Keep One Hand on Your Wallet
By Linda Anselmi on September 9, 2009 at 2:01 PM in Congress (House & Senate), Health Care, President Barack Obama
With President Obama set to speak before congress tonight on health care, it seemed an opportune time to look back over some of the key players and the money issues they bring to the health care table.
Insurers – Insuring for the Bottom Line:
Back in June, the House subcommittee on Energy and Commerce held meetings on Rescission. Don Hamm, president and CEO of Assurant Health had this to say in his prepared testimony:
…there are times when we discover that an applicant did not provide complete or accurate medical information when we underwrote the risk. …
The decision to rescind is made only in cases where the undisclosed information would have made a material difference to the underwriting decision based on our guidelines. …
Rescission is rare. It affects less than one-half of one percent of people we cover. Yet, it is one of many protections supporting the afford ability and viability of individual health insurance in the United States under our current system.
What could sound more reasonable? Insurance companies are for-profit entities. They are in business to make money. Selling insurance is just how they do it.
And yes, rescission is purely about business – the business of limiting losses and increasing profits.
Insurance companies first make their money when people pay in, so the more the merrier. As long as you are willing to pay and you will not yet cost them money, they will happily sell you coverage and collect your money. And they will consider you a great customer, regardless of the accuracy of you application and medical history, right up to the time it starts to look like your health (or lack there of) may actually require them to pay out money. Then, they will want out. And then, that oh so rare rescission percentage doesn’t look so small.
According to Health and Human Services research based on 2002 data -
Half of the population spends little or nothing on health care, while 5 percent of the population spends almost half of the total amount.(2) In 2002, the 5 percent of the U.S. community (civilian noninstitutionalized) population that spent the most on health care accounted for 49 percent of overall U.S. health care spending (Chart 1, 40 KB). Among this group, annual medical expenses (exclusive of health insurance premiums) equaled or exceeded $11,487 per person.
In contrast, the 50 percent of the population with the lowest expenses accounted for only 3 percent of overall U.S. medical spending, with annual medical spending below $664 per person. Thus, those in the top 5 percent spent, on average, more than 17 times as much per person as those in the bottom 50 percent of spenders.(2)
So for all the finger pointing at the lack of complete and accurate information on applications, the insurance companies are not truly interested in solving “the problem”. Because it works beautifully for them. Having an escape clause that they can activate at any time is one of the best features of the system.
And don’t forget, rescission is only one of several tactics including dumping group plans, denying for pre-existing conditions and consolidation that are used by insurance companies to ensure their profits regardless of what it does to the physical, emotional or economic health and well being of the american people.
For an eye opening, must see insider view of the insurance industry, don’t miss this Bill Moyers’ interview with Wendell Potter, the former head of Public Relations for CIGNA with 20 years experience in the industry and now a whistleblower.
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Health Care – Profiting Off of Sick People:
How well can a health care system function when its legal obligation is to maximize profits, its incentives are to increase the number of patients procedures, and its processes focus on minimizing and standardizing individual patient interaction? When can the intended goal of caring for the patient be achived? And how much benefit do patients actually gain?
Financial journalist, Maggie Mahar’s spent years researching the health care industry and talking to doctors for her book MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE: THE REAL REASON HEALTH CARE COSTS SO MUCH. Here are a few transcript excerpts from a Bill Moyers Journal segment on her book.
MAGGIE MAHAR: A physician takes an oath to put his patient’s interests ahead of his own. A corporation is legally bound to put its shareholders’ interests first. And this is part of the inherent conflict between health care as a business, part of our economy, and health care as a public good and part of our society. …
DR. DONALD BERWICK: … Just as long as it’s a human enterprise, yeah, at some level, someone’s got to make some money or why would… they won’t do it. So we’re going to have profit even if you call it a non-profit system. What are the incentives? Right now the incentives in America are if you want profit, do more. You make money by doing stuff and there’s no limit. So we do and do and do and we get this oversupply, this excess activity because that’s how people, hospitals, doctors make money.
And with more and more hospitals and medical organizations being run by CEO’s with MBA, you can imagine which side of the patient vs profit conflict comes out ahead.
MAGGIE MAHAR: What’s interesting about the fee schedule is that it’s all about what it costs the doctor to produce the service in terms of time and education. Never does anyone ask, “How much benefit is there for the patient?” This might be a service that, on average, lengthens the patient’s life by 5 months, as opposed to having your diabetes controlled for 30 years, which means that you live a lot longer and you never have an amputation. And yet we would pay much more for that technically very skilled procedure that gave you another couple of months, because we look at it entirely in terms of the work on the part of the doctor rather than the benefit to the patient.
