Health insurance rates substantially increasing

[Hildebrand]

Elaine Benedict of Ontario (County) ARC was surprised Wednesday when she heard that next year’s rates for the local BlueCross health plans were to jump by almost 15 percent.

…But companies do not understand why Excellus premiums jumped more than expected, especially since its primary competitor — Preferred Care — announced on Wednesday average premium increases of 8 percent.

…“The plan I have now will probably go up about $90 to $100 a month,” said Misiurewicz of Greece (NY), who is married and has two children ages 18 months and 3 years. “That has to come from somewhere.”

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041202/BUSINESS/412020347/1001

That increase is not even half as bad as another health insurance company available in the Rochester/Finger Lakes Region - HealthNow will increase their plans by an average of 33%!! And MVP Healthcare will increase their plans by 16.3%.

 

[Mom_of_one]

As far as I am concerned, THIS IS A CRIME!!! How much do the “major players” in these companies make? In the 6 figures! I can’t get decent vision care, my insurance won’t pay for a major surgery I need, and they have the nerve to raise their rates and their co-pays?! I guess it is “all about the Benjamins”.

 

[Hildebrand]

Momofone:

As far as I am concerned, THIS IS A CRIME!!! How much do the “major players” in these companies make? In the 6 figures! I can’t get decent vision care, my insurance won’t pay for a major surgery I need, and they have the nerve to raise their rates and their co-pays?! I guess it is “all about the Benjamins”.

And the insurance companies keep racking in those huge profits. Major players can make 7-8 digits. Who is accountable for their bureaucratic waste? Nobody is, they can always hike up our rates. These same insurance companies waste billions of the money we pay. Health Care is not just ANY service, it is a VITAL service.

What they are doing are will eventually bring about socialized medicine. Back in 1993/4, America was not ready for socialized medicine because our health coverage did not cost $5,000+ a year with premiums raising double digits (%) every year.

While I am opposed to government control of health care… I am in favor of getting rid of all insurance companies and paying the federal government for catastrophic coverage (plus other options) and paying into a personal private health savings account for routine check-ups and doctor visits.

 

[jlw]

Hildebrand:

While I am opposed to government control of health care… I am in favor of getting rid of all insurance companies and paying the federal government for catastrophic coverage (plus other options) and paying into a personal private health savings account for routine check-ups and doctor visits.

I second that!!

AND the bill the doctor charges the patient will also go down if his/her business expenses (like MALPRACTICE INSURANCE) goes down too.

Limit junk lawsuit awards!!

 

[otm]

Insurance companies are in business to make a profit. If they don’t make a profit, they are not in business very long.

Part of the profits they make are put aside to pay out future claims, which gives some stability to premiums.

Some things which cut into the profits (which, after having been made, are called savings), include higher than predicted costs, higher than predicted claims, and stock market reversals.

Shifting to a government run health care system is an extremely short road to rationed health care. It will also cause a rapid and large increase of taxes; you think you are paying a lot for insurance now, where do you think the money is going to come from to pay the same (or larger, due to increased bureaucracy) costs, the same claims?

Health care will be rationed because people will only stand for so much in taxes, and then they will vote in someone who will reduce them. Reduce the taxes, less care. Oregon has a health care system and we have already had several rounds of reduction in coverage and/or reduction in coverage. Ask Europeans how they like their tax rates. Notice which countries are most productive (especially compared the the US) and how that correlates to tax structures.

And while we are at it, most health care companies do not pay hugh dividends; the return might be in the 2 to 5% range of the cost of the share of stock. Yes, their top people make six figures; but the company is making 10 to 11 figures. The money they make is hardly a drop in the bucket.

The system needs work and help. Too often, the proposals are worse than the situation at hand.

 

[jlw]

otm,

As a fellow Oregonian, I know of what you speak!!

At least you don’t reside in dreaded Multnomah county!

