Cash Only: Another Health Care Option

[White Eagle]

I'm gonna question this on the fact it came across on Fox, fair and balanced, radio.
I pass.

 

[01solara]

Actually, I came across this topic via an AP report, and although I have posted those before, doesn't the AP not like it for their work to be reposted? If it's not a problem, I'll post that link (which comes from USA Today or CBS News - take your pick).

I was waiting for someone to say that there was validity to the clip due to it being related to Fox News. However, I will say that I don't listen to Fox New Radio and have no idea how the broadcaster here is. Does anyone know?

My main point is not that Cash Only will solve everything. I am suggesting that the costs are so high for office visits and for surgeries due to the structure of health insurance coverage and government intervention.

Maybe that $58,000 surgery that was mentioned would be a lot less if certain things were factored out of the equation. When my parents and grandparents were growing up, they did not have health insurance with their employers. How did they pay for their visits to the doctors or for their surgeries? At what point to health care get out of control with the costs and the red tape?

Health care costs started to get out of control when the government got involved with it. I was born in 1964 and the total bill was $75. Having a baby now from what I have heard from friends costs around $8,000 if there are no complications. Lyndon Johnson and his great society have a lot to do with our current problems. When the government rewards people that do the wrong thing they do the wrong thing a lot more. The US government paid people to have children without two parent homes. The US government paid single women more for every child they had for a long time the net result was rampant illegitimacy and multigenerational welfare families. Women that had five and more children each by different fathers then all of those children did more of the same. This was somewhat reformed in the 90's but we are about to take another hard left turn in the wrong direction.

 

[iman]

^No, the government got involved with health care because health care began to get expensive. Johnson signed the medicare bill in 1965 because older Americans could not afford health care. Health care has steadily gotten more expensive because of the developments and sophistication of the equipment needed to provide care not because someone has illegitimate children (David Letterman?). Just the cost of the personnel and the high tech imported machines needed to do routine blood and urine tests are multimillion dollar investments that have to be continually renewed. Medicine will never again be inexpensive, the costs will continue to explode.

You guys keep trying top reduce everything to the most simplistic level. The modern society we live in is very complex and cannot be reduced to 19th century small town ideals. If you want to live in a primitive country, I can only suggest Afghanistan.

 

[SonOfSlobone]

There are some cash-only doctors, we have one in my town. But the range of services they can provide is very limited. And they refuse to even touch paperwork from insurance companies, government health programs, etc. Idon't think it's a very viable solution.

 

[palemale]

The figure I have seen is that something on the order of 30% of our health care dollars goes to the insurance company. Haven't done the research to verify if my memory is accurate, but will try to do so. However, that is an insane amount of money that goes to paperwork, insurance company profits, insurance company salaries, salaries for the staff doctors and hospitals must hire to process the paperwork.

My doctor is in a medical practice in a small building in Manhattan. His medical group has a whole floor of the building that does nothing but process insurance claims. Many doctors here no longer accept any insurance.

One reform I am aware of, and believe is still in the mix, is the development of a standard form all insurance companies must use. This simple reform, a government issued form that is mandatory, alone would probably save barrels of money.

 

[iman]

The figure I have seen is that something on the order of 30% of our health care dollars goes to the insurance company. Haven't done the research to verify if my memory is accurate, but will try to do so. However, that is an insane amount of money that goes to paperwork, insurance company profits, insurance company salaries, salaries for the staff doctors and hospitals must hire to process the paperwork.

My doctor is in a medical practice in a small building in Manhattan. His medical group has a whole floor of the building that does nothing but process insurance claims. Many doctors here no longer accept any insurance.

One reform I am aware of, and believe is still in the mix, is the development of a standard form all insurance companies must use. This simple reform, a government issued form that is mandatory, alone would probably save barrels of money.

^Sounds like a very good argument for the Public Option.

 

[letme]

Welcome back Alfie..

Alfie was gone ?

On topic this just scares the fuck outa me....

Who would be the best at deciding if the test was medically necessary? A private insurance company or a government bureaucrat?

What about my doctor and myself deciding? Now Government is deciding how I should live or IF I should even live.

 

[01solara]

^No, the government got involved with health care because health care began to get expensive. Johnson signed the medicare bill in 1965 because older Americans could not afford health care. Health care has steadily gotten more expensive because of the developments and sophistication of the equipment needed to provide care not because someone has illegitimate children (David Letterman?). Just the cost of the personnel and the high tech imported machines needed to do routine blood and urine tests are multimillion dollar investments that have to be continually renewed. Medicine will never again be inexpensive, the costs will continue to explode.

