i don't think it is a legitimate excuse to stop progress toward an affordable health insurance in the face of the amount of money that these people have gambled away. It is no longer a question whether or not the govt should be in insurance business because it is. the question is what do we want to insure? our health or something else.
I think those of us that pay for it should be allowed to deduct it as an expense, not pay tax on it as income. And as an employer I'd like to get a 100% tax write off on my health care expenses I pay out to employees. Right now, either way, I get fucked. I pay for my own health care, and had to drop out of our company plan because it cost more than me doing it privately. Then I get hit with having to pay fucking income tax for health care I buy out of my own pocket. Fucking lovely. The problem is not with health care. Its with the ridiculous cost of insurance and the governmental interests that seek to tax the fuck out of people that pay for it and or provide it. It's ridiculous to think that I have to pay the US Government Tax on money I spend, out of pocket to provide health care for myself and my family. Meanwhile, people that do not even pay for it want me to pay for them too with more tax? FUCK THAT SHIT!!!
Yesterday I ran into a friend of a friend. Hadn't seen him in probably 2 or more years. He had had a terrible medical calamity and insurance problem. Here is the story: He had a reputable quality coverage with a strong insurer. His wife had a malignant cancerous brain tumor. It was diagnosed during the pregnancy of their first child. He had a private business with separate health coverage. She was a teacher using a version of blue cross blue shield. Best shots at treatment were at one of two cancer centers; one in Baltimore one in NYC. Each of the hospitals was in a different zone of coverage than her insurer. The medical procedure cost in excess of $40,000. Her insurer said they would only qualify it for $9,000 in payments. None of this was known prior to buying the insurance and/or in choosing hospitals. As it turned out, he had a medical expert reference and after visiting both hospitals they went with the one in NYC. The operation was a success. The tumor has receeded. The most recent check shows no cancer. They just had a second baby. She is back teaching. Hallelujah!!!!! Normally the hospital would bill for the entire $40,000 plus. The insurer would have paid the $9,000 and my friend would have been immediately due for the remainder. He and his wife have been litigating this case for 2 years. Due to the contact the hospital hasn't billed him for the amount and is waiting for settlement of the case. Over time the insurer has slowly, reluctantly offered to pay more....but it is in bits and drabs. They are still far apart. The hospital billing office has referenced to him that for this relatively rare procedure this type of insurance battle has occurred only 3 times. In the vast vast vast number of cases, the insurer picks up the costs of the surgery in its entirety. Three of the insurers have balked. Meanwhile over the long haul case he learned that the Baltimore hospital would have taken the $9,000 and written off the rest. If not for the hospital holding off on billing him my friend would have faced a large bill immediately. Probably he could have paid it or possibly taken out loans to pay it off over time. He and his wife, I suspect have combined incomes in the low six figure level. If they didn't have the income or reserves they would have been forced into bankruptcy. No ifs ands or buts. The entire system is capricious, mysterious and difficult. With insurance you have to fight your carrier on all sorts of little costs let alone the catastrophic ones. It is exhausting. The consumer is on the wrong side, with less resources and knowledge. He went on to discuss current insurance issues. Both he and his partner have medicine issues in their respective families. In both cases insurance coverage on medicine runs out rather quickly in the year. The medicines are expensive. He is considering flying to Mexico. The cost of flights and picking up medicine for the bulk of the year are far less than the costs going forward buying it locally. The entire medical system is crazy. Its not just an issue of government coverage. Its not just an issue of 45 million being uncovered by insurance. The insurance system sucks. Deal with your insurer on getting reimbursements. Its a fight. It sucks. People don't buy hospital care on a "market" basis. He and his wife didn't have costs explained to him prior to this operation. Neither of the hospitals said. Hey We'll beat their price....and allow your wife to stay in the hospital for an extra two days. Its not a market process. In any case making life and death decisions while contemplating price......it just doesn't compute. This guy, his wife, and his kids are good folks. He and his wife are producers. The kids deserve two parents unencumbered with financial problems that could arise from a medical system that is totally not understandable, rational, and immune from market controls at all. Frankly I'd junk the system and start over. The only big protection against emergency life and death issues is having lots and lots of money. Insurance in too many cases doesn't work. Its not even a case of simple government mandated health care or not. The system is broke in lots of ways.
You are generally better off without insurance. I went 7 years without it during the Clinton Depression and even ended up in the hospital hours from death and on an operating table. No one refused me service. In fact, it was 2 weeks later when I got a call asking to work out payment arrangements. Those payments, interest free BTW where made over the course of a number of years and to this day, it was probably the most pleasant experience I've had in dealing with the health care industry. Years later, well insured, the hospital sued my wife and I after the birth of our son because they could not get their shit together with the insurers and the hospitals billing dept. Sad... Very sad!
My dad's hospital bill in 1945 when he was born, $35 My hospital bill in 1971 when I was born, $300 (dad had to sell his car to pay for it) My son's hospital bill in 2003, $30,000.00 Somethings clearly not right here.
BINGO... He was a franks breach. They tried turning him first, outside the womb. I do NOT (and I know my wife agrees) recommend that procedure for anyone. Even after all that, we were sued for a difference of opinion over a matter of $1300 that the insurance did not pay because the hospital sent the bills to the wrong insurance company. We settled out of court after 3 months of bitching back and forth and dealing with a pro-conglomerate health care judge that assumes that ever person before his court is a dead beat trying to get out of paying bills. If that were the case, I would not have paid a dime. But I digress.