Too bad measure 35 went down to defeat…

 

[jlw]

otm,

As a fellow Oregonian, I know of what you speak!!

At least you don’t reside in dreaded Multnomah county!

Too bad measure 35 went down to defeat…

 

[JW10631]

Get rid of insurance companies?

Gee, thanks for getting rid of my job. Please tell me what industry you work for and I will propose getting rid of it, just to be fair.

People generally do not like insurance companies. I’m well aware of that. The insurance company I work for raised premiums, eliminated a lower-cost group health plan and laid off employees. We are likely to have a record profit this year.

The problems with the cost of health care are numerous, but only the insurance companies - and, at times, the pharmecutical companies - are blamed.

Americans are fatter than ever, leading to more utilization of services for problems like heart disease and diabetes. While cigarette smoking has decreased, the cost of treating smoking related illnesses, almost always serious, continues to increase. An aging population, especially where I live, along with stagnant economic growth, causes young people to leave. Community rating - the practice of taking all the members of a community and assessing risk - pushed up the cost for everyone.

Auto insurance is experience rated. If you are a good risk, you pay lower rates. If you are a high risk, you pay more. This is often not permitted for health insurers because the elderly would be hit with the highest rates.

Blues plans are the “insurers of last resort”. They provide coverage (at a cost) to people who cannot buy it from anyone else. This line of business loses money. As a result, other customers pay more to help defray this cost.

Hospitals in many regions have formed cartels, designed to push up reimbursement rates from insurers. This pays for exorbitant salaries and excessive advertising. Hospitals tend not to be well run administratively and in some cases, a management company is hired to manage the hospital system. This practice allows hospital management to hide their salaries from public review.

I know more about this than most people. I worked in a hospital for more than eight years, starting when I was in high school and putting myself through college in the same job. I have worked in health insurance for 15 of the past 16 years. Neither has been my definition of “fun”. I have prepared the financial statements that are filed with the state insurance department. I know what goes into it.

Health care inflation has been a problem for decades. People receive a card from their employer and think everything should be covered. It isn’t. For anyone.

Health care inflation would be kept in check if:

1. Americans must take better care of their own health. Eat right. Stop smoking. Exercise. Do this and major problems can be delayed or avoided altogether.
2. Caps must be put on punitive damage awards for malpractice and bad doctors are removed from practice. Several malpractice insurance companies have been forced to close and certain physicians have had to close their practices and relocate because of the cost of malpractice insurance - which is factored into the cost of physician care.
3. Hospitals must be subjected to quality and financial audits.
4. Excess use of emergency rooms. My mother was an emergency room nurse for nearly 30 years. Unionized car factory employees often brought their children into the emergency room for things such as a cold, then pulled out the insurance card expecting it to be paid for. This is not the purpose of emergency room care.

Virtually every state closely monitors the surplus level of insurers of all types to ensure adequate surplus level to pay claims and to guard against excess premiums. While some insurers gouge, the high cost of health care is reflected by, not determined by, health insurers.

Everyone shares the blame. Everyone has to accept responsibility for the cost.

 

[Lisa_N]

JW10631:

Get rid of insurance companies?

Gee, thanks for getting rid of my job. Please tell me what industry you work for and I will propose getting rid of it, just to be fair.

People generally do not like insurance companies. I’m well aware of that. The insurance company I work for raised premiums, eliminated a lower-cost group health plan and laid off employees. We are likely to have a record profit this year.

Health care inflation would be kept in check if:

1. Americans must take better care of their own health. Eat right. Stop smoking. Exercise. Do this and major problems can be delayed or avoided altogether.
2. Caps must be put on punitive damage awards for malpractice and bad doctors are removed from practice. Several malpractice insurance companies have been forced to close and certain physicians have had to close their practices and relocate because of the cost of malpractice insurance - which is factored into the cost of physician care.
3. Hospitals must be subjected to quality and financial audits.
4. Excess use of emergency rooms. My mother was an emergency room nurse for nearly 30 years. Unionized car factory employees often brought their children into the emergency room for things such as a cold, then pulled out the insurance card expecting it to be paid for. This is not the purpose of emergency room care.

