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My mother had a glioblastoma, the same type as Senator McCain, although she only lived for 9 months past diagnosis. She was diagnosed on a Friday, had brain surgery on a Monday, was hospitalized a few times and then spent the last 5 months in hospital.
She had private insurance through my dad's company plan so she only paid pennies for any prescriptions not dispensed while in hospital, and had coverage for a semi-private hospital room. The only bill I paid directly was a $45 ambulance ride when she was discharged from hospital the first time. Everything else, covered by OHIP. (Ontario Health Insurance Plan)
Your mother's entire medical treatment and hospitalization was covered under OHIP with your dad's top-up plan covering the costs of those pharmaceuticals not covered under OHIP. The ambulance TO the hospital would have been covered but it sounds as though she needed medical attendant transportation upon discharge. No Go-Fund Me nonsense, no family pooling of resources to jump in to help out. No relying upon the largesse of others, no waiting for treatment while some medical provider tries to hook you up with a funding source. None of that nonsense.
These on here have no idea what it's like to go from cradle to grave without worrying about, needing to know or even wanting to know the costs of whatever medical requirements you might have your entire life.
We don't consider what our co-pay, deductible or some other costs we need to cover from out of pocket because there aren't any. We visit the doctor when we want or need to without regard to what it's costing us. We have routine bloodwork done without the cost of I it entering our minds. Pre-emptive medical visits are therefore encouraged because they do not cost us out of pocket at all.
They're caught in the age old conundrum of "I've got mine, fugg you" bullcrap.
We cannot begin to imagine the benefit we've enjoyed for decades as compared to friends in the U.S who routinely grapple with all aspects of uncertainty regarding the idiotic insurance model they're stuck with. Can you imagine being told the costs of the specialist you're trusting with your life not being covered because he's not "in network". Can you imagine if it's a cancer diagnosis you're dealing with what that delay would do to your stress level?
We can't possibly imagine and mores the pity, because they've endured this nonsense for eons they have no idea what they're missing.
You're dreaming if you think ditching regulations and letting the medical industry self regulate is a good idea. I don't want my doctor "trained" in some back alley warehouse in the finer arts of human anatomy. That's just nuts.
Do you not understand how the free market works? If someone was a doctor trained in some back alley warehouse, the free market would expunge that person extremely fast. That's exactly the point of a free market - not only does it cause the costs to plummet, it also self regulates.
We don't need the government to tell us who is bad, we, the people, can figure that out by ourselves, and a whole lot faster. Mr. Back Alley Warehouse Doc, MD is not going to be a practicing MD in very short order.
Do you not understand how the free market works? If someone was a doctor trained in some back alley warehouse, the free market would expunge that person extremely fast. That's exactly the point of a free market - not only does it cause the costs to plummet, it also self regulates.
We don't need the government to tell us who is bad, we, the people, can figure that out by ourselves, and a whole lot faster. Mr. Back Alley Warehouse Doc, MD is not going to be a practicing MD in very short order.
Exactly and the market already does this efficiently. That's why the health plan with the lowest costs is the one that has the most foreign-born and foreign-trained doctors. Kaiser here in CA, for those of you who have ever had this insurance...you know the deal. Everyone is Indian or Chinese. There's usually a handful of Americans in the local Kaiser and they're so in demand they are never accepting new patients.
Exactly and the market already does this efficiently. That's why the health plan with the lowest costs is the one that has the most foreign-born and foreign-trained doctors. Kaiser here in CA, for those of you who have ever had this insurance...you know the deal. Everyone is Indian or Chinese. There's usually a handful of Americans in the local Kaiser and they're so in demand they are never accepting new patients.
They go by gov't regulations - so when you're 70 and need cardiac surgery - the gov't will decide if ot's cost effective.
As someone stated above - no insurance changes are going to be made before the gov't deals with the expensive costs of pharmas and hospitals.
The free market does work and here's an example. When MRIs were introduced and became the go to for a diagnosis - they cost $1000. We had to get a referral from insurance companies documenting that both medication and PT had been tried and many times there was a dr to dr consult before the test would be approved. Two years later - one of the facilities decided to drop the cost to $500 as any medical testing costing $500 or less didn't need approval from the insurance companies. Needless to say they were inundated with patients needing MRIs while the MRI machines at other facilities sat unused until they too lowered their prices. At that time it still cost $1000 if you had a compensation case, No Fault case - or were private pay - but if you had insurance - the cost dropped to $500.
Drugs are cheaper in other countries because they set a price they are willing to pay. We don't so Americans absorb the cost for developing the drugs and any loss incurred by making deals for lower prices so the drugs will be used outside of the US.
Until the gov't plays hardball with the pharamceuticals and hospitals - no insurance change will make things better for the American taxpayer.
Here's a couple from American doctors that say differently:
I agree and we absolutely could have had that. The only thing that stopped it was Obama and company. They had no problem passing the Unaffordable Care Act without a single GOP vote. They could have passed any number of laws to address the problems with American health care.
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