Health Insurance Degeneration Continues

[DL82]

You miss one important point; Someone must pay.

That someone is not a government bureaucrat, it’s an ordinary wage-earning American. He’s the guy that funds everything. If he cannot pay, the debt will not be paid.

I think this gets to the heart of the difference between the way we Europeans view healthcare and the way you do in America.

The question of who the someone is who must pay. It’s either:
a) the person who uses the service
or
b) everybody who might some day use the service.

Because none of us choose to be ill, or to have an ill relative, none of us choose to make use of medical treatment in the way we choose to buy a candy bar or a new motorcycle. We choose to have the treatment because we choose not to die or be permanently incapacitated.

A good analogy might be having your home broken into. If someone breaks into your home, you will choose to call the police, not because you like calling the police, but because you want them to catch the burglar. Does that mean that only those who are unlucky enough to have to call the police should have to pay for them? Of course not!

Americans, through their insurance companies, do show that they agree with this idea of collectivisation, that you should pay for the privilege of knowing that you can have medical treatment if and when you need it. Why not go the step further, and instead of relying on a private profit-making company to organise that collective cover, let everyone be involved through a system of progressive taxation.

We all benefit through the knowledge that we have the right to use a high-quality healthcare service if and when we need it. That is the primary benefit. The individuals who are unfortunate enough to need to use that benefit more are just particular cases of that benefit being applied.

 

[vern_humphrey]

We all benefit through the knowledge that we have the right to use a high-quality healthcare service if and when we need it. That is the primary benefit. The individuals who are unfortunate enough to need to use that benefit more are just particular cases of that benefit being applied.

And none of this requires a government monopsony.

There are far better ways of paying for healthcare.

 

[DL82]

And none of this requires a government monopsony.

There are far better ways of paying for healthcare.

OK, maybe there are better ways, but what are they? If you have a better idea, please suggest it. One thing is for sure, the current US private insurance system isn’t one of them.

 

[vern_humphrey]

OK, maybe there are better ways, but what are they? If you have a better idea, please suggest it. One thing is for sure, the current US private insurance system isn’t one of them.

How many times do I have to post this?

MSAs

The fundamental principle behind Medical Savings Accounts (MSA) is that you buy cheap, high-deductible catastrophic health insurance, and then save an amount each year equal to the deductible with tax-free dollars. You use that money to cover any medical expenses up to the deductible. You roll any unused dollars over at the end of each year into your IRA. The institution holding the MSA would issue a credit card, and this card would be used to pay for health care. This would have several important impacts:

1. Paperwork makes up from one-third (in private health plans) to two-thirds (in government programs) of the total cost of health care. The use of this credit card approach would dramatically reduce the paperwork and result in lower costs.

1. The current systems of paying for health care have long delays built in. The pay-on-the-spot approach would allow care providers to further lower costs.

1. MSAs provide an incentive for people to bargain for health care – when people spend their own money (and know they can keep all they save), they have an incentive to bargain for better rates.

1. MSAs provide an incentive to avoid over-consumption of medical care.

People who cannot afford MSAs can apply for assistance, based on their most recent tax return, and would receive proportionate assistance – not an automatic 100%. They would get help with insurance premiums and with each payment from their MSA – so they would always have the chance to save something by bargaining and not over-consuming.

Young people would especially benefit from this – since they could build up substantial savings in their healthiest years.

 

[pontoon]

We left good old England because of your taxation and I don’t think we want more governement run programs and more taxes. What is wrong with a health savings account? Well people don’t save the money and then when something happens those people expect the rest of us to bail them out. People need to take responsibility for their lives. If we are going to have socialized medicine I think the Catholic church should lead the way and have free health care for everyone at all of its Catholic Hospitals. Lead thru example isn’t that true socialism everything free PEACE LOVE DOPE

 

[mary_bobo]

One thing I’d like to draw attention to:

Everyone says America leads the world in medical research because of its’ private healthcare system. This is patently untrue.

Please show a site that we can refer to that backs up this assertion.

Look at the argument over stem.-cell research. Embryo research is not outlawed by the US government, but no Federal funds can be put into funding it. Those who are pro-embryo-research say that this will lead to America falling behind the rest of the world.