Virtually every state closely monitors the surplus level of insurers of all types to ensure adequate surplus level to pay claims and to guard against excess premiums. While some insurers gouge, the high cost of health care is reflected by, not determined by, health insurers.

Everyone shares the blame. Everyone has to accept responsibility for the cost.

BRAVO! You are right on the money. The thought of government health care might sound good but it would be a fast road to disaster. Think healthcare is over utilized now? Wait til people think it’s “free.”

One of the blessings and curses of the system of basing everything on employer paid insurance is as was stated previously. No discount good practices, no premium for risk. They take a group and it’s the same price for everyone. For example we have a family plan and it’s $XXX. This covers two parents and one kid or two parents and six kids. We have both size families in our company but it costs the same. That doesn’t make sense at all. Plus a fat smoker pays the same premium as some jock whose colesterol is in two digits and never smoked in his life. We have no control over our insurance costs because there is no way to weight risk factors in these employee groups.

BTW one of the main ways hospitals avoid making their financial info (including CEO salaries) public is that many charitable hospitals are considered “churches” and don’t have to file their 990s with Guidestar. Believe me these execs make big dollars. One of the CEOs in this town is paid over a MILLION DOLLARS…and it’s a “charity” hospital. Worse yet it’s our inner city hospital with high levels of charity and medicaid patients.

I also agree that many many health problems in this country are self induced. Believe me our group would have no one to operate on if not for people eating fatty food (can’t wait til those Atkins people start comin’ through!), smoking and not exercising.

LIsa N

 

[Hildebrand]

otm:

Shifting to a government run health care system is an extremely short road to rationed health care. It will also cause a rapid and large increase of taxes; you think you are paying a lot for insurance now, where do you think the money is going to come from to pay the same (or larger, due to increased bureaucracy) costs, the same claims?

AMERICANS are CURRENTLY paying some of the HIGHEST bureaucracy costs for health care in the world.

The authors found that, in 1999, Americans spent $1,059 per capita on health-care administration, compared to $307 per capita for Canadians. Put another way, bureaucracy gobbles up 31 per cent of U.S. health dollars, compared to 17 per cent in Canada.

pnhp.org/news/2004/june/lets_not_get_tangled.php

After a brief lull, health care costs have resumed their exuberant growth; health maintenance organizations (HMOs) have fallen to the basement of public esteem and have failed to contain costs; commercial pressures threaten medicine’s best traditions; and healing has become a spectator sport, with physicians and patients performing before a growing audience of bureaucrats and reviewers…Bureaucracy now consumes nearly 30% of our health care budget.

cthealth.server101.com/national_health_insurance.htm

WHY NHI?

The fiscal case for NHI arises from the observation that health care’s enormous bureaucratic burden is a peculiarly American phenomenon. No nation with NHI spends even half as much administering care, nor tolerates the bureaucratic intrusions in clinical care that have become routine in the United States.

Our biggest HMOs keep 20%, even 25%, of premiums for their overhead and profit6; Canada’s NHI has 1% overhead2 and even Medicare takes less than 4%.7 And HMOs inflict mountains of paperwork on physicians and hospitals. The average US hospital spends one quarter of its budget on billing and administration,4 nearly twice the average in Canada. American physicians spend nearly 8 hours per week on paperwork, and employ 1.66 clerical workers per physician,8 far more than in Canada.

Reducing our bureaucratic apparatus to Canadian levels would save 10% to 15% of current health care spending, at least $120 billion annually, enough to fully cover the uninsured and upgrade coverage for those now underinsured.

cthealth.server101.com/national_health_insurance.htm

 

[Hildebrand]

Getting rid of health insurance companies will put tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of paper-pushers and customer service personnel workers in the unemployment lines. I am sorry for them and their families. However, it is not my responsibility to keep them employed. The same thing happened with AT&T and other over-charged services. Remember how much money it cost to call long-distance and overseas? The solution for them was to open them up to competition. Look what we have: programs with free long-distance phone calls, 5 cents phone calls to anywhere in the country, 10 cents a minute to call England, etc.

