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Single-payer healthcare opinion


K9Buck

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3 minutes ago, aztek said:

all those promises of free healthcare are blatant lies  anyone who has a slightest idea what is involved , and half a brain to process it, knows it,  

I don't believe anybody is saying health care will be free.  Somebody always pays.  It is just that under Medicare-for-All, the govt does the paying.  Doctors will be free to sign the payment agreements or not, just as they are now.  But the govt will tell them how much they can charge.  That should bring down the cost of healthcare.  My suggestion is that they don't try to bring the cost down too much in the first few years.  The govt will need experience in this before they can come up with realistic pricing schedules - ones that get people treated at a minimum cost.

Doug

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7 minutes ago, Doug1029 said:

I don't believe anybody is saying health care will be free.  Somebody always pays.  It is just that under Medicare-for-All, the govt does the paying.  Doctors will be free to sign the payment agreements or not, just as they are now.  But the govt will tell them how much they can charge.  That should bring down the cost of healthcare.  My suggestion is that they don't try to bring the cost down too much in the first few years.  The govt will need experience in this before they can come up with realistic pricing schedules - ones that get people treated at a minimum cost.

Doug

Like I said before.  The government has experience in this, has been doing it for a long time with Medicare and the VA.  All the rules can stay the same, but the medicare payment would be 100% instead of 80%.  The big issue is getting rid of the private insurance companies.  I also mentioned before that a lot of doctors would rather deal with medicare than the other insurance companies.  Less headaches, fewer personnel required to process claims, etc.  The doctors who want to charge what the want are the ones who would rather a different system be in place.  And usually they go in to non insurable or barely insurable types of practice.

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35 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

Like I said before.  The government has experience in this, has been doing it for a long time with Medicare and the VA.  All the rules can stay the same, but the medicare payment would be 100% instead of 80%.  The big issue is getting rid of the private insurance companies.  I also mentioned before that a lot of doctors would rather deal with medicare than the other insurance companies.  Less headaches, fewer personnel required to process claims, etc.  The doctors who want to charge what the want are the ones who would rather a different system be in place.  And usually they go in to non insurable or barely insurable types of practice.

But what is missing in that "experience" is the amount at which doctors start short-changing patients on services.  They already do that with indigent patients, so somewhere between indigent and wealthy is a fuzzy gray line that distinguishes quality care from slap-dash effort.

Doug

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7 minutes ago, Doug1029 said:

But what is missing in that "experience" is the amount at which doctors start short-changing patients on services.  They already do that with indigent patients, so somewhere between indigent and wealthy is a fuzzy gray line that distinguishes quality care from slap-dash effort.

Doug

I have gotten slap-dash care from doctors and I have always had good insurance who paid them the rate contracted by the doctor with that insurance company.  I am not sure what this has to do with the "medicare-for-all".  Of course if a doctor can make more money they will treat a patient better, and some will treat patients carelessly who can't pay, which means it either gets written off, or their is a government program paying, and some even refuse to treat patients who can't pay when they work for a private corporation. 

But that has nothing to do with the "medicare-for-all" issue.  Many say the government can't handle it and with the present administration I agree, (not that it is being mishandled now, but that the wrong people will get appointed to manage it).  However,  it is being handled on a smaller scale and has been, by processes that have been in place for Medicare and the VA for a long time.

Edited by Desertrat56
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4 hours ago, Doug1029 said:

Wednesday, February 26, 2020:  Hospital admissions have reached 80,000.  We might make it to 90,000 by the end of the week, but not the predicted 100,000.  Deaths are at 2700.

1900 ADDITIONAL cases today.  A little over 100 deaths TODAY.

Estimates are that the total world death toll will be about 225 million.

 

We can expect containment to be breached in the US within the next month or so.  There were 53 cases here as of this morning.

Doug

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1 hour ago, Doug1029 said:

I don't believe anybody is saying health care will be free.  Somebody always pays.  It is just that under Medicare-for-All, the govt does the paying.  Doctors will be free to sign the payment agreements or not, just as they are now.  But the govt will tell them how much they can charge.  That should bring down the cost of healthcare.  My suggestion is that they don't try to bring the cost down too much in the first few years.  The govt will need experience in this before they can come up with realistic pricing schedules - ones that get people treated at a minimum cost.

