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Brave talk......until you or someone in your family comes down with an expensive medical issue like cancer or you have a child born with an expensive birth defect.
So, I will ask again, what is your plan when you are priced out of insurance or run out of money?
Go bankrupt and apply for Medicaid? Go online and beg for money? Let nature take its course and allow the afflicted to suffer and die? Plant a money tree in your backyard?
Ideally, I'd like to see catastrophic insurance for everyone. Buy it privately or, if you are under a certain income level, purchase it through the Marketplace with a subsidy.
In addition, I'd like to see more practices offering direct primary care. My family belongs to this type of practice. It's paid for privately, but if Medicaid would cover something like this, I think it would save a ton of money. (No, I'm not an economist, so I could be mistaken.) The gist is that you pay a certain amount of money per month; at our local practice, it's $60/adult, $25 for the first child under 26, and $10 for subsequent children under 26. (If they are 18+, they must live in your home.) So for my family of four, it's $155/month.
For that, we get practically unlimited visits. It includes well-woman care, various in-house testing, sick visits, stitches that don't require ER care, and so on. For example, the other day, I took my son in because he's been sick for quite a few days in a row now, and they did a flu test and a mono test right in the office, so we didn't pay extra for that. If we need routine bloodwork (which our overpriced ACA plan actually covers, but assuming it didn't), it's $45 at a local lab because the doctors at the practice have made a deal with the laboratory. We've also had things like x-rays done at a greatly reduced price, even less than what we'd pay with our insurance. My son needed a foot x-ray and it was $20. My mammogram earlier this year was covered through ACA, but if it wasn't, the negotiated price was $50 or something. This type of model makes routine care extremely affordable.
Obviously, specialty care is not included. My daughter requires annual visits with a pediatric cardiologist, and the practice does not have any type of deal worked out with any, so we travel to a city 90 minutes away so that she can have the care that she needs for that. Our high-deductible plan hasn't actually paid for any of it yet, but we do at least get the reduced prices negotiated by our insurance company. And because it's through a children's hospital, we qualify for some private aid through the hospital itself; they have donors and a fund for families who are in the middle class (the income limits are 6-figures for most of the programs, so most families do qualify for at least some aid).
But by going to direct primary care and catastrophic coverage for things like cancer and falling off of a roof would cover most care that most people need. There will always be the need for non-catastrophic specialty care, and that would need to be worked on... but if private aid is available (and I don't know that it is in non-teaching or non-children's hospitals), then that would be helpful, as well. I do think the government should have some responsibility in keeping people from dropping dead... and also that individuals who are able to should have some skin in the game, so the combination of coverage I am proposing would provide both of that for most people. Things would need to be tweaked to cover everyone (and everyone should be covered in some form).
Ideally, none. It be the easiest and quickest way to bring all costs down.
Besides that, real catastrophic plans, low premium, low deductible. Plans that were available before ACA. When the middle class wasn't being housed. Go back to the way it was.
Single payer for all americans, government has the ability to set prices for services and drugs, like every other country. Our healthcare will become affordable again once we stop the price gouging by providers and insurers. That is the issue.
There is no good solution until the cost of care is addressed.
Universal paid the employed by payroll taxes including by the employee. Hamburger plan without frills. Includes say $25 to see a doc and $1500 for an operation copays. If you want a steak plan, get something from the private sector.
we already have medicaid for the unemployed.
Useless without containing costs and since big hospitals and big pharma own congress, this will go nowhere. Cause, ya know, no drug research happens in any other country than the US so the US must subsidize it by paying having consumers pay 2X to 10X for the same drug vs UK, canada, Germany, Switzerland...
Medicaid for unemployed? Most red states did not expand Medicaid to unemployed adults.
Your child gets leukemia, you can't afford the insurance premiums, you can't pay for treatment yourself, what do you do?
You have a child born with a severe health problem you can't pay for, what do you do?
Remember, with no government intervention insurance companies are free to charge you whatever they please....but, no worries.......you can negotiate a good deal all by yourself, right?
Ideally, I'd like to see catastrophic insurance for everyone. Buy it privately or, if you are under a certain income level, purchase it through the Marketplace with a subsidy.
In addition, I'd like to see more practices offering direct primary care. My family belongs to this type of practice. It's paid for privately, but if Medicaid would cover something like this, I think it would save a ton of money. (No, I'm not an economist, so I could be mistaken.) The gist is that you pay a certain amount of money per month; at our local practice, it's $60/adult, $25 for the first child under 26, and $10 for subsequent children under 26. (If they are 18+, they must live in your home.) So for my family of four, it's $155/month.
