2 years, 5 months ago
What bothers you most about the current healthcare reform?
HealthInsurance.NET Wants to know!
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M$4 Answers
The problem is that it's not balanced enough in order to control the cost of insurance-premiums. The dark-side of capitalism managed to block the key part of the reform that would made it affordable without affecting the quality of service.
First, a recap: It's not about reforming health *care*. It's about reforming health *insurance*.
Getting people to think it's about reform of health *care*, instead of what it really is, which is reform of health *insurance*, is just another one of those Orwellian double-speak word-games that the Dar Side keeps wanting people to think so they won't notice that the problem has *never* been about American health *care*. American health CARE is excellent, top-of-the-line stuff!
But trying to *pay* for it the way it's historically been done in the US has been a quirky USA-only problem that no other industrial democracy has tolerated because, in fact, it's quite simple and straightforward to solve.
In the USA, the Dark Side has been powerful enough, what with control of things like Fox news, to keep many American minds *blind* about what the real issue is, but the simple fact is... the majority of American citizens want to kick American civilization up a notch and use the advantages of numbers to spread-out the cost of health-insurance, plus make it universally accessible, in order for We-The-People to not have to fret about health-insurance so they can worry instead about those things that really matter, like building a business, or pursuing a careers and/or raising a family.
I mean... that's what's supposed to happen when people organize into social-civilizations: They pool together for things that it makes more sense to cooperate, like schools, fire-departments, police-departments, military... and now it's time to add to that some affordable, guaranteed health insurance.
But the Dark Side don't like it.
Repeat after me: American health CARE is top-notch best-in-the-world good-as-it-gets stuff, but the health *insurance* is overpriced, and it was *not* being sold fairly.
American health *insurance* reform sought to enable Americans to wipe out the stress of having - and the fear of being able to pay for - heath *insurance*...
... like has already been done in all the other industrial democracies like England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Austria, Denmark, Finland, etc. etc., and that meant doing the same two things that all the other industrial democracies did, which was:
1) Everyone has health insurance. If you can't afford it, then the government will subsidize it, but everyone is covered, and no-one can be denied, regardless of their health.
2) In order to control the cost of the insurance, the American citizens would have the right to ask their city/county/state and/or federal government to set up and operate a common-wealth health-insurance scheme on a cost-service basis, like how all the other industrial democracies do it.
It's not like it takes financial wizardry nor industrial captaincy to operate a sole-purpose insurance plan. It's mostly just billing and collecting premiums, and then paying doctors and hospitals when the services are required.
Plus, it doesn't even require some super-rich capitalist to provide financing in order to get started, because all the financing is COMING FROM THE PREMIUMS, so even the argument that it takes seed capital to get rolling is bunk. Any bank in the world would lend start-up capital to an insurance company with *one* statistician capable of adding up a column of numbers-squared and doing a division and taking a square root in order to know how much the premiums should cost in order to cover claims.
But it didn't go that way with the current US health insurance reform legislation. Point 1) got passed, but point 2) got blocked, and in the media blizzard got lost the point that it doesn't really work right unless both can be together.
The Dark Side supported the requirement for everyone to have insurance, and it *loved* the part about the government subsidizing health-care premiums for those would could not afford it, because it meant that the private health-insurance sellers could pad the premiums with higher costs than were really needed to cover claims, whereupon the government will feel compelled by its own legislation to subsidize those premiums, which might require a tax increase, which gets the people screaming at the government and blaming it for high taxes, when in fact, all those extra taxes to pay for subsidized premiums aren't going towards providing health CARE...
... Rather, it's going strait across to the investment account of some shareholder of private-insurance company stock.
It becomes a trick for share-holders of private-insurance companies to skim money out of taxpayer pockets while government catches all the flack for the taxes collected to pay for those over-priced premiums.
In order to keep the premiums more affordable by all - in order to keep premiums at a price where the government does not have to raise taxes in order to subsidize them and where premiums are paying the doctors and nurses and hospitals and health-insurance administrators - then there also must be the option for people being allowed to decide that they want to set up a common-wealth health-insurance on a cost-service basis with no profit-creaming.
But the Dark Side blocked that part of it, so now you'll get guaranteed coverage like citizens of all industrial democracies, but you'll be paying a lot more for it, and although private shareholders will be skimming that cream made by artificially inflating the premium prices, it will be government catching flack for it.
You know... for awhile it was starting to look to citizens of places like England and France and Germany that maybe the US was going to become a place worth moving to again... like it used to be... but with the loss of the option of setting up common-wealth health-insurance, the conclusion was, "Nope... I think I'll just stay here."