Doug

IMO, trusting the most inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy on the planet with my healthcare is a losing proposition.  

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1 hour ago, Desertrat56 said:

The government has experience in this, has been doing it for a long time with Medicare and the VA.

Of which we hear nothing good.  Same with Medicare.  Horribly run, underfunded, most physicians can't afford to treat people on it because the premiums for their malpractice insurance are more than what medicare pays.  This would be a disaster for years if implemented.

And of course the most pathetic part is that politicians took steps long ago to protect themselves and their families from being part of any such legislation by guaranteeing their own Cadillac Insurance plans are forever. 

Edited by OverSword
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3 minutes ago, OverSword said:

IMO, trusting the most inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy on the planet with my healthcare is a losing proposition.  

The US is far from being the most inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy on the planet.  But it is working on becoming that way.

The Soviet Union did itself in by trying to govern based on ideology rather than sticking to what works.  THAT is inefficiency.  If the right wing keeps trying to govern by ideology, they will bring down the government and your anti-govt knee-jerk reaction is part of the cause.  A little pragmatism would go a long way here.

Doug 

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6 minutes ago, OverSword said:

Of which we hear nothing good.  Same with Medicare.  Horribly run, underfunded, most physicians can't afford to treat people on it because the premiums for their malpractice insurance are more than what medicare pays.  This would be a disaster for years if implemented.

"Horribly run" Medicare cut $23,000 off the cost of my hip replacement operation.  It worked very smoothly and rapidly - faster than the insurance company.

Doug

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8 minutes ago, Doug1029 said:

"Horribly run" Medicare cut $23,000 off the cost of my hip replacement operation.  It worked very smoothly and rapidly - faster than the insurance company.

Doug

I'm a licensed life and health insurance agent.  Many doctors will not work with medicare or medicaid clients.  I know this because I've had to help individuals find doctors.  Yours did.  Did you have medicare supplements too?

Edited by OverSword
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19 minutes ago, OverSword said:

And of course the most pathetic part is that politicians took steps long ago to protect themselves and their families from being part of any such legislation by guaranteeing their own Cadillac Insurance plans are forever.

This is why we need to clean house and get rid of most congress and senators and then keep voting out everyone every election until we get people who do not plan it as a career and can respond to our needs, rather than corporate and personal desires.

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7 minutes ago, OverSword said:

I'm a licensed life and health insurance agent.  Many doctors will not work with medicare or medicaid clients.  I know this because I've had to help individuals find doctors.  Yours did.  Did you have medicare supplements too?

if it was a surgery the doctor is affiliated with a hospital.  it is different than an outpatient thing.  the reason he got 23k off is because someone else with good insurance paid the difference, like mine insurance paid 70k for a childbirth last year,  the cheaper his service is, the more expensive mine gets

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2 hours ago, aztek said:

all those promises of free healthcare are blatant lies  anyone who has a slightest idea what is involved , and half a brain to process it, knows it,  

Still working over here. 

Maybe you should work on the other half of that brain. 

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14 minutes ago, aztek said:

if it was a surgery the doctor is affiliated with a hospital.  it is different than an outpatient thing.  the reason he got 23k off is because someone else with good insurance paid the difference, like mine insurance paid 70k for a childbirth last year,  the cheaper his service is, the more expensive mine gets

Well,  that's somewhat true depending on your carrier, your plan, possibly your age and medical history.  It varies state to state which is another reason that having a single payer plan would be very disruptive.  Underwriting is very complicated 

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31 minutes ago, OverSword said:

I'm a licensed life and health insurance agent.  Many doctors will not work with medicare or medicaid clients.  I know this because I've had to help individuals find doctors.  Yours did.  Did you have medicare supplements too?

Just Medicare Part A

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i would love to not pay copays, deductible, unpaid portion for out of network,  on top of $700 a month for family plan, that costs my employer 2x as much, but i know all those political promises are lies,  and without replacing pretty much everything else it just can't happen in usa. 

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22 minutes ago, aztek said:

if it was a surgery the doctor is affiliated with a hospital.  it is different than an outpatient thing.  the reason he got 23k off is because someone else with good insurance paid the difference, like mine insurance paid 70k for a childbirth last year,  the cheaper his service is, the more expensive mine gets

It was affiliated with a hospital.  $23,000 was half of what they originally billed me for.  The balance ($23,000) was mostly disallowed by my insurance company.  They paid about $7800 and left me with $1000.  So are you saying I had good insurance?