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of embryo research for a moment, this proves that the major investor in medical research in the United States is the Federal government!

How do you figure this? There are many companies and foundations that fund medical research. I personally don’t want our government funding some of these projects

That’s the same in any country. No medical insurance company, and no private hospital, and no University have the kind of money needed (tens of billions) to carry out leading-edge research in biochemistry in the 21st century. Therefore the premiums Americans pay for their healthcare clearly don’t directly fund leading-edge medical research.

Private medical treatment made sense in the 1950s, when family doctors earned average white-collar salaries, the main hospital treatment was bed-rest, most surgery involved removing big lumps of guts with a scalpel, and most drugs could be discovered and produced by a couple of guys in white coats in the kind of laboratory you would find in your average chemistry workshop in your average community college. The overheads for the cost of a hospital stay was the cost of a bed, a nurse, your food and a daily visit from a doctor, about the same as the cost of a stay in a nice hotel.

When you get into the complexity and expense of the kind of medical equipment in a modern hospital, the ethics of whose needs justify access to the most expensive equipment and drugs, the extent of specialist training needed by even basic nursing staff, in a 21st century healthcare system, it becomes impossible and unaffordable to bill individuals for the costs of specialist equipment and complex surgery used to treat them. We need to spread the cost, and spread the entitlement, otherwise the standard of treatment most people can expect to afford is lower than it was in the past.

Sounds to me, correct me if I am wrong, that you are in favor of rationing health care. I don’t think that will fly here. But we may very well get it if the political climate changes here. I am just glad that it probably not affect me much. But I am not in favor of a bunch of government bureaucrats running the health care system.

 

[JW10631]

Administrative costs come from two sources. Processing the paperwork (which is done by the insurance companies) is one source. The other is creating the paper work (which is done by the health provider.) The latter source is not audited, and is necessarily **equal to or greater than **the insurance company costs (since small doctor’s offices cannot take advantage of economies of scale.)

Nor does a state audit cover administrative costs which occur outside the state – say, in the home office of the insurance company.

Not true, Vern. Not true at all. I’ve been in this business most of my adult life and that isn’t the case. Admin costs are not 20-30% of health insurance costs.

 

[Listener]

I would like to make a comment about Medicare: I love it! My husband is old enough for Medicare, and I am not. He has traditional Medicare along with the other insurance that we have had for years.

My husband has had several surgeries and medical procedures since he turned 65. Medicare is billed first by the provider. After Medicare pays, the bill goes to the other insurance.

The Medicare EOB’s are very neat and easy to read. When the EOB comes back from the other insurance, it always says that his balance is ZERO! I love it!

On the other hand, my life is not so easy because I am not old enough for Medicare. I have the usual complicated office co-pays, deductibles, and the leftover percentage I need to pay. I constantly find mistakes in my bills. I have spent an incredible amount of time fighting with the insurance company because they won’t pay my medicals correctly.

I am dead serious. They should figure out a way to put the whole country on Medicare! Our lives would be much easier.

 

[ribozyme]

It comes down to another question - would you rather have your healthcare requirements managed by accountable policymakers at a local level, who you can democratically remove if they fail in their duties, or would you rather these requirements were dictated by an unaccountable private company who are only concerned with their shareholders’ profits? It comes down to the question of whether democracy works at all.

The former… I always love impartial policy wonks.

 

[ribozyme]

One thing I’d like to draw attention to:

Everyone says America leads the world in medical research because of its’ private healthcare system. This is patently untrue.

Please show a site that we can refer to that backs up this assertion.

tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=51faeaa7-5021-40d0-95d3-0f260b25edd4

Atlas Shrugged?

It is the American health care system that leads the world in research and development of new technologies, processes, equipment and medicines. Americans bear this burden for the rest of the world.

bmj.com/cgi/content/full/331/7522/958

Medical research will pay off with cures to diseases and eventually full body rejuvenation within the lifetimes of some of us alive right now and yet George W. Bush wants to freeze the NIH budget.

