Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It is an undeniable irrefutable fact that your State and federal governments, and the American Hospital Association created the system you hate.
You cannot prove otherwise.
Why? They're called federal/State statutes and regulations. You need only look at them for yourselves if you dare.
Your first error is assuming that you are insured. You are not. No American has had health insurance since 1954 IRS Tax Code took effect.
Insurance companies did not sell health insurance policies until after the 1949 In re: Inland Steel Supreme Court decision.
Prior to that, health insurance was sold by hospitals and only hospitals and no other.
The first health insurance policy was issued by Baylor Hospital (now Baylor University Medical Center) who were a member of the American Hospital Association (AHA) in 1926.
You got $22,000 annual coverage for hospitalization for a cost of $6.50/month....if you happened to be a public/private school teacher in Dallas County, Texas.
The AHA expanded that program to other AHA member-hospitals in 1929 and 80% of hospitals were AHA members. About 18% were members of the American Medical Association and the remainder were unaffiliated.
By the mid-1930s in the midst of the Great Depression, States were cashed strapped and dying for revenues. The policies sold by hospitals looked a helluva lot like insurance, because they were insurance and the States demanded regulation which means getting licensed, paying the annual licensing fees, and paying all the other fees.
The AHA lobbied States for the right to operate as monopolies and avoid insurance regulation. Those are called "enabling laws" and I've posted them on this forum.
Is there such a thing as "Out-of-Network" Auto insurance? Home-owner's insurance? Business/casualty insurance? Fire insurance?
Nope, but there is in health care, because the AHA created it in 1936.
The goal was to drive AMA member-hospitals out of business or force them to quite the AMA and join the AHA.
In 1946, the AHA combined all insurance policies issued by all of its member hospitals into the Blue Cross -- the very first health insurance company.
The key was the "Out-of-Network" policy. To keep AMA member hospitals from going out of business or joining the AHA, the AMA created the Blue Shield a few months later.
Note that the Blue Shield had no such policy originally. It does now, but not then.
In 1949, the real health insurance companies jump into the market because the Supreme Court said employer-based health plan coverage was not a fad.
Within 2 years the AHA's Blue Cross lost more than half its market share dwindling from 80% to 40% and falling fast.
Why? You pay monthly premiums to the Blue Cross until the day you die and then you get nothing.
The real health insurance companies combined life/catastrophic health together.
You pay premiums for only 10 years, then you never pay again, but you, your spouse (and minor children) are covered until the day you die and when you die, whatever you haven't spent on healthcare goes to your named beneficiaries.
And there was no such thing as "Out-of-Network."
Only a moron would want Blue Cross.
The AHA lobbied Congress to change the tax laws to prevent employers from buying catastrophic/life polices and that law went into effect with the 1954 IRS Tax Code.
Your State laws and regulations dictate to insurance companies what policies must cover.
So, all you want is a small cheese pizza, but your State makes you buy an extra-large double-topping everything even though you don't want it, and that costs a helluva lot more.
All your State has to do is repeal all the insurance regulations.
Now, your insurance company can sell you $50,000 or $100,000 or $500,000 worth of ER coverage only and nothing more.
Or you could buy a catastrophic health policy.
Or you could buy any combination of catastrophic, ER coverage, doctor visits, prescription drugs, birth control, pregnancy/maternity, diagnostic testing or whatever you wanted, instead of what Mamma State thinks you should have.
The other issue is healthcare delivery.
Euro-States (sans Britain, Spain and Portugal) have affordable healthcare because they abandoned the Hospital Model decades ago in favor of the Clinic and Polyclinic Models, and they ban monopolies.
Note that Sweden has been engaged in privatization for more than a decade because they can no longer afford their national healthcare system (which is a form of universal healthcare prohibited by the US Constitution.)
If you want affordable healthcare, all you have to do is get involved and start electing the right people who will dismantle the Soviet-style Command Economic System created by the AHA and your State legislature.
After your federal and State governments with the help of the AHA disenfranchised Millions of Americans and left them without the ability to get health plan coverage, the AHA wrote the Medicare legislation and was ready and willing to offer up the Blue Cross so that the AHA could reap profits:
"Introduced by various House and Senate sponsors and subject to extensive hearings, the basic framework of part A began to reflect accommodations between the sponsors, the Administration and the American Hospital Association (AHA).
It ranged all the way from principles of institutional reimbursement, which has been pretty thoroughly already worked out in a general way for their own purposes between Blue Cross and the Hospital Association over a period of several years
The American Hospital Associationhas already nominated the Blue Cross organization for its membership, although some member hospitals will undoubtedly elect out of this arrangement. We have proceeded very far in the development of working arrangements with Blue Cross, although no formal approval as a fiscal intermediary has yet been given them."
Source: Report to Social Security Administration Staff on the Implementation of the Social Security Amendments of 1965, Robert M. Ball Commissioner, November 15, 1965
"Premiums paid by an employer on policies of group life insurance without cash surrender value covering the lives of his employees, or on policies of group health or accident insurance...do not constitute salary if such premiums are deductible by the employer under Section 23(a) of the IRS Code."