DR. LARRY CHURCHILL: It shouldn’t be any surprise that there is a huge disconnect between the amount of dollars that actually poured into health care and the health indicators of a population because this system was not designed to serve this end. That’s a fundamental realization that we need to come to. And until we do I think, you know, we’ll still be trying to tinker with the market in some kind of funny way. Just a little tweak or adjustment to make it work better, but it was never designed, actually, to meet health care needs.
And remember, these are doctors talking from inside the system.
_____
Government – Reforming for Election Dollars.
In Sick and Wrong, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone wrote a devastating and detailed, must read indictment of the health care reform taking place amid political mauneverings, public posturing and private deal making. If you have some how managed not to become thoroughly disgusted with the actions of our government so far and still believe meaningful reform is still a possibility, beware this article is guaranteed to turn the tide on the still hopeful.
…The bad news is our failed health care system won’t get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America.
Just as we have a medical system that is not really designed to care for the sick, we have a government that is not equipped to fix actual crises. What our government is good at is something else entirely: effecting the appearance of action, while leaving the actual reform behind in a diabolical labyrinth of ingenious legislative maneuvers. …
It’s a situation that one would have thought would be sobering enough to snap Congress into real action for once. Instead, they did the exact opposite, doubling down on the same-old, same-old and laboring day and night in the halls of the Capitol to deliver us a tour de force of old thinking and legislative trickery, as if that’s what we really wanted. Almost every single one of the main players — from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Blue Dog turncoat Max Baucus — found some unforeseeable, unique-to-them way to fuck this thing up. Even Ted Kennedy, for whom successful health care reform was to be the great vindicating achievement of his career, and Barack Obama, whose entire presidency will likely be judged by this bill, managed to come up small when the lights came on.
We might look back on this summer someday and think of it as the moment when our government lost us for good. It was that bad.
So how bad is bad…
To recap, here’s what ended up happening with health care. First, they gave away single-payer before a single gavel had fallen, apparently as a bargaining chip to the very insurers mostly responsible for creating the crisis in the first place. Then they watered down the public option so as to make it almost meaningless, while simultaneously beefing up the individual mandate, which would force millions of people now uninsured to buy a product that is no longer certain to be either cheaper or more likely to prevent them from going bankrupt.
So how confident should we be that our government will finally give the American people affordable, quality health care?
By the time all the various bills are combined, health care will be a baby not split in half but in fourths and eighths and fractions of eighths. It’s what happens when a government accustomed to dealing on the level of perception tries to take on a profound emergency that exists in reality. No matter how hard Congress may try, though, it simply is not possible to paper over a crisis this vast.
Ah, not much.
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Taxpayers/Patients – Paying for Insurance, Health Care and Government Malpractice
a new [Aug. 15] Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most voters (54%) say no health care reform passed by Congress this year would be the better option.
This does not mean that most voters are opposed to health care reform. But it does highlight the level of concern about the specific proposals that Congressional Democrats have approved in a series of Committees.
So where does all of this reform leave the american taxpaying health care user? Somewhere between a rock of expensive show reform and a hard place of expensive no reform.
From the beginning of the debate, voters have indicated support for the concept of health care reform and for some of the specific ideas that have been suggested. However, they are skeptical about what has been presented thus far in Congress. One reason is skepticism about Congress itself. By a two-to-one margin, voters believe that no matter how bad things are Congress could always make it worse.
Real reform? It is only an American dream. Unless taxpayers revolt, we will be paying MORE for the same dysfunctional health care system because profits are greedy things. They always need more dollars.
So my advice — as you listen to President Obama, keep one hand on your wallet.
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Very informative post!
I am one of those who believes that we are in need of a radical overhaul of our healthcare delivery system. I also believe that no reform is better than THIS “reform”.
Wouldn’t it be a better idea to WAIT to consider a healthcare plan AFTER: We see
1. what will become of the economic stimulus plan. So far, the Obama branch of this porker give-away has done virtually nothing to stimulate the economy. The American economy, at the control of Obama, is failing.
2. what will become of the TARP loans. Will GM default on the aprox. 81 Billion dollars and how will this affect the U.S. budget and deficit.
