Affordable Health Care is a Christian Act

[kingofseoul]

You seem to equate the two criticisms. While the popes have criticized capitalism, they have condemned socialism.

If you have an equally blistering condemnation from a pope on free markets, I’d like to see it.

Quite right! The Pope did condemn socialism. However, the AHA is not socialism! I seems that many Americans think that the government providing a direct service to its citizens is socialism. It’s not. If it were, then all democratic countries would be socialist, including the United States.

 

[Jerry_Miah]

Someone please tell me what value the insurance companies provide?
Since their duty is first to their stockholders, and second to patients, which leads them to deny care whenever possible, how is including them in our health plan useful for us?

No one seems to object to Medicare. Jerry states: " I would have preferred single-payer (medicare for all), but it wasn’t politically possible."
It’s possible now, since whatever the Supreme Court decides, the ACA will be a no starter, and doing nothing is not an option.
We need to push for an expansion of Medicare.

Yes, there are many who hope that if the Court rejects the ACA, this will mean we will get single-payer national health insurance (Medicare for all).

But that will still be politically difficult; personally I think it will not happen and we will go back to 45,000 people dying every year for lack of health care access, the moral disaster status quo.

What is forgotten by many who oppose ACA is that this has been a fight for decades and decades while the rest of the industrialized world settled long ago. ACA is the best our system can do right now given certain elements in our society (and I can’t say much more without getting into politics, but I think everyone knows what we’re talking about).

 

[Corki]

Someone please tell me what value the insurance companies provide?
Since their duty is first to their stockholders, and second to patients, which leads them to deny care whenever possible, how is including them in our health plan useful for us?

The role of the insurance companies is the same role that insurance companies provide in other areas - that of mitigating risk for individuals by pooling resources and using statistical analysis to make sure that claims do not exceed income. This is true whether we are talking about health insurance, auto insurance, life insurance or unemployment insurance.

There are some well publicized cases of insurance companies denying care with tragic results but that is far from the norm. To say that insurance companies “deny care whenever possible” simply because they (some of them) have stockholders, is like saying that all retail stores cheat customers whenever they can in order to make a higher profit. It isn’t true for the retail industry and it isn’t true for the insurance industry.

Insurance companies follow a business model that is designed to make money rather than to lose money. If insurance companies regularly operated at a loss, we wouldn’t have any insurance companies in short order. Nor would we have investors willing to put capital into the pool used to operate the companies. Without insurance companies, we would have to pay for our medical expenses directly to the provides - doctors, hospitals and drug companies who also have to make a profit. Even a so-called single payer plan just creates one giant insurance company that still has to stay in the black to remain viable.

 

[gtrenewed]

You keep avoiding my question about what would keep people from waiting until they needed health care to buy insurance and cancelling once they are well. I don’t see any reason to continue this exchange until you do.

I believe I did answer it but here it is again:

1. you cannot predict when a major health crisis or accident will happen. If you don’t have insurance before entering the hospital it is too late because many companies have waiting periods and you would be financially ruined or in a deep financial hole.
2. people with pre-existing conditions have on going health issues so keeping coverage is necessary.
3. this discussion revolves around those who are denied insurance meaning they want to buy it but cannot. Most have had coverage but lost it for one reason or another. All the money they paid in while healthy counts for nothing going forward.
4. for those who think like you do, a very short sighted and illusory position, is the reason for the individual mandate requirement. By doing this the risk is vastly reduced to the insurance company and hospital which makes policies more affordable for all.

 

[Corki]

ACA is the best our system can do right now given certain elements in our society (and I can’t say much more without getting into politics, but I think everyone knows what we’re talking about).

This is an extremely sad statement. The ACA is the first stab at real reform of the health care system. It was put together in a rush, with too many political side deals and without a process of review and discussion. I refuse to believe that this is the best we can do.

 

[pismopal]

What we need most of all is an affordable government and a people who understand that our debt ,brought on by irresponsible spending, is an anchor which will take us all to the financial bottom. It is coming and there are not enough adult thinkers in this country to stop it. Free health care…free food…pay for not working…and not enough people with jobs. Add it up folks, it is a hoax.