In stark contrast to his initiative for physical sciences [ScienceNOW, 1 February and 3 February], President Bush today proposed a budget freeze for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2007, holding its funding steady at $28.6 billion. The proposal, part of the President’s overall budget request to Congress, is drawing concern and even outrage from biomedical research advocacy groups, who worry that NIH is losing ground after its budget was doubled from 1999 to 2003. Now the budget proposal, which curbs domestic discretionary spending while boosting funding for national defense, must wind its way through Congress before being approved in some form later this year.

This is being penny wise and pound foolish. A freeze is really a cut by whatever the rate of inflation turns out to be. So medical research is getting cut 2% or 3%. Yet medical research is, in my opinion, the best value per dollar of government spending.

futurepundit.com/archives/003260.html

 

[BamaRider]

Lemme just ask The Ribo this- You think turning *your *healthcare over to govt is a good thing?

 

[vern_humphrey]

Lemme just ask The Ribo this- You think turning *your *healthcare over to govt is a good thing?

Absolutely!! We will have a system with all the efficiency of the Post Office and all the compassion of the IRS.

And it will only cost us about twice what we pay for health insurance now.

 

[pontoon]

You are correct vern. Who will want be become a doctor. Who wants to study for 12 years to become a government employee or have a government employee tell them how to operate. Better still who wants to have a government employee opreating on them. Rest assure all of us paying taxes will be much more with no end in site. We could run out of doctors as our best and brightest might all be lawyers.

 

[vern_humphrey]

You are correct vern. Who will want be become a doctor. Who wants to study for 12 years to become a government employee or have a government employee tell them how to operate. Better still who wants to have a government employee opreating on them. Rest assure all of us paying taxes will be much more with no end in site.

We will wind up like Canada, with doctors fleeing the country in search of greener pastures elsewhere. The more affluent of us, faced with sub-standard care and long waiting lists, will go to foreign countries and pay for their medical treatment out of their pockets. The poor will die on the waiting list.

We could run out of doctors as our best and brightest might all be lawyers.

 

[BamaRider]

Pontoon asks-

Better still who wants to have a government employee opreating on them

To which I say-

NOT ME!! hehehhe!

 

[pathia]

My mother is currently losing her battle with ovarian cancer. It could have been found over two years earlier if profit had not been an issue.

How? Her cancer had been showing on her scans for two years before she was diagnosed. Why was it not seen? The screening of her scans was outsourced overseas via the internet to a radiologist who was paid much less so the hospital could increase its profits more.

They profit, my mother is dying as a result

 

[mary_bobo]

Lemme just ask The Ribo this- You think turning *your *healthcare over to govt is a good thing?

Isn’t it interesting how “wise” the young have become these days? I can remember being an idealist when young, then I grew up and was hit square in the face with reality. I think we would be foolish to turn the whole of our health care system over to government at any level. I am not saying that we should not help those who cannot do it on their own, but too many of us are getting fat and lazy, willing to sit back and let someone else be responsible for us, with somebody’s else’s money.

 

[ribozyme]

Isn’t it interesting how “wise” the young have become these days? I can remember being an idealist when young, then I grew up and was hit square in the face with reality. I think we would be foolish to turn the whole of our health care system over to government at any level. I am not saying that we should not help those who cannot do it on their own, but too many of us are getting fat and lazy, willing to sit back and let someone else be responsible for us, with somebody’s else’s money.

What? I understand reality! I read Paul Krugman’s columns in the NY Times. I am not “wise” but he is wise.

 

[mary_bobo]

What? I understand reality! I read Paul Krugman’s columns in the NY Times. I am not “wise” but he is wise.

You seem like a very bright person, but you would be better served to broaden your reading list and not believe everything you see in print on either side of an issue.

 

[vern_humphrey]

breitbart.com/article.php…cle=1&catnum=1

Jan 28 08:02 PM US/Eastern
By JIM SUHR
Associated Press Writer

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Substandard care at a southern Illinois Veterans Affairs hospital may have contributed to 19 deaths over the past two years, a VA official said Monday as he apologized to affected families and pledged reform.

The hospital in Marion, Ill., initially drew scrutiny over deaths connected to a single surgeon, but two federal reports found fault with five other doctors.

The hospital undertook many surgeries that its staffing or lack of proper surgical expertise made it ill-equipped to handle, and hospital administrators were too slow to respond once problems surfaced, said Dr. Michael Kussman, U.S. veterans affairs undersecretary for health.