3. what will become of Social Security, slated to come crashing down in a few short years. That’s when the greater bulk of baby-boomers will definitively retire and cause the boat to list.
4. will home and auto sales rebound, because right now there is nothing going on in either market. The “clucker” program did nothing to substantially aid the American car markers — although it did help our foreign auto maker friends. Let’s wait and make certain that these extremely crucial markets recover before leaping into massive healthcare overhauls.
5. what will happen with the current business downturn and unemployment. Obama assured that there would be no greater average unemployment than 8%, and we are at 10%. In some areas of the country inflation is double-digits, 14, 16, 20 percent.
6. what will need to be done to cure the rocketing high deficits.
7. what will happen when, since the timing is right, the Ron Pauls will get their way and audit the Federal Reserve. Recall what happened when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac coughed-up.
8. what will be the tax rate consequences due to the unrestrained spending spree of the past 24 months. Trillions of dollars will have to be paid in increased taxes. There’s talk about adding a value added tax; will this be in addition to the progressive tax? Will there be a tax revolution, all of which could mean that the funds for a national government controlled health plan could be severely limited. This would translate into exceedingly limited services in health care for people.
9. what will happen if $500 Billion are taken from Medicare. Take it now and wait to see what happens. Besides everything short of full anarchy by the elderly, this is adding much more stress to an already stressed system.
Don’t be surprised that Obama, on his 112th “new” pitch to sell his (snake oil) health plan, will offer nothing substantial; and, certainly nothing that could not wait until prudently we resolve each and every issue mentioned. American’s are saying they are fine with the insurance and health care arrangements they currently have. Perhaps leaving well enough alone is best. Certainly, over the summer we have seen what “it could be worse” looks like, and nobody cares for Socialism in the U.S.A.
AMEN!
Add the cost of private contractors going into Iraq to take the place of the U.S. soldiers, on the government dime, in the billions.
Most, if not all, of these problems could be solved if we got the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
i agree with you..
All of Obama`s ideas are for gaining more and more control of our lives. PERIOD.
[...] Keep One Hand on Your Wallet Share and [...]
I read today that the health industry is spending $1.5 million PER DAY to defeat any kind of reform. It’s working so well for them as it is, why change it? This money of course comes from the premiums you pay for health insurance.
One group which was formed solely to combat health care/insurance reform is Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. The person who formed this group is Richard Scott who:
“previously started the for-profit hospital chain in 1987 that later became the $23 billion Columbia/HCA. He was ousted from this post in 1997 after an FBI investigation of Columbia/HCA that led to 14 felony convictions and $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for Medicare fraud.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Conservatives_for_Patients_Rights
Here’s one of their touchy-feely ads, and the truth about their claims from Kaiser.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/AdAudit/080309squeeze.aspx
It’s just a matter of priorities:
Newly revised estimates from Citizens for Tax Justice show that the Bush tax cuts cost almost $2.5 trillion over the decade after they were first enacted (2001-2010).Preliminary estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office show that the House Democrats’ health care reform legislation
is projected to cost $1 trillion over the decade after it would be enacted
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/bushtaxcutsvshealthcare.pdf
Interesting, especially curious considering that no less a Democrat than JFK cut taxes to head off a recession.
Yes, but we all know that anything government enacted ends up costing a lot more than projected.
At its start(1966) Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee, along with President Johnson, estimated that Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion by 1990. In 1990, Medicare topped $107 billion. So in 24 years, the actual cost ended up being 9 times higher than estimated. So by that reasoning, to expect to only spend $1 trillion in the first 10 years if health care reform is enacted is optimistic.
By offering free and universal access to medical care, the dynamics of the system will drastically change, and the data used to predict the costs of the program will be useless. They base their predictions on current usage of the medical system, usage that is regulated by market forces such as price and supply. When the government artificially removes price from the equation, the system will be rapidly thrown out of balance. It boils down to very fundamental economic principles. There is no limit for demand, and since the resource is finite, price regulates it’s distribution. When cost is eliminated, behavior will change, and the medical services will initially become swamped. The stampede for free medical attention will magnify the government’s financial obligation exponentially. This is what happened with Medicare and Medicaid, and it will happen with this legislation as well. 1 trillion is a gross underestimate since it is based upon current trends. When you capriciously alter the behavior of the masses, you will also have to radically adjust the models that you’re using for prediction.
