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Err... exactly who are those people "lining their pockets with way more money than they know what to do with"?
When you actually look at the numbers, most of the money goes to labor. Do you propose to give nurses a 50% pay cut? X-Ray technicians? Phlebotomists? Nurse practitioners? The janitor? The physician who does my annual physical gets $50 from the insurance company and has to pay all the overhead. Are you going to pay him $25 instead? 21st century medicine is wildly expensive. Where I live, a day in a nonprofit hospital is $2,700. Even in a backwater cheap labor place like Mississippi with a vastly inferior level of care, it's $1,500. The medical system is sucked dry by chronic conditions. Diabetes, for example, averages almost $15K per year per patient. Cardiovascular disease is about $20K per year and spikes if you need surgery. Kidney dialysis ain't cheap. Cancer treatment is off the charts expensive.
Health care is cheap if you don't have any of those chronic things wrong with you. The older you get, the more likely it is that you're going to contract one of those expensive things so market rate health insurance needs to be priced appropriately. I'm 58. Medicare spending for parts A, B, and D is about $13,000 per person. At 58, I'm in that kind of risk pool and I live in a high cost of living place so it's locally more like $20K. At market rate, that's what my premiums should look like.
This isn't political. The US GDP is about $19 trillion. We spend 17% of it on health care. That's 3.25 trillion dollars. That's about $10,000 per person and it's mostly spent on older people. Somebody has to pay for it. Either we all pay the market rate for the amount of coverage we can afford or we take money from young-healthy people and rich people to pay for health care for the older-unhealthy people. You can't just blame some insurance company. They're not the problem.
How do you say insurance companies are not part of the problem? They all require built in 10% to 15% annually profit growth for shareholders, $10 to $20 million dollar compensation packages for EACH executive for EVERY company wether or not they lose money. Millions of dollars in administrative overhead.
I went to visit my uncle after he had open heart surgery and the nurse gave him tylenol every time he got a pill that was actually prescribed by the doctor.
We asked: "what's all the tylenol for?"
She replied: "It's not NECESSARY, but building a tolerance may help later."
The insurance company allows hospitals to do this for tons of patients and the hospitals charge $30 to $60 per pill, which is paid for by the insurance company. Which is suppose to add value to the process. How has this not been picked up on by some smart executive and eliminated to cut unneeded expenses. To me these administrative pain points and the mentioned administrative overhead and profit margins are exactly the problem. There are so many players they point the blame at each other and nothing ever gets solved.
We need a more streamlined process that only has necessary components being compensated.
The wealthiest will always create better systems for themselves but for the masses we need single payer. Within that system the insurance conglomerates we currently have are almost definitely unnecessary overhead.
No, the forum expects you to monitor Pelosi's opinions on all issues and register complaints whenever she says anything that could be questionable. If you fail to do this anything you say will be labeled partisan politics and viewed as biased. Personally I have a staff of three part timers keeping track of what she says so that I can complain at appropriate times.
There you go, overspend money and complain. All you have to do is read the headline back when it was passed. No need to hire 3 staffers. That's how cost goes up.
Err... exactly who are those people "lining their pockets with way more money than they know what to do with"?
When you actually look at the numbers, most of the money goes to labor. Do you propose to give nurses a 50% pay cut? X-Ray technicians? Phlebotomists? Nurse practitioners? The janitor? The physician who does my annual physical gets $50 from the insurance company and has to pay all the overhead. Are you going to pay him $25 instead? 21st century medicine is wildly expensive. Where I live, a day in a nonprofit hospital is $2,700. Even in a backwater cheap labor place like Mississippi with a vastly inferior level of care, it's $1,500. The medical system is sucked dry by chronic conditions. Diabetes, for example, averages almost $15K per year per patient. Cardiovascular disease is about $20K per year and spikes if you need surgery. Kidney dialysis ain't cheap. Cancer treatment is off the charts expensive.
Health care is cheap if you don't have any of those chronic things wrong with you. The older you get, the more likely it is that you're going to contract one of those expensive things so market rate health insurance needs to be priced appropriately. I'm 58. Medicare spending for parts A, B, and D is about $13,000 per person. At 58, I'm in that kind of risk pool and I live in a high cost of living place so it's locally more like $20K. At market rate, that's what my premiums should look like.
This isn't political. The US GDP is about $19 trillion. We spend 17% of it on health care. That's 3.25 trillion dollars. That's about $10,000 per person and it's mostly spent on older people. Somebody has to pay for it. Either we all pay the market rate for the amount of coverage we can afford or we take money from young-healthy people and rich people to pay for health care for the older-unhealthy people. You can't just blame some insurance company. They're not the problem.
From what I've read under Obamacare it was $29,000 per person. Very expensive.
I'll try not to take that personally since you have no idea if I'm a dem, pub, independent, or libertarian. I want healthcare that doesn't bankrupt people while lining the pockets of people with already way more money than they know what to do with. If the 'pubs can do that, more power to them - but I want to see it. And I could care less about Pelosi.
