Healthcare Rationing has begunFollow

The whole point is that MY INSURANCE COMPANY ALREADY DOESN'T COVER IT FOR REASONS I CANNOT FATHOM. Damn, you have the reading comprehension of a fifth grader.

As evidenced by this:



I didn't say they were. The urgent care center is trying to bilk an extra $40 out of the insurance company, not the other way around.

Since the claim was denied, the extra $40 was passed along to me.

Had I said I had no insurance, the urgent care center would have only charged me $75 for the visit, as they have in uninsured years past. Since I had insurance, they tacked on an extra $40 fee, trying to get extra money from the insurance company.

Huh?! Did you reply to the wrong post, or quote the wrong paragraph? I was specifically responding to a statement that the only people talking about repealing Obamacare are forum trolls, and that no public figures are calling for repeal. Which is clearly false.

Nope. In your haste to prove Yossarian wrong, you missed what he was saying. He even came back before your latest post and clarified his meaning. Unless I'm misreading you and you were responding to a different poster.

Yes. Which has been the exact argument I've been making about health care for years. It is monumentally idiotic to cover the normal day to day and relatively inexpensive health care activities via an insurance mechanism. If you need to get some treatment for an abscess and it costs $75, you should just go to a doctor and pay $75. Covering that (or anything similar) with insurance can only increase the total cost.

Insurance should pay *only* for rare and expensive things, not common and inexpensive things. We've been doing this backwards for 35 years and the new health care law just continues that same backwards approach. It's why health care keeps getting more expensive. We demand greater coverage and preventative care. But the preventative care is cheap. If people would just spend the $50 it might cost once or twice a year to get a checkup, they'd be golden. But they don't, so the government decides to make that choice for them and mandates coverage by insurance companies, who will happily charge the consumers for that extra coverage and cost (with their own cut added in of course).


Health insurance used to only cover expensive medical costs (like hospitalization, surgeries, major illnesses, etc). And it was relatively inexpensive and nearly everyone could afford it if they wanted (and lots of employers provided it). Go take a gander at the HMO act of 1975 to see when that changed and why.

It is absolutely insane that the average person pays $5k+ a year for health insurance. The overwhelming majority of people would be better off paying a third of that to cover only major expenses and paying the other stuff out of pocket. They could even put the rest of the money aside and maybe get ahead in life instead of working themselves to death. But that would require that we abandon this absurd idea that the government's job is to take care of us and the left doesn't want to give that promise up, no matter how much they fail utterly to deliver it.




Wrong direction to go (but its the direction they want you to, so that's not surprising). It would be even cheaper if you just paid a doctor directly for his services, just like you do for every other thing you buy in your life.



I think I've been clear on this. I think the government should get out of the health care business entirely. I think that insurance companies should be allowed to trim back coverage to only the rare and expensive items. I think that employers ought to be free to provide those packages to their employees and pass the savings on to them in the form of higher wages. I think that there is no reason why someone earning a middle class salary should be paying $5k/year for insurance, out of which half to two thirds pays for maybe a few hundred dollars of actual service (yearly checkups, flu shots, and other minor stuff).

I've been employed at my current job for about 15 years. We have a very good health insurance program (good being defined by how much it covers). It probably costs $8-10k/year for that coverage. That means that over that time frame, I've paid (and don't kid yourself, it's the employee who pays the full cost) $120-150k for health care. Do you know how much I've gotten back? I went to an urgent care once for an ear infection. The doctor spent about 3 minutes with me, confirmed what it was and wrote me a prescription. That was it. That's what all that money bought me.

Even the most serious illnesses would have a hard time racking up medical bills that large over that much time. You can't possibly expect me to believe that this is cost effective from the end consumers point of view. But we have this system, not because the private market chose it, but because the government decided that companies had to provide the "option" of full coverage health care (HMOs). Of course, you offer full coverage and people will take it because most don't realize that they're paying for it and it's going to actually cost them more. Over time, the whole system changes to provide that kind of unnecessary coverage and we end out where we are right now.


It's also why a lot of conservative are incredibly suspicious of the "public option". We're in the mess we're in now because the government just offered the public an "option" to get an HMO instead of their existing care. I'd explain why this doesn't actually end out being a real choice when you factor it across a large population, but that would require some examination of large group psychology. Just accept that when you offer what appears to be a free thing to individuals in a group where the group as a whole has to adopt what the majority of individuals choose, the whole group will eventually "choose" that thing. It's not really a choice. It's an illusion. That's why the proposed public option really isn't an option. Its mere existence will ensure that it will be adopted and become the standard. Anyone who studies history and large group choices should be able to see this.

Cat,



No it doesn't. Go talk to members of your local va and ask them about their govn healthcare if you want to see what's really going on.

So your opinion here is that veterans should not be provided health benefits?

Ah... I knew I was mangling that when I wrote it. I'm talking about mandates on coverage Joph. Obviously, the insurance companies *love* that the government places those mandates, since it's more money for them. The result places limits on what employers have available in terms of health care plans, and thus drives up the cost.

Jophed,



lol...right. Does having more insurance companies compete for health insurance customers drive up costs?

Pretty basic stuff, even for you.

To be fair, I was asked how I'd change things if I could. To me, it's more a matter of principle though. The current condition exists because the government created the insurance-for-everything model of health care. Forgive me if I don't really trust the the same player is going to actually seek to drive down costs.

The insurance industry didn't run around to consumers back in the 60s and 70s and ask them to sign up for insurance which would save them $50/year while costing them $200. That would never have flown and no one would have purchased it. As I've pointed out in previous threads on this subject, prior to the mid 70s and the HMO act, pretty much the only employers who offered such complete coverage for their employees were mining-town type work sites where it was cost effective for everyone to pool their money together into a fund for the whole. It was not then and hasn't been since a viable model for most businesses or private citizens to use.


But the introduction of medicare opened a crack for that to happen. It promised full care for seniors, and the government used the existing insurance model to do it, inefficient as it was. The combination of government power and corporate greed combined to bring us the HMO act, which effectively forced most employers in the country to also provide such care. And once it was there, it became nearly impossible to get rid of. Most employees simply don't grasp that they are the ones paying for their health care premiums, even the portion "matched" by their employer. It all counts as labor costs for their company. But because of that employees will demand better coverage. Better defined in ways which really aren't better and ultimately end out just driving up the price.


As difficult as it might be to unwind the mess we've found ourselves in, IMO it's a better direction to go than to simply allow for greater and greater government control of the industry. Health care used to work very well in this country. Heck. It still works well in some areas. But it's kinda hard to ignore the pattern that the areas in which our system works least well and has the most problems and the most cost increases are the very same areas in which the government has the greatest hand. Why on earth would anyone trust that more government will reverse that? It's like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

Is "because they can" not sufficient?