Since the government does not have infinite funds it will not only be unable to pay for infinite demand for finite medical services, it will also be unable to pay for the needed expansion of medical services to compensate for the huge new demand. Say hello to the dreaded waiting lines, rationing, and a stagnation in medical innovation. This bill, and government involvement in what should be a private market, is a recipe for dissaster.
As what happened with cash for clunkers. I figure the majority of buyers did not need the rebate to buy a car. They might have taken advantage of it and bought a more expensive car then they would’ve bought if they didn’t have the rebate, but lending standards are such right now that the person has to have good credit and ability to pay back the loan. As such, many could have afforded to buy a car before the program started but choose not to. But once it was advertised “$3500-$4500 FREE money towards buying a new car. Just trade in an old clunker” then buyers rushed in. So much that government found the program so popular they had to allocate another $2 billion dollars to fund it.
So tell people they can get “free” healthcare just by filling out some paperwork and you can bet people will rush in to join up. Marketing 101 proves that the majority of people are swayed towards choosing a “free” anything when given a choice rather than paying a small amount for a better deal.
The rush to by cars during the cash for clunkers idiocy, will be offset by the corresponding depression in the auto market that’s destined to follow. It will balance out….but not quite. The destruction of the running and usable clunkers represents a net loss in tangible wealth. The whole cash for clunkers nonsense is quite simply an apotheosis of the “Broken window fallacy”.
“right up to the time it starts to look like your health (or lack there of) may actually require them to pay out money. Then, they will want out.”
Please show specifics because based on my personal family situation and those of close friends and relatives I have NEVER seen this. I have seen low level insurance company clerks try to argue costs but in each and every case they back off. I am sick and tired of hyperbolic rhetoric based on platitudes. I want specifics.
Bill Moyers is not exactly a good example of journalistic integrity and his show is clearly biased. Like any industry, particularly in the insurance business, there are good companies and bad. By showing the testimony of three of the really bad ones (Aliant, Wellpoint and Golden Rule) Moyers gives viewers a false impression of the industry in general. But that is nothing new with Moyers.
“How well can a health care system function when its legal obligation is to maximize profits”
Since when is it a crime to maximize profits if a company can? Your problem is that you do not understand the business involved and the fact that government regulations allow for those profits. Also, with that statement you include doctors. If you intended that then I group you right I with Obama’s deceitful comments about doctors and surgeons who do work based on profit. Anyone believing that is ignorant.
“its incentives are to increase the number of patients procedures, and its processes focus on minimizing and standardizing individual patient interaction?”
The reason, and the ONLY reason, for increased patient procedures is for doctors and hospitals to legally protect themselves against the ambulance chasers. Do you have any idea what a doctor pays per year in malpractice insurance? And all because some slime ambulance chaser convinced a patient to get-rich-quick. You people are quick to look at the few healthcare insurance execs who make million dollar salary. Ever look at the rich ambulance chasers who made far, far more money that any CEO by concocting bogus malpractice lawsuits and thereby driving up costs for these insurance companies?
Once again your friend Moyers manages to promote an issue concerning the patient’s interests without talking about the pink elephant in the room called nuisance malpractice lawsuits.
Rolling Stone has never been a sanctuary of truth since I started reading it and they tend to extend the truth. That’s where Matt Taibbi comes in. First I take issue with statements like “our failed health care system.” Failed who? What percent of Americans do not get the very best care in the world? How many lives are saved everyday in this failed health care system? And why do people from other countries come here to take advantage of our failed health care system.
Whatever problems there are in the healthcare system will not be resolved with more incompetent government and skyrocketing taxes. The solution is less government regulation to allow for much greater competition among insurance companies which, like with telecommunications and airlines, will drive down costs and will place consumers in the driver’s seat in demanding what the conditions are, while maintaining the same high quality doctors and hospitals we currently have. This is the last thing big insurance companies want because they have the market cornered now and are in bed with state government officials. But Democrats refuse to discuss any of this because the big insurance companies are as much in bed with them as they are with Republicans and Democrats never want to upset the lawsuit happy lawyers.
“…Democrats never want to upset the lawsuit happy lawyers.”
Howard Dean admitted as much a couple of weeks ago in a typical Dean candid moment. Trial lawyers contributed over 40 million reasons to the Obama campaign, truly a remarkable investment that thus far seems to be paying off.
Hope, Change, Payola.
hokma
Did you by an chance watch the video interview with Wendell Potter? He was a former head of public relations – he explains how the industry works. How rescission is used. I did not claim it happens to every one. Just the industry misleads by their statistics, since rescission doesn’t come into play until you become an expense.
