Real efforts to reduce healthcare costs

[Kiyoat Husker]

12 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

“The money we spend on health care is money we don’t spend educating our children, or investing in infrastructure, scientific research and defense spending. So if what this means is we ultimately have overmedicalized, poorly educated Americans competing with China, that’s not a very good investment.”

 

Yeah, I'd love to invest some money into my kids' college funds, but first I have to take care of the gall bladder surgery from last year, and paying off my own crushing college loan debt.... and my owned car just died, so add a car payment.

 

Isn't it great to be an American?

[BigRedBuster]

We are spending on average $9,000 per person on healthcare in this country compared to $3,600 in the rest of the world.

 

You think you could do some good with $5,400 more in your pocket....per person in your household?

 

 

When was the last time you heard a politician talking about this part of healthcare?

Edited November 1, 2017 by BigRedBuster

[TGHusker]

31 minutes ago, Kiyoat Husker said:

 

Yeah, I'd love to invest some money into my kids' college funds, but first I have to take care of the gall bladder surgery from last year, and paying off my own crushing college loan debt.... and my owned car just died, so add a car payment.

 

Isn't it great to be an American?

We live a stress free life brother. Stress free.  I've told my wife, retiring to Costa Rica or some place like that sounds awfully good at times.

[JJ Husker]

1 hour ago, Kiyoat Husker said:

A thought just occurred to me.  If Insurance companies are the "Buyers" to the Providers' "Sellers" role, one possible check on prices would be to allow insurance companies more power to negotiate with providers.  There should still be protections for the insured, but consumer choice doesn't seem to be have an affect on the providers prices.  Insurers, on the other hand, could have more clout in controlling prices with buying choices, right?

 

My head hurts....

 

Insurance companies do negotiate and get huge discounts.....for their covered persons. But the system is very uneven and I might even claim corrupt.

For any one procedure or medication there are multiple final cost prices. There is the full price you get charged if you have no insurance. There are multiple negotiated prices that various insurance companies will pay. And there is the price Medicare/Medicaid will pay. IMO, this is a large part of the problem. The providers will soak whoever they can for the maximum amount and the prices get more reasonable when they are negotiated or set by the government.

 

I had a drug that required infusion. I got this drug when I had insurance and another time when I didn't have coverage (unbeknownst to me at the time but that's another story). Full price for one monthly infusion....$24,000. The negotiated price for my insurance company was $14,000 of which the insurance would pay about $10,000 and I was left with about $4,000 as my share. However, the drug manufacturer had a price support program for the patient. They would reduce my cost to where all I had to pay was $50, so in effect they were waiving about $3,950 of my cost. There was a catch though, they would only offer that price support program to folks who had private health insurance. It was not offered to those without insurance or to those on Medicare/Medicaid.  When my coverage lapsed and I got an infusion, the hospital tried to collect the full $24,000 from me for a drug I had received a few other times for $50. Yeah.  What this tells me is that they were plenty happy to sell that IV bag full of clear liquid as long as they could get about $10,000 for it. And remember that $10,000 had to come from somewhere, it was built in to their health insurance premium structure so all their insured were in effect paying for it. There are a lot of problems with a system that works this way. There is no accountability. There is no consumer holding their feet to the fire. In most cases, there is no one consumer that can say "no, I won't pay that much". My doctor that prescribed it had no idea it cost that much. There is no way in hell it was actually worth anywhere near that amount. Why charge $24,000 for something you are perfectly content to get $10,000 for?

 

This is one example of one drug. This very thing plays out everyday for every procedure, every facility, every provider, every drug. This system is so hopelessly f#cked up the only thing that could possibly begin to fix it is one payer socialized medicine. Of course that introduces it's own problems of accessibility and quality of care but the cost issue is what needs to be, has to be fixed. It is so far beyond being fixed by pooling and crossing state lines it isn't even funny. Our elected officials don't really want to fix it because of the health and insurance industry lobbies and money that gets poured into their coffers. The money that comes from that extra $10,000 they get to charge somebody for a drug that probably costs them less than $100 to make. Nobody involved in the system has any incentive to fix it. They are all getting paid handsomely under the status quo. The only people suffering are those who pay insurance premiums and those who don't have insurance and are driven into bankruptcy....oh you noticed, that's every one except the profiteers.

[BigRedBuster]

Diaco....

 

i wish more people understood that. But, that’s not politically beneficial. 

 

And, having insurance doesn’t necessarily mean you get it cheaper. 

 

I had had an employee need cardiac rehab. They were charging us $500 every week. Living in a small town, I knew a wealthy farmer that was paying himself......$50. 

Edited November 1, 2017 by BigRedBuster

[JJ Husker]

5 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

Diaco....

 

i wish more people understood that. But, that’s not politically beneficial. 

 

And, having insurance doesn’t necessarily mean you get it cheaper. 

 

I had had an employee need cardiac rehab. They were charging us $500 every week. Living in a small town, I knew a wealthy farmer that was paying himself......$50. 