Who wants to move to the USA? A few Cubans who can't stand life under Habana's style of communism, and a *lot* of Mexicans who can't stand life under Mexico City's style of capitalism, but you don't see Germans nor French nor Brits pounding on the door begging to be let in.
The point of the American Revolution was that people were ticked off at being told to pay taxes to a monarchy that was telling them how to live their lives when the payers didn't even get a voice in British Parliament, and it's as American as American can be for American citizens to band together and rise up and declare that it's their country and not that of some overlord.
As American as American can be it is to stand together and say, "Hey! We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, want the fears and uncertainties of becoming ill with no access to medical care brushed aside and minimized with an intelligent implementation of common-wealth health-insurance"...
... Yet some invisible insurance overlords are saying that you can't.
You know... the purpose of the Constitution was to ensure that no single person, nor any small group of oligarchs, would be allowed to swell up and dictate terms of existence to the people if it's not what the people want, yet that's what's happening with those invisible insurance-overlords from the Dark Side and their blockage of people having the freedom to choose common-wealth health-insurance if that's what people want.
Maybe it will take a Constitutional Amendment to bring the Dark Side insurance-overlords under the umbrella of American common-will, but however it's done... the way that legislation got passed without there being even an *option* to have common-wealth health-insurance - even if it be the will of the people - is... not right.
It's saying that the Will of The People will *not* be *legal*... and that most *definitely* is NOT what being American is about!
First, a recap: It's not about reforming health *care*. It's about reforming health *insurance*.
Getting people to think it's about reform of health *care*, instead of what it really is, which is reform of health *insurance*, is just another one of those Orwellian double-speak word-games that the Dar Side keeps wanting people to think so they won't notice that the problem has *never* been about American health *care*. American health CARE is excellent, top-of-the-line stuff!
But trying to *pay* for it the way it's historically been done in the US has been a quirky USA-only problem that no other industrial democracy has tolerated because, in fact, it's quite simple and straightforward to solve.
In the USA, the Dark Side has been powerful enough, what with control of things like Fox news, to keep many American minds *blind* about what the real issue is, but the simple fact is... the majority of American citizens want to kick American civilization up a notch and use the advantages of numbers to spread-out the cost of health-insurance, plus make it universally accessible, in order for We-The-People to not have to fret about health-insurance so they can worry instead about those things that really matter, like building a business, or pursuing a careers and/or raising a family.
I mean... that's what's supposed to happen when people organize into social-civilizations: They pool together for things that it makes more sense to cooperate, like schools, fire-departments, police-departments, military... and now it's time to add to that some affordable, guaranteed health insurance.
But the Dark Side don't like it.
Repeat after me: American health CARE is top-notch best-in-the-world good-as-it-gets stuff, but the health *insurance* is overpriced, and it was *not* being sold fairly.
American health *insurance* reform sought to enable Americans to wipe out the stress of having - and the fear of being able to pay for - heath *insurance*...
... like has already been done in all the other industrial democracies like England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Austria, Denmark, Finland, etc. etc., and that meant doing the same two things that all the other industrial democracies did, which was:
1) Everyone has health insurance. If you can't afford it, then the government will subsidize it, but everyone is covered, and no-one can be denied, regardless of their health.
2) In order to control the cost of the insurance, the American citizens would have the right to ask their city/county/state and/or federal government to set up and operate a common-wealth health-insurance scheme on a cost-service basis, like how all the other industrial democracies do it.
It's not like it takes financial wizardry nor industrial captaincy to operate a sole-purpose insurance plan. It's mostly just billing and collecting premiums, and then paying doctors and hospitals when the services are required.
Plus, it doesn't even require some super-rich capitalist to provide financing in order to get started, because all the financing is COMING FROM THE PREMIUMS, so even the argument that it takes seed capital to get rolling is bunk. Any bank in the world would lend start-up capital to an insurance company with *one* statistician capable of adding up a column of numbers-squared and doing a division and taking a square root in order to know how much the premiums should cost in order to cover claims.
But it didn't go that way with the current US health insurance reform legislation. Point 1) got passed, but point 2) got blocked, and in the media blizzard got lost the point that it doesn't really work right unless both can be together.
The Dark Side supported the requirement for everyone to have insurance, and it *loved* the part about the government subsidizing health-care premiums for those would could not afford it, because it meant that the private health-insurance sellers could pad the premiums with higher costs than were really needed to cover claims, whereupon the government will feel compelled by its own legislation to subsidize those premiums, which might require a tax increase, which gets the people screaming at the government and blaming it for high taxes, when in fact, all those extra taxes to pay for subsidized premiums aren't going towards providing health CARE...
... Rather, it's going strait across to the investment account of some shareholder of private-insurance company stock.