I didn’t claim being for profit is a bad thing, it just don’t think our current for profit system is the right thing for health care. IMO. It creates too many conflict in the system – that don’t provide the best results for the patient/taxpayer/user.
I have an axiom. Where there is a problem there is a lawyer. That not only includes ambulance chasers, it also includes elected or unelected policy makers and lobbyists. The less laws and regulations the less need for lawyers. What one te biggest factors in cost build up for any company is government related expenses.
This problem of government over-regulation extends to the mortgage crisis. These banks were not going to extend loans to undeserving people and only did so becausse of laws that forced them to. My spouse had to go on long term disability and the first thing the LTD insurance company did was deny coverage without looking at any MRIs or speaking to a doctor. Why? Because our federal government under ERISA entitles them to without any penalty.
I have ZERO confidence in anything the Federal government does and like most Americans do not want them completely overhauling something that just needs some fixing.
Get rid of government regulations that restrict competition and you will see health insurance costs go down fast which will not make big insurance companies too happy.
Agreed, Linda. I have no problem with any company making a decent profit. But should our health = the profit the insurance companies make.
Sorry, but I don’t think so.
hokma made a statement yesterday that he/she was paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 @ month for a decent family healthcare insurance. The median wage of the “ordinary American worker” is in the $50,000 range. If you’re paying $20,000+ coverage and making $55,000 per annum, you’re already on the ropes.
He/she also made some ridiculous comment that the average American worker pays nothing or relatively little for healthcare coverage [that is, if the coverage is available].
“”In the U.S. “ordinary working people” are have health insurance through their employer and either pay nothing or relatively little.”
Well, hello! My husband and I make more than the median. But not so much we’d be considered “rich.”
We pay $6800 + per annum on our own [though the price keeps going up every year] and put another $3000+ in a personal health savings account to pickup all the things our insurance package does not cover. The company my husband works for chips in, too. In fact, it matches. That’s in the neighborhood of $17,000 per year, a fairly substantial chunk of change.
Sorry, but I don’t consider that free or relatively nothing. But at the same time, we consider ourselves fortunate: because at the moment, we can still afford the premiums.
I could cut our costs by going to managed care, but we had a catastrophic event with one of our kids ten years ago. My son would not have received the therapies he needed under an HMO plan. And the final cost? It would have left us bankrupt.
Even with our package, I spent more time on the phone after my son’s injury fighting with insurance clerks than I care to remember. Why? They tried to nickel and dime us to death, insisting that certain treatments fell outside the insurance coverage. That was BS. For those without an advocate? You’re up a damn creek without a paddle.
So, we’re still carrying the upgraded package out of sheer fear. The premiums keep going up and coverage keeps shrinking.
This is not a system that works! And for families who cannot afford the price, you’re dead in the water [no pun intended]. In fact, if my husband and I lost our employment, we too would lose coverage.
I have no problem with insurance companies making a profit. But there’s a good, solid profit, and then there’s an obscene profit. And when it’s done on the backs of ordinary Americans, I say enough is enough!
In certain cases employers still pick up the entire cost and employees pay nothing. In other cases I said people pay relatively little. What I should have said is that they pay relatively little of the entire cost.
In a competitive market, when an industry is so heavily regulated that it prohibits competition, it permits industry leaders to charge as much as they want. The way the industry is is the way the big insurance conglomerates want it. It is to their benefit.
What Obama and his allies are doing is misguidingly telling people that the only other option for competition is a government run plan. That is a lie. What they want is to nationalize as many indsutries as they can and healthcare is the biggest.
If you take away state mandates and eliminate all interstate regulations, then competition will dramatically reduce insurance premiums because lower costs providers working on lower profit margins will force that. It will also lead to better policies without precondition stipulations.
Linda A.
I WILL thank you for providing the link to the Bill Moyers’ interview of the CIGNA whistleblower. The man’s very cogent expression of his journey to understanding the wrong direction of his company was quite compelling. His points all were perfectly clear.
I grew up feeling guilty if I became ill because my parents couldn’t afford health care. I felt terrible for my mother, whose congenital health issues were never addressed properly, because she would always find a way to pay for our medical care if we needed it, but she never really was able to do anything about hers, until it was too late.