 

[sedonaman]

… I seems that many Americans think that the government providing a direct service to its citizens is socialism. It’s not. If it were, then all democratic countries would be socialist, including the United States.

Well, aren’t they at least partially?

 

[gtrenewed]

First of all, I think you have a couple of misconceptions going on here:

i.imgur.com/ntvMY.jpg

The above is a screenshot taken this morning from Google Finance. You can click on the picture to go to the actual page from Google Finance to verify that I am showing you real data. It shows most of the major companies involved in providing health insurance services. You can see that, while all of them currently are making a profit, none of those profits are horribly excessive. (In my opinion, a 5% profit margin is not an immoral profit). Compare this to a company like Microsoft, that makes a 33% profit. If you’d like to complain about profit-mongering, it’s pretty clear where those complaints should go.

First if I don’t have any Microsoft products, I will not be financially ruined. Without insurance I could be and many are.

Second, your data does not reflect the huge sum of money paid to executives, lobbyists, politicians, monuments to themselves and so on. Those things come off the gross as expenses to make the net. It is immoral to look for ways to deny coverage to existing policy holders and many doctors who have acted as the gatekeeper have had severe conscience stress.

The reason insurance companies don’t cover something or that they deny coverage is not an evil plot. I know it seems that way but it just isn’t. They have very specific rules on what they cover and what they don’t cover for a given policy. If the insurance policy is with a large employer, they will actually negotiate with the employer what types of things are and aren’t covered. Why? So that the premiums paid by the employer are at a cost that the employer can afford. The more that’s covered, the higher the premiums will be.

It is evil when they use those rules to cloud the truth. Many rules are ambiguos to provide loopholes that are indiscrimmately applied. Many applications are so confusing that they provide easy fodder to say that the applicant lied and thus deny coverage.

But why? I, honestly, can’t imagine anybody who would say “die, you b*****d, die”. I’m sure that we would like the ideal world where everything is covered with a zero dollar copay for anything. However, in the real world, I don’t think we could afford the premiums. It’s very, very rare that an employer provides 100% of the premium – at least part of those costs would be passed to all of us who were part of that scheme.

That is the effect, life decisions based on profit and loss. It is not about 100% coverage, it is about equity and fairness.

Look at it with a cynical eye: it would be in the insurance company’s interest to not have to deny anything. Their costs would go down while their revenues would rise. Just imagine: anytime a doctor, hospital, or pharmacy presents them a bill, they pay it out. No investigation required, no analysis, just pay it. Rather than costing about 10-12% for processing, they could reduce their costs to probably 1-2%. They would just pass the increased costs on as higher premiums. That equals more revenue. So if they’re still making 5% profit, more revenue means more dollars of earnings (even though it’s the same percentage: 5% of 1 billion dollars = 20 million; 5% of 2 billion dollars = 40 million). And that would equate to higher dividends for the stockholders. But in the real world, the subscribers wouldn’t be able to afford the premiums and would drop their coverage…which would reduce their revenues…thus, there’s no way they could do that in the real world.

This is really a smoke-screen of an arguement. Insurance companies do not have to be efficient, they simply pass the costs on, ask you employer if you have that coverage. In fact, the whole medical system does not have to be efficient and that’s the problem.

Our poor health standing in the world demonstrates that our focus is misplaced. Dealing with insurance company immorality is just the start. The medical community inefficiencies are part of the blame for high costs. Paying doctors to keep us healthy rather than just fixing us is part of the solution. There are medical entrpreneurs who have demonstrated better ways of providing health care but have been fought by the status quo thinking of insurance companies, hospitals, and other doctors.

 

[sedonaman]

I am not a fan of insurance companies either. But for probably different reasons than you. I will explain later on.

The purpose of insurance is to spread risk around a whole lot of people, The more people the better. If you are relatively healthy, … etc.

This is a good post, but worthless to those who believe in a free lunch.

Having said that, let me illustrate why government involvement would be a colossal waste of resources, as it is in every endeavor.