For that, we get practically unlimited visits. It includes well-woman care, various in-house testing, sick visits, stitches that don't require ER care, and so on. For example, the other day, I took my son in because he's been sick for quite a few days in a row now, and they did a flu test and a mono test right in the office, so we didn't pay extra for that. If we need routine bloodwork (which our overpriced ACA plan actually covers, but assuming it didn't), it's $45 at a local lab because the doctors at the practice have made a deal with the laboratory. We've also had things like x-rays done at a greatly reduced price, even less than what we'd pay with our insurance. My son needed a foot x-ray and it was $20. My mammogram earlier this year was covered through ACA, but if it wasn't, the negotiated price was $50 or something. This type of model makes routine care extremely affordable.
Obviously, specialty care is not included. My daughter requires annual visits with a pediatric cardiologist, and the practice does not have any type of deal worked out with any, so we travel to a city 90 minutes away so that she can have the care that she needs for that. Our high-deductible plan hasn't actually paid for any of it yet, but we do at least get the reduced prices negotiated by our insurance company. And because it's through a children's hospital, we qualify for some private aid through the hospital itself; they have donors and a fund for families who are in the middle class (the income limits are 6-figures for most of the programs, so most families do qualify for at least some aid).
But by going to direct primary care and catastrophic coverage for things like cancer and falling off of a roof would cover most care that most people need. There will always be the need for non-catastrophic specialty care, and that would need to be worked on... but if private aid is available (and I don't know that it is in non-teaching or non-children's hospitals), then that would be helpful, as well. I do think the government should have some responsibility in keeping people from dropping dead... and also that individuals who are able to should have some skin in the game, so the combination of coverage I am proposing would provide both of that for most people. Things would need to be tweaked to cover everyone (and everyone should be covered in some form).
I agree with this completely; but conservatives would call it Medicare for all. ($155/month!)
Your child gets leukemia, you can't afford the insurance premiums, you can't pay for treatment yourself, what do you do?
You have a child born with a severe health problem you can't pay for, what do you do?
Remember, with no government intervention insurance companies are free to charge you whatever they please....but, no worries.......you can negotiate a good deal all by yourself, right?
I am 52 and have no children. Not sure why you keep trying to scare me with diseases striking kids that I don't have?
Before government intervention, companies charged less. Go read the article No_Recess linked. The government of NC has decreed that nobody needs another MRI machine because the entire Winston-Salem area is fine with the two they already have, both of which fall under the area's protected monopoly hospital system. That is a private provider trying to lower your price and get your business, an the government erecting a barrier to competition to keep their hospital cartel cronies happy with artificially high prices common to monopolies.
Go read any of Mircea's numerous posts on why our hospital cartel is not like the Euro poly-clinic model, and why the poly-clinic model can be cheaper, but we aren't there because of the protected monopoly of the hospital cartels.
You think government intervention helps you, when the truth is that every financial worry you have is because of their meddling. Health care, college, real estate....you find any market, any industry, any product where the price has gone insane, and I will 100% guarantee there is government meddling as root cause. Guarantee, no doubt in my mind.
You freaking statists are so freaking brainwashed that you cannot even accept documented and easily verifiable facts about how government has been the primary driver of these insane cots. You honestly think they are here to help you. It's beyond my ability to comprehend how anyone can buy this easily disproved propaganda.
sorry OG. Americas corporate interests took over healthcare long before 25 years ago. 25 years ago we were on an unsustainable path... we were just 25 years earlier than we are today on that path.
that path started in the 70s when democrats divorced the patient from the payment. HMOs and insurance companies negotiating with drs happened way back then and THAT is exactly what has led to this mess.
The fix is to put the dr and patient back into direct contact on the payment front. Insurance companies (and government) should not be involved in that at all.
Yeah, right.
The GOP's brilliant, "Pay the doctor with a chicken" plan.
I am putting this thread under Politics and Controversies, because healthcare was a major part of the Democratic Debate on Tuesday night, and the healthcare insurance controversy continues to generate a great amount of debate here on City Data, also.
You still just don't get it.
I have shown you actual court documents were hospitals charge $82,000 for a medical procedure that really only costs $5,000-$7,000.
That's why you pay through the nose for health insurance.
Court documents show that same hospital then "settled" with the insurance company for $13,000 --- for a medical procedure that only costs $5,000 - $7,000.
Hospitals -- even when they're non-profit -- have no choice but earn a profit. That profit is necessary for the hospital for things like refurbishment, remodeling, expansion, purchasing new medical technology and such.
I get that, but hospitals -- because they are monopolies and monopolistic cartels -- dictate the profit margin instead of letting the Free Market dictate the profit margin.
Did your Democrats address that? No, because Democrats are part of the problem.
Health insurance is not the problem. The problem is the cost of medical care.
Learn and understand the difference.
Your health insurance reflects the cost of medical care.
If you want cheaper medical insurance, then you must reduce the cost of medical care.
Making hospital monopolies and monopolistic cartels illegal -- which is what Euro-States have done --- will reduce your medical costs 30%-60% overnight, causing the cost of your health insurance to drop 30%-60% overnight.
If you adopted the European healthcare delivery system, then you'd save another 10%-30% in medical care costs which will reduce your health insurance another 10%-30%.
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Who's behind the times?
