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.
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.
I was under the impression that the costs for supplies, equipment, and medicines are what has been growing so fast.
The biggest contributor to rising medical costs is administration. Many clinics and hospitals have more people dealing with insurance and regulatory compliance forms than treating patients.
The second biggest contributor is big ticket equipment. It is questionable how much value these bring. When hospitals install MRI machines, costing millions of dollars each, there is no measurable improvement in patient outcomes.
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?
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.