When I earned a full-tuition scholarship to the local university, she was quite proud of me. But…sadly…I often felt that her pride was based on her reading of the student health insurace coverage I had also earned with that scholarship. She was happy for me, but I know a little jealous for herself.
As a mother myself, I could always breathe a sigh of relief in regard to my older son who joined the Navy, went through the Nuclear Power School, served on a submarine, and then was recruited by a national steel company. During his adult life, he–as I have–has always had very good coverage.
But the years I spent holding my breath for my younger son were frightening. He did a lot of job hopping and never had insurance. Finally he found a company to work for that did provide a very minimal healthcare option, but I didn’t relax until he had worked there long enough to be eligible for the much better insurance plan.
It is a frightening thing for a mother. And as one of those people in the majority who has spent far more on health insurance than I have ever spent on actual health care, I am now at an age where the next worry comes in.
I am serious when I say that I often think about how I can cause myself to die quickly if I ever come down with a serious health problem. I have worked hard to save to be able to leave something for my sons; I’ll be damned if I will give it to a health insurance executive enjoying his trips on a corporate jet.
When Hillary, as First Lady, attempted to get her reform in place, I was confident that she had done the work to make it work. I was appalled by the way the Republicans and the heath insurance companies skewered her.
I believed then, as I do now, that health care should NOT be driven by a profit motive. I can tell that over the years of my life, that profit motive has grown strength and has become basically the ONLY concern of the healthcare industry–because of the stupid free-market, trickle down ideas of the right. Health care should be a public concern in a democracy just as education is–profit should not be a motive. It’s fine to offer options besides the public option for those who want them, but we need a public system for providing health care.
However, now that we have the bumbling, untrustworthy, confusing Obama administration (Why in the H#$@ couldn’t people see that Hillary would have handled this much better?), we do have to worry. This from the Matt Taibbi quotation says it all:
And you expressed exactly how I feel now:
I agree. This is a fundamental shift in perspective that, in my opinion, is prerequisite to any serious dialogue about healthcare. Unfortunately, much of the conversation is still seeped in either/or thinking that leads to false debates, i.e., the “what have you got against profit” response, etc.
As a healthcare provider who made a conscious decision to remove myself from insurance panels, my personal experience has convinced me that for-profit healthcare limits accessibility and choice. It is interesting to hear fear of “rationing” used as a critque of alternatives to the current system: in our current system it is insurance company bureaucrats who determine treatment protocols, and who control patient access to treatment.
While malpractice insurance is certainly a concern for physicians, doctors – and hospitals – who participate on insurance panels are contractually obligated to accept whatever fee the third-party payer deems to be “usual and customary”. The costs of actually collecting these fees can be quite high, as some insurance companies have a pattern (perhaps a policy??) of denying initial claims. As consumers know, third-party payers are also accepting less and less responsibility for paying for services as reflected in escalating out-of-pocket expenses such as deductibles and co-pays.
This whole process adds layers and layers of cost between consumers and providers: billing services, auditing or risk management activities, etc.
Whew…!
Obama’s plan, or the democrats in the House and in the Senate can be likened to doctors who decide to do a heart bypass, liver, kidney transplant all in one long surgical procedure. Of course the patient will never survive.
Just like in today’s economic predicament, the American system will fall apart in more ways than one.
Or perhaps that’s what they really want to accomplish, ala Van Jones’ agenda.
Apt analogy felizarte.
Sorry Linda, but America-hating Matt Taibi and statist Bill Moyers aren’t people I look to for answers to this problem.
Government collusion with the insurance industry has brought us the system we currently have. And guess what? They’re at it again!
As someone here (WMDB — not sure if the letters are correct) talked about on other HC threads, there’s a no-insurance chain of primary care clinics cropping up which started in Seattle called Qliance. It was started with the needs of the working poor in mind. Check it out.
http://www.qliance.com/index.html
Now THIS is my idea of reform and neither the government nor the insurance industry is involved in bringing this innovation to healthcare consumers.
Access to something like Qliance along with an HSA (Health Savings Account) or some other kind of catastrophic plan could provide good, affordable coverage that many people would find acceptable.
The insurance companies are in business to make money. To them, making people healthy is at most a trivial side-effect.
Glenn Reynolds:
WILL ANYONE IN THE PRESS ASK THIS QUESTION TONIGHT?
How much will reform cost, and how does he mean to pay for it?
That question takes on greater urgency now that Obama has asked Congress to raise the federal debt limit past its already-staggering current $12.1 trillion.