I don't care whether you are dem or not dem. These entitle programs are costly. Even Medicare is in trouble, face insolvency.
How do you say insurance companies are not part of the problem? They all require built in 10% to 15% annually profit growth for shareholders, $10 to $20 million dollar compensation packages for EACH executive for EVERY company wether or not they lose money. Millions of dollars in administrative overhead.
I went to visit my uncle after he had open heart surgery and the nurse gave him tylenol every time he got a pill that was actually prescribed by the doctor.
We asked: "what's all the tylenol for?"
She replied: "It's not NECESSARY, but building a tolerance may help later."
The insurance company allows hospitals to do this for tons of patients and the hospitals charge $30 to $60 per pill, which is paid for by the insurance company. Which is suppose to add value to the process. How has this not been picked up on by some smart executive and eliminated to cut unneeded expenses. To me these administrative pain points and the mentioned administrative overhead and profit margins are exactly the problem. There are so many players they point the blame at each other and nothing ever gets solved.
We need a more streamlined process that only has necessary components being compensated.
The wealthiest will always create better systems for themselves but for the masses we need single payer. Within that system the insurance conglomerates we currently have are almost definitely unnecessary overhead.
How are they adding value?
My apologies to the board for this off track item, but in this example you've given, you do realize the bad one here is the hospital, not the insurance company right? The insurance company doesn't want to be billed for $60 Tylenol. The hospital wants to bill $60 Tylenol.
In today's healthcare, a provider can bill certain things. So they'll bill $200 for service x. They then bill the insurance companies or Medicare. I haven't seen recent stats, but for awhile they were receiving 60-80% of insurance company claims and 30% on Medicare billings. As such, the hospital knows they need to inflate the rates of their services because nobody is paying the cash price. The insurance companies and medicare in turn put limits on the amounts that can be charged. The provider turns around and says, ok, but then we'll give additional services. The insurance company turns around and says that some services aren't necessary. The government says insurance companies must pay to provide certain ones. Here goes the elective train.
For the poor patient, the best they can hope for is that they get the services they actually need despite likely getting additional services they don't need. Some providers aren't even that good anymore, sticking only to services they can provide. Referring to doctor owned facilities for unnecessary procedures. It's a sick sick world in some corners.
So you have this tremendous battle going on for supply and demand. The patient doesn't know what they need to buy. The doctor is torn between what they think is best and what their employer has setup for deals. The hospital is torn between needing to provide for ER deadbeats, but still make money while being paid very slowly by Medicare and insurance companies and lots of litigation CYA that needs to happen from attorneys, drug makers want their cure to be high on the placement at these facilities and insurance companies are the ones that end up paying for it all.
I believe the answer will lie in healthcare groups like Kaiser Permanente, where they are both the provider and the insurance. By focusing on prevention and making individual tests and procedures cheaper and more factory like, they can give greater care and get rid of the billing headaches, but that's only going to work in the cities.
A simple answer to the OP's question, a lot less than those financial magazine and internet articles would have you believing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FREE866
What makes you say that? I agree, but just curious your rationale
I am not Borninsac and I cannot speak for him, but I will say why I feel the same way.
1. Who are the advertisers in those financial magazines? Companies who profit all the more when we invest more with them. The magazines are smart enough to play along with their advertisers.
2. Who are the readers of those magazines? People who are doing well financially. The articles as well as the advertising are pitched to them.
3. What are the (often unstated) assumptions behind the alleged amount of yearly income which will be needed in retirement? I believe the assumption is for the continuation of a lifestyle which is far beyond that of the average person. I did not have the following when I was working and I do not have them now in retirement, nor do I desire them: Membership in a posh (or even a bare-bones) country club, a BMW or Mercedes or similar, designer clothes, the latest in kitchen counter tops. And so forth - I think my general idea is quite plain.
Yet I am very content in retirement. I lack for nothing that I really want. I am not living on a shoestring.
I am not Borninsac and I cannot speak for him, but I will say why I feel the same way.
1. Who are the advertisers in those financial magazines? Companies who profit all the more when we invest more with them. The magazines are smart enough to play along with their advertisers.
2. Who are the readers of those magazines? People who are doing well financially. The articles as well as the advertising are pitched to them.
3. What are the (often unstated) assumptions behind the alleged amount of yearly income which will be needed in retirement? I believe the assumption is for the continuation of a lifestyle which is far beyond that of the average person. I did not have the following when I was working and I do not have them now in retirement, nor do I desire them: Membership in a posh (or even a bare-bones) country club, a BMW or Mercedes or similar, designer clothes, the latest in kitchen counter tops. And so forth - I think my general idea is quite plain.
Yet I am very content in retirement. I lack for nothing that I really want. I am not living on a shoestring.
Like everything you said here. I'm similar in that I just want simple things and am not a big spender at all.
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