Thanks Obama

Yes.

I am for single payer...but more than that, I am for price control. Healthcare doesnt operate by the same laws as other freemarket enterprises, therefore at the very least it should be well regulated in terms of costs and profit.

I think a single payer system is the best way to get there, but I am in favor of any system with some form of price control in place.

 

Yes, There are distinct advantages in having served your country as long as you can avoid the pitfalls like dying


Hotwater

 

Nothing will ever be well regulated when money is produced out of debt.

 

Move to Canada, Pumpkin. I'll take you in as my pet and you can have all the free health care you want.

 

it's not the best system but it is a start. if we are going to raise the level of care for the rest of America it's going to take a while, i think at some point a better compromise will come along. i would rather pay a little more right now than see some poor kid with a preexisting condition die because he couldn't get the medical attention that he needed because his parents couldn't afford the medication he needed or the operation. should we just say the hell with the poor and the elderly, send them all off to an island to fend for themselves just so we can live with a litte more money in our pockets ??

 

According to Investopedia, the reasons healthcare costs are so high in the US:

1. Administrative Costs

The number one reason our healthcare costs are so high, says Harvard economist David Cutler, is that “the administrative costs of running our healthcare system are astronomical. About one quarter of healthcare cost is associated with administration, which is far higher than in any other country.”

2. Drug Costs

Another major difference in health costs between the U.S. and every other developed nation is the cost of drugs. The public definitely believes drug costs are unreasonable; now politicians are starting to believe that too. In most countries the government negotiates drug prices with the drug makers, but when Congress created Medicare Part D, it specifically denied Medicare the right to use its power to negotiate drug prices. The Veteran's Administration and Medicaid, which can negotiate drug prices, pay the lowest drug prices. The Congressional Budget Office has found that just by giving the low-income beneficiaries of Medicare Part D the same discount Medicaid recipients get, the federal government would save $116 billion over 10 years.

3. Defensive Medicine

Yet another big driver of the higher U.S. health insurance bill is the practice of defensive medicine. Doctors are afraid that they will get sued, so they order multiple tests even when they are certain they know what the diagnosis is. A Gallup survey estimated that $650 billion annually could be attributed to defensive medicine. Everyone pays the bill on this with higher insurance premiums, co-pays and out-of-pocket costs, as well as taxes that go toward paying for governmental healthcare programs.

4. Expensive Mix of Treatments

U.S. medical practitioners also tend to use a more expensive mix of treatments. When compared with other developed countries, for example, the U.S. uses three times as many mammograms, two-and-a-half times the number of MRIs and 31% more Caesarean sections. This results in more being spent on technology in more locations. Another key part of the mix is that more people in the U.S. are treated by specialists, whose fees are higher than primary-care doctors, when the same types of treatments are done at the primary-care level in other countries. Specialists command higher pay, which drives the costs up in the U.S. for everyone.

5. Wages and Work Rules

Wages and staffing drive costs up in healthcare. Specialists are commanding high reimbursements and the overutilization of specialists through the current process of referral decision-making drives health costs even higher. The National Commission on Physician Payment Reform was the first step in fixing the problem; based on its 2013 report, the commission adopted 12 recommendations for changes to get control over physician pay. Now it is working with Congress to find a way to implement some of these recommendations.

6. Branding

“There is no such thing as a legitimate price for anything in healthcare,” says George Halvorson, the former chairman of health maintenance organization Kaiser Permanente. “Prices are made up depending on who the payer is.”

Providers who can demand the highest prices are the ones that create a brand everyone wants. “In some markets the prestigious medical institutions can name their price,” says Andrea Cabarello, program director at Catalyst for Payment Reform, a nonprofit that works with large employers to get some control on health costs.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has pushed back to some degree against the high costs created by branding. In central Florida, for example, one of the top brands is Florida Hospital. This year ACA policies offered by Humana did not include services provided by this brand. Similar types of contract negotiations knocked out top hospitals in other locations. It remains to be seen whether this will cause those hospitals to reduce prices to get those patients back.