The money the hospitals and doctors are racking in "forcing" almost everyone to have a c-section should be a red flag in itself. Every time I hear a young person who is having their first child, they are already talking about the "due" date - the one scheduled already a month in advance to do a c-section and the person thinks they have to.
My kid was overcooked as they called it in the delivery room. By about 2-3 weeks... But I hear ya, its a business!
I look at Mia's comments, Homebiz's comments and the story from my friend. I think the entire pricing, insurance thing is way out of whack. Insurance payments are arbitrary to a significant degree. Meanwhile health care costs are high and just seem to go up. I tend to believe that there should be some kind of nationalized health care. Simply because there are about 46 million American's who are uninsured. I believe there are far bigger problems, though that represent simply very high rising costs, and an existing private insurance program that is out of whack. I don't want to fight my insurer about $100, 200, 1,000 every damn time there is some need for expenses. What gives? I don't have to fight people about prices on everything else. Meanwhile, bitching about little costs doesn't cover the catastophic situation that my friend faced. When I asked him, what do you do, if the bill is due and you can't pay it. He is now expert in this arena. He stated that bankruptcy is the only alternative. That jives with public reports that claim that many bankruptcies (before this mortgage disaster) occur because of health care issues. Obama said most recently that in view of the financial problems he doesn't expect all his proposals on the expense side to occur quickly. I strongly agree with that. You can't all of a sudden unleash an expensive program on a nation suffering from deep debt. I got this feeling going forward, even if Obama, or Hillary were to have been elected.....somewhere around 45 million Americans are going to stay uninsured. Meanwhile there will be lots more personal bankruptcies because of an inability to handle health care costs.
Insurance companies don't want to have to pay unless they have to. However, since i've had insurance, i've never had a huge problem with having them pay for the things they said they would pay for. We'll see how it goes with this new insurance company I am with when we have our next baby in May though.
They are uninsured because they choose to be uninsured. I chose that once. I chose it because I could not afford it. With nationalized health care choice disappears. I like having a choice. If 46 million Americans choose not to pay for health insurance because they cannot afford it, then how in the hell is the government (funded by those Americans) going to pay for those 46 million and the rest of us that currently choose to buy health insurance? Since when does nationalizing something that is too expensive to pay for solve the problem? What we need is a reduction in the costs in health care and insurance. There is no reason anyone should be charging $37 for a box of kleenex or $52 for an aerosol can. (these were items on my bill which I had removed). All one need do is look at Canada, or most European nations to see just how wonderful nationalized health care is. You think you have a hard time with insurance dictating what you can and cannot have done, what until the government starts telling you what you can and cannot have done. Malpractice? Who are we suing? The doctor, the insurance company or under nationalized health care, your suing yourself. Nope, not thanks. I choose to buy my health insurance. Lets get prices under control, work on tort reform, and tax deductions for those of us who CHOOSE to buy health insurance. Its not just the insurance companies that are out of whack on price, its the health care industry itself, which is already - for the most part - nationalized in a way. Most health care providers are larger conglomerate businesses. Gone are most of the private practices. Instead in most cases there are one or two Health Care outfits that own the hospital, the doctors, and the clinics. Are you kidding me? So his excuse for not delivering on his HOPE and CHANGE is all based on the fact that he won't have enough money to spend? I think the best thing Obama could do right now is to do his fucking job rather than being a lazy ass power crazed bum of a community organizer. He should go to work and introduce an emergency bill calling for a reduction in or suspension of all of Congress's pay. I think a 50% reduction would both save money and encourage these guys to stop wasting. But more importantly I believe it would send an example to the wasteful and overpaid executives around the US. It would send a message to Americans that Congress cares enough to take a pay cut to do their part to help reduce waste in Washington. These guys don't choose to buy their health care btw. They get it for free. As part of this bill Obama should also ask that all of congress buy their own damn health care and stop making us pay for it. This elitist attitude and holier than thou bullshit needs to stop. Has anyone even bothered to pass an energy bill yet? What the hell happened to that? Our government is not going to be able to nationalize health care when they cannot even pass the simplest of bills. Good lord. Hillareeeee talked about nationalized health care back in 92? Remember? Anyone here at DP old enough to remember that? Anyone care to elaborate on that subject and where it went? Ahem.... Yeah, did not think so. Obama cannot even produce a legitmate birth certificate. I fail to see how he could solve any problem as president when he's not even show any of his constituants in the state of Illinois or the United States results in his current and past job.
How was it a choice if you could not afford it? I say we should privatize law enforcement, then everyone can "choose" whether or not to be able to afford basic protection. If someone breaks into your home to steal your stuff and you call 911, you get a $20k bill and if you don't make a high enough income to be able to foot the bill, you have to sell all the stuff they were trying to protect. And of course if the thief still gets away with your stuff, it does not get you out of paying for all the work law enforcement had to do, unless you can spend huge amounts of money to prove that law enforcement made a mistake. It'll be fun... like the wild west or something! And it'll free up more money for banking fraud too!
There were great visionaries though. Al Capone tried to develop privatised protection but they wouldn't let him on lousy excuses!
It was a choice because I chose to spend my money on other stuff. In a way, law enforcement is kinda private. I mean it is a not like the federal government is running the PD here in little old Lake Geneva. The state, county and local communities fund and support their local law enforcement. I see the comparison you are trying to make, but its kinda like comparing Apples to Rectums. Fire, Police, water, etc., are community services and managed and paid for by their local community. Health care run at the federal level will be no different than Social Security and other entitlement programs. It will be broke, in debt and defunct.