Let's blame Obama Care
- Thread starter canndo
- Start date
Racist....!
I agree 100%. Insurance companies are incapable of healthcare innovation. They best increase their profits by denying as much care as they possibly can. Because they minimize or eliminate competition between healthcare providers, they also discourage anyone else from innovating. If the reimbursement for an xray is $500, that's that! The best way for an insurance company to make money is to deny people payment for xrays performed; the best way for hospitals and doctors to make money is to never charge less than $500 for an xray.
If healthcare providers were competitive, profit seeking enterprises like most of the other enterprises in the consumer marketplace, costs would be declining.
canndo
Well-Known Member
so let me get this all in order. It is abominable that Obama lied (I agree), but it is perfectly ok for insurance companies to obscure the truth and lie - themselves because, after all, they are in the business of making money - the how of it makes no difference.
canndo
Well-Known Member
Do I need to remind you that most Americans DO want at least a modicum of gun control? Seems we go with the "majority rule" argument only when we happen to agree with that majority.
canndo
Well-Known Member
Still standing by that "free shit", "makers and takers" argument are you? in the face of reality? Nothing is free, we both can agree on that. I have been talking about that couple who make 90k incurring huge medical bills and then hiding behind a grand chapter 7 as the rest of us sustain the hit. This is the sort of system you have been advocating and it is a reason why your premiums are as high as they are.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
It is also worth remembering that 6 out of 7 Californians voted yes on Prop 35. I read the text in my Voter Guide and was simply appalled. I recognize that Americans poll as being largely in favor of gun control, but i also am led to wonder if most of those really know the facts and not the easy emotional arguments. Fwiw.
canndo
Well-Known Member
I AM reaping, I am aware that it is a very flawed system. I am lucky that I get a break out of the whole deal, it could have and may yet fall differently but as I have said many times here, it is better than nothing, we are the only "civilized" country without health provisions and the other side has offered nothing of substance, all the while moaning that the very system it endorses by it's failure to address specifics, is oh so very poor.
The way I see it, when the right finally gets used to the yoke, it will begin, as it always does, to see advantages, and perhaps make their own reasonable modifications.
We shall see.
canndo
Well-Known Member
How, exactly do you measure this "finest health care system in the world" crap? Infant mortality? Availability? afordability? What we happen to have is the best emergency or catestrophic care in the world - if you can pay the price. I am not foolish enough to claim that health care has much to do with general longevity, but other than that, we do not have "the best health care in the world" and the concept is foreign to anyone who is aware of the PR it took to have us believe such a thing.
canndo
Well-Known Member
Health insurance contributes exactly nothing to the health of our country and in my opinion is about as useless as a pig on a skidoo. It is unfortunate that their lobbying capacity and power forced us into this abomination but it is a better abomnation than the one we had previously. Doctors should and do make a profit, but they do so by (for the most part), "helping people out". Drug companies, for all their ill advised behavior, perhaps in spite of themselves, .... help people out. Medical device companies, medical supply companies, emergency transport services and the like... "help people out". Insurance companies help no one but their share holders and CEO's. The reason is simple, they produce nothing BUT profit at our expense.
canndo
Well-Known Member
Tough deal, California. It is a state that governs itself by direct vote of people who rarely, as a whole, know the facts. It also tends not to let it's elected lawmakers stay lawmakers long enough to become expert at... making laws.
UncleBuck
Well-Known Member
ya wanna know how other nations solve that?
they put the heavy hand of government into healthcare, and the government negotiates rates annually for procedures.
it totally works, and costs go down.
but alas, we can't do that. because socialism.
Government healthcare creates exactly the same problem that insurance creates. By fixing the cost of a service at a certain level, there is no incentive to ever charge less than that cost. When you negotiate with a company over how much you're going to pay, you create an artificial bottleneck at the price you agree to pay.
The most effective way to reduce prices for anything is not to issue government edicts or to enable insurance companies to play monopoly, it's to encourage competing, profit seeking forces to drive costs and thus prices as low as they can possibly go.
canndo
Well-Known Member
When we finally decide that the purchase of medical care or medical insurance is not akin to the purchase of an Ipad then we may come to an understanding. I will repeat what I have said before, there is not a single barrier currently to any insurance carrier extending their coverage across state lines except agreements between carriers. Further, be sure to let me know how you are going to negotiate terms with that ER that took you in when you had chest pains, or perhaps find another, cheaper deal when that ambulance appears at your door while you are projectile vomiting and your wife is frightened shitless.
see4
Well-Known Member
What's the use? They refuse to consider logic or fact.
echelon1k1
New Member
While I agree in part, I am sceptical that all Americans should accept the current system based on "it's better than nothing"... Complacency shouldn't become a pillar of a healthcare system
canndo
Well-Known Member
So long as "they" actually believe that someone is getting something for nothing they will continue to bleet about THEIR situation and how the government that bad bad entity is making them less free. Free to be abused by rampant corporatism, free to be denied insurance while costing the rate payer and tax payer huge sums. Oh no, that disaster, personal, health or environmental will never ever happen to them because they live a good, god fearing life. It will only happen to the "takers".
canndo
Well-Known Member
Nothing is what we have had. Nothing is on track to make the divison between classes even worse than it already is, nothing does not work, something may not work either but it is at long last worth a try.
see4
Well-Known Member
That was way too deep for them. You may need to explain that in crayon.
I never suggested competition between insurance companies would solve the problem. If you read any of my posts about healthcare it should be very obvious that I think health insurance companies are the problem. They earn tens of billions of dollars every year without doing anything at all to encourage lower healthcare costs; indeed, they do exactly the opposite--they keep costs high by preventing provider competition, which is the main driver of cost.
You know how much of our healthcare spending actually takes place in the ER? Between 5% and 10%. 90-95% of healthcare spending takes place elsewhere. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...mergency-care-account-just-2-percent-all-hea/.
I agree that hospitals have inevitable monopoly power in emergencies, but that's actually not a significant driver of cost. Doctor and nurse salaries, equipment, drugs, and everything else would be cheaper with more competition in the rest of the field, which would drive ER costs down despite the existence of that monopoly power in emergencies. Alternatively, a government major medical program setting prices on emergency care in those monopoly situations would be significantly more effective than a government program controlling prices in all of healthcare.
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