Source: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/080615/6-reasons-healthcare-so-expensive-us.asp

 

everything sold to a hospital, much like everything sold to the military, costs between five and 25 or even more times as much, as the exact same item sold to anyone else. sometimes its the exact same item. the reason given is sanitary packaging, which is often but not always a legitimate cost, and still charged more then it needs to be. and then of course administrative over head which is mostly an additional layer of greed, as are the incomes of drug and other medical supply ceo's, and then you have the greed of your insurance company ceo's, who are the real death committees, deciding who may be cared for and who not.

the system is still broken, and most civilized countries have less broken ones then the u.s. not that they have perfect ones. of course you can pick flaws in each of them, but america still has the most broken one of all first world nations and worse then several so called third world ones. there was nothing wrong with making an effort to fix it. it just still needs to be fixed.

and there is no bigger road block to fixing anything, then making a god out of making everything have to be about money.

 

The replies in this thread make me happy it was created.

 

Pressed, I don't know what you're paying monthly for health insurance, but if you were to up the ante so to speak I think you would find that ER co-pays would be a thing of the past for you. I spent some time looking at health insurance policies a few years (more like 10) back, and what I discovered is that the cost of co-pays and deductibles is usually hinged on the monthly premium.

 

So pay now or pay later... It still costs to much.

 

I dropped the plan i had last year because my premiums cost so much i was barely making enough to get by. I claimed like 6 exemptions on my w4s for a few months just to increase my take home pay.

Of course last year i barely went to the doctor at all except for regulsr check ups.

This year i switched to a lower premium higher deductible plan (this is all employer, not obama care). my son has been to the doctor 3 times so far this year which wiped out my HSA card. I have an upcoming appt to get a lump checked out, hopefully will be no big deal but the diagnostic work is still going to cost a small fortune .

I feel like either way you're fucked

 

Do you ever do anything but whine and complain?
While agreeing that the copay amount sounds extreme, you are not special.
what is your maximum annual out of pocket co-pay and what is your maximum lifetime out of pocket?
That is the real number to consider.

for you it may seem like a scam and a ripoff, but for a person with chronic illness, that max copay and maximum lifetime out of pocket amount is a blessing.
imagine if you had to spend what you just did on just one script each month and you had ten of them?

get out of your myopic little self absorbed world.
it's not all about Pressed Rat and his comfort.

 

I do hope that lump is nothing! Hoping the best for you!

 

They gave you medication for anxiety and pain. Did you get better?

Did you not feel the pain relief was worth $500?

 

Well, they're so fucking skimpy with pain meds or anything that can be remotely used to get high.

The Norco (which is hydrocodone + acetaminophen) worked slightly better than the ibuprofen, and the Ativan barely took the edge off or helped me sleep. They only prescribed me five of the Ativan (which were only 0.5mg), and I found that I needed two to actually fall asleep. When I did fall asleep, it was for only about 3 hours. After that it was restless sleep where I was in and out the whole time. They also prescribed me with antibiotics (Penicillin) and the corticosteroid Prednisone for the swelling. At the time it did seem worth it because I was in agony. Fortunately I am feeling much better, but still tired yet unable to really get a decent sleep for some reason.

 

Yeah, they were even stingy with my mom's Ativan. I don't think they want you on it for more than 2 weeks because of the addiction possibilities, which is ridiculous when you're dealing with an 80 year old woman. Addiction to something that gave her a better quality of life. Who cares? She was 80 for Christ's sake.

 

Hope everything turns out okay - it is always scary when a lump needs to get investigated.

 

Thank you ladies. 8 out of 10 breast lumps are benign. This has become my mantra over the last week.

 

I went for some diagnostic work last year, and ended up with a $1000 bill. For a pelvic ultrasound, a physical, and some bloodwork. When I got the bill in the mail, I couldn't believe it. I was just not expecting it, since my insurance is middle-of-the-road. Luckily, I can afford a surprise grand here and there. But a lot of people can't. A few years ago that would have devastated me. Health care is heavily flawed, and something has got to give, sooner or later.

Now, because of that surprise bill and some others like it, I'm hesitant to go to the doctor, unless there is a fairly clear and major issue. That's exactly the problem. People wait until it is too late to seek medical attention, which ends up costing individuals, taxpayers, and the government 10's of 1000's of dollars more. I really wish there was more incentive to seek standard and preventative care.