It becomes a trick for share-holders of private-insurance companies to skim money out of taxpayer pockets while government catches all the flack for the taxes collected to pay for those over-priced premiums.
In order to keep the premiums more affordable by all - in order to keep premiums at a price where the government does not have to raise taxes in order to subsidize them and where premiums are paying the doctors and nurses and hospitals and health-insurance administrators - then there also must be the option for people being allowed to decide that they want to set up a common-wealth health-insurance on a cost-service basis with no profit-creaming.
But the Dark Side blocked that part of it, so now you'll get guaranteed coverage like citizens of all industrial democracies, but you'll be paying a lot more for it, and although private shareholders will be skimming that cream made by artificially inflating the premium prices, it will be government catching flack for it.
You know... for awhile it was starting to look to citizens of places like England and France and Germany that maybe the US was going to become a place worth moving to again... like it used to be... but with the loss of the option of setting up common-wealth health-insurance, the conclusion was, "Nope... I think I'll just stay here."
Who wants to move to the USA? A few Cubans who can't stand life under Habana's style of communism, and a *lot* of Mexicans who can't stand life under Mexico City's style of capitalism, but you don't see Germans nor French nor Brits pounding on the door begging to be let in.
The point of the American Revolution was that people were ticked off at being told to pay taxes to a monarchy that was telling them how to live their lives when the payers didn't even get a voice in British Parliament, and it's as American as American can be for American citizens to band together and rise up and declare that it's their country and not that of some overlord.
As American as American can be it is to stand together and say, "Hey! We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, want the fears and uncertainties of becoming ill with no access to medical care brushed aside and minimized with an intelligent implementation of common-wealth health-insurance"...
... Yet some invisible insurance overlords are saying that you can't.
You know... the purpose of the Constitution was to ensure that no single person, nor any small group of oligarchs, would be allowed to swell up and dictate terms of existence to the people if it's not what the people want, yet that's what's happening with those invisible insurance-overlords from the Dark Side and their blockage of people having the freedom to choose common-wealth health-insurance if that's what people want.
Maybe it will take a Constitutional Amendment to bring the Dark Side insurance-overlords under the umbrella of American common-will, but however it's done... the way that legislation got passed without there being even an *option* to have common-wealth health-insurance - even if it be the will of the people - is... not right.
It's saying that the Will of The People will *not* be *legal*... and that most *definitely* is NOT what being American is about!
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M$Report Abuse
In the current US healthcare debate, there doesn't seem to be much emphasis on reform of healthcare. Yes, the current plan finally makes coverage available to those who need it, but that isn't reform. It seems the emphasis has been on keeping special interests happy so they won't fight the bill. For example, pharmaceuticals committed to $80 billion in concessions in exchange for a commitment that the government would not use its purchasing power to lower prescription drug prices. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Healthcare-Reform-Bill-twst-2122905458.html?x=0&.v=1 But of course increased coverage will mean more volume and lest we forget the unit price of pharmaceuticals has risen 10% this year. So no wonder why pharmaceutical stocks are going up. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/17/pharma-stocks-heat-up-as_n_360652.html
Fortunately, the Senate bill in compensating for some concessions speaks to "medical loss ratios" being mandated in range of 80%-85%. That means at least 80 to 85 cents of your healthcare dollar goes to healthcare. In the past, insurance companies have medical loss ratios in range of 65% to 75%. That meant 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 healthcare dollars went to marketing, profit, and administering the benefits. And what do they do to administer benefits - still shuffling paper (well my company now allows faxing). But for real administration? I asked my insurance company to clarify with the hospital that the level 5 surgery room billing was properly coded for a fairly straightforward procedure. The response? "That's not our problem".
Furthermore, nothing seems to have been done to the basic model of US healthcare requiring "fee for service". This means care coordination continues to be uncompensated even though the average American patient is seeing seven doctors and drug-drug interactions and adverse drug events are commonplace. Yes fee-for-service is easier to administer but is it the best way to reform healthcare and lower the cost of healthcare. And what about malpractice reform? A recent study says it would only save 1% to 2% ... well every little bit helps.
So I am happy something is being done in terms of increased eligibility but the hard questions (and the ones leading to reform) seem to have been ignored.
Fortunately, the Senate bill in compensating for some concessions speaks to "medical loss ratios" being mandated in range of 80%-85%. That means at least 80 to 85 cents of your healthcare dollar goes to healthcare. In the past, insurance companies have medical loss ratios in range of 65% to 75%. That meant 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 healthcare dollars went to marketing, profit, and administering the benefits. And what do they do to administer benefits - still shuffling paper (well my company now allows faxing). But for real administration? I asked my insurance company to clarify with the hospital that the level 5 surgery room billing was properly coded for a fairly straightforward procedure. The response? "That's not our problem".
