Another Reason health care needs to be reformed

Did you ask the price?

I will agree I would prefer to see more transparency to prices - at least in terms of non emergency situations.

 

Yeah, I’ve heard that narrative. It’s nothing new or earth shattering. And if it’s true, glad to hear you don’t need to socialize medicine and make things even worse. I can take care of me and my family. You can take care of you and yours. We can both take care of the people who are genuinely unable. And the people who are just unwilling can sink or swim.

 

Of course, it is a lot more complicated than that. It goes to the economics of setting pricing. What is your loved one being alive worth to you? If you can't put a number on it wherein you will say no if faced with that situation and the number is too high, certain procedures are going to be almost impossible to price due to price elasticity without substantial competition. And the nature of the industry makes competition difficult in many instances (I can't price shop while having a heart attack). Insurance can help a little, but only insofar as they are able to convince a provider that they will let their customer die.

 

FTR, I have Kaiser Permanente now. Someone does indeed come in BEFORE I have something done and breaks down the costs.

But this is always non-emergency stuff. In a pinch I doubt I’ll be shopping around. I guess whatever the “menu” says to restart my heart is what I’ll “choose.” I am a bit of a captive audience at that point.

 

Don't watch shark tank. Products need to have A decent margin for companies to survive.

That said, the medical field needs more pricing transparency.

 

That’s the thing “I’ll take care of me and mine” works great when you are young and healthy, and your kids are healthy. Most families deal with the annual checkups, maybe a broken bone or two along the way. Might not work so well if you need insurance at 75 years old, or under the old paradigm where insurance could drop you if you or a family member had a terminal or chronic issue.

At some point, fundamentally, health insurance means that the person racking up expenses is effectively being subsidized by the people who don’t make any claims.

Really that’s how all insurance works. If you always pay premiums but never have a claim, well that’s an ideal customer. As soon as you have a large claim? Moocher!! Obviously with health insurance it’s not like insuring a car or home. There isn’t a finite “replacement value”, it isn’t very finite at all, and unfortunately serious health issues can very much curtail a families income so it can be damaging to both sides of the ledger. Healthcare is just a different beast.

 

Many other countries have socialized healthcare and have better health outcomes than we do. They pay less for healthcare as a percentage of their GDP too.

 

Conservative talk about their anecdotal health care billing issues all the time, however they could care less about doing anything about it. They're more concerned with where transgenders use the restroom

 

The fact is as it is set up now, probably most people could not afford to pay the full cost of their health care. The only way they afford it is if their employer pays it. Not all jobs are going to have paid health insurance.

Maybe you find it acceptable where there is a system that just by definition is going to exclude a chunk of people. I don’t and most people don’t. And even if you do, it is still a fail because they end up seeking expensive emergency care anyway.

 

No, since single payer would replace Medicare and almost everyone pays FICA, which includes Medicare tax, including non-citizens.

BTW, the above statement is not an endorsement of single-payer, only a clarification of how it might be funded if it were ever implemented.

 

Agreed. Which is why your life isn’t market-worthy.

TBC, I am typically a market person. I have posts on these boards advocating for you to post “No Enmittos Allowed”, and such. That is a ******** pancake. i’ll find another. And I hope society joins me.

But this ain’t that.

 

The key stat that changed my opinion on socialized healthcare was learning that in the US, we already spend enough government money on healthcare, per capita, as most of the countries who have universal coverage. We are already spending enough money to do the job, we may as well just go ahead and do the job.

 

We spend more on healthcare than any other country and have the shortest lifespan by a long shot. Incredibly broken system.

 

Be careful of what you wish for - it was FDR who put a ceiling on wages during WWII to temper inflation which resulted in companies offering “hospitalization” insurance in lieu of increased wages. Thus, we have the start of our current mucked up system thanks to the Fed Govt monkeying with the economy.
Perhaps the Fed Govt could do for healthcare what it’s done for student loans …

 

Re a single-payer health insurance program run by the federal government ...... just think about having to deal with "something" like the IRS for your healthcare. As that ol' sayin' goes ..... grass ain't always greener .........

 

It would be almost as bad as having to deal with your for profit insurance company for your healthcare.

 

Federal gov't has been handling my insurance for 42 years, been great so far. Not sure how it would be if expanded, but I am very happy.

Check out my pic above, other countries pay a lot less and live a lot longer, we need to do something. Not only do they have a longer lifespan, I would guess they have a much longer healthspan which is more important.
US does good with emergency care and extending life (at enormous cost), we suck at extending useful life.

 

New law in FL; unpaid medical debt less than $500 is not reported to the credit agencies as of 2023: FYI in case you prefer to protest more than you care to pay exorbitant fees.