That was phone-service, what I am talking about is something a bit more important - health care. Something new is needed to solve the out of control health care costs. Getting rid of the profits from health insurance and having the citizens pay their health insurance “bills” to the government is the solution. An “unseen” benefit of this would be more jobs for Americans. Companies are less likely to hire Americans because of the health insurance costs and the rapid rise of those costs. Throughout the world, companies do not have to pay health care for their workers. If the US wants to remain competitive globally, we must have a level playing field.

Is anyone sad and crying over the fact we broke up the bureaucracy of AT&T and their over-priced rates? :nope:

I am happy and :dancing: :clapping: , and so is everyone else (except those connected with AT&T).

With health insurance, everybody is treated differently. Imagine walking into a grocery store and everybody pays different rates (group, individual, etc), the prices rise 10-30% a year, and you have thousands of useless paper-pushers in the back deciding whether you can get a banana or would a apple be better. Then you have a person who is employed, not covered by the employer, and wants health insurance. Well they’ll have to pay $50.00 for a loaf of bread. I am sorry but it is complete insanity.

 

[Hildebrand]

Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has released a report outlining the top consumer complaints about health care in New York State.

The 2003 Health Care Helpline Report was compiled from nearly 7,800 complaints received by the Attorney General’s Health Care Bureau through its toll-free helpline during a twelve-month period between July 2002 and June 2003. It analyzes those health care-related complaints investigated by the office and issues proposed reforms to address systemic problems.

“The report indicates that too many consumers need assistance when navigating the complex world of health care and in protecting their rights,” Spitzer said. “This report also demonstrates that consumers from across the state would be well served with full financial support for the Managed Consumer Assistance Program enacted in 1996 to help individuals gain information about and access to health care.”

At least one-forth of all consumer complaints to Spitzer’s Health Care Bureau arose from health plan or provider mistakes in claims preparation, processing and payment, and almost two-thirds of those mistakes are attributable to health plans. These types of complaints have remained the most common health care complaint since at least 2001.

Access to specialty care and out-of-network providers accounted for nearly 22 percent of all consumer complaints, making it the second most-common complaint.

The report highlights two noteworthy trends in 2003 Helpline complaints as compared to complaints analyzed in the 2002 report:

• Denials of care or coverage by health plans decreased from 23.2% to 17.4% of complaints; and
• Denials of emergency care by health plans declined from 1.2% to 0.6% of complaints.

While observing these trends, the report notes that its sample size is limited and that the 2003 Helpline report covers a 12-month period compared to the 18-month period covered by the 2002 report.

In assisting individuals in addressing their health care complaints, Spitzer’s office was able to recover $3.9 million in additional care or coverage for consumers in 2003. Through enforcement actions, the Health Care Bureau generated an additional $862,000 in restitution for New Yorkers and $344,500 in costs and penalties to the state.

The report also contains recommendations to improve consumer access and satisfaction with the state’s health care system by:

• Mandating use of a model claim denial notice by all health plans to address inadequate and confusing denial notices;
• Fully funding New York’s Managed Care Consumer Assistance Program to ameliorate widespread consumer confusion and consumers’ frequent inability to protect their rights and access benefits;
• Providing statutory penalties for violations to better address non-compliance by health care plans and providers with the Managed Care Consumer Bill of Rights, which provides managed care consumers with rights to certain coverage information, appeal and grievance processes and other protections.

Consumers who want to file a complaint about their health coverage or who are looking for assistance with regard to their health care plans or in obtaining health care coverage are encouraged to contact the Attorney General’s helpline at (800) 771-7755, option 3.

news-medical.net/?id=3947

Isn’t the article sickening?

