On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:50:13 -0400, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:24:01 -0400, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
RCM only

On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:04:01 -0400, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:

That's a good question, and fixing that little atrocity should be the
very
first step in reforming the health care system.

Amen, but your President and his men aren't doing (or even
considering) that, are they? Nor did Shrub, etc. deep sigh

You can't fix it as long as the health care system is a captive of the
insurance industry, Larry. The first thing you have to do is to break
their
backs. And the way you *start* to do that is with a public option for
insurance.

Interesting. Do you feel that the public option has a good chance of
rationing healthcare, or can we get around that?

Health care is already rationed -- by the insurance industry. They're the
ones that dictate what will be paid for and not. There is no getting around
that, unless you're a millionaire, and for many conditions, you need
multiple millions. No insurance will pay for some available, long-shot
treatments, which, as a self-fulfilling prophesy, tend to be "experimental"
in their eyes.

You have a point there.


But the public option has no influence at all on what kind of high-end
insurance you can buy, if you want to buy it from commercial carriers. My
fear for the public option is that it will become a dumping ground for the
commercial insurance industry; a way for them to shuck off individuals with
any risk at all, and then to cover up the resulting outrageous profits they
make as a result. That will mean much more profit for them and a
higher-than-necessary cost for the government-backed insurance. And with
their lobbying power, they'll probably get exactly that. The private,
commercial carriers will wind up being the high-end, by default, because
they'll be playing with much better actuarial tables than the government is.
And that, of course, is exactly how Medicare came about.

Hmm...


A public option provides only the possibility of getting the insurance
industry under control; it won't necessarily produce the desired result. But
without it, we'd might as well fold our tents and just have our paychecks
sent directly to the insurers.

Some people are damnear doing that now, with $1,930/mo payments for
their families. Dayam!


The thing that's hard to see through all of the smoke and fog they send up
is that they don't really care what medical costs are. What they care about
is increasing their margins. High medical costs and high margins are not
necessarily incompatible. And lowering costs does not necessarily improve
their margins. They'll go with the flow, as long as they get theirs. And
they'll get theirs until we can't be squeezed anymore. They are approaching
that limit, which is why we hear organ music coming from the industry, and
offers by them to cooperate with Obama. But there is NOTHING they do that
isn't about extracting more money from the people they insure. Nothing. And
to the degree that they're insuring us as individuals, rather than as
members of an organization or employees of a large company, they have and
will continue to have no competition (this is another story; I'm not
suggesting that the reasons for this are obvious.)



I still think that more free/sliding-scale clinics would do away with
a lot of the prices the hospitals get for minor stuff, too.

And who pays for the "free" clinics, or makes up the difference on the
sliding scales?

We would, via the gov't., but that'd be less than we're paying now.


We have lots of clinics now. Where I live, we often go to them for things
that don't require hospitalization -- my son gets most of his sports
injuries treated in such a place, and my wife and I both go to specialized
clinics for various outpatient procedures. Our insurance pays.

I simply cannot believe what has happened to the commercial emergency
clinics in the past 20 years. What used to be cheap is now the same
price as the friggin' ER at an overblown hospital.


It probably
would help to encourage them, with a form of insurance that encourages those
people without commercial insurance to go to them. But right now, if you
don't have insurance, the only institutions that *have* to take you are
hospitals with ERs.

Depending on your income, community clinics do, too.


As long as the insurance industry has the reins, they'll use it to steer
the
industry to maximize their profit, and they'll continue to treat the
welfare
of patients as an annoying distraction.

A bit of tort reform is in order, too, as are punishments for doctors
who **** up too much.

You want to fight a lot of battles against the big lobbies at once. You
sound like Obama. g

Bite your tongue, heathen! Bama is a whole 'nother kind of idealist.


They have more money than God. Good luck!

Yeah, that's why nothing has been done yet. It's a Catch 22 situ,
with everyone corrupt so nothing ever gets done.

--
Seen on a bumper sticker:

STOP THE INVASION
REOCCUPY MEXICO