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Discuss the US Presidential Election & Health Care
Yesterday we discussed the war and how foreign policy will matter in your decision next Tuesday. Today our series of election discussion pieces continues with Health Care. With an obesity epidemic, a failing economy, and ballooning health care costs, which candidate has the best answers to making sure that Americans are able to stay healthy without America being bankrupted in the process?
Let me give you an anecdote to help to make your point and show how much of a parasite the insurance companies really are.
I took my grandfather to his general doctor the other day. On the window is a sign, "Pay in full at time of service with cash and get 30% off." So basically if you skip the whole insurance process you get 30% off on the spot at this doctor. Insurance isn't the only problem, but is a big part of why healthcare costs so much.
Why would you want to opt out of the NHS? Remember the NHS is there for all at any time. So if you are in a traffic accident and have to be rushed to A&E (the emergency room) you will not receive a bill from the ambulance company, you will not have nurses going through your wallet looking for an insurance card before they treat you, you will not get a bill from the hospital because your insurance company didn't "pre approve" your life saving treatment...
Insurance compaines make their money by selling a service they don't intend to deliver, or deliver only part of. Banks make their money by stealing from you in small ammounts from all accounts.
Neither should be in a position to make decisions relating to the health needs of an individual.
I live in a country that has both Govt health care and private. However, the private insurers have no say in what treatment is given that is and should be the decision of the treating doctor.
It always amazes me that in the US accountants are allowed to decide a patients treatment.
OK I'll bite. I'm a Canadian and back in Canada now, but I used to live in California. 5 years ago I had to have two vertebrae in my neck surgically fused together. I was self-employed and had what I thought was a reasonably good PPO (health insurance plan).
It was surgery that took two days from my visit to the doctor to being under the knife. There wasn't a lot of time to go over the fine print of details like who my anaesthesiologist was going to be and whether he was covered by my PPO. I had the surgery, and a month or two later I got a bill for something like $1700 from the anaesthesiologist.
I called the anaesthesiologist's company and they said "your PPO doesn't cover us. Pay up." I called the PPO and they said "It's the hospital's responsibility to choose a care that is covered by your policy. Don't pay this bill." I called the hospital and they said "We told you who the anaesthesiologist was going to be, it's not our problem your PPO won't pay."
This went around and around for months with everybody denying responsibility. It then went into collections, and totally messed up my credit. I finally paid it out of pocket myself but by that time I had a huge black mark on my credit and the cost had ballooned over $2200.
The total bill for the surgery was over $30k so I'm glad that's all I had to pay. Still, it's pretty clear in the end that I was the one who lost out of this. Nobody had any motivation to "be on my side", and that was pretty clear once it came down to the money.
www.clarke.ca
If you can't protect your own back yard from the Soviet Union, Communist China or local gangs, I fail to see why I should care. Let's dissolve the Union and let every man fend for himself.
No, seriously, let's do it. I want to see how all of these whining "Why should I have to care for my neighbour" libertarians do in the Darwinian jungle they apparently want to live in. I wonder how many of them would actually stick to their principles to the bitter end, and what proportion would band together and start rebuilding a Big Brother to keep them safe. Not that could, since it would be outcompeted by the governments built by people who cooperated from the start, but that's besides the point.
Nature is red in tooth and claw and yours are pathetic. A lone wolf can get a meal, but a lone human is the meal. That's why you should care about other people's health.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
My wife and I just leased a car this summer, a 2009 Subaru Forester. Having experienced a lot of maintenance problems with the car we were replacing, we decided to pre-pay the maintenance on the Forester for the life of the lease, which is 3 years. It cost us about $1000 for the package that gets us oil changes every 3500 miles (we do a lot of city driving). When it came time for the first oil change, I drove over to the shop at the dealer (conveniently close to where we work), turned it over to them, and waited about 25 minutes for them to change the oil. Then I got in the car and drove off, no co-pay, no nothing.
Over the 45K miles of the lease, we'll probably get the oil changed twelve or thirteen times, which would cost us about $600. But there are several other maintenance items along the way that are covered under the plan, including one that costs about $700. One could argue that we could sneak by without having those maintenance items done, and the car would be just fine. But regular checkups and periodic maintenance help a vehicle run well, and help forestall any major catastrophes that cause big problems at unexpected times. So I'm planning to stay on the maintenance schedule, and I expect to turn a healthy car back into the dealership at the end of the lease.
Would you go to the doctor more if it didn't cost you anything than you do now? Probably. But you wouldn't go all the time for everything (some people would, but they're in the minority), because you have better things to do with your time than go to the doctor. Ultimately, though, you'd probably retire healthier if you had free, accessible health care that was of decent quality.
So, how do we get ourselves there? We need a better system than we have, and it probably doesn't need to (shouldn't) involve insurance companies in the capacity they are now. The other end of it is our knee-jerk reaction to sue doctors for malpractice for every little thing. If an issue is egregious, there should be punishment of some sort, and the patient should be compensated somehow. But millions of dollars for doing a complicated procedure less than perfectly is insane.
How about limiting settlements to the total value of someone's carried life insurance policies? Shouldn't the judicial system put the same value on someone's life as that person puts on their own?
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011