Slashdot Mirror
In These Eight Midterms Races, Health and Medicine Are Front and Center (statnews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah, voters will directly decide whether their states should expand their Medicaid programs. In Wisconsin, they could elect a candidate for governor who has pledged to sharply curtail drug prices. And across the country, Democratic congressional candidates are running on platforms highlighting their support for protecting insurance coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and lowering drug prices. Health care is on the ballot across the country, with issues ranging from medical marijuana to abortion rights to insurance coverage dominating the conversation.
Do any of these candidate propose anything that makes sense like expanding the market supply by building medical schools or rolling back some of the regulations that do nothing but block lower cost solutions? Or will they just continue with the tried and true "we'll regulate cost and then be surprised when the market doesn't comply with our fondly held wishes."
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I've got friends and family that depend on pre-existing condition coverage. Plus I've got friends stuck in dead end jobs because they can't go 90 days without healthcare (one of them tried to get Cobra and found out that it's damn near impossible to sign up for, at least with his old company. He's just had to live without health insurance for 90 days).
I want Medicare for All. Saves money, works in every country that tried it and covers everyone. 45,000 Americans die of treatable illnesses every year. I don't want to be one of them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
GOP has been gradually sabotaging it via various SCOTUS rulings; removing the mandate, which makes it more expensive for seniors and those with pre-existing conditions (Legislative branch); and intentionally mis-managing the implementation and oversight of it (Executive branch).
Obama has often said that if someone presents a better plan than ACA tied to real numbers, not just talking points, he would back it. One should have realistic alternatives before complaining.
GOP can promise flying cars that get 200 mph and cost only 3 grand. The hard part is delivering a blue-print that doesn't violate physics and math.
Table-ized A.I.
There has been a lot of discussion and action at the state level around the legalization of medical use of marijuana (or full-blown recreational use in a few states), but I haven't heard much about U.S. Congress representative candidates, yet alone senators, supporting it. Has anyone heard of, or does your candidate support, bringing up a bill on the federal level to bring consensus around medical use nationally? In Indiana, the state legislators have essentially punted on the idea. They held a special committee over the summer to study the issue, with families and doctors coming forward to speak about the benefits. But in the end, the committee decided it would provide no recommendation, and several state politicians seem to want to defer to the U.S. Congress to act. I don't really have a dog in this race, but do believe it can provide a lot of benefit to patients, let alone stop ridiculous jailing and prosecuting of those who choose to use.
sure, tackle the issues one at a time.... starting with cost. The lower your cost the more people will be able to have it.
stop tying health insurance to EMPLOYMENT. This is a SCAM. No other insurance on the planet works this way. If I hate my job, I dont have to worry about driving without insurance, or my house catching on fire and not being covered, as a result of this. With healthcare I may have to stick with a completely shitty place to work merely because I am currently using benefits (kids physical therapy or something similar) where changing jobs threatens this. This has existed since Nixon and its a tool that employers can use to stagnate wages and underpay employees. Employers are not even required to subsidize. They literally can charge the employee the full cost of coverage. So if employers want to continue to subsidize they can come up with a way that employers can direct deposit an amount directly to the premium.
limit the costs of procedures. Constantly you get an EOB that says medical billed some ridiculous price and that the insurance lowered it to some lower value. This value is generally based on reasonable acceptable amounts. A 8 min office visit does not need to cost $186, hell it shouln't even cost $45. Make the requirement that the facility or practice most present the same charge to uninsured as those with insurance. There are plenty of plans that suck that have $40 copays for an office visit. If you read your EOB you will see that the charges got reduced down to $48, meaning they only paid $8 anyway. By forcing the providers to charge everyone $48, even the uninsured are not paying much more than those with the shittiest insurances. These $4000 procedure discounted to $1500 come back in 'income losses' and claimed against their taxes.
limit the costs of malpractice and malpractice insurances - they constantly claim that those $4000 MRI bills (that are only $150 in europe) are padded with malpractice insurance and malpractice payouts and these crazy prices are to recover those expenses. Make class actions (the type where the class gets $50 while the lawfirm gets hundreds of millions) banned. Each malpractice should have its own case with its own determination of Tort and actual damages.
Require all medical fields to meet the requirements of 503(c) non-profit status. They must re-invest a percentage of their profits back into their mission statements. Allowing hospitals and medical facility to be for-profit is unethical. 503(c) can turn a profit, they just are limited in how much profit they can turn by making them re-invest in whatever their mission is such as new medical equipment or newer technologies and research.
Solve the cost issues FIRST... once these are stable, THEN start going over what services should or should not get serviced. Because with a stable and affordable cost structure in place. Does this earn me the right to complain?
Noone said lower. If youre already accepting $48 from the insurance companies, then always bill $48 not $158 regardless. You might be surprised to learn the doctors are currently prohibited, via contract, from actually doing this right now. The insurance companies are the issue in the case of inflating non covered pricing. It helps the insurance company look like they are doing more than just payjng 20% of your bill. Do away will all of this fake numbers-game bullshit. Allow Doctors to offer pricing comparible to insurance allowed amounts. Prohibit doctors from listing extraneous âretailâ(TM) pricing in order to game taxes or gouge uninsured the same way they prohibit gouging gas prices or utility prices. This is the easiest part of the whole thing to solve. We already do this sort of thing for many other types of products.
There is a mountain of data that shows socialized medicine in first world countries provides great healthcare for half or less the overall cost of our own (both public and private expenditures). The people arguing against it are the same who claim to be economic conservatives but consistently do nothing to balance the budget. Health care for all has been shown to be far more affordable than our current system for decades, the problem is this country is full anti government paranoids and blindly partisan types.
Sure, once a system is in place that works most of these idiots will come around seeing the obvious results that every other first world country has shown but until then they will kick, scream, and flail their little hands. The challenge is getting a system in place that works over the heads of these ignorant masses.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
What is this? It's "stuff that matters"
Many Americans are of the opinion that proper healthcare isn't something people should have to go bankrupt over. Only one party has even attempted to approach this issue in the last 2 decades that a majority of Americans very much care about. The other party simply wants to blindly move forward in a system that is clearly broken.
And by broken I mean spending twice or more per capita than any other first world country spends on its socialized medicine.
Sure what the Democrats have done so far is middling at best but it's still far better than business as usual for a failing system.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
if you had a catastrophe you'd quickly find out they covered nothing. They were riddled with loop holes. If all else failed they'd declare it a pre-existing condition.
The plans were that cheap because they didn't work. Their purpose was to soak up money from rubes and (more often) divorced guys with a court order to have insurance. Reading the fine print they weren't worth the paper it was printed on.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
when the phony baloney plans went away the kitchen sink approach was there to shore up profits from the insurance companies being forced to cover everyone, even the really sick.
See, insurance is wildly profitable when you don't have to insure high risk customers. And with modern big data you know exactly who's high risk. Plus with all that sweet, sweet data you can always find some "pre existing" condition (my personal fav is skin cancer. Ever had acne medication? Congrats, you've had treatment for cancerous skin lesions, no more cancer meds for you, pre-existing).
The actual solution is to expand the risk pool to the largest possible: everyone. In otherwords, medicare for all. But we've had our heads stuffed full of insurance industry propaganda. They spent billions making sure you think the way you do because if you ever figure out the truth they and their blood sucking parasitic business model are through. They're fighting for their lives, so they're gonna be real nasty about it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/