Ailing Man and Obamacare
May 17, 2015 11:02:19 #
I found this article to be ironic, and I would guess there are many other cases similar to this situation.
http://www.sunherald.com/2015/05/16/6230671/leonard-pitts-ailing-man-finds.html
http://www.sunherald.com/2015/05/16/6230671/leonard-pitts-ailing-man-finds.html
May 17, 2015 11:47:00 #
3jack wrote:
I found this article to be ironic, and I would guess there are many other cases similar to this situation.
http://www.sunherald.com/2015/05/16/6230671/leonard-pitts-ailing-man-finds.html
http://www.sunherald.com/2015/05/16/6230671/leonard-pitts-ailing-man-finds.html
Passing HR 676 (Medicare for ALL) would eliminate problems like this. But instead all our corporate owned and ass kissing politicians could do was pass a MANDATE that everyone had to buy health insurance from private, for profit health insurance corporations that are allowed to extract $500 BILLION annually from the health care system so their CEOs and top executives could make millions in salaries and bonuses trying to figure out how to deny coverage and claims.
If he had needed kidney dyalysis or a kidney t***splant medicare would have paid for it. Why? Because private, for profit health insurance corporations got their puppet politicians to pass legislation in 1972, in effect, passing the extremely expensive and unprofitable kidney treatments onto the taxpayers.
http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-topics/kidney-disease/financial-help-f...
Type of Insurance Plan Who Pays First
Individual plannot provided by an employer Medicare always pays first. An individual plan always pays second.
Employer or union group plan With kidney failure, the employer or union group plan pays first for 30 months* after a person is eligible for Medicare because of kidney failure. The 30-month clock starts whether the person enrolls in Medicare or not. However, the person will eventually have to enroll in Medicare. After the 30 months, Medicare pays first. The employer or union group plan may pay all or part of the rest.
Did you get that? In 1972, the U.S. Congress passed a law that allows most people with kidney failure coverage by Medicare.
Educate yourselves:
http://warisacrime.org/node/43855
http://www.medicareforall.org/pages/HR676
May 17, 2015 13:15:02 #
I just donated $100 so his wife doesn't have to find a job or so that he doesn't have to take a 2nd mortgage on his $300,000 house.
LOL, just kidding. I wouldn't give a nickel. Let the market solve this.
If he had a brain he'd appeal to the bleeding heart liberals and say he's seen the light and all the conservatives are wrong and he wished he'd listen to liberals. I'm sure they'd probably fly him to the best eye doctor in the country at no cost.
Obviously, he's not a thinker if he didn't have any insurance to begin with.
LOL, just kidding. I wouldn't give a nickel. Let the market solve this.
If he had a brain he'd appeal to the bleeding heart liberals and say he's seen the light and all the conservatives are wrong and he wished he'd listen to liberals. I'm sure they'd probably fly him to the best eye doctor in the country at no cost.
Obviously, he's not a thinker if he didn't have any insurance to begin with.
3jack wrote:
I found this article to be ironic, and I would guess there are many other cases similar to this situation.
http://www.sunherald.com/2015/05/16/6230671/leonard-pitts-ailing-man-finds.html
http://www.sunherald.com/2015/05/16/6230671/leonard-pitts-ailing-man-finds.html
May 17, 2015 14:55:13 #
Yeah, so he could give the private, for profit health insurance corporations the equivalent of 2 monthly new car payments and they may or may not have covered his eyes. Right!
What would be wrong with HR676 (Medicare for All) and everybody would pay a small tax instead of 2 car payments and be cover with health care. Instead we let government mandate that we must buy health insurance, which, by the way, is not the same thing as health care, from a private , for profit health insurance corporation then think it is no problem that they extract $500 BILLION annualy from that health care system and pay their CEOs and tp executives millions in salaries and bonuses to figure out ways to get out of paying as many claims as possible.
Nobody see anything wrong or immoral about that? Is health care about people or profits?
Both ocare opponents (those that see it as socialized medicine) and ocare proponents that think it solved anything are WRONG. It is neither socialized medicine (that we should have like Medicare) nor is it any solution to the problems we face in the health care industry (like out of control premiums and deductibles and the rising costs of health care, access, etc). It is plain and simple a gift to the private, for profit health insurance corporations with its mandate.
