Interstate insurance purchasing is a sham. Insurance companies would do the exact same thing credit card companies did and find the state with the least amount of regulations and make their home there...ever wonder why there are so many credit card businesses in Delaware? Tort reform isn't the answer either. We need the ability to sue doctors and hospitals when they fuck up, otherwise there will be nothing to limit the crackpots that shouldn't be practicing first aid, let alone medicine.
As far as what drives up costs to us, it's the paperwork and endless hoops the insurance industry puts the doctors through...medicare is pennies compared to that. For profit hospitals are not much better. When I lost my insurance a couple of years ago, I continued to see my private doctor. His rate was 150/hr. Because he no longer had to deal with insurance, and thus did not have to employ his office staff for me, he was able to drop his rates for me to 80/hr...just to give you an idea of how much doctors pay people to deal with the paperwork involved with insurance companies. I also asked him about medicare, and he told me that the amount of paperwork needed for that is next to nothing compared to insurance. My mother works for a chiropractor and does the billing for the office. It's insane what the insurance companies do to try and not pay doctors. If we were to take the insurance companies out of the picture, healthcare would actually be affordable. I am a diabetic. I get random leg infections (generally staph) that require that I stay in the hospital a few days on IV antibiotics and pain meds. Last year I went to a local hospital and went through the ER (there's a whole 'nother rant involved with that...not a good experience...lets just say that as a medic, if I had treated a patient like they treated me, I would have expected to get courts martialed) and stayed for 4 days. I was no insured at the time. During my stay, I had my normal diabetes meds, IV antibiotics, and pain meds. They did lab work twice I think. When they checked my blood sugar levels, it was with a common meter just like we would buy at the drugstore...nothing fancy or special and no lab work involved in that. The total bill for my 4 day stay was $25,000. Metformin is a common diabetes drug. If I were to go to Walgreens and buy a 30 day supply (90 pills), it would cost me 57.50 with no insurance. The hospital charged me $30.00/pill...basically if I were to buy from them, that same 30 day supply, at their rate, would cost me $2700.00. Checking my blood sugar levels...125 a pop. For those of you not familiar with meters, the cost of the strips are about 12 cents each. Meters generally run about $60 and are reusable across patients. Pretty much every drug they gave me was marked up 5-6 times the retail cost. Hospitals don't pay retail...they pay wholesale prices and get bulk discounts. I would hazard to guess that they probably pay 1/2-3/4's retail for their medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. This industry need to be shot in the head and dumped in a shark filled lagoon...though I might have some sympathy for the sharks as they would probably get indigestion. If the insurance industry disappeared today...tomorrow would be a much better world. The government gets to choose who wins and loses by what industries help and what industries hurt. The insurance industry only hurts. They only exist to make as much money as they possibly can and don't give a rats ass who they kill in the process. You want death panels...well they already exist in the form of formularies and accountants making medical decisions in the insurance industry. While every system has it's horror stories, ours has more horror stories than good ones. The Canadian, UK, and other systems of socialized medicine have their horror stories too, but those are a drop in the bucket compared to the success stories. The fact that someone need to come to the US for liposuction because they don't want to wait for it only tells me that they are impatient and spoiled and used to getting their way because they have a shitload of money...not that there is anything wrong with their system of medicine. Don't take this as me saying that socialized medicine is perfect, but it is a lot closer to perfect than ours is by leaps and bounds. Eric -----Original Message----- From: Jerry Barnes [mailto:critic...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 7:34 PM To: cf-community Subject: Re: Shocker: Major corporations may dump health insurance, pay penalties instead "Personally, I tend to favor a government sponsored plan in competition with private plans." Sounds good in theory. Alas, in reality, the gov't will undercut the insurance companies. This will eventually lead to the insurance companies closing and only the government option left. Then, it will be socialized medicine, just like the UK. This is not some idle speculation. Watch the video link I post earlier. Representative Jan Schakowsky absolutely revels in the impending doom of private insurance. "I don't believe that any industry has a right to continue to exist." Spoken like a true free-market capitalist. I am with you. The gov't should not be allowed to pick winners and losers. GM should not have been bailed out. Likewise, the gov't should not be implementing a plan that bankrupts an industry. Let business succeed or fail on its own merits. "I think that a variety of structures could potentially work, but I definitely feel that government has a strong role to play in health insurance and reform." The gov't should have some role in regulating insurance. I don't think anyone feels sorry for the insurance companies. Their policies have helped lead to this situation. Maybe government oversight could have prevented the mess. Reform has many forms. The current measure did not address tort reform. It did not address interstate insurance. It did address many things. "I do indeed. In fact, my entire work for the last couple years has been writing software for the health care field. I work directly with medical billing people all the time and have for several years. It has definitely informed my opinions on the health insurance debate." If you work on the hospital side and not the insurance side, you should be fine then. Government creates bureaucracy and paperwork. Plenty of need for IT to organize, store, etc. If you're on the insurance side, watch out. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:317684 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
