Mark & Juanita wrote:
DGDevin wrote:

Phisherman wrote:

I'm an extreme Libertarian and it is my guess no Libertarian will
support Obama's Health care plan. It is financially irresponsible.
Government, please get out of my face!!!

So how do you feel about various industries including the health
insurance industry being in your face? They keep raising the cost
of health insurance
while finding ways to deny coverage to those who need it.

You do realize that if you don't like one health insurance company,
you are perfectly free to find another, or to lobby your employer to
change insurers -- if enough employees are having problems, your
employer will most likely listen. If you are denied, nothing stops
you from fighting via the legal system or paying yourself -- that may
lead to indebtedness, but if people are willing to go into debt to
get that flat-screen TV or the newest car, you'd think something that
will save their lives would be viewed as a good investment. If you
don't like the price, you can shop around -- you'd be surprised the
prices you can get on medical if you pay without insurance -- you
save a lot of paperwork for the doctors. Do you think those options
would be available if the government runs health care? How many
choices do you have for the motor vehicle department?

i.e, if you can't see the difference between the choices you have now
and a federally mandated, unconstitutional, federally run health
system, there is nothing more that can be discussed.


They manage to
consume 20% of the money they take in for administrative overhead, at
least
several times what it costs in other industrialized nations.
Competition is supposed to drive down prices for consumers, yet the
health insurance industry has achieved the exact opposite. Did you
know the health care industry shifts about a tenth of what you pay
for health insurance to cover
their costs in treating uninsured patients? Did you know that
despite spending the most on health care of the 13 wealthiest
nations that life expectancy in America is the lowest of those 13
nations, while infant mortality is the highest?

Did you know that survival rates from cancer are the highest in the
United States compared to other countries, especially those with
socialized medicine? That is a much better measure of health system
success than life expectancy since that is driven strongly by
genetics and thus demographics in some of those countries that are
very homogeneous compared to the US. As far as infant mortality, you
also have to examine the definitions that other nations use.


So who, other than the govt., is supposed to do
something about this?

I'd feel a whole lot better if the government were doing a bang-up
job on the health care programs it already runs. VA? Medicare?
Indian Health Service? Not exactly glowing testimonials. But if we
give them the whole sector, they'll make it work. Yeah, I'm
convinced.




Excellent retort. In sum, we spend more per capita than other countries
BECAUSE WE CAN. Other countries spend less than we for a lot of reasons,
chief among them is they don't have the wealth to do so.

A consequence of this deficiency is lowered expectations. Here in the U.S.,
I EXPECT a tooth extraction to involve anesthesia - not so in Britain. Here
I EXPECT an MRI, and possibly surgery, for a torn knee ligament within a few
days* - it's months in other industrialized countries.

----------
* In some, admittedly rare, cases, the MRI diagnosis takes place within
MINUTES of the injury (think professional football). The entire concept of a
portable MRI machine in the locker room, or just down the street, of a
British soccer stadium is so patently absurd as to be laughable.

HeyBub wrote:
Phisherman wrote:

Stop the waste. If Medicare/Medicade have worked well, I might be
for the proposed plan.


Not to disagree, but sometimes stopping the waste costs more than
ignoring the inefficiency. You can't build a house without making
sawdust (unless you're using mud bricks).

As an example, the IRS doesn't seize someone's house, garnish their
wages, and file suit in federal court over a delinquent tax bill of
two dollars!

No, wait...

One of the big problems is that the insurance companies are being forced to
cover the uninsured. How does that happen you ask? Well, hospitals are
required by law to give at least a minimal standard of treatment to anyone
who walks into the emergency room, without regard to means. The laws that
require them to do this do not provide any means of compensating them for
the costs incurred. Even nonprofit hospitals have to recover costs somehow
or they run out of money and can't pay their bills. Thus the means they use
to recover costs is to set their rates so that anyone _with_ insurance gets
surcharged to cover the uninsured. This means, for example, that Joe
Homeless walks into the emergency room to get four stitches and he gets them
for free, while I walk into the same emergency room and get four stitches on
the same table from the same doctor and get charged 2500 bucks.

One step toward fixing the system would be a Constitutional amendment
restricting unfunded mandates--if the government says that you _have_ to
provide a good or service to someone who cannot reasonably be expected to
pay for it then the government must compensate you for that good or service.

"HeyBub" wrote in message
Excellent retort. In sum, we spend more per capita than other countries
BECAUSE WE CAN. Other countries spend less than we for a lot of reasons,
chief among them is they don't have the wealth to do so.