Suppose I am in charge of a medical imaging lab under obamacare. The government bureaucrat in charge of funding imaging labs will ask me sometime in March of every year how many MRIs I plan to do the next fiscal year [FY]. Since I anticipate doing, say, 100 this year, I tell him 110 next year to allow for growth in the demographics. He beats me down to 104 because he thinks I’ve inflated the number. So next FY, I get funded for 104 MRIs, 26 per quarter *. Fast forward to the last quarter, and I note that I have done only 60 MRIs so far that FY. Based on that rate, I estimate only 80 total by FY end. I will be in a bind if I do less than 104 by FY end because it will affect the number I get funded for the FY after that, AND the Washington bureaucrat will accuse me of having lied to him. What do I do? Answer: call up all the doctors I know and tell them to send me more business … IOW, no matter what the patient’s problem, order a MRI until further notice. Meanwhile, another MRI lab across the country is in a bind because they are going to run out of MRI funding before FY end. I don’t dare ask my excess funding to be transferred to the other because my fate will be the same next year as if I did nothing: reduced funding. So, we have a situation where one is going without while another is wasting resources. The government will have compounded the shortage problem by wasting resources.

This scenario is not so far-fetched because it is what our government does every year in other areas. Self-preservation being part of human nature, it is the way it thinks.

Some here have said to put everyone on Medicare. Medicare is rife with fraud, waste, and abuse [FWA]. How do we know? obama has told us that he can pay for his plan by eliminating FWA. If there is that much money to be saved, Medicare FWA must be rife. obama doesn’t need any more laws to eliminate or even reduce FWA, so why hasn’t he? It has been at least two years since he made this claim. Have you heard him talk of any progress? Of course not, because there has been none. In short, he is not interested in an efficient use of scarce resources.

It has been said that if the government was put in charge of the Sahara Desert, there would be a shortage of sand in two years. The same fate awaits health care under government management. If someone thinks otherwise, I challenge him to show me a program that has worked and is not in financial trouble.*

 

[Corki]

This is a good post, but worthless to those who believe in a free lunch.

Having said that, let me illustrate why government involvement would be a colossal waste of resources, as it is in every endeavor.

This is the crux of the discussion. The ONLY way to have a government run (ie single payer) system and to NOT have it go bankrupt ( or to bankrupt the country) almost immediately is to run the system with the same controls on expenses, actuarial calculations and check and balances as the private insurance companies use. If you (not you, sedonaman) think that the insurance companies have graft and waste, you are dreaming if you think the government can do it more efficiently or with less coruption.

The government always spends more money to do the same work that private industry does better.

Which leads to the real Catholic objection. If a smaller, more localized organization can do the work better, it would be a violation of the principal of subsidiarity to give it to the government to do.

 

[sedonaman]

Would that be bases on volunteering/non profit? I am not
familar w what was around then.

…

Credit unions are an example of a mutual benefit society. Here is an explanation. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_benefit_association

 

[JimG]

This is a good post, but worthless to those who believe in a free lunch.

Having said that, let me illustrate why government involvement would be a colossal waste of resources, as it is in every endeavor.

Suppose I am in charge of a medical imaging lab under obamacare. The government bureaucrat in charge of funding imaging labs will ask me sometime in March of every year how many MRIs I plan to do the next fiscal year [FY]. Since I anticipate doing, say, 100 this year, I tell him 110 next year to allow for growth in the demographics. He beats me down to 104 because he thinks I’ve inflated the number. So next FY, I get funded for 104 MRIs, 26 per quarter *. Fast forward to the last quarter, and I note that I have done only 60 MRIs so far that FY. Based on that rate, I estimate only 80 total by FY end. I will be in a bind if I do less than 104 by FY end because it will affect the number I get funded for the FY after that, AND the Washington bureaucrat will accuse me of having lied to him. What do I do? Answer: call up all the doctors I know and tell them to send me more business … IOW, no matter what the patient’s problem, order a MRI until further notice. Meanwhile, another MRI lab across the country is in a bind because they are going to run out of MRI funding before FY end. I don’t dare ask my excess funding to be transferred to the other because my fate will be the same next year as if I did nothing: reduced funding. So, we have a situation where one is going without while another is wasting resources. The government will have compounded the shortage problem by wasting resources.

This scenario is not so far-fetched because it is what our government does every year in other areas. Self-preservation being part of human nature, it is the way it thinks.