Unless it does so by the middle of next month, when the national debt is expected to exceed the existing limit, Washington faces default and a curtailment of government operations.
The ceiling already has been raised three times in the past two years. The House raised the limit to $13 trillion in April (with Democratic leaders using a disingenuous parliamentary maneuver to avoid a recorded roll call).
Now the Senate must take action.
But how high can debt be allowed to go — and how much higher will it go if ObamaCare, whose estimated costs could exceed $1 trillion, is enacted?
Back when he was in the Senate, Obama voted against raising the debt limit, saying it was irresponsible and a sign of bad leadership in the White House. So what is it now?
http://www.instapundit.com
The narcissist I know … often offers to lend people money, and over time people realize they end up further in debt when they agree to borrow from this person.
It’s by design. Further debt means people are even more dependent on this innocent-seeming narcissist. And the narcissist gets to berate the dependents for being irresponsible. And gets to roll the eyes and ask “why am I the only one” who has it all together.
If you’re worried about what healthcare reform would cost, you should consider that Americans are already paying way too much. Other Western democracies set limits to the amounts insurance companies can charge, and/or they have a single payer government run system. Other Western democracies bargain with healthproviders and drug companies to set reasonable prices. The problem with what Obama seems to have been suggesting so far is that the legislation will let insurance and drug companies and health providers decide what they want to charge and the government will not bargain, because the prices are supposedly kept in check by ‘competition’. This is nonsense, and the various medical insurance companies, the drug companies and the health providers have mostly been making obscene profits and rationing service.
It’s time Americans got value for the money. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 1999, the average American family spent $5,791 on health insurance: in 2008 this has risen to $12,680.
According to OECD figures, Americans spend more than twice the amount on healthcare as other countries, and Americans are not any healthier and don’t live longer than people in countries who spend half of what Americans spend. Americans just have to start having the money they pay out actually go towards healthcare, and not to buy foreign villas and domestic palaces and stuff the Cayman Island bank accounts of the insurance and drug executives.
National per capita spending on healthcare, 2007
United States: $7,290
Norway: $4,763
Switzerland: $4,417
Luxembourg: $4,162
Canada: $3,895
Austria: $3,761
France: $3,601
Germany: $3,588
Netherlands: $3,527
Belgium: $3,462
OECD average: $2,964
Life expectancy for these nations, 2006
United States: 78.1
Norway: 80.6
Switzerland: 81.7
Luxembourg: 79.4
Canada: 80.7
Austria: 79.9
France: 80.7
Germany: 79.8
Netherlands: 79.8
Belgium: 79.5
Number of practicing physicians in these nations, per 1,000 people, 2007
United States: 2.43
Norway: 3.86
Switzerland: 3.85
Luxembourg: 2.87
Canada: 2.18
Austria: 3.75
France: 3.37
Germany: 3.50
Netherlands: 3.93
Belgium: 4.03
Infant mortality, deaths per 1,000 live births, 2006
United States: 6.7
Norway: 3.2
Switzerland: 4.4
Luxembourg: 2.5
Canada: 5.0
Austria: 3.6
France: 3.8
Germany: 3.8
Netherlands: 4.4
Belgium: 3.7
(Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)
Amenable mortality rate, preventable deaths per 100,000 people, 2002-2003
United States: 110
Norway: 80
Switzerland: N/A
Luxembourg: N/A
Canada: 77
Austria: 84
France: 65
Germany: 90
Netherlands: 82
Belgium: N/A
(Source: The Commonwealth Fund)
Estimated number of deaths in the United States from lack of health insurance, 2006: 22,000
(Source: The Urban Institute)
Milton Friedman identified the problem 30 yrs ago – Third Party Payors.
I must also wonder, how will he fund the 53 new governmental agencies required to feed this pig of a bill?
Why not make it easy for his bots to count and make it an even 100? Oh, most of them have six fingers. Never mind.
Great, Ferd. Soon we’ll need a Counting Czar.
ROFLMAO!!
Perfect timing, Doc99. The bot Czar is over on the “Paglia” thread, counting the number of healthcare bills.
Commodities, stocks and foreign currencies all rise as investors sell dollars.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/08/dollar-euro-imf-markets-currencies-united-nations.html
Автор, у тебя записи никто не крадет c блога? А то меня достали уже – тырят и тырят. Только тем и занимаюсь что нахожу их…
Блеск.