 

Yes, I've sure seen and heard the stories about people without insurance getting a better deal. What frustrates me is that service, that medicine has a value. That value should not change based on who is paying or on how that payer can be exploited. It should be illegal to charge one person $50 and another $500 for the same thing. That alone would be a good initial step in straightening out this mess. I've asked what some procedure or drug will cost numerous times and I've never gotten a straight answer. I don't even think it's because that person is trying to hide  it but that they just don't know. An unknown amount has to be submitted to the insurance company for unknown discounting and unknown benefits....what could go wrong. This system is perfect for anyone along the way that wants to exploit it and they'll never get caught because nobody could figure it out and nothing is wrong if they did.

[Michiganball]

8 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

We are spending on average $9,000 per person on healthcare in this country compared to $3,600 in the rest of the world.

 

You think you could do some good with $5,400 more in your pocket....per person in your household?

 

 

When was the last time you heard a politician talking about this part of healthcare?

Yea that and we are less healthy on average then many of those countries.

[RedDenver]

20 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

We are spending on average $9,000 per person on healthcare in this country compared to $3,600 in the rest of the world.

 

You think you could do some good with $5,400 more in your pocket....per person in your household?

 

 

When was the last time you heard a politician talking about this part of healthcare?

And that's before you consider deductibles and other costs when you actually get sick or otherwise need healthcare. Bernie has been talking about this exact thing for the last few months, starting when he had that healthcare debate with Cruz a while back. Mostly he uses it as a counter-point for his Medicare-for-all bill when the opposing side brings up tax increases. I think if Bernie made this his top talking point - that paying more in taxes for healthcare would actually save you money - he would bring over moderate/fiscal conservatives.

Edited November 2, 2017 by RedDenver

[Guy Chamberlin]

So today Paul Ryan wants me to celebrate the $1,200 a year my average family might get back under a new tax code.

 

Yesterday I learned my healthcare costs are scheduled to go up $2,400 a year. And if Obamacare is scuttled, as Ryan wants to do, I'm on the hook for $36,000 a year.

 

Tomorrow I'm pretty sure we'll learn we're not really getting that $1,200 after all. 

[JJ Husker]

5 hours ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

So today Paul Ryan wants me to celebrate the $1,200 a year my average family might get back under a new tax code.

 

Yesterday I learned my healthcare costs are scheduled to go up $2,400 a year. And if Obamacare is scuttled, as Ryan wants to do, I'm on the hook for $36,000 a year.

 

Tomorrow I'm pretty sure we'll learn we're not really getting that $1,200 after all. 

 

I got my renewal offer for 2018 two days ago. KP Silver plan for family of 4 going from $1553/mo. to $2227/mo. That's right an additional $674 per month, a 43.4% increase. That's $26,724 for the year just in case some unexpected illness or accident should happen. Of course it still has deductibles, copays and fairly crappy coverage. I'm really thinking for that kind of cash I should just pay the normal stuff out of pocket, pay the tax penalty (if Trump hasn't already eliminated it) and if something major occurs just stiff the hospital for the bill. Is it just me or is that insurance cost just completely frikken crazy? 

 

I think I'm going to be able to drop my son from the plan so that should cut it down about $400/mo but still that's over $1800/mo. It's so far out of control...

[Michiganball]

Man I thought I had it bad when I was in sales paying for Blue cross/ blue shield 180 a month in the early 2000's. That was great coverage, it must be double or triple that now. This is a hyper inflating monster thats not going to slow, there has to be an eventual collapse to it. If not for the insurance companies most the doctors would be out of business as they are way priced out of the market.

If you ever watch or read about a foreigner who had to use our services for some reason without insurance, often you will hear them say(and I heard this 3 times myself), extortion, or extortionate prices. That's where we are at right now.

But it's a bit funny and troubling that the insurance/doctor co-dependency is very similar to the espn/pay tv co dependency. Insurances just accept the price increases from the medical community no matter how absurd(like the pills that went from $20 per 500 to $1600 per 500 in one year)and pass the price hikes along to us. To bad there is no Netflix of medicine to disrupt the cycle.

 

Really though, we can talk about Obama care or whatever care, the bottom line is, the first thing your taxes should go to is your healthcare coverage as there is nothing more important then your or your family's health. Not any tanks, not any roads, not any moon lander(as much as i love them), without your life none of that matters obviously.

Some like to point out though that they dont want to carry others or pay an unequal amount towards the pot. But if everyone picked and chose we could eliminate good 90% of Americans from healthcare, because you cost more because you are to poor, you are to fat, you eat to much fast food, you have a genetic predisposition towards certain sicknesses, you like to drive fast, you ski, you are plain to dumb to survive etc etc.....

We really just need to get together as a country on this, it is just plain the right and decent thing to do. people should not have to play Russian roulette when they get a bump and hope it goes away or risk their family going into decades long debt. the whole thing just reeks of Dickensian England and no, despite how nice the period dramas make it look from the view of the upper class, you would not want to live there as anything but them.