You guys keep trying top reduce everything to the most simplistic level. The modern society we live in is very complex and cannot be reduced to 19th century small town ideals. If you want to live in a primitive country, I can only suggest Afghanistan.
==========================================================================
.
She overpaid!

Well aren't you just a little ray of sunshine. Say that to my mom and see if you live.

Please provide studies that show that medicare and welfare reduced the poverty level. Over a trillion dollars has been spent so far so poverty should be eliminated. Show me that the illegitimacy rate hasn't soared in poor and minority communities. Go to any free clinic and tell me about the short waits and high quality care. Show me that since affirmative action and forced busing, most minority children finish high school and graduate from college with their bachelors degree.

 

[thanol]

Well aren't you just a little ray of sunshine. Say that to my mom and see if you live.

Please provide studies that show that medicare and welfare reduced the poverty level. Over a trillion dollars has been spent so far so poverty should be eliminated. Show me that the illegitimacy rate hasn't soared in poor and minority communities. Go to any free clinic and tell me about the short waits and high quality care. Show me that since affirmative action and forced busing, most minority children finish high school and graduate from college with their bachelors degree.

So someone doesn't like black people...

 

[HenryReardon]

The figure I have seen is that something on the order of 30% of our health care dollars goes to the insurance company. Haven't done the research to verify if my memory is accurate, but will try to do so. .

According to this study done in Connecticut of HMOs operating in that state, the number is much lower:

http://www.conntact.com/article_page.lasso?id=40755

According to O'Rourke, Connecticut insurers are spending less of their income to pay claimants' medical expenses. On an aggregate basis, insurers in Connecticut spent 86.42 percent of health revenues on medical expenses in 2004, but just 82.80 percent in 2005 - a 4.2-percent decline year over year.

That bucks the trend of the industry as a whole, which spent 87.03 percent of health revenues on medical expenses in 2004, and 86.47 percent in 2005.

Why? For one thing, Connecticut insurers "showed an uptick" on administrative expenses, O'Rourke explains, growing from 10.69 percent in 2004 to 11.13 percent in 2005.

Administrative expenses for the entire industry, however, remained "relatively unchanged" at 10.74 percent in 2005, compared to 10.75 the prior year. [/QUOTE

That same study revealed that hmo profit margins were rather pitiful.

I have done some checking. My former ins co, Humana (left them because my Doctor left them) had a profit of just under 2.5 cents on the dollar in 07 or 08, down from 3 cents on the dollar the prior year. (source: Humana annual reports)

Aetna's net profit after taxes is in the 6 cents range.

 

[HenryReardon]

#37 in overall results - measured how, by whom, and using what standards.

I've already shown, in another thread, that the much touted infant mortality rate for the US is bunk, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the life expectancy numbers are also bunk - when adjusted for murder and accident deaths the numbers evey out very well.

On the other hand in the USA our cancer survival statistsics are much better than elsewhere.

 

[HenryReardon]

I believe I mentioned somewhere on this forum that reforming the system legally is one thing that needs to happen. I have heard of people that go for a particular surgery and the hospital gets them to sign a release to do another (possibly) unnecessary surgery to cover their butts against a potential lawsuit. After doing this so many times, it adds up to a lot. There was also another one shown in the article that there is $100B in waste due to patients not listening to their doctor's orders. How is a government plan going to attack these issues? The last one I mentioned is one of personal responsibility.

I think this should be more evidence that the slow and steady pace is the way to go, if this is going to be done at all. It is important to look at all the issues that impact the situation and make sure they are properly addressed.

If you do some checking you will find that much of the unnecessary testing is because Doctors are afraid of being sued. Tort Reform, which is much needed, is not a part of the Obama/Democrat proposals - how could it be, they are in bed with the Trial Lawyers.

It wouldn't be necessary to set a cap on jury awards if we adopted a loser pays system - if you file a frivilous lawsuit and lose then you have to pay all the costs for both sides.

 

[HenryReardon]

Been waiting for the 'children's chorus' to have its fun.

Those oft-cited statistics from the WHO are a joke.

People point to the infant mortality rate in the US to deride our health care. As was conclusively shown in that other thread, the statistics are uneven.

In the US hospitals and doctors go to extraordinary lengths to save premature babies.