Furthermore, nothing seems to have been done to the basic model of US healthcare requiring "fee for service". This means care coordination continues to be uncompensated even though the average American patient is seeing seven doctors and drug-drug interactions and adverse drug events are commonplace. Yes fee-for-service is easier to administer but is it the best way to reform healthcare and lower the cost of healthcare. And what about malpractice reform? A recent study says it would only save 1% to 2% ... well every little bit helps.
So I am happy something is being done in terms of increased eligibility but the hard questions (and the ones leading to reform) seem to have been ignored.
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M$
Articles on limited drug competition and impact on prices. Wholesale prices rose 9% last year - meanwhile CPI dropped.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/limited-drug-competition-a-prescription-for-extreme-price-increa/19313499/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/11price.html
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There are some really good answers here but I like to keep it simple,
What bothers me the most,
1. Both sides fought about this bill with gusto but there were actually three different drafts, so they really were never on the same playing field.
2.At the speed this was introduced and pushed through the floor you know as well as I do that it is going to cost millions more to fix all the glitches and loop holes, which by the way will allow both sides to say (I Told You So) and take away from other important issues.
Here is a link that will explain some of the bill. http://www.naturalnews.com/026733_health_health_care_healthcare.html
3. It is public knowledge that Sen. Nelson held out then sold his vote on the bill for some abortion concessions and don't forget tens of millions of dollars in aid for his home state.
Hum mm, A US Senator selling his vote toward something for concessions, is that just wrong or is it me? What happened to deciding what is in the best interest of the American people? If votes were traded for concessions on this big of an issue where do we stand with other issues?
I guess the fact that it is public knowledge that votes on issues are sold for concessions to either help individual States or just make individual Politician's look good that bothers me the most, they actually admit this stuff and we the tax payers just let it go on by and say oh well that's Government.
Come on wake up!!! There are selling out on issues that directly affect us all not to mention we as tax payers carry most of the burden to pay for.
I believe that covers everything that bothers me the most about the current Health Care reform and the way the government institutes bills.
Here is a link for the selling of the vote.http://www.rttnews.com/Content/GeneralNews.aspx?Node=B1&Id=1162026
Here is a link to a PDF file of the bill, so as not to confuse anyone about what's in it, http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf Someone should actually take the time too read it all and inform our Congress what's in it,being a gambling type person I would wager that some of our brightest and best scholars could not read, comprehend and decipher the ramifications this bill will have on the American people in the time it took them to write and pass it.
That bothers me too.
What bothers me the most,
1. Both sides fought about this bill with gusto but there were actually three different drafts, so they really were never on the same playing field.
2.At the speed this was introduced and pushed through the floor you know as well as I do that it is going to cost millions more to fix all the glitches and loop holes, which by the way will allow both sides to say (I Told You So) and take away from other important issues.
Here is a link that will explain some of the bill. http://www.naturalnews.com/026733_health_health_care_healthcare.html
3. It is public knowledge that Sen. Nelson held out then sold his vote on the bill for some abortion concessions and don't forget tens of millions of dollars in aid for his home state.
Hum mm, A US Senator selling his vote toward something for concessions, is that just wrong or is it me? What happened to deciding what is in the best interest of the American people? If votes were traded for concessions on this big of an issue where do we stand with other issues?
I guess the fact that it is public knowledge that votes on issues are sold for concessions to either help individual States or just make individual Politician's look good that bothers me the most, they actually admit this stuff and we the tax payers just let it go on by and say oh well that's Government.
Come on wake up!!! There are selling out on issues that directly affect us all not to mention we as tax payers carry most of the burden to pay for.
I believe that covers everything that bothers me the most about the current Health Care reform and the way the government institutes bills.
Here is a link for the selling of the vote.http://www.rttnews.com/Content/GeneralNews.aspx?Node=B1&Id=1162026
Here is a link to a PDF file of the bill, so as not to confuse anyone about what's in it, http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf Someone should actually take the time too read it all and inform our Congress what's in it,being a gambling type person I would wager that some of our brightest and best scholars could not read, comprehend and decipher the ramifications this bill will have on the American people in the time it took them to write and pass it.
That bothers me too.
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M$
What bother me so much about this heath care bill is why did it take over 50 years to pass.Why did so many people have to suffer and die to get this bill to pass. This was such a terrible delay.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/22/756277/-Tell-Congress-No-More-Delays-On-Health-Care-Reform!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/22/756277/-Tell-Congress-No-More-Delays-On-Health-Care-Reform!
images:
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M$
