to that Republican boondoggle giveaway to private insurance called Medicare Part D, seniors are stuck with the donut hole in coverage and drug companies aren't being forced to negotiate for lower prices. Plus, since there won't be a public option in this up and coming health care bill, the status quo will get even worse since the uninsured will be buying into private insurance.
I agree that all avenues of reducing costs should be explored however I'm not sure frivolous law suits are the main driver of increasing health insurance premiums. I'm sure it is the main driver of increasing malpractice insurance premiums, though. I took this from an article in the Wasington Independent.
“It’s really just a distraction,” said Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and author of “The Medical Malpractice Myth.” “If you were to eliminate medical malpractice liability, even forgetting the negative consequences that would have for safety, accountability, and responsiveness, maybe we’d be talking about 1.5 percent of health care costs. So we’re not talking about real money. It’s small relative to the out-of-control cost of health care.”
"With our thoughts we make the world"
look up Ron Williams, the CEO of Aetna, Aetna wasn't making enough of a profit for their liking so they replaced the CEO with Ron WIlliams who went about raising premiums on companies and individuals whose use of their insurance benefits cut into Aetna's profits....so they targeted these people and raised their rates to absurd levels and was able to get rid of 8 million customers increasing their profits (he also laid off 15,000 employees)
oh, and in 2008 Ron Williams made $24,300,112
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hams ... 06026.html
"do you even know what a tort is?? i'm just asking because of all of these shows you righties mention, not one of them goes in depth into what a tort is. there are several types of tort and it is not only in the medical fields where torts are alleged and where torts occur...
lawsuits are NOT why YOUR health insurance is so expensive. that is why the DOCTORS' LIABILITY INSURANCE IS SO EXPENSIVE! it does not directly influence your premiums so stop saying that it does. doctors can charge only what medicare allows them to charge for all procedures. medicare sets the groundrules that all health insurance companies play by in regard to costs and what they will pay for things. increasing doctor's premiums for liability insurance is not passed on to the patients, but the docs have to see more patients to make up for the loss of money for liability ins premiums. they can not directly affect your premiums and arbitrarily charge you 3 times the medicare allowable charge to make up for it, so it is not affecting YOUR health insurance premiums. please get your facts straight before you post this crap on here.
i believe tort reform is bullshit. read my example in the other thread. mistakes are made by doctors all the time, and i think a $250,000 cap on damages for such egregious and dubious errors as amputating the wrong limb, implanting an organ with the wrong blood type, removing the wrong kidney, and leaving surgical tools inside a patient that can cause years and years of pain and suffering, lost function, and mental anguish should be awarded what a jury feels as appropriate. not some arbitrary amount that some piece of legislation says."
also i just wanted to ask you why you are so concerend about whether or not a major corporate entity like blue cross or aetna makes a profit? they will be the first entities to screw over the general population, yet the general population would say they are entitled to do such things and make a profit...that is like standing on a gallows with a noose around your neck and paying the executioner to pull the lever to open the trap door....
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Ok so you educated me on tort reform... I agree with you that a patient that gets the wrong limb removed or the other thing s that you mentioned should be compensated,but wouldnt you agree that there are frivolous lawsuits ?
Do doctors not do things like run more test so they don't diagnose someone wrong to keep from getting sued ?
I know I probably bastardized that last question but my medical terminology is pretty sad.
and as far as an insurance company making a profit. No I don't have a problem with them making a profit. Why would I ? If it's reasonable
Do you have a problem with pj making a profit on their T shirts at their concerts when they charge $35 for a shirt that cost $5 ?
are people dying as a result of pj selling a shirt? more than likely not, health insurance companies on the other hand...a lot of their profit comes from not paying for treatment or prescriptions.
a few years ago i worked at a place where in addition to premiums going up that year we had to a deductible for prescriptions and even AFTER we met that we STILL had to pay full price and then mail them the receipt to be reimbursed....now come on, doesn't it seem like it costs them more $ to have someone process these claims and issue checks rather than how they did it the year before when there was no deductible and the pharmacist simply entered my insurance info in their computer and it told them if it was covered and how much?
the only reason i can think is they are hoping it will be like rebates where a lot of people just don't mail the stuff in or on time
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
This is exactly what they do and did with me. They left me with a $5000+ bill after denying me coverage after knee surgery. They literally came up with a reason to deny me coverage after initially telling it was fine to go ahead with the surgery. Their way out, nonsense about pre-existing conditions and try tracking them down to get them to cover you.
I had to stop my monthly payments just to get their attention but after 3 years they had made their money and moved on to the next sucker. REASONABLE profits my ass, they're a bunch of crooks.
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
There is no 4% tax on rent that is just crazy talk. A reason for coast increases bigger then tort reform is the number of uninsured people who get sick too. some one has to pay for that ultimatly it is the consumer. Why has no member of the GOP offered up a bill on tort reform? Why didn't they do it in the six of eight bush years they held the majority? it is just a talking point nothing more.
great question...
sadly the OP can't answer... :(
uh....the doctors get paid by the insurance company....if the insurance company won't pay...doctor doesn't do the service
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2