Considering all the bankruptcies and wasteful spending practices that have
come to light lately in the US, one has to question if all that wealth is
really available to spend or has the US been using up much of its future
spending ability for some time.

"BECAUSE WE CAN" is a poor excuse for any country to pursue a bankrupt
future. Realistically, I'd fully expect the US as the world's only truly
functional superpower to take what it wants when the time comes that it
can't afford to buy what it wants. Simple survival really.

On Sep 14, 7:35*am, "HeyBub" wrote:
Mark & Juanita wrote:
DGDevin wrote:

Phisherman wrote:

I'm an extreme Libertarian and it is my guess no Libertarian will
support Obama's Health care plan. *It is financially irresponsible.
Government, please get out of my face!!!

So how do you feel about various industries including the health
insurance industry being in your face? *They keep raising the cost
of health insurance
while finding ways to deny coverage to those who need it.

*You do realize that if you don't like one health insurance company,
you are perfectly free to find another, or to lobby your employer to
change insurers -- if enough employees are having problems, your
employer will most likely listen. *If you are denied, nothing stops
you from fighting via the legal system or paying yourself -- that may
lead to indebtedness, but if people are willing to go into debt to
get that flat-screen TV or the newest car, you'd think something that
will save their lives would be viewed as a good investment. *If you
don't like the price, you can shop around -- you'd be surprised the
prices you can get on medical if you pay without insurance -- you
save a lot of paperwork for the doctors. *Do you think those options
would be available if the government runs health care? How many
choices do you have for the motor vehicle department?

i.e, if you can't see the difference between the choices you have now
and a federally mandated, unconstitutional, federally run health
system, there is nothing more that can be discussed.

They manage to
consume 20% of the money they take in for administrative overhead, at
least
several times what it costs in other industrialized nations.
Competition is supposed to drive down prices for consumers, yet the
health insurance industry has achieved the exact opposite. *Did you
know the health care industry shifts about a tenth of what you pay
for health insurance to cover
their costs in treating uninsured patients? *Did you know that
despite spending the most on health care of the 13 wealthiest
nations that life expectancy in America is the lowest of those 13
nations, while infant mortality is the highest?

*Did you know that survival rates from cancer are the highest in the
United States compared to other countries, especially those with
socialized medicine? *That is a much better measure of health system
success than life expectancy since that is driven strongly by
genetics and thus demographics in some of those countries that are
very homogeneous compared to the US. As far as infant mortality, you
also have to examine the definitions that other nations use.

So who, other than the govt., is supposed to do
something about this?

*I'd feel a whole lot better if the government were doing a bang-up
job on the health care programs it already runs. *VA? *Medicare?
Indian Health Service? *Not exactly glowing testimonials. *But if we
give them the whole sector, they'll make it work. *Yeah, I'm
convinced.

Excellent retort. In sum, we spend more per capita than other countries
BECAUSE WE CAN. Other countries spend less than we for a lot of reasons,
chief among them is they don't have the wealth to do so.

A consequence of this deficiency is lowered expectations. Here in the U.S..,
I EXPECT a tooth extraction to involve anesthesia - not so in Britain. Here
I EXPECT an MRI, and possibly surgery, for a torn knee ligament within a few
days* - it's months in other industrialized countries.

----------
* In some, admittedly rare, cases, the MRI diagnosis takes place within
MINUTES of the injury (think professional football). The entire concept of a
portable MRI machine in the locker room, or just down the street, of a
British soccer stadium is so patently absurd as to be laughable.

I will leave you to your illusions and lies while I continue to live a
longer and healthier life without fear of not being able to afford
health care, and while my compatriots get jobs that move out from the
States because employers also can't afford health care.

Luigi

On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:42:58 -0400, J. Clarke wrote:

Joe Homeless walks into the emergency room to get four stitches and he
gets them for free, while I walk into the same emergency room and get
four stitches on the same table from the same doctor and get charged
2500 bucks.

One step toward fixing the system would be a Constitutional amendment
restricting unfunded mandates--if the government says that you _have_ to
provide a good or service to someone who cannot reasonably be expected
to pay for it then the government must compensate you for that good or
service.

Need I point out that that solution STILL leaves you paying for Joe -
just via a different path :-).



--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw

Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:42:58 -0400, J. Clarke wrote:

Joe Homeless walks into the emergency room to get four stitches and he
gets them for free, while I walk into the same emergency room and get
four stitches on the same table from the same doctor and get charged
2500 bucks.

One step toward fixing the system would be a Constitutional amendment
restricting unfunded mandates--if the government says that you _have_ to
provide a good or service to someone who cannot reasonably be expected
to pay for it then the government must compensate you for that good or
service.

