24 replies to this topic

[OverSword]

http://seattletimes....healthcare.html

[questionmark]

Guess I don't have to give up hope that reason wins over party entrenchment after all.

[and then]

I guess Boehner's feeling pretty silly about his "don't spike the ball" comments......

[OverSword]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and draw from what I witness on a daily basis as an employee of the 5th largest insurance agency in the USA.  Your average American's issue concerning health insurance is not, as politicians lead us to believe, that everyone have health insurance regardless of cost, but that healthcare costs are reduced.  So called Obamacare does nothing in that regard and this whole thing has become just another left vs. right opinion dividing political distraction.

There is a very simple way to reduce healthcare costs.  Make it ilegal for insurance companies to contract with hospitals and doctors.  Instead the insurance companies would have a specific amount, based on plan choice, that they would pay towards any given treatement.  So lets say you need surgery for list random surgery here you go to your benefit summary for your insurance plan and it says for that treatment we pay out $xxxxx.xx.  Now you know exactly how much money the insurance company will pay out.  Since in this model doctors are not mandated by the insurance companies how much to charge then you just shop for treatement, the more reasonably cheap doctors and hospitals will get the business and they will get into a war of who charges less.

The fact that this model has not been presented to the public tells me that the government has no real interest in limiting the costs of healthcare.

[Babe Ruth]

I will not participate.

[OverSword]

Babe Ruth, on 28 June 2012 - 06:04 PM, said:

I will not participate.

Do you have insurance babe?  If you do then you are already participating.

[cerberusxp]

questionmark, on 28 June 2012 - 04:27 PM, said:

Guess I don't have to give up hope that reason wins over party entrenchment after all.

I take it you are happy we Americans are going to have the same defunct health care as Greece? We used to have county hospitals that were all funded locally. But alas the taxacrats and state regulators made them go away.

[cerberusxp]

OverSword, on 28 June 2012 - 06:04 PM, said:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and draw from what I witness on a daily basis as an employee of the 5th largest insurance agency in the USA.  Your average American's issue concerning health insurance is not, as politicians lead us to believe, that everyone have health insurance regardless of cost, but that healthcare costs are reduced.  So called Obamacare does nothing in that regard and this whole thing has become just another left vs. right opinion dividing political distraction.

There is a very simple way to reduce healthcare costs.  Make it ilegal for insurance companies to contract with hospitals and doctors.  Instead the insurance companies would have a specific amount, based on plan choice, that they would pay towards any given treatement.  So lets say you need surgery for list random surgery here you go to your benefit summary for your insurance plan and it says for that treatment we pay out $xxxxx.xx.  Now you know exactly how much money the insurance company will pay out.  Since in this model doctors are not mandated by the insurance companies how much to charge then you just shop for treatement, the more reasonably cheap doctors and hospitals will get the business and they will get into a war of who charges less.

The fact that this model has not been presented to the public tells me that the government has no real interest in limiting the costs of healthcare.

OH OH do you work for a subsidiary of G.E.? Asuris maybe?

Allow for interstate trade of insurance companies for 1 and 2 standardize a minimum of coverage with multiple choice coverage.

Edited by cerberusxp, 29 June 2012 - 03:25 AM.

[ninjadude]

OverSword, on 28 June 2012 - 06:04 PM, said:

but that healthcare costs are reduced.  So called Obamacare does nothing in that regard

You're either being naive or intentionally misleading. The Affordable Care Act is mostly about reducing costs. See just a few below.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Authorized by the Affordable Care Act, the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program marks the beginning of an historic change in how Medicare pays health care providers and facilities; for the first time, 3,500 hospitals across the country will be paid for inpatient acute care services based on care quality, not just the quantity of the services they provide.

Preventing Disease and Illness.  A new $15 billionPrevention and Public Health Fund will invest in proven prevention and public health programs that can help keep Americans healthy -- from smoking cessation to combating obesity.  Funding begins in 2010.

Cracking Down on Health Care Fraud. Current efforts to fight fraud have returned more than $2.5 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund in FY 2009 alone. The new law invests new resources and requires new screening procedures for health care providers to boost these efforts and reduce fraud and waste in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.  Many provisions effective now

Improving Health Care Quality and Efficiency.  The law establishes a new Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation that will begin testing new ways of delivering care to patients that improve the quality of care, and reduce the rate of growth in health care costs for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

New Innovations to Bring Down Costs.  The Independent Payment Advisory Board will begin operations to develop and submit proposals to Congress and the President aimed at protecting and improving benefits for seniors and extending the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. It will target waste in the system, reduce costs, improve health outcomes for patients, and expand access to high-quality care.  Administrative funding becomes available October 1, 2011.

Bringing Down Health Care Premiums.  To ensure premium dollars are spent on health care, the new law requires that at least 85% of all premium dollars collected by insurance companies for large employer plans are spent on health care services and health care quality improvement

The new law levels the playing field by gradually eliminating Medicare Advantage overpayments to insurance companies

The lawestablishes a hospital Value-Based Purchasing program (VBP) in traditional Medicare. This program offers financial incentives to hospitals to improve the quality of care.

Using electronic health records will reduce paperwork and administrative burdens, cut costs, reduce medical errors and most importantly, improve the quality of care. First regulation effective October 1, 2012

Expanded Authority to Bundle Payments. The law establishes a national pilot program to encourage hospitals, doctors, and other providers to work together to improve the coordination and quality of patient care.  Under payment "bundling,"

whitehouse.gov

[acidhead]

[acidhead]

ninjadude, on 29 June 2012 - 04:10 AM, said:

You're either being naive or intentionally misleading. The Affordable Care Act is mostly about reducing costs. See just a few below.

