Comments on: Now is the time to be heard on Health Care Reform

By: Tyler

Tyler — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 06:25:59 +0000

Johnny – when did I say I want free healthcare? I have no problem paying for it – how else would we pay for healthcare reform?
I just want it to work. And I don’t want 29% annual price increases for no good reason. And I don’t want to be dropped by an industry bureaucrat for a “manufactured” pre-existing condition or some other sort of loophole that happens ALL the time. That’s not going to differ much from megacorp to megacorp.
Any discussion of a public option allows you to keep your own healthcare plan. Where does it say you don’t?
I might not even switch from my current plan – just having a public option might create the competition in the marketplace and assurances that I won’t be dropped at some point to make the industry plan palatable.

By: Johnny Chingas

Johnny Chingas — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:52:38 +0000

#26 was me

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:51:21 +0000

Tyler, it might be a good deal for you, a self-employed person, to get “free” medical, but someone has to pay for it. And pay for the illegals.:-) Who will pay for all this “free” medical? I think it might be me, but if it isn’t that doesn’t make it right to force somebody else to pay. And it doesn’t work to try to make me feel guilty, or assert “rights” to confiscate my money, or make me wait in longer lines. I pay for my own health insurance, too, and I have never had a problem. I have called my primary care physician at 3am for authorization to treat a broken rib in emergency care. They are happy for my business, I don’t burden them with nonsense calls when I have a cold or flu, and it is worth the cost in case of catastrophic illness. My doctor is great, and gives me confidence in him and who he does business with. Sorry you pay good money for insurance that you doubt will provide what you are paying for. Have you tried the other six mega-insurers? Somebody will have the lowest price, it is up to you to make them compete.
Anonymous, I am nobodies shill, I just disagree with you and Tyler. Here is a short video on Canadian Linsay McCreith who was diagnosed with a tumor, and required an MRI. Canada’s system wouldn’t allow him to get one for four months, and would not allow him to pay for one out of his own pocket. So, he came to the U.S.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Rf42zNl9U
Canadians, who have the means, come to the U.S. for the best treatment in the world, and get it when they want it. This takes pressure off the Canadian system, so those who pay nothing can remain smug. Another reason Canada and Europe has money to fund “free” medical is that the U.S. is defending them, so they pay just a fraction of their true cost of defense.
Richard Baker’s Timely Medical Alternatives, based in Vancouver, says his company annually helps 150,000 Canadians on medical waiting lists receive care in the U.S. This is just one company, and doesn’t count other facilitators or people that come to the U.S. on their own. U.S. citizens don’t go to Canada for treatment.
I’m sure we will all read, hear and talk about this subject more in the coming months. Cheers.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:54:48 +0000

Ask any Canadian, when the chips are down they will come to the U.S. for care.
Another absolutely baseless canard and lie. Wait times in Canada are shorter than in the U.S. Outcomes are better. Canadians do not come to the U.S. for care, Americans go to Canada! Get real facts.
And no, I’m not going to your research for you until you actually come up with something that has not long been disproven as a baseless lie. Your canard comes from a survey from decades ago in which many Canadians polled said they were unhappy with wait times, which for certain elective procedures then averaged about three weeks. They did not say they would prefer a U.S. system. Most Canadians I’ve met are well aware that we just don’t get elective procedures paid for, period, and if and when we save the money for one, we will wait far longer than three weeks. That survey was taken out of context and used by the insurance lobby back in the ’90s to claim that Canadians wished they were in the U.S. Absolute lie.
Think wait times are shorter here? Call up a decent doctor and try to make an appointment. Then compare with Canada.
I’ve never met a real Canadian who has done anything but guffaw when presented with the U.S. myth that Canadians wish they had our healthcare. Go ahead and present paid industry shills who say so, I know they are out there, but real Canadians wouldn’t wish our healthcare on their worst enemy, much less themselves.
Meanwhile, when you look at all the outrageous stretches and lies told by the private insurance industry and its supporters, don’t you have to ask yourself why you are supporting such a liar?
When you say private insurance, for-profit, is all competition, you are completely out of touch with the facts. First of all, health insurance as a product, by nature, is not competitive, period. It is not a computer, which you buy and use and know right away if it works as promised. Insurance is something you buy and do not use. You buy it based on a promise – and with all the mergers of the last ten years, the track record of your company in actually keeping the promise you’ve bought is nonexistent. For example, Blue Cross over decades built a reputation as more or less paying when the time came. But it was bought by Wellpoint, which is notorious for NOT paying, denying coverage, canceling you once you are sick, and every other bad practice of a totally unaccountable private insurer. Private insurers can do this because competition is illusory in the insurance industry by the nature of the product – by promising something it has no intention of delivering, a company quickly swamps those companies who only promise what they do intend to deliver. The result is by nature, the private insurance industry can only end up being a consortium of companies that collect premiums, but deny health care – because those companies that deny and cancel coverage make the most profits and thereby swallow the competition.
Second, there are now seven major insurers who use about 1,300 dbas. In hundreds of markets around the country, there is only one company offering coverage. That is monopoly.
Third, the insurance industry has lobbied and obtained massive government aid ensuring it does not have competition. Health insurers have all kinds of exemptions from normal tort liability when they screw you. Routinely you are unable to recoup attorney fees when you successfully sue an insurer, meaning if you do not have a six figure war chest when you are diagnosed with cancer and denied coverage, you might as well just go die. There are limits on liability, higher evidence threshholds, and all kinds of distortions that protect the industry from having to compete on the only thing that should matter – whether they actually will pay when the coverage you’ve bought is needed.
And, when your insurers win what Heritage and the industry you are shilling want – a mandate that you must buy their product at pain of government prosecution – how much competition do you think there will be then?