Need I point out that that solution STILL leaves you paying for Joe -
just via a different path :-).

There's a difference worth noting: you wouldn't only be paying for Joe's
stitches, but also for all the clerical overhead needed for the
government to process the medical and accounting information.

Guess who pays /those/ bills....

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

On 09/14/2009 10:09 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:

There's a difference worth noting: you wouldn't only be paying for Joe's
stitches, but also for all the clerical overhead needed for the
government to process the medical and accounting information.

Guess who pays /those/ bills....

Presumably there's already hospital paperwork to cover treatment of
uninsured individuals, so the only additional effort would be to send
the claim to the government.

I assume that the hospital would submit it as an electronic claim and
unless it was exceptional in some way it would be handled automatically.
It seems unlikely that they would have actual people handling most of
that stuff.

Chris

Chris Friesen wrote:
On 09/14/2009 10:09 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:

There's a difference worth noting: you wouldn't only be paying for Joe's
stitches, but also for all the clerical overhead needed for the
government to process the medical and accounting information.

Guess who pays /those/ bills....

Presumably there's already hospital paperwork to cover treatment of
uninsured individuals, so the only additional effort would be to send
the claim to the government.

I assume that the hospital would submit it as an electronic claim and
unless it was exceptional in some way it would be handled automatically.
It seems unlikely that they would have actual people handling most of
that stuff.

Ok - feel free to change "clerks" to programmers, analysts, systems
engineers, application specialists, systems administrators, operators,
tech writers, managers, etc at HQ, regional, and district levels...



--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/

J. Clarke wrote:

One of the big problems is that the insurance companies are being
forced to cover the uninsured. How does that happen you ask? Well,
hospitals are required by law to give at least a minimal standard of
treatment to anyone who walks into the emergency room, without regard
to means. The laws that require them to do this do not provide any
means of compensating them for the costs incurred. Even nonprofit
hospitals have to recover costs somehow or they run out of money and
can't pay their bills. Thus the means they use to recover costs is
to set their rates so that anyone _with_ insurance gets surcharged to
cover the uninsured.

Yup, 8 to 10% of what we pay for insurance is shifted to cover the costs of
treating uninsured patients (and that's aside from govt. funding used for
the same purpose). Folks who don't want their taxes paying for treating the
uninsured have missed the little detail that their insurance premiums are
doing exactly that right now. Why would anyone be surprised that a
corporation seeking profit would pass on an expense like this to their
insured customers, did anyone seriously believe they would just eat this
expense?

One step toward fixing the system would be a Constitutional amendment
restricting unfunded mandates--if the government says that you _have_
to provide a good or service to someone who cannot reasonably be
expected to pay for it then the government must compensate you for
that good or service.

And where will the govt. get the money? Perhaps from the taxes we pay? It
doesn't matter which pocket the money comes from, it's all the same pair of
pants. So if we're going to pay I'd like to the bill to be as small as
possible. That means keeping people out of the emergency room, i.e.
providing them with less expensive preventative care rather than having them
stumble into the ER when they have no other choice.

On 09/14/2009 10:44 AM, Morris Dovey wrote:
Chris Friesen wrote:

Presumably there's already hospital paperwork to cover treatment of
uninsured individuals, so the only additional effort would be to send
the claim to the government.

I assume that the hospital would submit it as an electronic claim and
unless it was exceptional in some way it would be handled automatically.
It seems unlikely that they would have actual people handling most of
that stuff.

Ok - feel free to change "clerks" to programmers, analysts, systems
engineers, application specialists, systems administrators, operators,
tech writers, managers, etc at HQ, regional, and district levels...

Sure, but all that stuff has to be done anyways for the paying patients.
The incremental work to handle the non-paying patients should be
comparatively small.

Chris

On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:42:58 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

HeyBub wrote:
Phisherman wrote:

Stop the waste. If Medicare/Medicade have worked well, I might be
for the proposed plan.


Not to disagree, but sometimes stopping the waste costs more than
ignoring the inefficiency. You can't build a house without making
sawdust (unless you're using mud bricks).

As an example, the IRS doesn't seize someone's house, garnish their
wages, and file suit in federal court over a delinquent tax bill of
two dollars!

No, wait...

One of the big problems is that the insurance companies are being forced to
cover the uninsured. How does that happen you ask? Well, hospitals are
required by law to give at least a minimal standard of treatment to anyone
who walks into the emergency room, without regard to means. The laws that
require them to do this do not provide any means of compensating them for
the costs incurred. Even nonprofit hospitals have to recover costs somehow
or they run out of money and can't pay their bills. Thus the means they use
to recover costs is to set their rates so that anyone _with_ insurance gets
surcharged to cover the uninsured. This means, for example, that Joe
Homeless walks into the emergency room to get four stitches and he gets them
for free, while I walk into the same emergency room and get four stitches on
the same table from the same doctor and get charged 2500 bucks.

