Edd in KY said: (quoted from post at 18:28:00 09/16/14) Fact: Son had an emergency Appendecomy last Dec 2013, old healthcare system. He had good insurance thru his employer.
He was in the hospial from 5PM Friday until noon next day...19 hours. No complications. Bill was over $40,000. Insurance co and hospital in a big fight, insurance refusing to pay. He is on the hook (maybe). This is the wonderful old system at its best.[/quote:885d444134]
Edd, the reason the bill is so high is because the hospital is trying to pay for all the freeloaders, all the malpractice insurance, all the union contracts and retirees, doctors fees and insurance, all the fancy parking, waiting rooms, new offices, etc. They will hash it out, their lawyers will make money, the bill will be paid at a much lower rate and the costs passed on to the people in the pool at the insurance group and the hospitals costs onto the next guy in line where the same thing will happen. What did his actual care cost? Real hard to find out and probably no where near what he was charged. BUT- what is the alternative? We have a great big can of worms that's not going to be easy to untangle. "Free" healthcare isn't fee at all. So ask yourself if you want 25 to maybe 40% less in your net pay (because that's what "free" healthcare is going to end up costing) or would it have been better for your son to have had a health savings plan, tax deductible, and catastrophic insurance? Right now if he has insurance (healthcare plan actually, it's not insurance at all) his employer is probably already paying 1/3-1/2 of his salary into that (I judge that on what we're paying our local employees, it's going to vary). If you son had that $ to put in his HSA it would be a pretty fair nest egg and it could have been put in an interest bearing account. Just a thought.
[quote:885d444134="MarkB_MI"](quoted from post at 07:08:56 09/17/14) Bret, you need not worry about single payer coming to the US in our lifetimes. The insurance, health care and pharmaceutical industries are far too powerful to let that happen.
Here is my prediction for how things will shake out: ACA will continue along for the next three years. There will be plenty of problems, some self-inflicted (e.g. the website fiasco) and some not (the innumerable court challenges). In 2017 it may be mathematically possible to repeal ACA. That is not going to happen for three reasons: First, the political landscape will have shifted, and the idea of repealing ACA will be much less popular than it is today. Second, although they will have had three more years to think about it, the opponents of ACA will still have no idea what to replace it with. It's much easier to criticize something when you're not on the hook to come up with something better. Third, any repeal or replacement of ACA will almost certainly be much more expensive. So what will happen is there will be some changes to ACA, maybe major, maybe minor, but it will continue to roll along. For better or worse, the system created by ACA is what we will know for the rest of our lives.
A few corrections to your history:
Although Kaiser was a early implementer of employee health insurance, it was hardly the first. The first employee health insurance plans were created for teachers in the thirties.
'all those people on the public dole wanting "free" care' You are of course referring to Medicare/Medicaid, the primary recipients of which are the elderly, the blind and the disabled, not able-bodied people on public assistance.
Pharmaceutical patents are good for 20 years, although the patent holder gets exclusive rights to produce the drug for only seven years. But the pharmaceutical companies have come up with novel ways to insure continued profits in spite of these limits.
Kaiser was the first to come up with "healthcare" in the form we know it today, not that it really matters.
Medicaid is what I was referring to. It's the largest single cost on our tax base locally and from what I read it's the same everywhere across the nation. Medicare is another issue altogether and differs greatly from Medicaid. I do recognize that Mediaid does cover some percentage that is blind, disabled, etc. of working age, but what percentage is that do you think? 10%? 15%? It also covers a lot of young kids with major issues, and some not so major, like speech therapy. Still, what percentage is that compared to the whole? My Google-fu is on the fritz because several minutes looking for that info got me zilch. The numbers say almost 1/3 of our population is on public assistance, 35.4%, that's more than the number of people working. Some of those people are actually in need of assistance and I would never deny then that- the infirm, ill, disabled (the TRULY disabled!), the elderly that qualify (being old does not mean you qualify- Warren Buffet is pretty old). But how many don't even try? I don't know where you live, but in my area being on multiple forms of public assistance is common. A good deal of these people don't try and never tried. Those are the people that scream loudest when any talk of change comes along and those are the people I was aiming at. If you feel 20 and 30 somethings that have never done anything other than sit and drink beer their whole lives are worthy of your tax dollars, have at it. I think my tax dollars should go to help people trying to help themselves.
I don't think external_link is going to last. Maybe I'm wrong, wouldn't be the 1st time. Either way, it's going to end up costing a lot more than ever imagined (per the CBO) and it's a huge power grab. And either way, I don't things getting better as far as costs, care (rationing is already in play), privacy or in solving the base issue which was people falling through the so called "safety net". We already have states issuing or talking of issuing healthcare to illegal aliens. How is that sustainable?
This post was edited by Bret4207 at 05:07:17 09/17/14.
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