The Simple Answer to Americas Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All
By Dave Lindorff
When it comes to reforming Americas disastrous health care system, there are two issues that need to be considered: access and cost.
The so-called reform proposals being offered by the Obama White House, the House and the Senate, are failing on both counts, and deserve to die.
No progressives should allow themselves to be suckered into promoting one or the other.
Heres the problem. As long as the health insurance industry is permitted to be the primary paymaster, the cost of medical care will continue to soar, not least because the insurance industry is so concerned about minimizing its own outlays that it is forcing the system to dev**e nearly 30% of every health care dollar spent to administrative costs (compared to 3-4 percent for Medicare, and even less for single-payer systems like Canadas). Thats true whether there is a so-called public option government-run health insurance plan or not. Note that 30 percent of Americas $2.5-trillion health care bill per year is $750 billion a year, a sum which does absolutely nothing to make a single person more healthy or less ill. Even if one were to assume that the lions share of those administrative expenses were only for the private funded portion of Americas health care system, and for Medicare, the state-run but partly federally-funded portion that is famous for its paperwork mess, and the uninsured, who also consume a lot of paperwork when they do get treated at hospitals under mandated free-care provisions of at the expense of local governments, wed be talking about 30% of $1.5 trillion, or about $450 billion going to administrative costs every yearstill a staggering sum.
Medicare, the health program for the elderly and the disabled, and Medicaid, the federally and state-funded program that funds medical care for the poor, together cost some $850 billion a year. Add to that the $150 billion that hospitals and local governments spend annually to cover the uninsured poor who dont qualify for Medicaid, and the $50 billion the federal government spends for veterans care. Thats just over $1 trillion in government spending to cover the health care of roughly half the population of the United States.
The rest of usworking people and our familiesrely on private insurance, some of it paid for by employers, some by us, either as our share of the cost of company plans (growing every year), or as the deductible and co-pay portions of our medical bills. That privately funded medical care costs us about $1.5 trillion a year50% more than the government spends on the medical care for a roughly equal number of people. If you do the math, it turns out that we who rely on the private sector are spending about $10,000 per person per year on health care, either directly out of our own pockets, or in the form of money our employers are paying into insurance plans for usmoney that could otherwise be coming to us in the form of higher wages or lower-priced goods.
What this means is that right off the bat, if the politicians in Washington were to simply thumb their noses at the insurance industry, and at the greedy docs and drug companies who are paying millions in legal bribes to protect their stake in the lucrative medical game, and if they were to extended Medicare to all of us, we could immediately eliminate $500 billion from the nations collective medical bill, because thats how much more cheaply Medicare, Medicaid and the VA are able to treat patients than the private sector. But the savings would be far more than that. The cost of treating the uninsured--$150 billion a yearwould be dramatically reduced, because it is currently almost entirely for emergency care at hospitals, the most expensive possible way to deliver medical care. My guess is that at least $100 billion would be saved simply by switching all those people over to Medicare, so they could walk into a doctors office for treatment instead of into an ER. The VA, with its separate government-owned hospital system, would become largely redundant if all veterans were simply treatable under Medicare, which would probably save a considerable portion of that $50 billion-per-year expense. Furthermore, by switching private-pay patients over to Medicare, most of the $450 billion a year currently wasted on administrative costs would be eliminateda savings of perhaps $3-400 billion a year. While some of that would be reflected in the cost differential between privately financed and Medicare financed care, most is not. The main reason Medicares per-patient cost for care is much lower than for private pay patients (who, remember, are younger and healthier on average than Medicare patients, and so should be cheaper to treat, not more expensive), is that Medicare sets out payment schedules for doctors and hospitals, and negotiates payments for medicinesall at much lower levels than do private insurers, who often just set reimbursement rates, and let their insured patients cover the difference out of pocket.
Taking all these savings together, its a good guess, I would say, that by simply expanding Medicare to cover all Americans without exception, the nation as a whole could save upwards of $900 billion on its current $2.5 trillion annual medical bill.
Now thats not to say such a change wouldnt involve a tax increase. The current publicly funded share of that $2.5 trillion bill is about $1 trillion, when you add together federal, state and local outlays, all funded by the taxpayer. An expanded Medicare that covered everyone would, by my reckoning, cost about $1.4 trillion, once all the costs were added, and the savings implemented, including lowered payments to doctors, hospitals and drug companies. So wed have to cover an extra $400 billion a year through tax increases.