One step toward fixing the system would be a Constitutional amendment
restricting unfunded mandates--if the government says that you _have_ to
provide a good or service to someone who cannot reasonably be expected to
pay for it then the government must compensate you for that good or service.


I like the idea of hospitals charging $300 for all emergencies. That
would help keep the hypocondriacs and flu patients from taking
resources from those that really need it. I rushed a friend to a
hospital once, he had a burst appendix. He passed out on the floor
while filling out page 4 of the 7 required pages to be admitted.
Hospitals will work with those without money--you can pay whatever you
can per month until paid up.

Mark & Juanita wrote:

You do realize that if you don't like one health insurance company, you
are perfectly free to find another,

Assuming you don't have a pre-existing condition so that other companies won't
write you a policy.

If you are denied, nothing stops you from fighting via
the legal system or paying yourself

If you live long enough to get through the legal system and/or have enough money
or enough credit to pay yourself.

If you don't like the price, you can shop
around -- you'd be surprised the prices you can get on medical if you pay
without insurance -- you save a lot of paperwork for the doctors.

This is very true. Most doctors are glad to get cash on the barrel.

Do you think those options would be available if the government runs health care?

Which clause in which proposed bill has the government running health care?
Numbers please.

-- Doug

On 09/14/2009 11:17 AM, Phisherman wrote:

I like the idea of hospitals charging $300 for all emergencies. That
would help keep the hypocondriacs and flu patients from taking
resources from those that really need it. I rushed a friend to a
hospital once, he had a burst appendix. He passed out on the floor
while filling out page 4 of the 7 required pages to be admitted.

The admitting nurse didn't recognize him as an urgent case? Seems odd.

Chris

On Sep 14, 1:26*pm, Chris Friesen wrote:
On 09/14/2009 11:17 AM, Phisherman wrote:

I like the idea of hospitals charging $300 for all emergencies. *That
would help keep the hypocondriacs and flu patients from taking
resources from those that really need it. *I rushed a friend to a
hospital once, he had a burst appendix. *He passed out on the floor
while filling out page 4 of the 7 required pages to be admitted.

The admitting nurse didn't recognize him as an urgent case? *Seems odd.

Chris

The admitting 'clerk' maybe? Did it look like just another OD? Too
many unknowns to comment.

On 09/13/2009 10:59 PM, Mark & Juanita wrote:
Do you
think those options would be available if the government runs health care?

I'm not American so the discussion doesn't really impact me. However, I
was under the impression that the proposed legislation allowed for a
public insurance option in addition to all the private ones.

How many choices do you have for the motor vehicle department?

Around here (Saskatchewan, Canada) basic insurance is provided by the
government along with the license plates (at competitive rates relative
to the other provinces, and without any subsidization) but you can go to
any insurance company you want for additional coverage.

i.e, if you can't see the difference between the choices you have now and a
federally mandated, unconstitutional, federally run health system, there is
nothing more that can be discussed.

I didn't think that this was actually in the proposed bill.

Chris

"DGDevin" writes:
J. Clarke wrote:

One of the big problems is that the insurance companies are being
forced to cover the uninsured. How does that happen you ask? Well,
hospitals are required by law to give at least a minimal standard of
treatment to anyone who walks into the emergency room, without regard
to means. The laws that require them to do this do not provide any
means of compensating them for the costs incurred. Even nonprofit
hospitals have to recover costs somehow or they run out of money and
can't pay their bills. Thus the means they use to recover costs is
to set their rates so that anyone _with_ insurance gets surcharged to
cover the uninsured.

Yup, 8 to 10% of what we pay for insurance is shifted to cover the costs of

You need to document that number; How was it derived?

while a full 25% is pure insurance overhead, to wit (From UHC 2008 10-K)

Revenue (premiums): USD 81 Billion
Payments (medical care): USD 60 Billion
Insurance Company Costs: USD 15 Billion
Insurance Company Profit: USD 5 Billion.

25% overhead is entirely too much. Need to get rid of the insurance companies
entirely to save any money in health care. Add in the savings in the
hospitals, doctor's, etc. due to less paperwork, and you end up cutting 50% or
more from the costs of medical treatment.

