Posted on 06/23/2017 9:12:27 AM PDT by ColdOne
Which would cover what?
$1 a day for a finger up the ass once a year. My doctor is female. Their fingers are smaller.
That requires cracking the medical cartels so that the 500K cancer treatments become 15K cancer treatments, as they are in other parts of the world. But good luck getting the Senate to bite the hand that feeds them.
Though I was very angry with Levin prior to the election for his lack of support and then very late in the game support for Trump.
However, he is presenting some excellent programming on the health care bill... I recommend folks go to his website for archives and listen to the 6/22 show. Really scrutinizes the healthcare bill~basically concludes that the bill is 95% Obamacare. Noted that McConnell shared the bill FIRST with lobbyists!! Had on David Horowitz discussing the bill.
http://www.marklevinshow.com/2017/06/22/june-22-2017/
He has also been excellent on the investigation “shenanigans!”
Not a Levin fan anymore; however, he does have his strong moments, this week he has had several.
The insurance companies do make money but have you seen the Taj Mahals that hospitals have become?
just one small example...this stuff ain’t cheap and NO ONE bats an eye....
Rand Paul is not speaking off the cuff. There are new statistical time-shifting theoretical developments that support what he is saying. And he is spot on when he draws attention to two focus points: 1) ‘legalize’ inexpensive insurance, 2) propping up insurance companies.
I was dismissive of Paul two years back when he succumbed to McConnell’s missive to squelch the revealing of the plain law violation of Congressional staffs and members pleading ‘small business’ to secure their Obamacare exemptions. But Paul is coming back around to espousing practical matters of truth when it counts.
That will work as soon as Doctors can only make $15 an Hour just like Burger Flippers in Seattle.
The government constantly engages in misdirection.
At a certain level, no one cares about insurance. Insurance isn't "interesting". It's just paperwork and finance stuff that people don't get excited about. It's a second-level concern.
What people want is health care. That's their first-level concern. My relative has cancer -- can she get treatment? I broke my leg -- I need help.
People want health care. But the government does almost NOTHING to make health care more common or more affordable. That isn't what the government is trying to do. The government wants to make sure that money gets funneled to big Insurance Companies. Keep the insurance execs fat and rich. That's the first-level concern for government.
Don't talk to me about Insurance. I care about health care. What are we doing to make health care cheaper? (Hint: tort reform)
I am a perfectly healthy 60 yr old man, and I have to pay $970/mo just for myself. That is absurd.
BINGO -
Healthcare Insurance companies make between 3 - 5% profit on policies.
Are health insurers making huge profits? - The Economist
www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/03/in... Proxy Highlight
Mar 5, 2010 ... Insurance costs and health-care reform Are health insurers making huge ... an average profit margin of 3.3 percent, is the 86th most profitable ...
However, Hospitals and Pharma have OBSCENE markup of the real cost of procedures and treatment by up to 1000%!
I know this to be true, confirmed by family workers who are hospital physicians and therapists.
Read the entire Brill Time magazine expose in order to understand the massive fraud of the secretive hospital “ChargeMaster” billing scheme.
Note, investigation reveals that the gross billing overcharges are far beyond the 1 - 3 percent negative financial impact caused by mandatory emergency care of indigent patients.
The Hospitals That Overcharge Patients by 1000 Percent - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/ho... Proxy Highlight
Jun 8, 2015 ... The Hospitals That Overcharge Patients by 1,000 Percent ... The ratio of hospital charges to costs has only increased over time: In 1984, it was ...
Hospital Pricing Ripoffs: Study Shows Hospitals Overcharging | Money
www.time.com/money/4541049/hospitals-prices-overcharg... Proxy Highlight
Oct 21, 2016 ... Hospitals continue to overcharge patients, even raising prices after ... it showed U.S. hospitals overcharging patients by as much as 1,000%.
50 hospitals charge uninsured more than 10 times cost of care ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-scienc... Proxy Highlight
Jun 8, 2015 ... ... Wellness · Magazine · Home and Garden · Inspired Life · Fashion ... Uninsured patients are charged 12.6 times the actual cost of patient ... This means when it costs the hospital $100, they are going to charge you, on average, $1,000.” ... Researchers said the main factors leading to overcharging are the ...