But remember, there would be no more local revenues going to pay for uninsured care at local hospitals, no more state taxes going to pay for Medicaid for medical care for the poor, no more out-of-pocket payments by families for co-pays and deductibles, or for employee share of insurance premiums. And companies would no longer be paying anything for employee health insurance. The net gain to the average person would be enormous.
Thats the point that the medical industry lobby conveniently ignores. Its a point also conveniently ignored by the politicians theyve bought in Washington and the White House, who only talk about the increased taxes that a single-payer government takeover of health care finance would entail.
And, to get back to the beginning of this article, there would no longer be an issue of Americans going without access to medical care. Everyone would be on Medicare. And not one of the costly reform proposals being pushed through Congress today can say that. Every proposed reform plan leaves millions uninsured.
Note too that, under basic Medicare (as long as you dont get suckered into one of those HMO rip-offs like Humana and other insurance firms advertise), everyone gets to choose his or her own doctor and hospital. There is no gatekeeper systemanother bugaboo raised by the health industry lobbyists.
With a universalization of Medicare, at one fell swoop, America would have a single-payer systemone that its elderly citizens already have, and by all accounts are very satisfied withand one that would be substantially cheaper than what we have now.
For everyone.
Socialized medicine? Maybe, but its a socialism we already know. Call it socialism with American characteristics, if you like. Or to crib from a comment President Obama made to the fat cat docs at the American Medical Assn. convention recently, its a socialism that is part of the American tradition.
So, want to have some fun? Tell your congressional delegation to demand that the Congressional Budget Office, which just came up with an estimate that the Senates health reform bill would add $1.6 trillion in costs over 10 years, do a study of what expanding Medicare to all would cost, after netting out the savings to individuals and employers of having their insurance payments and out-of-pocket health expenses eliminated.
What would be wrong with HR676 (Medicare for All) and everybody would pay a small tax instead of 2 car payments and be cover with health care. Instead we let government mandate that we must buy health insurance, which, by the way, is not the same thing as health care, from a private , for profit health insurance corporation then think it is no problem that they extract $500 BILLION annualy from that health care system and pay their CEOs and tp executives millions in salaries and bonuses to figure out ways to get out of paying as many claims as possible.
Nobody see anything wrong or immoral about that? Is health care about people or profits?
Both ocare opponents (those that see it as socialized medicine) and ocare proponents that think it solved anything are WRONG. It is neither socialized medicine (that we should have like Medicare) nor is it any solution to the problems we face in the health care industry (like out of control premiums and deductibles and the rising costs of health care, access, etc). It is plain and simple a gift to the private, for profit health insurance corporations with its mandate.
The Simple Answer to Americas Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All
By Dave Lindorff
When it comes to reforming Americas disastrous health care system, there are two issues that need to be considered: access and cost.
The so-called reform proposals being offered by the Obama White House, the House and the Senate, are failing on both counts, and deserve to die.
No progressives should allow themselves to be suckered into promoting one or the other.
Heres the problem. As long as the health insurance industry is permitted to be the primary paymaster, the cost of medical care will continue to soar, not least because the insurance industry is so concerned about minimizing its own outlays that it is forcing the system to dev**e nearly 30% of every health care dollar spent to administrative costs (compared to 3-4 percent for Medicare, and even less for single-payer systems like Canadas). Thats true whether there is a so-called public option government-run health insurance plan or not. Note that 30 percent of Americas $2.5-trillion health care bill per year is $750 billion a year, a sum which does absolutely nothing to make a single person more healthy or less ill. Even if one were to assume that the lions share of those administrative expenses were only for the private funded portion of Americas health care system, and for Medicare, the state-run but partly federally-funded portion that is famous for its paperwork mess, and the uninsured, who also consume a lot of paperwork when they do get treated at hospitals under mandated free-care provisions of at the expense of local governments, wed be talking about 30% of $1.5 trillion, or about $450 billion going to administrative costs every yearstill a staggering sum.
Medicare, the health program for the elderly and the disabled, and Medicaid, the federally and state-funded program that funds medical care for the poor, together cost some $850 billion a year. Add to that the $150 billion that hospitals and local governments spend annually to cover the uninsured poor who dont qualify for Medicaid, and the $50 billion the federal government spends for veterans care. Thats just over $1 trillion in government spending to cover the health care of roughly half the population of the United States.