How much money does the NY State government spend to investigate the health insurance companies for the thousands of complaints they receive every year?

 

[JW10631]

It’s clear that you have an agenda and are not interested in discussing the matter.

Paper pusher? Try doing my job - then run your big mouth.

 

[Lisa_N]

Hildebrand:

Is anyone sad and crying over the fact we broke up the bureaucracy of AT&T and their over-priced rates? :nope:

I am happy and :dancing: :clapping: , and so is everyone else (except those connected with AT&T).

With health insurance, everybody is treated differently. Imagine walking into a grocery store and everybody pays different rates (group, individual, etc), the prices rise 10-30% a year, and you have thousands of useless paper-pushers in the back deciding whether you can get a banana or would a apple be better. Then you have a person who is employed, not covered by the employer, and wants health insurance. Well they’ll have to pay $50.00 for a loaf of bread. I am sorry but it is complete insanity.

Hildebrand, I find it a tad IRONIC that you are cheering the demise of a MONOPOLY with respect to the phone company and want to CREATE a monopoly with Government healthcare. Yikes. Do you understand what you are suggesting? Why would a government monopoly be any better?

If you worked in this industry you’d understand that MANY of the costs are due to the government. One of the most expensive additions to healthcare costs was HIPAA. This was originally homosexuals who wanted to prevent their employers from finding out they had AIDS and other STDs. It morphed as such government programs do into a monster. The added COSTS of complying with this idiotic program are over $100MM per year. Insurance companies, as they have access to people’s personal medical information are included under this fabulous new plan that insures no one who NEEDS someone’s medical info will get it without a fight.

Another little gem courtesy of the government is the basic government mandate of what insurance MUST cover. One year our premiums shot through the roof. We asked the agent what happened. He said there was a new law requiring all insurance companies to cover a vastly expanded list of mental health programs. Another year it went up because the state mandated that insurance companies must cover “alternative” practitioners…everything from chiropractors to Moxibustion specialists. You might recall the fight to insure new mothers a certain number of days in the hospital. Another government mandate that costs money and takes the decision making away from both patient and doctor.

Trust me you do NOT want the government in charge of administering healthcare.

Lisa N

 

[Hildebrand]

JW10631:

It’s clear that you have an agenda and are not interested in discussing the matter.

Paper pusher? Try doing my job - then run your big mouth.

I have an agenda? I have an opinion on the topic and am interested in discussing the matter. You sound like a pro-abortion person saying “those radical anti-abortion advocates don’t care about discussing a woman’s right to choose, all they are is interested in their religious agenda”. Back to the topic…

People who work in offices and who are needed are not paper pushers. I worked in an office and nearly everybody there was over-stressed, over-worked, and under-paid (including myself, but I did not have it nearly as bad as others).

What I am talking about when I mentioned paper-pushers is the instance of insurance companies wasting thousands upon thousands of labor hours (costing me hundreds of dollars a year and making health insurance unaffordable for others) because of an over-bureaucratic system they set up for themselves. The money we pay is not being spent on creating an efficient and an effective health care system. Instead, profits are governing the decision making process.

We cannot accept the status quo. Health Care is one of the most important sectors of our society.

 

[Hildebrand]

Lisa N:

Trust me you do NOT want the government in charge of administering healthcare.

Who said I wanted the government in charge of administering healthcare? I don’t believe they should. Hospitals and doctor’s offices must remain private. Doctors and nurses should not become government employees. All I am calling for is the power of the health insurance companies to be transferred to the government. We already have it with older Americans - ie: Medicare. The problem with Medicare is the elderly do not pay for it, they paid for it in the past and were promised it. What I am in favor of is a program for persons not eligible for Medicare (everyone under 65) where each person pays the government for health insurance. The government already pays the doctor’s bills, hospital’s bills, etc through Medicare, they could do it for everyone who chooses to have health insurance. The base coverage would be the least expensive (catastrophic insurance). Then there would be other options. It would be the same thing as we currently have, except for a few things: (1) It would cost much less and (2) Far more Americans would be covered.