In at least one European country, low birth-weight and preemie babies are given only palliative care.

If a baby is under a certain size or so many weeks premature in some countries, it isn't counted as a live birth.

The WHO has four standards which are used to judge infant mortality. Some countries do not use all four of the criteria.

Life expectancy is also often quoted, and the statistics are equally bogus. Adjust them for our high murder and accidental death rates as compared to other countries, and the playing field looks quite different.

None of those statistics take into account the rates of obesity and other items which impact longevity.

As someone once famously said -

"There are liars, damned liars, and there are statistics."

Bottom line - the much touted "37th" overall number is a joke - one that is perpetuated and repeated by people who hate America and everything it stands for.

Of course, those of the looter persuasion who want the government to steal from the rich at gunpoint in order to provide for their own selfish needs won't believe a word of actual facts.

 

[naked gent]

If you do some checking you will find that much of the unnecessary testing is because Doctors are afraid of being sued. Tort Reform, which is much needed, is not a part of the Obama/Democrat proposals - how could it be, they are in bed with the Trial Lawyers.

Henry I agree with you that tort reform needs to be part of the solution to rising medical costs and the dems don't show much interest in pursuing it much to my dismay but the idea that unnecessary testing would be eliminated should we have tort reform while still paying doctors extra money for those unnecessary tests is absurd on the face of it and should you actually believe that you must also believe that humans don't respond to financial incentives.

btw I read a Charles Krauthammer op-ed in which he suggested that we should get rid of lawyers entirely when it comes to health care and should you be injured due do medical negligence an "expert board" would determine what your suffering was worth......sounds like a republican version of Palin's "death boards" to me.

I"d also add that if people had to pay for medical care out of their own pockets and the government and private insurance companies were out of the picture medical technology advances would quickly come to an abrupt end.

 

[HenryReardon]

Henry I agree with you that tort reform needs to be part of the solution to rising medical costs and the dems don't show much interest in pursuing it much to my dismay but the idea that unnecessary testing would be eliminated should we have tort reform while still paying doctors extra money for those unnecessary tests is absurd on the face of it and should you actually believe that you must also believe that humans don't respond to financial incentives.

btw I read a Charles Krauthammer op-ed in which he suggested that we should get rid of lawyers entirely when it comes to health care and should you be injured due do medical negligence an "expert board" would determine what your suffering was worth......sounds like a republican version of Palin's "death boards" to me.

I"d also add that if people had to pay for medical care out of their own pockets and the government and private insurance companies were out of the picture medical technology advances would quickly come to an abrupt end.

I think that, should serious tort reform come to pass, we would see over time, a gradual reduction of needless procedures. It won't happen overnight, however, and may well depend upon who prepares the results of the tests.

For many years I went to the same single practitioner, and when he sold his practice to another doctor and retired, I stayed with the new doctor. My Doctor drew blood as part of my annual physical and sent it to a lab for testing.

There came a time when he said, I can't do that any more - the insurance companies are requiring that the blood be dawn by the lab. So, I had to make another appointment and go through the trouble of having the blood drawn elewhere.

My current GP is part of a group practice that has it's own in-house facilities, so his people draw the blood and do the tests.

I suspect the current GP has more incentive to do blood tests than did my Dr. from years ago.

On the other hand, the Insurance Company won't pay for a test it deems unnecessary - so what is the Dr. to do. He has to prepare the paperwork to justify his every move.

Actually, today it's not really paperwork. In the case of the last two group practices and the last two specialists I've used - the Doctors and the nurses carry laptops around and make notes in them. I handed my new specialist the records from the old specialist, and the office woman told me that she would scan them into their system and shred them, unless I wanted them returned.

That must save a ton of money on filing systems....

As the pressure on Doctors to see more and more patients in the same period of time increases, I suspect they won't have a whole lot of time to do frivilous tests.

I really don't like the thought of a bean-counter from an HMO looking over my Doctor's shoulder, questioning everything he does - but I like the idea of a nameless, faceless bureaucrat in DC doing that even less.

 

[HenryReardon]

I"d also add that if people had to pay for medical care out of their own pockets and the government and private insurance companies were out of the picture medical technology advances would quickly come to an abrupt end.

I heard someone suggest, recently, that it might be a good idea that everyone should be required to pay a minimum amount for every office visit - say $20 or something like that. There are, after all, people who spend a lot of time going from Doctor to Doctor whether they need to or not.