Well in healthcare news, some hospitals are screwing us

[Joremarid 3,603]

On 6/16/2017 at 2:47 PM, Dago 3.0 said:

you know what isn't complex? calling for us to adopt the same healthcare model (or similar) to other countries and ignoring the fact that it costs us 2.5x more per person than other developed countries is idiocy. 

you can talk about your little circle jerks all you want but you have yet to address actual cost. 

but since I am obviously ignorant, I guess these people are too

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/hospitals-that-charge-1000-more-than-they-should/395099/

http://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/what-hospitals-overcharge.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/10/20/despite-being-shamed-for-overcharging-patients-hospitals-raised-their-prices-again/?utm_term=.198d5ba6744a

http://time.com/money/4541049/hospitals-prices-overcharging-patients-report/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/05/08/the-great-american-hospital-pricing-scam-exposed-we-now-know-why-healthcare-costs-are-so-artificially-high/#2b99b15b3bff

I could go on and on but I know this won't resonate with you because you think you are the only one who knows anything on the subject and the rest of these researchers and publications are just idiots like me

Id imagine we are close to 2.5 times as unhealthy, obese, smokers, etc then most developed countries too. I give anesthesia for a living and i assure you its a lot easier and less risky to do it on a healthy, non smoker with a normal bmi vs a morbidly obese smoker.

[Joremarid 3,603]

On 6/16/2017 at 3:47 PM, Dago 3.0 said:

there is far more to a business being profitable. you said I am being simplistic, but just saying that the prices have to be that way to be profitable and even then many hospitals aren't ignores things like inefficiency and bloated bureaucracy

furthermore, a complete lack of ethics and transparency in handling billing only adds to the problem. 

I am not against some sort of universal healthcare. What I want is some sort of accountability which is impossible without knowing cost and the medical industry goes to great lengths to obfuscate that. 

 

 Its difficult to provide costs when costs are largely patient dependant.  A lap chole on one person may be more expensive then a lap chole on another based on patient co morbidities.

[Joremarid 3,603]

 I'll go ahead and say... what is so immoral about the healthcare industry turning a profit?  

[lostone 18,059]

1 minute ago, Joremarid said:

 I'll go ahead and say... what is so immoral about the healthcare industry turning a profit?  

Turning a profit is one thing.  gouging prices and withholding procedure because they aren't as profitable is another.  That mindset is keeping weed illegal and medical heroin on the rise.  It can't be all in the name of profits.

[Joremarid 3,603]

No hospital is withholding procedures because they arent profitable if they are neccessary. If they arent neccessary, then why would they have to provide them? And gouging prices?  First you'd have to define what price gouging is. You're argument seems to based around the idea that medicare established reimbursement represents true cost. As shown earlier, it doesnt. A hospital forced to survive off of a pure medicare patient population will require public subsidies to stay afloat. I provide a service. I safely put people to sleep so a surgeon can cut them open, rearrange their parts, and wake them up so they dont even know what happened.  What is that worth? Why should i, spending many years in school doing that and taking on risk that can end my career on any given case, do that at "cost"?

[Billy Ocean 33,314]

No real progress will be made with health care until everyone is willing to admit that employer-sponsored insurance is no longer a viable framework.

[lostone 18,059]

1 hour ago, Joremarid said:

No hospital is withholding procedures because they arent profitable if they are neccessary. If they arent neccessary, then why would they have to provide them? And gouging prices?  First you'd have to define what price gouging is. You're argument seems to based around the idea that medicare established reimbursement represents true cost. As shown earlier, it doesnt. A hospital forced to survive off of a pure medicare patient population will require public subsidies to stay afloat. I provide a service. I safely put people to sleep so a surgeon can cut them open, rearrange their parts, and wake them up so they dont even know what happened.  What is that worth? Why should i, spending many years in school doing that and taking on risk that can end my career on any given case, do that at "cost"?

I wasn't answering your question from the perspective of the hospital.  But charging someone a ton of money and they can't pay it doesn't really help either.  

 

22 minutes ago, Billy Ocean said:

No real progress will be made with health care until everyone is willing to admit that employer-sponsored insurance is no longer a viable framework.

Not gonna happen.  I would honestly love for health insurance to be decoupled from employment.  It is also in a companies best interest to make sure their employees are healthy as well.  I wonder if that benefit went away, would that money still be spent on the employee or go back to the company or investors?  Probably just to the top.

[WhenFalconsWin 27,931]

51 minutes ago, lostone said:

I wasn't answering your question from the perspective of the hospital.  But charging someone a ton of money and they can't pay it doesn't really help either.  

 

Not gonna happen.  I would honestly love for health insurance to be decoupled from employment.  It is also in a companies best interest to make sure their employees are healthy as well.  I wonder if that benefit went away, would that money still be spent on the employee or go back to the company or investors?  Probably just to the top.

That's a good question.  For years companies (also unions) used the health benefits as a way of recruiting people with their companies excellent fringe benefits as a bargaining tool.  Companies consider that as part of the employees pay.  If a company took that away (as of now they cannot if they have over 50 employees or they pay a penalty) they would not be able to compete with companies that still offered those packages.  

[GEORGIAfan 18,436]

On 6/16/2017 at 11:21 AM, kicker said:

Dude.  You're really going to argue that Democrats haven't quoted the cost of Medicaid and Medicare vs private insurance on a per patient basis in an effort to expand the government's single payer system?

I am sure some have, but the main argument single payer advocates make is about how much cheaper other countries healthcare systems are to ours. Medicare and Medicaid are used because they are existing systems that we can expand to make similar systems as well as their current popularity. As I said, go look at bernie's plan and see how different it is from our current Medicare system. 