Also, by getting rid of the insurance companies, the patients and the doctors will have more rights, not less rights.

 

[Lisa_N]

Hildebrand:

Who said I wanted the government in charge of administering healthcare? I don’t believe they should. Hospitals and doctor’s offices must remain private. Doctors and nurses should not become government employees. All I am calling for is the power of the health insurance companies to be transferred to the government. We already have it with older Americans - ie: Medicare. The problem with Medicare is the elderly do not pay for it, they paid for it in the past and were promised it. What I am in favor of is a program for persons not eligible for Medicare (everyone under 65) where each person pays the government for health insurance. The government already pays the doctor’s bills, hospital’s bills, etc through Medicare, they could do it for everyone who chooses to have health insurance. The base coverage would be the least expensive (catastrophic insurance). Then there would be other options. It would be the same thing as we currently have, except for a few things: (1) It would cost much less and (2) Far more Americans would be covered.

Also, by getting rid of the insurance companies, the patients and the doctors will have more rights, not less rights.

No Hildebrand you are suggesting a government monopoly. You apparently either didn’t read my post or you ignored what I said. I’m curious why you think Medicare is such a paragon of effficiency. Do you deal with them every day like I do? Do you understand how Medicare is funded? Look at your paycheck. 1.45% of everyone’s wages plus the same percentage from the employer pays for Medicare. So we are ALL paying for a tiny percentage of our population. Imagine if all the wage earners suddenly had to take on 100% of the cost, not just a fraction. We’d not have anything left of our checks.

GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM NOT THE SOLUTION. As I said, insurance companies are VERY VERY heavily regulated. These are government regulations, not something insurance companies enacted to save their industry. If this were truly a free market, insurance companies could conceivably compete by offering for example a more “bare bones” plan for those who chose that option and a “champagne plan” for those who wished to pay more. Unfortunately because of GOVERNMENT regulations, insurance companies must offer certain coverage, must have certain processes, must comply with behemoths like HIPAA. THis is a government created problem, Hildebrand, why do you think government healthcare would save money? If government won’t allow insurers to compete how in heck would they compete with themselves?

Believe me I am not an apologist for insurance companies. We fight with them every day to get paid for services our doctors provide. We also fight with government plans such as Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is literally the bane of our existence. There is NOTHING more inefficient than state medicaid plans. Again, government getting its nose between a doctor and patient is NOT a good thing.

Lisa N

 

[Linda_H]

What upsets me is how doctors and hospitals can find the money to treat people flown in from other countries, but let a working poor person here need the same type of medical care, sorry buddy, your on your own! How many of you have donated money so someone could get care for a major medical problem, I’ve done it many times. How many of you live in an area where there are free or low income clinics? Outside of the larger cities they are a rare find, and yet people wonder why ER’s are being used to treat illnesses that should be treated by a family practitioner. Yes, there is enough blame to be spread all the way around for the mess that passes for healthcare here, but I don’t think it is fair that so many blame those who have the most to lose.

Linda H.

 

[Hildebrand]

Lisa N:

No Hildebrand you are suggesting a government monopoly. You apparently either didn’t read my post or you ignored what I said.

I did read your post. And I cannot believe you think that the market determines the cost of health insurance. The health insurance companies do NOT compete against each other. They know every American under 65 (all 200+ million of us) must get health insurance from them. And since it is not easy to start a health insurance company, not many new health insurance companies join in and the ones that do join do business like the others because they want more profits. The health insurance companies are acting like a monopoly. I’ll say it again, they do not compete with each other (by lowering their prices, etc). All we see are increases every year and those insurance companies making new record profits.
Lisa N:

I’m curious why you think Medicare is such a paragon of efficiency. Do you deal with them every day like I do? Do you understand how Medicare is funded? Look at your paycheck. 1.45% of everyone’s wages plus the same percentage from the employer pays for Medicare. So we are ALL paying for a tiny percentage of our population. Imagine if all the wage earners suddenly had to take on 100% of the cost, not just a fraction. We’d not have anything left of our checks.