Perpetual HSA's for individuals with competetive catastrophic coverage
from multiple vendors would go a long way towards reducing medical costs.

scott

Morris Dovey wrote:

Need I point out that that solution STILL leaves you paying for Joe -
just via a different path :-).

There's a difference worth noting: you wouldn't only be paying for
Joe's stitches, but also for all the clerical overhead needed for the
government to process the medical and accounting information.

Guess who pays /those/ bills....

Who pays for the 20% administrative overhead the insurance companies absorb
today? Health insurance administration in Canada absorbs 6%, it's 4% in
France and an astonishingly efficient 1.5% in Taiwan. What baffles me is
why so many folks are apparently content paying an extra 20% for insurance
that goes to executive salaries and marketing campaigns and so on while
being horrified at the thought of the supposedly greater inefficiency govt.
would bring to the process. The insurance companies have been getting away
with murder--refusing customers with pre-existing conditions, finding
excuses to drop customers who paid their premiums for years but now need
treatment, raising their rates far ahead of inflation, not to mention
absorbing a fifth of the money they take in for "administration." We're
being screwed six ways from Sunday *now* by the industry--are we just
supposed to bend over and smile forever, paying more than any other nation
on earth for health care while coming in 13th among wealthy nations in life
expectancy and infant mortality? My usual instinct is to suspect that govt.
can usually makes things worse, but when it comes to health care we need to
do something different, it can't go on like it is now because we simply
can't afford it.

On Sep 14, 10:17*am, Phisherman wrote:

I like the idea of hospitals charging $300 for all emergencies. *That
would help keep the hypocondriacs and flu patients from taking
resources from those that really need it. *I rushed a friend to a
hospital once, he had a burst appendix. *He passed out on the floor
while filling out page 4 of the 7 required pages to be admitted.
Hospitals will work with those without money--you can pay whatever you
can per month until paid up.

In Canada, your friend would have been whisked inside to be treated
immediately and you would have been asked questions by a clerk who
filled out a couple of pages form. The clerk would probably also have
asked you to go get your friend's medicare card. A nurse would
immediately have asked your friend a bunch of questions, but related
to his condition and previous medical experiences. A flu patient would
be immediately isolated from the others.

Your hypochondriac would be made to wait, and wait and wait. And then
they would bitch about the Canadian health system because their
obviously non-urgent condition was not treated immediately. Then they
would have mortgaged their house to get their pimple operated on in
the USA and appeared in ads for the Republicans about how bad the
Canadian system is.

Luigi

HeyBub wrote:


: Excellent retort. In sum, we spend more per capita than other countries
: BECAUSE WE CAN. Other countries spend less than we for a lot of reasons,
: chief among them is they don't have the wealth to do so.

But the problem is, that extra spending on health care does not make us
live longer or better lives. Here' a very good video presentation of some
of the facts of the matter, comparing US and foreign expenditures to
e.g., survival rates for various things:

http://brightcove.newscientist.com/s...id=30583310001



Well worth watching. It discusses, among many other things, the fact that
a lot of the cutting-edge expensive tests equipment is owened by the
doctors, who need to recoup their investment asap.

-- Andy Barss

Mark & Juanita wrote:

You do realize that if you don't like one health insurance company,
you are perfectly free to find another, or to lobby your employer to
change insurers -- if enough employees are having problems, your
employer will most likely listen.

It is always amusing to see someone advise people to look elsewhere if they
don't like the way things are now. Where, pray tell, does one find a health
insurance company that doesn't care about pre-existing conditions? Where
does one find an insurance company that hasn't raised its rates far above
inflation in the past 15 years? Where does one go to find an insurance
company that doesn't have 20% administrative overhead?

If you are denied, nothing stops
you from fighting via the legal system or paying yourself -- that may
lead to indebtedness, but if people are willing to go into debt to
get that flat-screen TV or the newest car, you'd think something that
will save their lives would be viewed as a good investment.

Here we go again, Joe and Mary Mainstreet are supposed to sue some giant
corporation with bottomless pockets. Yeah, good luck with that. Hey,
here's a radical idea, how about making it illegal for the insurance
companies to do slimy things like use flimsy excuses to drop customers when
they need treatment? Or does that sound too much like raging communism to
you?

If you
don't like the price, you can shop around -- you'd be surprised the
prices you can get on medical if you pay without insurance -- you
save a lot of paperwork for the doctors. Do you think those options
would be available if the government runs health care? How many
choices do you have for the motor vehicle department?

Please quote those portions of the current health care reform proposals that
would result in "the government runs health care."

And if you don't like the way the DMV works, why not sue the govt.--"
nothing stops you from fighting via the legal system."

i.e, if you can't see the difference between the choices you have now
and a federally mandated, unconstitutional, federally run health
system, there is nothing more that can be discussed.