Some Hospitals Marking Up Prices More Than 1,000 Percent - 2015 ...
www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2015/some-hospitals-... Proxy Highlight
Jun 8, 2015 ... The 50 hospitals in the U.S. with the highest markup of prices over actual costs are charging ... workers’ compensation insurers, more than 10 times costs allowed by Medicare, new research suggests. ... Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine ... The impact of overcharging extends beyond hospital patients.
Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us | TIME.com
https://www.uta.edu/faculty/story/2311/Misc/2013,2,26... Proxy Highlight
Feb 20, 2013 ... http://healthland.time.com/ 2013/ 02/ 20/ bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are- .... hospitals and related medical facilities, of which MD Anderson is the ..... operating profit margins than the 1, 000 for-profit hospitals after the ..... Steve H. ‘s bill for his day at Mercy contained all the usual and customary overcharges.
How Hospitals Mark Up the Cost of Over-the-Counter Supplies Like ...
www.sandiegofreepress.org/2013/03/how-hospitals-mark-... Proxy Highlight
Mar 17, 2013 ... Hospitals charge their customers … er, patients, through the nose for ... The following outlandish charges are referenced in a Time article, Bitter Pill: ..... or overprice/underinsure the sick-prone and lower income groups. .... by Steven Brill in Time magazine and in Part 2 of my series on Hospital ... $1,000…
How to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater - The New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/health/exploring-salines-s... Proxy Highlight
Aug 25, 2013 ... ... a bundled charge for “IV therapy” was almost 1,000 times the official ... Hospital bills for IV therapy vary wildly: $787 for an adult, $393 for a ...
Generic Drug and Brand-Name Drug Prices Increase - AARP
www.aarp.org/health/drugs-supplements/info-2015/price... Proxy Highlight
Aug 1, 2015 ... Around the same time, Riha’s generic hormone replacement ... cost has doubled, tripled and in some cases soared by 1,000 percent or more.
“How Hospitals Mark Up the Cost of Over-the-Counter Supplies Like Aspirin and Q-tips as Much as 1000%
March 17, 2013 by John Lawrence
Chargemaster: Hospitals’ Killer App for Sucking Your Financial Blood Dry – Part 3
blood-240x240Hospitals charge their customers … er, patients, through the nose for simple products which anyone can purchase at WalMart for a fraction of the amount. In Part 1 and Part 2 we detailed the ridiculous prices hospitals routinely charge their patients – like several thousand dollars a day – just for a room. In this installment we will go over the markups on products that are added on to patients’ bills.
Suffice it to say that for anything consumable, there will be a Chargemaster billing item. The Chargemaster is the giant computer file that lists the charge for every possible medical service and supply that a hospital provides. Nothing is “included.” Everything is billed out separately, ala carte. The following outlandish charges are referenced in a Time article, Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us, by Steven Brill.
Like, for example, gauze pads. Following a patient’s diagnosis of lung cancer, he was charged $308.00 for four boxes of sterile gauze pads each containing twenty-four 4 inch by 4 inch dressings, which can be bought over the counter at Walgreen’s for $3.99 a box. These were tacked onto his $348,000.00 bill.
Another patient was charged $18.00 each for Accu-Chek diabetes test strips. Amazon sells boxes of 50 for about $27.00 or 55 cents each. For the price of one Lipitor pill in the US you can buy three in Argentina. One hospital charged $1.50 for one 325-mg acetaminophen tablet. You can buy 100 tablets on Amazon for $1.49. That’s a 10,000% markup.
dewey et alOne Nexium pill in the US costs the same as eight of them in France. No wonder the pharmaceutical industry has millions of dollars to spend on TV advertising to try to convince you to talk your doctor into prescribing them for you. Then as soon as you see the ad to get you to buy Plavix, there follows an ad for some legal firm saying in effect “If you’ve ever been harmed by Plavix, call the Dewey, Cheatham and Howe law firm.”
For instance, the lawyers at Saiontz & Kirk, P.A. are trolling for Plavix users throughout the United States who have suffered serious and potentially fatal injuries as a result of the medication. Their website states: “Research has linked side effects of Plavix to an increased risk of certain health problems, which the manufacturer failed to adequately warn about.”
Steven H’s bill contained an item – MARKER SKIN REG TIP RULER – for $3.00. That’s the reusable marking pen that marked the place on Steven H’s back where the incision would go. Then there was the STRAP OR TABLE 8X27 IN for $31.00 That’s the strap used to hold Steven H onto the operating table. Hey, do you suppose they could use that again for some other patient?