Some here have said to put everyone on Medicare. Medicare is rife with fraud, waste, and abuse [FWA]. How do we know? obama has told us that he can pay for his plan by eliminating FWA. If there is that much money to be saved, Medicare FWA must be rife. obama doesn’t need any more laws to eliminate or even reduce FWA, so why hasn’t he? It has been at least two years since he made this claim. Have you heard him talk of any progress? Of course not, because there has been none. In short, he is not interested in an efficient use of scarce resources.

It has been said that if the government was put in charge of the Sahara Desert, there would be a shortage of sand in two years. The same fate awaits health care under government management. If someone thinks otherwise, I challenge him to show me a program that has worked and is not in financial trouble.*I had to laugh while reading this post because it reminded me of the Federal agency I used to work for. Take, for example, travel expenses. We had to estimate travel expenses for the next FY. We always estimated high because we didn’t want to run out of funds if we needed them. But if we didn’t use up all the funds allocated, funding would be reduced for the following year. The result: at the end of the FY approached, other important work was dropped in order to travel, to use up the travel funds so they wouldn’t be left over.

 

[pismopal]

I had to laugh while reading this post because it reminded me of the Federal agency I used to work for. Take, for example, travel expenses. We had to estimate travel expenses for the next FY. We always estimated high because we didn’t want to run out of funds if we needed them. But if we didn’t use up all the funds allocated, funding would be reduced for the following year. The result: at the end of the FY approached, other important work was dropped in order to travel, to use up the travel funds so they wouldn’t be left over.

And this is a minor example of the waste by government but a good example of why the needs of those who are truly deservng of help are best served by Christian charities. Government is a huge hog which eats up enormous amounts but spills even more while gorging itself.

 

[sedonaman]

And this is a minor example of the waste by government but a good example of why the needs of those who are truly deservng of help are best served by Christian charities. Government is a huge hog which eats up enormous amounts but spills even more while gorging itself.

“Government gives benefits to benefit the giver, not the receiver.” – George Soros [before he went commie on us.]

 

[sedonaman]

I had to laugh while reading this post because it reminded me of the Federal agency I used to work for. Take, for example, travel expenses. We had to estimate travel expenses for the next FY. We always estimated high because we didn’t want to run out of funds if we needed them. But if we didn’t use up all the funds allocated, funding would be reduced for the following year. The result: at the end of the FY approached, other important work was dropped in order to travel, to use up the travel funds so they wouldn’t be left over.

You can replace “MRI lab” and “travel funds” with anything the government funds. There is also an equipment buying frenzy the last month of the FY. One year, we ran out of overhaul money in May and weren’t given any more, so some work didn’t get done. The last week in the FY [4th wk in Sept.] we got a call from a Washington manager who wanted to give us a couple of million dollars to spend by the end of the week. We told him “sorry” because all our salaries were paid for, and we had passed the cut-off date for buying equipment. He wasn’t too happy, but where was he in May?

I’m convinced that some people think that government services are like rides in Disneyland: you pay one price [your income taxes] and get to ride all you want with no hassle. Unfortunately, it might work in “The Happiest Place on Earth,” but it does not in the real world. To make the analogy more accurate, assume there is a means test whereby “the poor” don’t pay for admission or the rides; only “the rich” do. It doesn’t take too much imagination to conclude “the poor” would flood the gates and short the system to ground.

 

[JimG]

And this is a minor example of the waste by government but a good example of why the needs of those who are truly deservng of help are best served by Christian charities. Government is a huge hog which eats up enormous amounts but spills even more while gorging itself.

Another example. We were involved in home loan guarantees–nothing so large as HUD–but in the course of business the agency acquired and sold foreclosed homes. We were doing fine with that, at minimal cost. We’d put our listings in local newspapers cheaply, and had a lady who knew how to make a web page and put them online. After some years of this, all offices were advised that they were expected to spend a particular dollar amount per property per month for advertising. When I did the calculations, the figure that we were expected to spend was way more than needed! But, we spent it anyway, with no improved results, because what we had been doing locally was already working at a cheaper cost. Later, we were told the local website would have to go, because all websites would be designed nationally–and of course at a much higher cost.