Since nobody appears to be proposing such a system your continued reference
to it is baffling.

Did you know that survival rates from cancer are the highest in the
United States compared to other countries, especially those with
socialized medicine?

How about for the one-in-six Americans who lack health insurance, what's
their survival rate? The bright point in American health care is
catastrophic medicine like complicated surgery or drug treatment for
diseases like cancer. Unfortunately the other side of that coin is many
millions of Americans can't afford such treatment. Of course if you take
the view that's just their tough luck it makes that grim reality acceptable
(unless you're smart enough to realize that a tenth of *your* health
insurance premiums are used to cover the cost of treating the uninsured).

That is a much better measure of health system
success than life expectancy since that is driven strongly by
genetics and thus demographics in some of those countries that are
very homogeneous compared to the US. As far as infant mortality, you
also have to examine the definitions that other nations use.

Oh, really--so places like Canada and Britain and France and so on have
homogeneous populations? It's hilarious to see various right-wing groups
currently making the claim that life expectancy and infant mortality are
unreliable indicators of how good a nation's health care is. The NCPPR
pushes that line--they're the guys who take contributions from Exxon-Mobil
and then miraculously decide that man-made climate change is a myth. Not to
mention their money-laundering for Jack Abramoff. Yeah, real persuasive
source.

I'd feel a whole lot better if the government were doing a bang-up
job on the health care programs it already runs. VA? Medicare?
Indian Health Service? Not exactly glowing testimonials. But if we
give them the whole sector, they'll make it work. Yeah, I'm
convinced.

VA health care has cleaned up its act in recent years, they're doing a hell
of a lot better job than they did back in the 70s and 80s. They even
negotiated lower prices with the drug companies, something the last
Republican-controlled Congress prohibited Medicare from doing. Besides, you
continue to refer to a total takeover of health care by the govt. when
nothing in the proposed legislation mandates that; how about keeping the
discussion on this planet rather than inventing creeping-socialism horror
stories?

HeyBub wrote:

Excellent retort. In sum, we spend more per capita than other
countries BECAUSE WE CAN. Other countries spend less than we for a
lot of reasons, chief among them is they don't have the wealth to do
so.

More than half of personal bankruptcies in America result from medical
expenses. Companies move overseas in part because they don't have to pay
for employee health coverage, e.g. it costs GM $1,200 less per vehicle to
build cars in Canada than in the U.S.--Toyota took note of that when they
decided to build a new plant in Canada instead of the U.S. Health insurance
companies absorb several times what such administration costs in other
industrialized nations--and so on. The notion that America can afford to
waste more of its health care budget than other nations would be funny if it
weren't so sickening.

Phisherman wrote:

I'm an extreme Libertarian and it is my guess no Libertarian will
support Obama's Health care plan. It is financially irresponsible.
Government, please get out of my face!!!

So how do you feel about various industries including the health
insurance industry being in your face? They keep raising the cost
of health insurance


I dont need a president, a cigarette smoker himself, telling me what
kind of insurance I need. Stopping smoking is an excellent way to
prevent disease and reduce health costs.

But apparently you do need insurance companies that can drop your coverage
when you get sick on whatever flimsy excuse they can cook up. It is nothing
short of astonishing that so many people don't want govt. bureaucrats in
charge of their health care but are blissfully happy to have corporate
bureaucrats in charge of their health care despite the steadily rising costs
and lower standards of care those corporations have managed to create in
their pursuit of profit to the exclusion of all else including the health of
their customers.

Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:42:58 -0400, J. Clarke wrote:

Joe Homeless walks into the emergency room to get four stitches and
he gets them for free, while I walk into the same emergency room and
get four stitches on the same table from the same doctor and get
charged 2500 bucks.

One step toward fixing the system would be a Constitutional amendment
restricting unfunded mandates--if the government says that you
_have_ to provide a good or service to someone who cannot reasonably
be expected to pay for it then the government must compensate you
for that good or service.

Need I point out that that solution STILL leaves you paying for Joe -
just via a different path :-).

I don't have a problem with paying for Joe, my problem is with the
government doing it in such a roundabout way and then using the result to
claim that medical costs are out of control.

As a matter of political strategy though it's genius.

DGDevin wrote:

Because they can't even get all their own members of Congress to go along.
A bunch of them (especially from the south) are worried about losing their
seats to Republicans so they'll resist voting for what many of their
constituents have been convinced is rampaging socialism.