What I wonder about is why doctors/hospitals are so bad at billing.  The amount actually paid was 19% of the original bill.  Surely they knew this going in and thought it was profitable or they would never have done the surgery.  They padded the bill by more than $37,000.  That kind of mark-up should be criminal.

Doug

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8 minutes ago, aztek said:

i would love to not pay copays, deductible, unpaid portion for out of network,  on top of $700 a month for family plan, that costs my employer 2x as much, but i know all those political promises are lies,  and without replacing pretty much everything else it just can't happen in usa. 

The money will come out of insurance premiums (which will be replaced by Medicare taxes), insurance company profits and reduced payments to providers.

Doug

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1 minute ago, Doug1029 said:

It was affiliated with a hospital.  $23,000 was half of what they originally billed me for.  The balance ($23,000) was mostly disallowed by my insurance company.  They paid about $7800 and left me with $1000.  So are you saying I had good insurance?

What I wonder about is why doctors/hospitals are so bad at billing.  The amount actually paid was 19% of the original bill.  Surely they knew this going in and thought it was profitable or they would never have done the surgery.  They padded the bill by more than $37,000.  That kind of mark-up should be criminal.

Doug

I think you do have good insurance if you only piad 1000.00 of the cost of the surgery.  My deductible is 8500 a year for a single person and the company pays 5000 of that, so the company makes our insurance decent.  They found it less expensive to cover the first 5000 of the deductible than to get us on a low deductible plan.

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On 2/4/2020 at 12:29 PM, Setton said:

There's the key word. 

You have no idea what you are talking about but you imagine it must be bad because someone (*cough* RavenHawk *cough*) once told you it was socialist and that all socialist things must be bad (except the ones the US already had). 

Illogical, ill-thought and ill-informed. 

I gather you're voting for Trump..? 

No, all socialist things really are bad. State healthcare must and should remain in private sector ownership. The low amount of socialism in the US is exactly why it has a GDP of $20 trillion instead of a mere $8 trillion.

Socialism creates poverty, it doesnt cure it.

Sure those receiving benefits and state healthcare think its great. But by taxing wealth that tax burden drives up the operating costs of businesses. That in turn stops them competing in price sensitive markets. Your love of socialism is why in the UK all the manufacturing has drifted to China and the US must not make the same mistake.

Its why the only decent jobs remaining here are in the financial and banking sector. Socialism has driven us out of all price sensitive markets. The US must never go down that route, and Obama was the worst US President in history thanks to Obamacare. He started the rot that will ultimately end the US`s reign as the leading economic superpower.

The Americans need to dismantle socialism, they need a new Reagan and they have one in Trump! Its one of the reasons why they hate him so much, and one of the reasons why I think the guy is great.

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11 minutes ago, RabidMongoose said:

 they need a new Reagan

:lol:  Yes, that's what we have now, someone who suffers from Alzheimers and is really good at reading scripts (NOT), Trump is as clueless as Reagan was but he is horrible at reading scripts. (unless maybe his owners want him to be insulting everyone all the time or claiming everything is wonderful)

America has already sent a lot of jobs to china, we have all kinds of crap with Made in China on it and it has nothing to do with socialism, it has to do with letting big corporations take the jobs outside of the country so they can pay less for manufacturing and employees.

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18 minutes ago, RabidMongoose said:

No, all socialist things really are bad. State healthcare must and should remain in private sector ownership. The low amount of socialism in the US is exactly why it has a GDP of $20 trillion instead of a mere $8 trillion.

Lets look at some of those evil socialist things.

The Post Office is government owned and government run - lock, stock and barrel.  It fits the definition of "communist."

The Tennessee Valley Authority provides electricity and navigational facilities for most of the eastern United States.  It also fits the definition of communist.  It sells power to electric companies that in turn, sell it to consumers.  That makes it more fascist than communist.  It also provides free lock services to all boats passing its locks.  As that is mostly large towboats, that also makes it largely fascist.

Same goes for the Columbia River Authority.

Your local fire department is probably a socialist operation.  All people pay into it and all benefit from it - socialism.