+

About reducing costs?  What you listed was the GOV spending billions and creating more agencies and more paperwork.  Total waste of taxpayers money.

Edited by acidhead, 29 June 2012 - 04:26 AM.

[Yamato]

Disgrace!   Obamacare is unconstitutional.  It's a direct unapportioned tax and the Supreme Court lied by claiming it isn't a direct tax because it "doesn't effect every American".  The income tax is a direct tax.  Does it effect every American?  It only effects Americans who have income vis-a-vis Obamacare only effects people without health insurance.   What a sad and delirious case of legislating from the bench this is.  I care about the uninsured and preexisting conditions as much as anyone but this bag of rocks ain't it.  We're going to destroy the insurance industry and drive health care costs into the stratosphere.   Everyone will ignore the low penalties, buy in after they get sick if they get sick, or else those who can't will moan and cry about how they can't afford health care and how badly the system failed them.  When we pass nonsense like this we open the door to medical Armageddon and then after the clueless Americans blame the free market for the nightmare they're living through, we'll move to the real agenda of socialized medicine.  I think Schiff is spot on.

There's one other cure for Obamacare though.  Nullification.

Edited by Yamato, 29 June 2012 - 04:30 AM.

[questionmark]

cerberusxp, on 29 June 2012 - 03:16 AM, said:

I take it you are happy we Americans are going to have the same defunct health care as Greece? We used to have county hospitals that were all funded locally. But alas the taxacrats and state regulators made them go away.

Health care is defunct in Greece not because it does not work (in fact the Germans have had theirs for the pat 112 years) but because it was, as the rest of the country, mismanaged.

[Rafterman]

ninjadude, on 29 June 2012 - 04:10 AM, said:

You're either being naive or intentionally misleading. The Affordable Care Act is mostly about reducing costs. See just a few below.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Authorized by the Affordable Care Act, the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program marks the beginning of an historic change in how Medicare pays health care providers and facilities; for the first time, 3,500 hospitals across the country will be paid for inpatient acute care services based on care quality, not just the quantity of the services they provide.

Preventing Disease and Illness.  A new $15 billionPrevention and Public Health Fund will invest in proven prevention and public health programs that can help keep Americans healthy -- from smoking cessation to combating obesity.  Funding begins in 2010.

Cracking Down on Health Care Fraud. Current efforts to fight fraud have returned more than $2.5 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund in FY 2009 alone. The new law invests new resources and requires new screening procedures for health care providers to boost these efforts and reduce fraud and waste in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.  Many provisions effective now

Improving Health Care Quality and Efficiency.  The law establishes a new Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation that will begin testing new ways of delivering care to patients that improve the quality of care, and reduce the rate of growth in health care costs for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

New Innovations to Bring Down Costs.  The Independent Payment Advisory Board will begin operations to develop and submit proposals to Congress and the President aimed at protecting and improving benefits for seniors and extending the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. It will target waste in the system, reduce costs, improve health outcomes for patients, and expand access to high-quality care.  Administrative funding becomes available October 1, 2011.

Bringing Down Health Care Premiums.  To ensure premium dollars are spent on health care, the new law requires that at least 85% of all premium dollars collected by insurance companies for large employer plans are spent on health care services and health care quality improvement

The new law levels the playing field by gradually eliminating Medicare Advantage overpayments to insurance companies

The lawestablishes a hospital Value-Based Purchasing program (VBP) in traditional Medicare. This program offers financial incentives to hospitals to improve the quality of care.

Using electronic health records will reduce paperwork and administrative burdens, cut costs, reduce medical errors and most importantly, improve the quality of care. First regulation effective October 1, 2012

Expanded Authority to Bundle Payments. The law establishes a national pilot program to encourage hospitals, doctors, and other providers to work together to improve the coordination and quality of patient care.  Under payment "bundling,"

whitehouse.gov

Well that settles it.  Whitehouse.gov says it's all good.

Didn't they also say that the stimulus was going to produce millions of new shovel-ready jobs?

[Rafterman]

OverSword, on 28 June 2012 - 06:04 PM, said:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and draw from what I witness on a daily basis as an employee of the 5th largest insurance agency in the USA.  Your average American's issue concerning health insurance is not, as politicians lead us to believe, that everyone have health insurance regardless of cost, but that healthcare costs are reduced.  So called Obamacare does nothing in that regard and this whole thing has become just another left vs. right opinion dividing political distraction.

There is a very simple way to reduce healthcare costs.  Make it ilegal for insurance companies to contract with hospitals and doctors.  Instead the insurance companies would have a specific amount, based on plan choice, that they would pay towards any given treatement.  So lets say you need surgery for list random surgery here you go to your benefit summary for your insurance plan and it says for that treatment we pay out $xxxxx.xx.  Now you know exactly how much money the insurance company will pay out.  Since in this model doctors are not mandated by the insurance companies how much to charge then you just shop for treatement, the more reasonably cheap doctors and hospitals will get the business and they will get into a war of who charges less.

The fact that this model has not been presented to the public tells me that the government has no real interest in limiting the costs of healthcare.

That's been my contention all along - there is little to no free market in our current system.  All pricing is hidden behind the scenes.

Bring the free market back into the system and you'll see prices drop dramatically.

Let's see 2 for 1 coupons for you and your mom to get a mammogram for Mother's Day or 75% off on cancer screenings during cancer month.

Or better yet, only have major medical insurance and no coverage for day-to-day medical services and screenings - the price of those things would drop dramatically.

There are a lot of easily enacted regulations that would lower costs without creating a huge new Government monstrosity and bringing about the largest tax increase in US history - which is what Obamacare really is.