No argument with that, other than "many of their constituents recognize
as rampaging socialism." "Rampaging socialism" is easy to recognize, no
need to convince anyone with half a brain... it is what it is...

--
Jack
Using FREE News Server: http://www.eternal-september.org/
http://jbstein.com

On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:26:12 -0600, Chris Friesen
wrote:

On 09/14/2009 11:17 AM, Phisherman wrote:

I like the idea of hospitals charging $300 for all emergencies. That
would help keep the hypocondriacs and flu patients from taking
resources from those that really need it. I rushed a friend to a
hospital once, he had a burst appendix. He passed out on the floor
while filling out page 4 of the 7 required pages to be admitted.

The admitting nurse didn't recognize him as an urgent case? Seems odd.

Chris


No, at the time nobody knew his appendix had burst. I knew there was
something seriously wrong because his skin turned a green color. And
because it was a Sunday, they did not know until the following day.
The lab technicians do not work on Sunday.

"Phisherman" wrote:

No, at the time nobody knew his appendix had burst. I knew there
was
something seriously wrong because his skin turned a green color.

The same thing happened to my father, my mother was concerned gangrene
had set in.

They performed emergency surgery on dad as soon as he got to the
hospital and he survived.

The year was 1940/1941.

Lew

"Larry Blanchard" wrote in message om...
On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:42:58 -0400, J. Clarke wrote:

Joe Homeless walks into the emergency room to get four stitches and he
gets them for free, while I walk into the same emergency room and get
four stitches on the same table from the same doctor and get charged
2500 bucks.

One step toward fixing the system would be a Constitutional amendment
restricting unfunded mandates--if the government says that you _have_ to
provide a good or service to someone who cannot reasonably be expected
to pay for it then the government must compensate you for that good or
service.

Need I point out that that solution STILL leaves you paying for Joe -
just via a different path :-).



It is worth noting as well that the problem is less the uninsued and more the $2500 for 4 stitches.....The hospital and/or ER have a cost/expence structure quite beyond ration or reason. Sadly during the entire "health care" debate we've had no attention paid to the actual cost structure. Rod





--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw

Scott Lurndal wrote:

Yup, 8 to 10% of what we pay for insurance is shifted to cover the
costs of

You need to document that number; How was it derived?

It's been quoted in the media of late; I saw it on the AMA website if memory
serves.

25% overhead is entirely too much. Need to get rid of the insurance
companies entirely to save any money in health care. Add in the
savings in the hospitals, doctor's, etc. due to less paperwork, and
you end up cutting 50% or more from the costs of medical treatment.

Their high administrative costs aside, many practices of the insurance
industry (like canceling coverage when they can get away with it, including
in the middle of someone's chemo therapy) are loathsome and should not be
tolerated.

Phisherman wrote:

I like the idea of hospitals charging $300 for all emergencies. That
would help keep the hypocondriacs and flu patients from taking
resources from those that really need it. I rushed a friend to a
hospital once, he had a burst appendix. He passed out on the floor
while filling out page 4 of the 7 required pages to be admitted.
Hospitals will work with those without money--you can pay whatever you
can per month until paid up.

I've read news reports that Canada has a problem with people who go to the
doctor for every case of the sniffles since there are no co-pay fees to
discourage that; they take up resources needed by those who have more
serious complaints. Apparently some hospitals in the U.S. have closed their
ERs because they can't afford to run them, they are de facto health clinics
for the uninsured. I'd have no problem with ERs being restricted to actual
emergency cases involving immediate threats to life and limb. But then that
would leave millions of people with no health care at all since the ER is
the only place they have. It sort of looks like clinics providing basic
preventative care would be more efficient that waiting until someone is so
sick they have no choice but to go to the ER, doesn't it.

On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:49:16 -0700, "DGDevin"
wrote:

8 to 10% of what we pay for insurance is shifted to cover the costs of
treating uninsured patients (and that's aside from govt. funding used for
the same purpose). Folks who don't want their taxes paying for treating the
uninsured have missed the little detail that their insurance premiums are
doing exactly that right now.

That I don't understand. 'splain to me how my insurance premiums are
paying for treating uninsured patients? Are you talking about the
increased charges to paying customers (insured or not) to cover
non-payers? I don't see any other way the insurance companies would be
paying the bills for people who don't have insurance. Certainly not
directly.

Tom Veatch
Wichita, KS
USA

Chris Friesen wrote:

i.e, if you can't see the difference between the choices you have
now and a federally mandated, unconstitutional, federally run health
system, there is nothing more that can be discussed.

I didn't think that this was actually in the proposed bill.