There are a few privately-run fire companies.  You subscribe to their services once a year and if your house catches fire, they fight it.  If you don't pay in advance, they watch your house burn OR they offer to buy it from you at "fire sale" rates.  If you sell, they fight the fire, if not, good luck.  But that's capitalism at work.

How about your sewer and water?  Are they government owned/run (socialist), or privately owned/run (capitalist)?

How about your local police department?  Do you pay for a cop when you need one, or is that provided by your government?  And how about judges?  Do you hire one to hear your case?  That used to be done in Celtic society by the Druids - a capitalist legal system.  Justice for sale to the highest bidder - but that's Trumpism.

How about insurance?  Any "company" with "mutual" in its name is owned by its policy holders - socialism.  They all work by collectivising risk - socialism.

There are at least 100 companies in the US that are owned by their employees.  That's socialism.

I'm sure you can think of many more.

Doug

Edited by Doug1029
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53 minutes ago, Doug1029 said:

It was affiliated with a hospital.  $23,000 was half of what they originally billed me for.  The balance ($23,000) was mostly disallowed by my insurance company.  They paid about $7800 and left me with $1000.  So are you saying I had good insurance?

Yeah, if you had only had medicare you would have paid $8k out of pocket sounds like.

Quote

 

What I wonder about is why doctors/hospitals are so bad at billing.  The amount actually paid was 19% of the original bill.  Surely they knew this going in and thought it was profitable or they would never have done the surgery.  They padded the bill by more than $37,000.  That kind of mark-up should be criminal.

Doug

 

Yes, it should be.  

11 years ago I had to get surgery on my arm  Price of surgery was $20k my deductible was $5k (paid for by my HSA) insurance paid the rest.

Edited by OverSword
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35 minutes ago, Doug1029 said:

Lets look at some of those evil socialist things.

The Post Office is government owned and government run - lock, stock and barrel.  It fits the definition of "communist."

The Tennessee Valley Authority provides electricity and navigational facilities for most of the eastern United States.  It also fits the definition of communist.  It sells power to electric companies that in turn, sell it to consumers.  That makes it more fascist than communist.  It also provides free lock services to all boats passing its locks.  As that is mostly large towboats, that also makes it largely fascist.

Same goes for the Columbia River Authority.

Your local fire department is probably a socialist operation.  All people pay into it and all benefit from it - socialism.

There are a few privately-run fire companies.  You subscribe to their services once a year and if your house catches fire, they fight it.  If you don't pay in advance, they watch your house burn OR they offer to buy it from you at "fire sale" rates.  If you sell, they fight the fire, if not, good luck.  But that's capitalism at work.

How about your sewer and water?  Are they government owned/run (socialist), or privately owned/run (capitalist)?

How about your local police department?  Do you pay for a cop when you need one, or is that provided by your government?  And how about judges?  Do you hire one to hear your case?  That used to be done in Celtic society by the Druids - a capitalist legal system.  Justice for sale to the highest bidder - but that's Trumpism.

How about insurance?  Any "company" with "mutual" in its name is owned by its policy holders - socialism.  They all work by collectivising risk - socialism.

There are at least 100 companies in the US that are owned by their employees.  That's socialism.

I'm sure you can think of many more.

Doug

I know, its bad right!

Here in the UK our Post Office is now nearly completely privatised. Electricity and water already are. I dont know what you mean by navigational facilities but if you mean service stations then they are private here too. Our fire, police, and justice system, are still state owned but I dont think they can really be privatised as it would create too many problems. It might be possible to do the fire and police, I think we should give it a try.

Our worst pieces of socialism are the NHS and public services. We could do with privatising hospitals, roads, libraries, swimming baths, airports, large areas of the civil service, and cutting back on our education budget which churns out far to many graduates each year for the needs of our economy. We could vastly reduce the operating costs of our business once that is done which would double or triple our GDP.;

And while we are at it why are we building windfarms? Nuclear is green and by far the cheapest per kilowatt hour. Businesses need the cheapest power, not expensive power to make tree huggers happy. Green energy sources need to be the cheapest on offer.

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wow 4 degrees later and still no clue that company owned by employees is actually opposite of socialism. it is  collectively owned, employees are shareholders. socialism doesn't allow private ownership of businesses,   

and usps is horribly ran, and loosing money.  it's infected with cancer, aka union

Edited by aztek
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