[lostone 18,059]

So do we continue to subsidize the world?

[Padawan Knight 878]

10 hours ago, Joremarid said:

 I'll go ahead and say... what is so immoral about the healthcare industry turning a profit?  

Ultimately, nothing is immoral about making a profit. HOW that profit is made can be immoral. Forcing people to pay into a system (insurance) that turns a profit IS immoral. Trying to do away with any type of free market system when the industry still turns a profit (single payer) is immoral on steroids.

[WhenFalconsWin 27,931]

13 hours ago, lostone said:

So do we continue to subsidize the world?

We do it with NATO and we were going to do it with climate change.  We are not the ones you have to worry about with climate.  We've been cleaner (less polluted air and water) than practically any industrialized nation in the world.  So we've basically done our part over the last 50 years, where are these other nations that are screwing up the environment like many Middle East countries along with China and India.  It's a way of redistributing out money to these other countries for something we've been working on for decades.  .

[lostone 18,059]

why do you say practically everyone and act like Europe isnt a large part of it?  Most all of their countries are cleaner than ours if not all.

[WhenFalconsWin 27,931]

59 minutes ago, lostone said:

why do you say practically everyone and act like Europe isnt a large part of it?  Most all of their countries are cleaner than ours if not all.

I didn't say everyone.  The US for an industrialized nation with 330 million people has done a wonderful job of cleaning up things considering how much produce/consume.  Besides you missed the bigger picture like their defense, why are we paying for them to be cleaner?  When do they take responsibility for themselves.  I guess if you use other people's money for certain things you have the money (defense/climate) to offer people by using our money in your country healthcare, right?

[lostone 18,059]

1 hour ago, WhenFalconsWin said:

I didn't say everyone.  The US for an industrialized nation with 330 million people has done a wonderful job of cleaning up things considering how much produce/consume.  Besides you missed the bigger picture like their defense, why are we paying for them to be cleaner?  When do they take responsibility for themselves.  I guess if you use other people's money for certain things you have the money (defense/climate) to offer people by using our money in your country healthcare, right?

We only have one planet and what people do in one area can impact everyone.  Wait I'm answering this while driving... 

 

[WhenFalconsWin 27,931]

3 hours ago, lostone said:

We only have one planet and what people do in one area can impact everyone.  Wait I'm answering this while driving... 

 

That's the problem.  People are not doing this in all areas and they want us to pay for it.  We've spent a lot of money cleaning up our country in the last 50 years.  

[Dago 3.0 8,688]

On 6/17/2017 at 4:29 PM, Joremarid said:

Id imagine we are close to 2.5 times as unhealthy, obese, smokers, etc then most developed countries too. I give anesthesia for a living and i assure you its a lot easier and less risky to do it on a healthy, non smoker with a normal bmi vs a morbidly obese smoker.

I completely agree that most of our problems come from the selfish and entitled attitude most Americans have. When are we going to learn you can't simply govern that away

On 6/17/2017 at 4:37 PM, Joremarid said:

 I'll go ahead and say... what is so immoral about the healthcare industry turning a profit?  

it's a problem when people are not longer being given a choice on whether to pay for the services. you really can't see how that changes things?

[DoYouSeeWhatHappensLarry 7,402]

On 6/16/2017 at 9:01 AM, Dago 3.0 said:

which is why the ACA sucks

taking craploads of money from people and giving it to the medical industrial complex without addressing the cost of services is closer to a pyramid scheme than any real business model

This has nothing to do with the ACA and everything to do with the inherent structures of the american healthcare industry. 

The ACA, if anything, was an attempt to get those costs to level off. Something it did relatively well, TBH. Although premiums and deductibles have continued to rise regardless of the slowing growth of actual costs. 

[DoYouSeeWhatHappensLarry 7,402]

On 6/17/2017 at 5:46 PM, Joremarid said:

No hospital is withholding procedures because they arent profitable if they are neccessary. If they arent neccessary, then why would they have to provide them? And gouging prices?  First you'd have to define what price gouging is. You're argument seems to based around the idea that medicare established reimbursement represents true cost. As shown earlier, it doesnt. A hospital forced to survive off of a pure medicare patient population will require public subsidies to stay afloat. I provide a service. I safely put people to sleep so a surgeon can cut them open, rearrange their parts, and wake them up so they dont even know what happened.  What is that worth? Why should i, spending many years in school doing that and taking on risk that can end my career on any given case, do that at "cost"?

There is a moral issue built into private healthcare services that, frankly, has no solution. 

Medical practitioners perform vital services for which they pay high liability insurance premiums, high costs of education/expertise, etc. They deserve to be compensated commensurate with their skills, investments and the import of their services. 

HOWEVER

In medicine, those services are completely based on something that is a basic human necessity. Access to medicine, in general (obviously we can identify exceptions), is as basic and fundamental as the other foundations of human existence....food, water, shelter, etc. As such, by profiteering on the provision of vital essential services, you're essentially taking advantage of folks under a form of latent duress. 

The conflict between the integral nature of baseline healthcare and the expertise required to provide healthcare is unresolvable, IMO. At least, absent a public option filled to some extent by a government body which could simultaneously provide health care services for low/no cost to the population while also compensating practitioners appropriately. 

 

[Brehus 1,030]

IMHO In most cases buying health insurance when you are young and healthy is a waste of money. You would better off in most cases investing the thousands of dollars a year you pay for health insurance in something fairly safe and let the money grow.

[kicker 4,393]

 

37 minutes ago, Brehus said:

IMHO In most cases buying health insurance when you are young and healthy is a waste of money. You would better off in most cases investing the thousands of dollars a year you pay for health insurance in something fairly safe and let the money grow.

^^^

Doesnt understand how insurance works.