Source: Public Law 83-591, August 16, 1954; Internal Revenue Code of 1954, Section 106. For more information see the 1986 Internal Revenue Code.
Your Supreme Court screwed you and let your employer lord over your health plan coverage:
Unions have the right negotiate fringe benefits on behalf of employees
Source: Inland Steel Co. v. National Labor Relations Board. United Steel Workers Of America, C.I.O., et al. v. National Labor Relations Board; United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.
"...pension and retirement plans constitute part of the subject matter of compulsory collective bargaining under the Act."
September 23, 1948. Writ of Certiorari Granted January 17, 1949. 170 F.2d 247 (1948)
"Following the 1949 Inland Steel decision by the Supreme Court, pensions became a mandatory bargaining topic and the subject of nearly all collective negotiations."
Source: www.nber.org/chapters/c7131.pdf
The National Labor Boarded screwed you when it decided that health plans were non-taxable fringe benefits:
"Amounts paid by an employer on account of premiums on insurance on the life of the employee...may not exceed five per cent of the employee’s annual salary or wages determined without the inclusion of insurance and pension benefits."
Source: War Labor Reports, Reports and Decisions of the National War Labor Board (Washington, D.C.: The Bureau of National Affairs, 4, 1943) LXIV.
Source: Office of Economic Stabilization, Regulations of the Part 4001 Relating to Wages and Salaries, Issued October 27, 1942; amended November 5 and November 30, 1942, Section 4001.1 (h) (2), War Labor Reports 4, XII.
Prior to 1946, health insurance did not exist:
"...the opportunities for fraud [in health insurance] upset all statistical calculations ... Health and sickness are vague terms open to endless construction. Death is clearly defined, but to say what shall constitute such loss of health as will justify insurance compensation is no easy task."
Source: Insurance Monitor July 1919, vol. 67(7), page 38
These are the enabling laws that the Deniers call "right wing talking points:"
NY Laws 1934, c. 595, adding Article 14, §§452-461, to the New York Insurance Law. The 1939 legislature adopted a new codification of the Insurance Law, effective June 15, 1939, in which Article DC-C, §§250-259, was substituted for Article 14, broadened to include non-profit medical indemnity
corporations, and amended in other respects.
California: Stat. 1935, c 386, amended, Stat. 1937, c. 881, Stat. 1939, A. B. 1712;
Illinois:Rev. Stat. (1937) §§551-562;
Mississippi: Laws 1936, c 177;
Georgia: Laws 1937, no. 379, p. 690;
Maryland: Laws 1937, c. 224;
Massachusetts: Annotated Laws (1938 Supp.) c 176A;
Pennsylvania: Stat. Ann. (Purdon, 1938) tit. 15, a 49A, §§2851-1301—2851-1309;
Kentucky: Acts 1938, c. 23;
New Jersey: Laws 1938, c. 366;
Connecticut: Laws 1939, S. B. 51;
District of Columbia: S. B. 497, 76th Cong. 1st Scss.(1939);
Iowa: Laws 1939, c. 222;
Maine: Laws 1939, c. 149;
Michigan: Laws 1939, H. B. 145;
New Hampshire: Laws 1939, H. B. 232;
New Mexico: Laws 1939, c. 66;
Ohio: Laws- 1939, S. B. 181;
Rhode Island: Laws 1939, c. 719;
South Carolina: Acts 1939, H. B. 845;
Texas: Laws 1939, Subst. H. B. 191;
Vermont: Laws 1939;
Wisconsin: Laws 1939, S. B. 288.
Note: The Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin acts were passed in 1939 after bills had been defeated in 1937.
Europeans use clinics, not hospitals:
Polyclinics—clusters of general practitioners who work together to form more specialized primary care centers—were used extensively and quite successfully in the former German Democratic Republic.
However, many politicians in West Germany initially disliked the idea of polyclinics because they associated them with communist ideology. It took a while for many people to understand that polyclinics offer significant advantages with regard to communication, coordination, and cooperation.
Source: How Germany is reining in health care costs: An interview with Franz Knieps pp 30-31
Europeans have a budget that cannot be exceeded:
"In the past 20 years, our overriding philosophy has been that the health system cannot spend more than its income.
Virtual budgets are also set up at the regional levels; these ensure that all participants in the system—including the health insurance funds and providers— know from the beginning of the year onward how much money can be spent."
[emphasis mine]
Source: How Germany is reining in health care costs: An interview with Franz Knieps
This illustrates the damage your hospital monopolies/cartels cause:
Wills v Foster 229 Ill. 2d 393 (2008)
There are literally Millions of cases just like that. They're all the same.
The plaintiff owed $80,163 in medical bills but the hospital accepted an insurance company negotiated settlement of $19,005 in full satisfaction.
Let's be clear on the concept here.
The hospital billed $80,163, not the insurance company.
The insurance company is the hero here, because they did a tremendous favor to everyone by negotiating a settlement of $19,005.