The rest of usworking people and our familiesrely on private insurance, some of it paid for by employers, some by us, either as our share of the cost of company plans (growing every year), or as the deductible and co-pay portions of our medical bills. That privately funded medical care costs us about $1.5 trillion a year50% more than the government spends on the medical care for a roughly equal number of people. If you do the math, it turns out that we who rely on the private sector are spending about $10,000 per person per year on health care, either directly out of our own pockets, or in the form of money our employers are paying into insurance plans for usmoney that could otherwise be coming to us in the form of higher wages or lower-priced goods.
What this means is that right off the bat, if the politicians in Washington were to simply thumb their noses at the insurance industry, and at the greedy docs and drug companies who are paying millions in legal bribes to protect their stake in the lucrative medical game, and if they were to extended Medicare to all of us, we could immediately eliminate $500 billion from the nations collective medical bill, because thats how much more cheaply Medicare, Medicaid and the VA are able to treat patients than the private sector. But the savings would be far more than that. The cost of treating the uninsured--$150 billion a yearwould be dramatically reduced, because it is currently almost entirely for emergency care at hospitals, the most expensive possible way to deliver medical care. My guess is that at least $100 billion would be saved simply by switching all those people over to Medicare, so they could walk into a doctors office for treatment instead of into an ER. The VA, with its separate government-owned hospital system, would become largely redundant if all veterans were simply treatable under Medicare, which would probably save a considerable portion of that $50 billion-per-year expense. Furthermore, by switching private-pay patients over to Medicare, most of the $450 billion a year currently wasted on administrative costs would be eliminateda savings of perhaps $3-400 billion a year. While some of that would be reflected in the cost differential between privately financed and Medicare financed care, most is not. The main reason Medicares per-patient cost for care is much lower than for private pay patients (who, remember, are younger and healthier on average than Medicare patients, and so should be cheaper to treat, not more expensive), is that Medicare sets out payment schedules for doctors and hospitals, and negotiates payments for medicinesall at much lower levels than do private insurers, who often just set reimbursement rates, and let their insured patients cover the difference out of pocket.
Taking all these savings together, its a good guess, I would say, that by simply expanding Medicare to cover all Americans without exception, the nation as a whole could save upwards of $900 billion on its current $2.5 trillion annual medical bill.
Now thats not to say such a change wouldnt involve a tax increase. The current publicly funded share of that $2.5 trillion bill is about $1 trillion, when you add together federal, state and local outlays, all funded by the taxpayer. An expanded Medicare that covered everyone would, by my reckoning, cost about $1.4 trillion, once all the costs were added, and the savings implemented, including lowered payments to doctors, hospitals and drug companies. So wed have to cover an extra $400 billion a year through tax increases.
But remember, there would be no more local revenues going to pay for uninsured care at local hospitals, no more state taxes going to pay for Medicaid for medical care for the poor, no more out-of-pocket payments by families for co-pays and deductibles, or for employee share of insurance premiums. And companies would no longer be paying anything for employee health insurance. The net gain to the average person would be enormous.
Thats the point that the medical industry lobby conveniently ignores. Its a point also conveniently ignored by the politicians theyve bought in Washington and the White House, who only talk about the increased taxes that a single-payer government takeover of health care finance would entail.
And, to get back to the beginning of this article, there would no longer be an issue of Americans going without access to medical care. Everyone would be on Medicare. And not one of the costly reform proposals being pushed through Congress today can say that. Every proposed reform plan leaves millions uninsured.
Note too that, under basic Medicare (as long as you dont get suckered into one of those HMO rip-offs like Humana and other insurance firms advertise), everyone gets to choose his or her own doctor and hospital. There is no gatekeeper systemanother bugaboo raised by the health industry lobbyists.
With a universalization of Medicare, at one fell swoop, America would have a single-payer systemone that its elderly citizens already have, and by all accounts are very satisfied withand one that would be substantially cheaper than what we have now.
For everyone.
Socialized medicine? Maybe, but its a socialism we already know. Call it socialism with American characteristics, if you like. Or to crib from a comment President Obama made to the fat cat docs at the American Medical Assn. convention recently, its a socialism that is part of the American tradition.
