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Interesting story about what happens when a guy steps up to protect another citizen and is injured as a result.
Mike Boone stepped in to stop a purse snatch and incurred over $60,000.00 in medical bills as a result. But Boone is uninsured due to a pre-existing condition that makes purchasing health insurance prohibitive for the $15,000 a year bartender. Private charity has raised $17,000.00 and a victim of crimes fund may kick in an additional $25,000.00 but still leave Boone deep in debt.
So who pays for Boone's future and outstanding medical bills, you and me, by what health-care providers call, cost-shifting, just another form of wealth redistribution conservative style.
Douglas Zehner is the senior vice president and chief financial officer at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in northwest Washington, where Boone was treated. He said Medstar gave $22.1 million worth of care to uninsured or underinsured patients and forgave $85.1 million in debt last year. But that charity isn't free. The only way the hospital can recoup its losses, Zehner said, is by negotiating with private insurance providers for higher prices, a process known as "cost-shifting."
"I have to price my services with insurance carriers because that’s the only group I'm even in the room talking to about how much they're going to pay me for my services," Zehner said. "So the way the cost-shifting works is you basically back into how much [money] you need to run that service [for all patients] and apply it to the expected number of people that are coming in that have insurance to get that service."
The fewer people who have insurance, the greater the burden on those who do have coverage. In order to cover the costs of treating the uninsured, premiums go up. The American Hospital Association estimated that U.S. hospitals performed $39.3 billion worth of uncompensated care in 2010, the most recent year for which numbers are available. That's 5.8 percent of total expenses.
In the first debate Obama said something I agreed with 100% about we have to reduce costs. We address how to pay costs all the time. I guess, I see ACA as increasing demand and pushing up costs greater than the increased revenues from getting the uninsured to join the system. When you compare our costs to those of European countries you can't help but notice the huge difference in the percentage of GDP spent on healthcare. Medicare, medicaid and ACA are just not economically viable in their current form. The unfunded future liabilities of our healthcare promises dwarf our unfunded SS future liabilities and national debt.
At some point there has to be a fundamental shift in how we actually practice healthcare.
Why anyone thinks that Obamacare is any different is beyond me. There will be millions that will still not be able to afford to financially be invested in Obamacare and the costs will be passed onto those who can.
The funniest thing to me is those who whine about insurance companies being greedy, evil, etc. yet praise ObamaCare when ObamaCare says that you MUST have insurance or pay a fine.
Where are you going to get insurance? Well from the same insurance companies they hate.
Concerning the lame attempt to pin the "socialist" tag on Obama: this brings up the nonstop right-wing charges that taxing the wealthy is "socialist redistribution of wealth". If that's true then republican tax breaks for the rich are also "socialist redistribution of wealth". Taxpayer subsidies to the wealthy - talk about "welfare".
So it's just the direction that matters to the reptile-right.
The funniest thing to me is those who whine about insurance companies being greedy, evil, etc. yet praise ObamaCare when ObamaCare says that you MUST have insurance or pay a fine.
Where are you going to get insurance? Well from the same insurance companies they hate.
Ironic, isn't it?
No clue, eh?
Obamacare was a compromise with repugs and was all he could get.
And yes, health insurance companies are leeches, making themselves wealthy off the afflictions of others. Now they must actually provide better service in exchange for more customers. Your boy Romney will of course set the clock back to having people's lives destroyed due to illness.
But redistribution of wealth? How about taxpayer-funded medicare for all.
No clue, eh?
Obamacare was a compromise with repugs and was all he could get.
The GOP had next to nothing to do with it. It took a year to get all the D's on board. It's amazing at the lack of knowledge of history here. Especially history this recent.
There was one (R) that voted for it in the House and that vote was not needed. There was none that voted for it in the Senate. Who was it exactly they were compromising with to get their vote?
In the first debate Obama said something I agreed with 100% about we have to reduce costs. We address how to pay costs all the time. I guess, I see ACA as increasing demand and pushing up costs greater than the increased revenues from getting the uninsured to join the system. When you compare our costs to those of European countries you can't help but notice the huge difference in the percentage of GDP spent on healthcare. Medicare, medicaid and ACA are just not economically viable in their current form. The unfunded future liabilities of our healthcare promises dwarf our unfunded SS future liabilities and national debt.
At some point there has to be a fundamental shift in how we actually practice healthcare.
Part of the huge difference in healthcare costs is profit, all the administrative costs involved with having a hundred different private health insurances (up to 30 % of overhead), a lack of coordination of care, an emphasis on services given by different medical specialities instead of coordinated treatment programs with an emphasis on outcomes, excessively high salaries for doctors, and extending life too long for sick infants and people at the end of their lives.
And for the last point I include decisions made by patients. I think a deathly ill newborn should be allowed to die instead of uncurring a life full of operations, ill health and suffering. Our hospitals are full of newborns with serious congenital health, lung, and nervous system issues that will result in a lifetime of healthcare, and now they are all saved and kept alive through extraordinary means.
And at the end of life, personally I do not want to be kept alive with machines and feeding tubes --- but many people neglect to fill out a living will so they don't end up in that situation.
No clue, eh?
Obamacare was a compromise with repugs and was all he could get.
And yes, health insurance companies are leeches, making themselves wealthy off the afflictions of others. Now they must actually provide better service in exchange for more customers. Your boy Romney will of course set the clock back to having people's lives destroyed due to illness.
But redistribution of wealth? How about taxpayer-funded medicare for all.
"was a compromise with repugs and was all he could get". Really? If it was a compromise why did NO repubs vote for it?
Do you NOT think that body and fender shops don't make money when people have accidents? Does that make them "leeches, making themselves wealthy off the afflictions of others."
Or how about the guy that fixes your brakes when the go bad? Aren't they doing the same thing?
Or the contractor who makes money fixing your house after a catastrophe?
And I do NOT support taxpayer-funded medicare for all.
Then we have the usual condescending insult, "Your boy Romney".
Yes I will take Romney over "your boy" Obama any day.
I posted this earlier, If insurance companies are so bad, why do so many not say a word about under ObamaCare forces every one to get insurance through an insurance company?
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If that's true then republican tax breaks for the rich are also "socialist redistribution of wealth". Taxpayer subsidies to the wealthy - talk about "welfare".
