Health Care Thread

Big Phoenix_sl said:

What free market? The healthcare industry hasnt been anything resembling a free market for 40+ years now. Half of this country is on some form of government run/paid healthcare.

Click to expand...

But that's not controlling costs. That's letting costs balloon to batshit insanity, thus making public assistance a necessity.

To control costs, the simplest options seem to be having an entity offer health care (hospitals, drug manufacturing, individual practices) at uniform prices. So either the government has to largely take over the role of providing health care (not happening) or private entities have to agree to lower prices, thus reducing profit (not happening).

My point was that suggesting either government control or price regulation would ignite a shitstorm greater than the one we have now.

I suppose you could also control costs by denying access to health care, which also sounds like a wonderful option.

Employers used to be able to pay whatever pathetic, un-liveable wages they wanted as they watched their workers die of starvation and become indebted the longer they worked. Collective bargaining came about to offer a counter balance to what had been a completely one sided situation. There was very little government regulation in regards to labor at this time, so people organized a system to prevent being dicked over. Regardless how you feel about unions today, back then, this was major progress.

We have a similar situation in terms of healthcare costs being a one sided issue. Healthcare providers dictate cost, and well you either buy it or you go without. The difference is that there is a metric horseshit ton of government regulation surrounding HOW these services get paid for. And then there is an entire industry acting as a leech on everyone in the form of insurance, that also blankets everything in it's own layer of bureaucratic bullshit. (horseshit and bullshit everywhere) All insurance practices and standards are designed with one goal in mind, to make money. (As in it doesn't get spent on healthcare)

This is just a shitty situation. You have a provider you can't bargain with, charging you through the nose, who gets paid by a company that wants you to stay home or just walk it off. And now the government says we have to play this game or suffer the consequences, but does absolutely nothing to mitigate or alleviate the unfair rules that run it. (Well except for getting rid of pre-existing conditions, that was nice of them.)

If the government is going to force everyone to help out with the healthcare costs of the entire country... guess what, they should cut out the middle man and simply enact a new payroll tax, similar to how social security is paid for... then eliminate insurance companies, all of them. And then take this giant bankroll of social medicine money and force healthcare providers to bid over contracts for providing care to help drive costs back down into the realm of the reasonable. And then to further reduce the need to even provide care, they could essentially offer people tax credits for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. If you are able to meet some easily measured and quantifiable health goals, you get a break. I mean yeah this system would be rife with problems as well, but at least every penny spent would be going towards providing care.

A system like that is concerned with keeping as many people as possible, as healthy as possible; But it is totally socialism, no mistake there. However, what we have right now is like the horrific bastard child of socialism and capitalism. Instead of contributing to the well being of your fellow citizens, you are forced to contribute to the bottom line of some shit head's quarterly report.

Really it's just a fucking mess. A really expensive mess that is concerned with making as much money off of as many sick people as possible.

Still waiting for this list of laws that everyone agrees upon that will totally fix the out of control costs of health care. They've only been working on them for nearly half a century now.

Force providers to bid for the ability to provide care... which really sounds horrible in terms of quality of care. But that would certainly lower cost. If you start with sound standards of care that must be met, and then allow providers to bid on meeting those standards, that would help maintain quality.

And really saying they've been "working" on them is a huge freakin exaggeration. Dicking around is about the most generous term I would use for the efforts made at reforming healthcare.

You know, at some point, someone should have mentioned to Obama that health insurers change their plans all the fucking time.

Lets be fair...insurers change their plans all the time, especially when forced to. The number of cancellations (and we should probably include the changed plans that people decided to stay with) is unprecedented. Not sop by a long shot.

I'm really split on pharma, tho. Drugs in other countries are cheap as hell, but the brand names that are actually developing the drugs spend a shitload on R&D. The US develops like 1/3 if all new drugs, and I think that's like 3x more than any nation. Once developed and tested, which can cost upwards of 1B, they need to recoup and I understand that...but damn everything is so expensive here. It's basically other countries' healthcare systems getting the benefit of our being screwed.

Oh, and we knew the cancellations were going to happen. It was a talking point during the original debate...one of the whole points was to push insurers out of the individual market and force them to go with the exchanges, something the Dems were lauding at the time, and now are spinning to point the finger elsewhere when exactly what they wanted to happen...happened.

fanaskin_sl said:

Practically None of the progressives actually try to understand the people you are arguing with for the most part, you think they are all racists or bible thumpers or whatever answer suits your preconceived notions. I'm not in favor of people forcing you to do things I'm explaining how to sell a progressive program with a compromise to get something out of it to the people that would resent it.

Click to expand...

big?ot[ b?gg?t ]
intolerant person: somebody with strong opinions, especially on politics, religion, or ethnicity, who refuses to accept different views

Somewhere along the way, the Democrat party that use to be so cool, became the land of bigots and liars. It sucks to have watched it happen. But it's only very recently that the lies and bigotry have become so pervasive as to turn off the public at large.

Just reading the morons on this site trying to excuse the inexcusable ACA is absurd enough to fill a SNL skit. But then there is the fact that some people are so blind and or dishonest to still defend the supreme mountain of bullshit that ObamaCare is based upon. And that fact is a depressing statement on humans as a whole.

Excusing a lie always makes you wrong.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

What free market? The healthcare industry hasnt been anything resembling a free market for 40+ years now. Half of this country is on some form of government run/paid healthcare.

Click to expand...

39% as of a few weeks ago - nearly half not half.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

You want lower healthcare costs? Stop using insurance to pay for routine bullshit. It shouldnt take a rocket surgeon to figure out having to rely on a third party to handle billing and payment for anything is going to drastically alter the final cost. Health insurance should be for once in a life time catastrophic emergencies(you know like opening up your skull to remove something), not going to the doctor to get prescribed lipitor for your fatass.

Click to expand...

A lifetime of Lipitor is about 10x more expensive than most 'expensive' surgeries you do realize, right? $240/mo adds up quickly.

So in a country where people go to the doctor less often every year and less often than the rest of the industrialized world, the solution is to go to the doctor less often.

Current average is under 4 visits/year, which is half of the number from 2000. OMG you fucking hypochondriacs!

BoldW_sl said:

I'm really split on pharma, tho. Drugs in other countries are cheap as hell, but the brand names that are actually developing the drugs spend a shitload on R&D.

Click to expand...

A lot of the cost is again due to government involvement though. So not only do you have the 3rd party payers meaning if you're insured you dont give a shit what things cost, you have various laws and practices that allow companies to virtually be monopolies and are immune to market forces:

The Soaring Cost of a Simple Breath - NYTimes.com

As drugs age and lose patent protection, the costs of treatment can fall significantly because of generic competition - particularly if a pill has only one active ingredient and is simple to replicate. When Singulair, a pill the Hayes girls take daily to block allergic reactions in the lungs, lost its patent protection last year, generics rapidly entered the market. The price of the drug has already dropped from $180 per month to as low as $15 to $20 with pharmacy coupons.

But sprays, creams, patches, gels and combination medicines are more difficult to copy exactly to make a generic that meets Food and Drug Administration standards. Each time a molecule is put in a new inhaler or combined with another medicine, the amount delivered into the lungs or through the skin may change, even though that often has an imperceptible effect on patients.

Click to expand...

As for me, since I switched to an HSA, where I pay out of pocket from my account up to the deductible, I question everything. I recently got a prescription for an antibiotic. 150 bucks. Fuck that. I wasnt that sick and I just went to the doctor to make sure it wasnt something serious. So I asked the guy if he had anything else. Pharmacist comes back after chatting with my doctor and says yeah we have this generic, 20 bucks.