Obama's Healthcare Nightmare

you obviously no nothing about the healthcare in those other nations. Just because they pay less doesn't mean they have it figured out.

 

I was very clear in my posts about the fact that I was estimating.

 

I cannot answer because your premise is flawed. What countries ? UK? Canada?

Health Insurance is not the problem. The cost of insurance is directly tied to the cost of care. What's the point in bankrupting insurance companies when the problem is the high cost of medical care?

And, have you cheked LEAP scores lately? In many places, pulic education is a joke.

 

Read post #209 on page 14, Switzerland, Germany, France, Canada. The premise is not flawed.

Of course insurance is a big part of the problem. Cost is part of it, and ACCESS is another big part of it.

The current 3rd party payer model does not incent savings. After my co-pay the bill goes to the insurance company. Do I care what that bill is? Not really. Does the insurance co. care what they pay? Some, but apparently not much since healthcare expenses have been growing at 2 or 3 times the inflation rate for decades. The insurance co. have been successful passing this on to companies, who now pass on a bigger share to employees. This will continue until the companies demand something be done. Frankly I'm surprised they are not yelling louder right now. Small business has gone from about 60% providing health insurance down to about 40% because the cost has gone up so fast they can't keep up with it.

The inflation in healthcare costs is actually an advantage to the insurance companies. If I take in a billion in premiums and pay out 80%, I have a 200 million profit. If I have a hundred million shares of stock outstanding, I earned $2 per share. Next year, with healthcare costs accelerating at 10%, since I just pass this along, I collect 1.1 billion in premiums, and at 80% payout, I profit 220 million, and with the same 100 million shares outstanding, I now earned 2.20 per share, without actually improving my business efficiency a whit. As long as you can pass on the increased cost in higher premiums, there is little incentive for the insurance companies to push for lower prices. Since we are not paying the bulk of the bills as individuals, there is no incentive for us consumers to economize when we require a treatment.

Regarding access, is it a good thing that insurance companies purge their rolls if an individual gets sick, or by raising premiums on a small business if it starts running abnormally high expenses, in order to force the small business to drop them as their carrier? Please explain why the profit incentive of a health insurance company is so important that they can deny access to health insurance to sick people or to small business who happen to have higer than average claims. In a single payer model, we don't need the private health insurance companies at all.

In MOST places it is not a joke. Where do MOST of the folks in the US go to school? Public, not private.

 

The numbers I have posted are facts, those countries spend around 10% of GDP on healthcare and they cover ALL of their people. So, what do you know about healthcare in Canada, Germany, Switzerland and France? Please share it with us and enlighten us.

Do their people get denied coverage of their illnesses because they have a pre-existing condition?

If I obviously know nothing about healthcare in those countries, then you indicate you know more than me about it, so tell us what you know.

 

i think free enterprise doesnt work for healthcare because its about money and not people. if we were talking about cars or shoes or even higher education that would be acceptable but health is more important. the system continues to support escalating prices that well-off can afford but more and more people are being priced out. perhaps over time somehow the system would correct itself but its wrong to wait 20 years for something that may happen. millions will go without standard health care. its bad for them and its bad for the country.

 

SF, what do you say about this criticism of the insurers --

"A: One thing I know most doctors agree with is insurance is out of control. The CEO of United Healthcare last year made $9 million more than the year before, but they're paying out 24 percent less in claims. They're there to make a profit, so of course they're looking for a way to cut costs. You sacrifice quality health care because the insurance companies are dictating what everybody else does."

 

Your implication was that it is systemic.

Doctors complain about the cost of insurance for the same reason you complain about the cost of health care. Granted, doctors pay huge premiums, but don't blame the insurance companies.

Could it be that more efficient claims handling and rooting out fraudulent claims led to 24% less in payouts? Don't assume unsavory activity just because a company made money. I have UHC and never had a problem. My wife has a type of Dystonia which requires specialized care and also treats at M.D. Anderson for an osteopathic condition known as Paget's, so it's not like I don't utilize the coverage

 

Pelosi is a bit arrogant, as of late.
She needs to cool the rhetoric and figure out this bill.