Chris

It isn't, but those people who have been gnashing their teeth and tearing
their hair ever since last fall's Presidential election like to pretend it
is. Death Panelists would be a good name for the members of this particular
cult, sufferers of Obama Derangement Syndrome (among other things).

On 14 Sep 2009 17:37:47 GMT, (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:

25% overhead is entirely too much.

Maybe so, but it's a lot less than the overhead in most (if not all)
manufacturing companies.

Tom Veatch
Wichita, KS
USA

On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:17:11 -0400, Phisherman
wrote:

I rushed a friend to a
hospital once, he had a burst appendix. He passed out on the floor
while filling out page 4 of the 7 required pages to be admitted.

Must be a hospital specific thing. The only time I've been to the ER
in a true emergency situation, I was treated immediately and the
paperwork came later. The necessary medical stuff (pharmaceutical
allergies, etc.) was taken verbally while treatment was underway.

Tom Veatch
Wichita, KS
USA

Jack Stein wrote:

Because they can't even get all their own members of Congress to go
along. A bunch of them (especially from the south) are worried about
losing their seats to Republicans so they'll resist voting for what
many of their constituents have been convinced is rampaging
socialism.

No argument with that, other than "many of their constituents
recognize as rampaging socialism." "Rampaging socialism" is easy to
recognize, no need to convince anyone with half a brain... it is what
it is...

Since these are the same people who are convinced the govt. wants to set up
death panels to decide when everyone will be allowed to die, and give away
free health care to illegal aliens (the clear language of the bill
notwithstanding) and for that matter that President Obama's birth
certificate is a forgery, I'm not too concerned with what they believe.
Anyone who shows up at a town hall meeting to screech that they don't want
the govt. getting involved with their Medicare is frankly too dumb to be
taken seriously. It saddens me that the Republican Party has been reduced
to appealing to the fears of ill-informed yahoos, but that's what it has
come to.

On Sep 14, 12:59*am, Mark & Juanita wrote:
* You do realize that if you don't like one health insurance company, you
are perfectly free to find another, or to lobby your employer to change
insurers -- if enough employees are having problems, your employer will
most likely listen. *If you are denied, nothing stops you from fighting via
the legal system or paying yourself

..... blah, blah, bla sniped

what on earth are you saying? ever hear about insurance and pre-
existing conditions? know what the major cause of bankruptcy is in
the u. s.?

There is never a situation where having more rounds is a disadvantage

Rob Leatham

What happened to "If you are going to be dumb you better be tough"?
From your posts I figured you must be the toughest guy on the
internet.

Steve Turner wrote:

Another thing that intrigued me about the empty posts is that we use
them in another group to represent a moment of silence when somebody has
passed.

At one time here they were a form of disagreement ... generally when BAD
was involved.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 10/22/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)

"Tom Veatch" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:17:11 -0400, Phisherman
wrote:

I rushed a friend to a
hospital once, he had a burst appendix. He passed out on the floor
while filling out page 4 of the 7 required pages to be admitted.

Must be a hospital specific thing. The only time I've been to the ER
in a true emergency situation, I was treated immediately and the
paperwork came later. The necessary medical stuff (pharmaceutical
allergies, etc.) was taken verbally while treatment was underway.

The last time I went to an ER, they told me that they couldn't see me until
I filed out the paperwork. Then they complained that there was to much blood
on the paperwork to read it.

"CW" wrote in
m:


"Robatoy" wrote in message
.
..
On Sep 14, 12:03 am, Puckdropper puckdropper(at)yahoo(dot)com
wrote:
"Ed Pawlowski" wrote in news:sZ-
:



"tom" wrote in message


...
On Sep 13, 12:38 am, "Lew Hodgett"
wrote:
Let the debate begin.

Lew

Forgive me. Which debate? Tom

Jet vs. Delta

Spruce, Pine, Fir: Which is the superior material to support a
Cherry table top?


Poplar or soft maple.


Ginger or Maryanne


Parsley, Sage, Rosemary or Thyme?

"Tom Veatch" wrote:

I don't believe congress is talking about forcing you or me to buy
fire insurance on pain of confiscatory fines. (local fire
departments
don't equate to fire insurance, by the way)

More IBS (Intellectual Bull ****).

1) What is being proposed is that everyone must purchase health
insurance.

2) If you can not afford to buy health insurance, tax rebates,
incentives, etc will be provided to help offset the cost of health
insurance.

Lew

"charlie" wrote:

i go to the mayo clinic. it is one of, if not the, most expensive
place for treatment.

That doesn't appear to be supported by the data.

Mayo is significantly lower cost (At least 30%) than UCLA Medical
Center as just one example.

Lew