The hospital still made a profit of $10,000 to $15,000 thanks to your State and federal governments.
This.
Government ruined the system. I'm not trusting them to fix it.
When a judge rules that it's illegal for an insurance carrier to charge lower premiums than another carrier, no reasonable person would deny that it's something other than Government that's ruining the system.
Procedures that operate outside the overreach of insurance (e.g. Lasik, cosmetic surgery etc) have improved in quality and cost.
Government ruined the system. I'm not trusting them to fix it.
When a judge rules that it's illegal for an insurance carrier to charge lower premiums than another carrier, no reasonable person would deny that it's something other than Government that's ruining the system.
Procedures that operate outside the overreach of insurance (e.g. Lasik, cosmetic surgery etc) have improved in quality and cost.
Government didn''t create the problem. More accurately it chose not to help and then over-regulated a patchwork mess rife with middle-men rent seekers.
We had a chance, right after WWII, to start fresh. Harry Truman proposed something fairly similar to what Canada adopted.
Mircea is right that the AMA and medical establishment killed it. Labor unions also did their part to mess it up. We have never done anything decent since. Medicare, ACA, all bandaids.
A middle class person should be able to go to a hospital for an emergency without fear of financial obliteration. We do not have that assurance now.
Last edited by redguard57; 04-16-2022 at 02:59 PM..
Government didn''t create the problem. More accurately it chose not to help and then over-regulated a patchwork mess rife with middle-men rent seekers.
We had a chance, right after WWII, to start fresh. Harry Truman proposed something fairly similar to what Canada adopted.
Mircea is right that the AMA and medical establishment killed it. Labor unions also did their part to mess it up. We have never done anything decent since. Medicare, ACA, all bandaids.
Which brings us back to - you want the same government that enabled the problem to take over healthcare and over-regulate the patchwork mess rife with middle-men rent seekers and turn it into a centralized mess rife with middle-men rent seekers?
And somehow that will make healthcare more affordable?
Everything the Government touches turns to ****. You should know that by now.
Which brings us back to - you want the same government that enabled the problem to take over healthcare and over-regulate the patchwork mess rife with middle-men rent seekers and turn it into a centralized mess rife with middle-men rent seekers?
And somehow that will make healthcare more affordable?
Everything the Government touches turns to ****. You should know that by now.
Envison Imaging......they have a bunch of locations - like 15 or 17 in DFW. They'll tell you the rock bottom cash price is something like $1350-$1750 and then fold to $700 or $750 if you'll make the drive to one of their lower volume facilities.
ETA - my DIL is an IM-MD in Dallas she sends cash shoppers to a place called New Choice Health to shop for imaging and other cash medical services. NCH also shows Envison angiogram prices starting at $700.
Yes, good doctors know where to send their cash paying patients. More than one doctor has told me not to get bloodwork or tests at his own office because it's too expensive.
But if you have insurance you're limited to who they have contracted with and for how much in most cases.
So you're saying that we pay so much for health care as a form of welfare for those 18 million who work in it?
If that's the case, I'd rather we just straight up say that this is make-work for 18 million.
Most everyone agrees that our health care system is screwed up, possibly beyond repair. But attempting to yank costs out of the system means laying off large numbers of people -- mostly people who don't treat patients, but rather perform non-clinical administrative functions.
And each and every one of those non-clinical administrative employees relies upon their paycheck to put a roof over their head, clothes on the backs of their families, and food on the table. In abstract, it is easy to say cut overhead and bureaucracy, but we must also realize that overhead & bureaucracy walks on two legs and votes.
Whatever that reason is does NOT involve centralized soviet-style command-and-control healthcare.
Yep LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism whose end goal seeks to destroy competition and charge as much as the market will bare is so much better... LOL We are just at the stage of capitalism where monopolies and oligopolies rule, the medical health care system too. They own govt and use it to prevent competition. After all the Supreme Court ruled corporations are people too so they can donate as much dark money to their minion politicians as necessary.
The real problem is lack of any real competition. Look at the huge chains buying up any potentially profitable hospital or medical group then jacking prices.
Yep LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism whose end goal seeks to destroy competition and charge as much as the market will bare is so much better... LOL We are just at the stage of capitalism where monopolies and oligopolies rule, the medical health care system too. They own govt and use it to prevent competition. After all the Supreme Court ruled corporations are people too so they can donate as much dark money to their minion politicians as necessary.
All a product of Government interference in markets. Government overregulation raises the barriers to entry, making it impossible for competitors to enter the market.
And laissez-faire capitalism sure as hell beats the crap out of socialism any day of the week and twice on sundays.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HJ99
The real problem is lack of any real competition. Look at the huge chains buying up any potentially profitable hospital or medical group then jacking prices.
Yes, good doctors know where to send their cash paying patients. More than one doctor has told me not to get bloodwork or tests at his own office because it's too expensive.
But if you have insurance you're limited to who they have contracted with and for how much in most cases.
She's done a good deal of pro-bono work through that she's run into a number of people who must go the cash route, mostly illegal aliens but others as well.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