 

[sedonaman]

… we were told the local website would have to go, because all websites would be designed nationally–and of course at a much higher cost.

Translation: some government VIP’s brother had a website design business. We were told that all our tech manuals had to be printed by the Government Printing Office, so we did. The finished product was so messed up that it was unusable.

 

[markomalley]

First if I don’t have any Microsoft products, I will not be financially ruined. Without insurance I could be and many are.

Second, your data does not reflect the huge sum of money paid to executives, lobbyists, politicians, monuments to themselves and so on. Those things come off the gross as expenses to make the net. It is immoral to look for ways to deny coverage to existing policy holders and many doctors who have acted as the gatekeeper have had severe conscience stress.

Why don’t you tell me the numbers? You make broad brush statements that sound oh-so-conspiratorial, well, why don’t you tell me how much was spent on executive compensation…lobbyists…monuments to selves…and so on.

All of these companies are publicly traded. So those numbers are in their 10-K. And political contributions must be registered with the FEC. So you should have no problem telling me exactly how much was spent.

I’ll give you a little clue, friend. Your normal health insurance company’s expenses break down as follows: 83-90% is paid out to providers, 8-15% are operating expenses, and whatever is left over is profit.

A very small portion of the operating expenses is executive compensation. An even smaller portion of the operating expenses is lobbying / political contributions. But you can take a look at any company’s 10-K and find that out for yourself.

Of course, I’m not holding my breath because the important thing is that they are EEEEEEVVVVVVVIIIIIIILLLLLLL – and we won’t let facts get in the way of our pre-supposition, will we?

As far as the rest of your post, when you decide to actually present a cogent argument to back up your assertions, then maybe it will be worth discussing it with you. Otherwise, you are simply appealing to the emotions of vulnerable people. Exactly the type of thing Leo XIII warned about in Quod Apostolici Muneris. Should I come to the same type of conclusion that the Holy Father did in his encyclical? You tell me.

You complain about rescission. But you don’t cite any numbers to show how horrible a problem it is. You could have easily done a little research to find out that United Health, for example, rescinded 20,000 policies in 2009 due to fraud. Horrible. Evil. Unmentionable. Of course, you would likely not normalize that number to inform the reader that they insure 74,000,000 people (thus, a rescission rate of 0.02 percent). How likely is it that 0.02 percent of the people in this country are going to lie to cover something up?

Don’t get me wrong. I think that health insurance has had a horribly deleterious effect on this country as a whole. I don’t like health insurance whatsoever. But, again, you have yet to advance anything other than an advocacy for nationalizing health care. And even that you haven’t bothered to provide any kind of a fact-based argument for.

So when you are actually ready to discuss, as opposed to rant, please let me know.

 

[Jerry_Miah]

This is an extremely sad statement. The ACA is the first stab at real reform of the health care system. It was put together in a rush, with too many political side deals and without a process of review and discussion. I refuse to believe that this is the best we can do.

I wish it were true! But look at the history of health care reform in the USA for more than three decades. Carter and Reagan mutually agreed to not discuss reform during their debates on the premise that no matter who won the presidency, they would have to set up some kind of health care reform. Wrong! So nothing during Reagan-Bush1. Then Clinton gives it a try, and it’s a debacle. Nothing during Bush2. Now Obama takes the Republican’s own previous plan and presents it and it still is fought tooth and nail. Sorry but I really believe this is the best we can do.

Are you for single-payer, Medicare-for-all?

 

[Corki]

I wish it were true! But look at the history of health care reform in the USA for more than three decades. Carter and Reagan mutually agreed to not discuss reform during their debates on the premise that no matter who won the presidency, they would have to set up some kind of health care reform. Wrong! So nothing during Reagan-Bush1. Then Clinton gives it a try, and it’s a debacle. Nothing during Bush2. Now Obama takes the Republican’s own previous plan and presents it and it still is fought tooth and nail. Sorry but I really believe this is the best we can do.

Which is exactly my point. We have only brought one plan as far as real rules and the plan that has been put forth is garbage. Which of the idiots is it that said we can’t see what’s in it until after it was passed? What kind of insanity is that?!?

Are you for single-payer, Medicare-for-all?

Hell no!