By: Tyler

Tyler — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:34:53 +0000

I never said the image was inaccurate – I said it was presenting data in a way that doesn’t address the core issues.
The healthcare industry IS the monopoly. That’s the problem.
I’m self-employed.
Why did my rates go up 29% this year, my deductible go up and my benefits go down, despite my perfect health and record industry profits?
What recourse do I have if I get sick and they drop me?
What if the insurance company says I have a pre-existing condition and drops me?
What if they point to legalese and say there is a donut hole that they don’t cover, and I’m on the hook for thousands of dollars?
Why do faceless bean counters in far-away offices make decisions about peoples’ health and what medical care they can receive?
Do you like this current system? I feel totally disempowered – if something goes wrong, I have no confidence that what I have been paying for will actually do what they say it will.

By: Johnny Chingas

Johnny Chingas — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:22:08 +0000

Tyler, rate of growth is meaningful when compared to a baseline.
The table provided by Heritage is accurate. Noting that you disagree with the worldview of a source does not invalidate that source.
The “for profit” is ALL competition. The government has bottomless pockets (ok, it assumes taxpayers have bottomless pockets) and will never have to turn a profit or go out of business. This proposed monopoly will have to ration care (just as Canada and all socialized programs do). Ask any Canadian, when the chips are down they will come to the U.S. for care.

By: Tyler

Tyler — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:46:40 +0000

re: administrative costs of the healthcare industry – New England Journal of Medicine says 31% in 1999, and growing much more rapidly than Canada against which it was compared:
http://nejm.highwire.org/cgi/content/short/349/8/768
re: the image you linked to – its heritage.org – they would love to see healthcare reform killed, to (1) protect the existing industry and (2) to cripple Obama’s presidency. So the data is presented in a way that supports their argument, which may not be the core argument but a distraction. (i.e. the news that organics aren’t any more nutritious than non-organics, conveniently ignoring pesticides)
Anonymous is dead-on in describing the insurance industry’s motivations – it’s for-profit with a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. And they do it with virtually no competition. That’s not the “free market” – why is the right so afraid of a public option?
You’re not going to have to euthanize your grandparents, you know.

By: Do The Math

Do The Math — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:36:07 +0000

OK, all of you brainiacs in here. Listen up – especially you spk, here’s a chance for you to ACTUALLY finally get a win (in your typical delusional fashion).
In 2007, health care in the U.S. cost 2 trillion dollars, but it is estimated to go to 6 trillion in 2010. OK, let’s say there is some waste, some overcharging, some duplication. Cut it in half, make it 3 trillion. Only half of the people in the country pay any income tax.
Now class, get out your calculator, and tell me how the gumint does this.
The guy who wants to be responsible for himself probably has it right. The rest of you are moochers.

By: Johnny Chingas

Johnny Chingas — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:37:52 +0000

Just waving your wand and calling a question “stupid” doesn’t make it so. And it won’t go away. And it deserves to be answered.
Here’s a question for ‘Are You Kidding’: where do you get your figures? Please cite your source for doozys like “…30-50% of your health care dollar goes into insurance executive and administrator pockets.” If you make an assertion and then can’t back it up, you have a credibility problem.
As for the “3% Medicare overhead”, please don’t just retype what you read on DailyKos. Put on your thinking cap, and realize that Medicare patients are over 65, therefore costing much more in their last years of care. The operations, drugs and therapy all run up costs which are much greater in proportion.
The following link will help you grasp the reality that government is not somehow a cheaper and more efficient provider of services. Enjoy!
http://timerealclearpolitics.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/admincosts1.gif

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:36:32 +0000

Adding to the comment:
What some people refuse to realize is that when your health care is run by a private insurance company out to make profits, you are only valuable while you are healthy, and paying a premium. During that time, the insurance company works as hard as it can to extract more and more money from you.
Once you get seriously ill, you are worthless to the company. Bedridden cancer patients cannot pay insurance premiums. That’s why they will immediately deny you, cancel you, etc. Once you are unable to pay premiums that are more than what you need them to pay out for you, they want you dead.
Your only hope in that circumstance is that you are not alone – that is, that you do not have an individual plan. If you are lucky enough to have a large employer paying your premiums, your insurer has had some incentive to pay for individuals in order to keep the large company premiums coming in. They do so because if they deny you, there is some risk that your employer might look for a different company.
So, for freedom lovers like Emerald and Mario, consider this: If you actually want any chance of benefit from your insurer, the current system makes you a slave to your large employer.
If you are one of the suckers in an individual plan where you have none of the large employer’s leverage, unless you have a prepaid lawyer on retainer, you are just wasting your money. Because all you are buying is the right to sue the insurer from your hospital bed as they deny you.
Of course, all that has already changed dramatically. In the past ten years, the very worst bottom feeding insurers have taken that war chest of illicit premiums (which they amassed by not paying out for health care) and bought up their rivals, who were financially weaker because they actually did pay out. In many markets, there now is only one insurer in town. In those markets, your employer doesn’t have any leverage either. And so we’ve been starting to hear more and more of people covered through an employer who are wrongfully denied.
Now just wait until Congress passes its “mandate,” requiring you to buy private insurance from one of the large conglomerates. They may just stop paying claims entirely at that point. Why not? Free money in the pocket, and the government will prosecute anyone who doesn’t pay the premium.