Medicare is in financial trouble not because it is government controlled, but because of the same issues as Social Security. The claim was the taxpayers would pay for “their” Medicare and Social Security. However that money was/is spent every year. The people who really pay for their Medicare and Social Security are their children and grandchildren. What I am advocating for is a federal health insurance where each person pays for their own health insurance (for real), the cost would be MUCH less than what is currently taken out of our paychecks because alot of the bureaucracy will be eliminated and all profits would go to the government or back to the taxpayers. The profits (billions upon billions) and the wasted duplicated bureaucratic costs (billions) would lower the cost of health insurance.
Lisa N:

GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM NOT THE SOLUTION. As I said, insurance companies are VERY VERY heavily regulated. These are government regulations, not something insurance companies enacted to save their industry. If this were truly a free market, insurance companies could conceivably compete by offering for example a more “bare bones” plan for those who chose that option and a “champagne plan” for those who wished to pay more. Unfortunately because of GOVERNMENT regulations, insurance companies must offer certain coverage, must have certain processes, must comply with behemoths like HIPAA. THis is a government created problem, Hildebrand, why do you think government healthcare would save money? If government won’t allow insurers to compete how in heck would they compete with themselves?

I agree with you on changes that can be made without eliminating health insurance companies. Still, insurers will never really compete as long as they know they can get more profits by not competing.
Lisa N:

We also fight with government plans such as Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is literally the bane of our existence. There is NOTHING more inefficient than state Medicaid plans. Again, government getting its nose between a doctor and patient is NOT a good thing.

Medicaid (which pays for the health care for the poor) is the bane of our existence? Medicare (which pays for the health care for the elderly) is the bane of our existence? How else will be poor or elderly get covered with the outrageous rates/prices the health insurance companies are charging? Are they to go without health insurance? So you want to eliminate Medicare/Medicaid and what would you do with the sick poor and elderly? Will you care for them and how?

 

[Lisa_N]

Hildebrand do you deliberately twist my posts around or do you truly not understand what I am saying?

Your arguments are internally inconsistent. You don’t like insurance companies because you think they don’t compete and thus you pay more than necssary. OTOH you think the solution to this problem is to turn over administration to a government monopoly, thereby destroying ANY possibility of competition. Further this assumes the grand leap that a government program will be more efficient than a private system…uh huh???

You apparently ignored all of my statements about the reasons for insurance increasing…government mandates, government regulations and government oversight being MAJOR REASONS. Yet you think turning our healthcare over to the government is a good idea? Sorry but you haven’t made much of a case.

I said Medicaid was the bane of our existence BECAUSE of the bureaucracy of dealing with a government administered plan. NOT because I think it should be eliminated. I am simply pointing out to you, as someone who evidently has no daily contact with medical payers, that government administered insurance is far more bogged down with rules, paperwork, documentation and it is far harder to actually collect our money from Medicaid than from commercial insurance companies. Further there IS competition, even in a small market like Oregon. Our agent just brought us proposals from ten different insurers and we are in the process of making a decision about which plan to accept for our employees. Yes all of them have increased rates but the increases vary from five to thirty five percent, depending on which plan we accept.

Further as I have said repeatedly, government mandates about what must be covered or cannot be covered mean that GOVERNMENT, not you, not your doctor, is making the decision about what is best for your healthcare. And you want to turn over the whole enchilada to Uncle Sam? You want the government deciding what treatment you or your family receive? Are you kidding?

Frankly this is my last response to you. You seem to have a strong opinion on this subject and although you haven’t provided any evidence your “cure” isn’t worse than the disease, you are apparently convinced. I wish you well

Lisa N