So, want to have some fun? Tell your congressional delegation to demand that the Congressional Budget Office, which just came up with an estimate that the Senates health reform bill would add $1.6 trillion in costs over 10 years, do a study of what expanding Medicare to all would cost, after netting out the savings to individuals and employers of having their insurance payments and out-of-pocket health expenses eliminated.
May 17, 2015 16:29:07 #
It's too late for that. Maybe 70-100 years ago. Maybe immediately following WWII. There is a huge insurance industry with jobs and stocks and entire sets of supporting industries (software, office supplies, furniture, employee benefits) and they pay taxes.
Most politicians don't want that to go away with a replacement public insurance.
Most politicians don't want that to go away with a replacement public insurance.
buffalo wrote:
Yeah, so he could give the private, for profit hea... (show quote)
May 17, 2015 16:35:26 #
UncleJesse wrote:
It's too late for that. Maybe 70-100 years ago. Maybe immediately following WWII. There is a huge insurance industry with jobs and stocks and entire sets of supporting industries (software, office supplies, furniture, employee benefits) and they pay taxes.
Most politicians don't want that to go away with a replacement public insurance.
Most politicians don't want that to go away with a replacement public insurance.
Before oliarcare tax money spent on the healthcare on the poor went directly to health care providers not through profit extracting middle men, as it does now. So, is health care about people or profits? How do you like your Medicare?
Most politicians have be bought and paid for by big health insurance corporations, big pharma, big banking, big military industrial corporations. No, they don't want to upset their gravy train.
May 18, 2015 12:12:47 #
So the "middle man" serves no value that government can't do better?
I think we got another lesson in that type of thinking when the government didn't get a middle man to run the health care exchange. We are getting another lesson now as many state exchanges are in the red.
The federal and state exchanges each should be sold off to a private "middle man". It's the profit motive that makes everything work smooth not a civil servant who has good intentions.
I think we got another lesson in that type of thinking when the government didn't get a middle man to run the health care exchange. We are getting another lesson now as many state exchanges are in the red.
The federal and state exchanges each should be sold off to a private "middle man". It's the profit motive that makes everything work smooth not a civil servant who has good intentions.
buffalo wrote:
Before oliarcare tax money spent on the healthcare on the poor went directly to health care providers not through profit extracting middle men, as it does now. So, is health care about people or profits? How do you like your Medicare?
Most politicians have be bought and paid for by big health insurance corporations, big pharma, big banking, big military industrial corporations. No, they don't want to upset their gravy train.
Most politicians have be bought and paid for by big health insurance corporations, big pharma, big banking, big military industrial corporations. No, they don't want to upset their gravy train.
May 18, 2015 15:31:33 #
UncleJesse wrote:
So the "middle man" serves no value that government can't do better?
I think we got another lesson in that type of thinking when the government didn't get a middle man to run the health care exchange. We are getting another lesson now as many state exchanges are in the red.
The federal and state exchanges each should be sold off to a private "middle man". It's the profit motive that makes everything work smooth not a civil servant who has good intentions.
I think we got another lesson in that type of thinking when the government didn't get a middle man to run the health care exchange. We are getting another lesson now as many state exchanges are in the red.
The federal and state exchanges each should be sold off to a private "middle man". It's the profit motive that makes everything work smooth not a civil servant who has good intentions.
How do you like you like your Medicare? Ask any senior how they like their Medicare. Private, for profit health insurance corporations do not want to cover seniors, the poor, disabled and end stage renal patients. Why? Because they require the most expensive and most quantity of health care. They are not profitable. So private, for profit health insurance corporations pushed them onto the tax payers. Now under ocare the subsidies for the poor go to those private, for profit health insurance corporations instead of directly health care providers. You should love the ACA if profits are more important to you than people.
There is a separate health care system for seniors, veterans, military personnel, Native Americans, end-stage renal failure, under 16 in a poor family, over 16 in a poor family, and working for the federal government.Ar That's on top of hundreds of private plans.
All these systems require another inefficiency -- the existence of compilers, middlemen who compile the bills doctors submit and shuttle them thru the payment system. The US Government Accountability Office concluded that if we could get administrative costs of our medical system down to the Canadian level, the money saved would be enough to pay for health care for all the Americans who are uninsured.
Are you happy with your Medicare?
If you want to reply, then register here. Registration is free and your account is created instantly, so you can post right away.