Posted on 01/31/2016 5:54:21 AM PST by fella
You left out the part where they will throw him in jail “without due process.”
Just went to see a “navigator” to get insurance for my 64 yr old wife. Unable to confirm that participation by her primary care doctor, $6000 deductible, decided to risk the next year without major medical.
Or deny all treatment anyway even with paying $1700 a month. Death panel, donchaknow..
In my case (we’re both 62), insurance is so expensive we just go without. Saved $26,000 in two years after tax dollars. And paid no penalty because of the 8% rule. The key is keeping your TAXABLE income below a certain amount.
There's a lot of people who would be better off with a single-payer system. But we've been trained to bark like a pack of dogs at the mention of it.
No, the key is eliminating the monopolies and protections that allow price manipulation by the big players in the medical field. Allow insurance policy sales across state lines, to create competition between insurance companies, allow competition in drugs (or at least allow the re-importation and re-sale of the cheap drugs the rest of the world gets from the US. Allow buyers and insurance companies to decide what a policy will cover. Then prices will come down, people will be able to afford both insurance and medical care, and charitable groups will be able to afford to help those that still can’t afford it.
The insurmountable issue with single-payer is that the government is directly involved with authorizing all of the care, and therefore is in direct control.
Pavlov cannot be blamed for the fact that government is not trustworthy to hold the keys to health care.
There’s a lot of people who would be better off with a single-payer system.
The dirty truth about health care is that it is not all that expensive - if you don’t use insurance to pay for it. I’ve seen discounts of up to 90%.
With a strictly free-market system, a hardworking, self-employed person with a pre-existing condition won't be able to buy insurance even if it is opened up across state lines. I don't see anything in your proposals that won't leave that hard working, self-employed person still stuck with getting less health care than your typical illegal alien or welfare leech.
Sure, charitable groups could help, if you want to turn people into beggars, pleading for mercy from charitable groups.
I don't know that I'd trust insurance companies any more with the decision over whether they'll approve a treatment plan that could save my life. At least the government has to pay attention to the will of the people to some extent. The insurance companies care more about the will of their shareholders.
I would have no idea where to find discounts like that.
With companies, there is competition.
I disagree that government has to pay attention to the will of the people. And I would point to England as the example with NHS.
I haven't really looked into it enough to be knowledgeable, but my impression is that the NHS is more of a single provider system than a single payer system like they have in Canada.
With single provider, you get a mess like we have with the healthcare our veterans get in the VA system. With single payer like Canada has, you still have competition between the different actual health care providers. It would basically be like medicare is now for people over 65. The lawmakers certainly have to pay attention to the people if they think they'll mess with medicare. And there is still competition between health care providers. Provide poor service, and the patients can go elsewhere.
There is no solution that is ideal for every imaginable case, but I think a Canada style system would at least eliminate a situation where welfare leeches get better health care than our veterans do, or hard working self-employed people with pre-existing conditions do.
The point of these changes is that medical care would cost only about 10% of what it does now! We would have small practice doctors again, instead of HMOs or enormous group practices. Insurance would only be needed for actual catastrophic events, not for EVERY medical encounter. Insurance would be affordable too. With a lot more competition in insurance, there would be policies or companies that would cover pre-existing conditions. AND, if we stopped tying health insurance to employment, everyone who wanted to could get health insurance and keep the same policy for life. Add reforming litigation laws to the list ;-)
As far as Canada, if their single payer plan is so great, why do so many Canadians come to the USA when they seriously need something done? Because equipment shortages and long wait times for any procedure make it preferable to come here and pay for it yourself...
In all seriousness, you just have to ask around. My fire experience with this was a chiropractor in the mid 80’s. He wanted $260 for xrays. But since I didn’t have insurance he charged me $47 for the negatives.
Good to know. My approach right now is to try to avoid needing medical care. If I need to see a doctor, I’ll know to try to comparison shop. I have fairly high deductible coverage purchased through Obamacare to protect against the risk of being wiped out financially by something major.
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