Right after that charge was one for $32.00 for a BLNKT WARM UPPER BDY 42268. That’s a blanket whose purpose is to keep surgery patients warm. It is of course reusable and is available on eBay for $13.00 They even billed poor old Steven H for the gown the surgeon wore! That came to $39.00 You can buy thirty of them online for $180.00
On one patient’s bill was a charge of $108.00 for Bacitracin, a common antibiotic ointment, which can be purchased over the counter at Walgreen’s for $5.99. But a charge on Sean Recchi’s bill takes the cake. We detailed Sean Recchi’s case in Part 2. As part of his $83,900.00 bill (that he was ordered to pay in advance of any treatment and in cash) was a charge of $7.00 each for an ALCOHOL PREP PAD. This is a little square of cotton used to apply alcohol to an injection. A box of 200 can be bought online for $1.91.
These kinds of charges show just how picayune the charges dictated by the Chargemaster can be. And remember these are non-profit hospitals, non-profits that make huge profits, more than most for-profits because – guess why – they don’t pay any taxes.
Soon after his diagnosis of lung cancer, Steven D and his wife knew that they were just in the business of buying time. And because of that the Chargemaster money demanded by the health care system went into overdrive. It reached a whole different and exalted plateau. By the time Steven D died 11 months later in his Daly City, California home, his bills totaled $902,452.00.
alcohol prep padIt was left for his surviving wife, who made about $40K a year running a child-care center, to pay it off. The first bill from Seton Medical Center for $348,000.00 was full of Chargemaster profit grabs. For instance, there was a charge of $24.00 each for 19 niacin pills that are sold in drugstores for about a nickel apiece.
Steven D and his wife maxed out on a UnitedHealthcare policy for $50,000. that he had bought through a community college where Steven was briefly enrolled. We detailed the destructive effects of these mini-med, limited benefit policies in Part 2. That left them with over $850,000.00 for which they themselves were responsible.
Luckily, they found a billing advocate who negotiated their bill down to what amounted to an 85% discount. When Steven Brill contacted Seton Medical center to ask why there were all these ridiculous charges that they were subsequently willing to negotiate down if the patient’s family was lucky enough to find a billing advocate, there was no comment. There was no comment either to the question of why they sent patients’ families bills that they didn’t expect to collect at a particularly sensitive and upsetting time in their lives.
When all was said and done, Steven D’s wife said: “I’m never going to remarry. I can’t risk the liability.”
When Brill queried Texas Southwestern Medical Center about a patient’s charge of $132,303.00 for LABORATORY, which included hundreds of blood and urine tests that ranged from $30.00 to $333.00 each, he was told that no one was available to discuss billing practices. A hospital spokesman informed him, “The law does not allow us to talk about how we bill.”
Really? It’s against the law to discuss the bill? Who knew?
If, however, this unfortunate family had been on Medicare, Medicare would have paid Texas Southwestern either nothing or $7.00 to $30.00 for these tests because Medicare negotiates prices with hospitals based on the real cost of the service or item, not on some out-of-touch-with-reality fantasy cost like those dictated by Chargemaster.
Most hospitals overorder lab tests especially for those patients staying multiple days. Every day new tests are ordered even though they’re not necessary. They become a cash cow for the hospital. And it’s a cash cow for the many doctors who stroll around poking their heads into various patients’ rooms. It gives them something to talk about and an excuse for charging big sums for every poke.
One ingenuous doctor told Brill, “I bet 60% of the labs are unnecessary.” Doctors cruise the halls and pop in their heads wherever while collecting handsome fees.
STOCK Health operation Generic Health picsHow do hospitals get away with it? Lobbying is the answer, pure and simple. For every member of Congress, there are more than seven lobbyists working for various parts of the health care industry. The health care industry, what I call the medical-industrial complex, has spent $5.36 billion since 1998 lobbying in Washington.”
The cost for cancer treatments is a disgrace and IMHO the real reason we'll never get a cure for cancer. Treatments are waaaay too lucrative. My wife died of Cholangeocarcinoma. She received chemo twice a month for 10 months. She also had to receive a Neulasta shot once a month. the total monthly cost was $75,000. The Neulasta shot was $11,000. The kicker about that shot was that the medicine came preloaded in a syringe. She used about one third of what was in the syringe. The rest was thown out! The nurse who was giving her the shot one day was complaining about the ridiculous cost and the waste of throwing out the balance of the medicine. I asked her why they didn't buy vials and just load the amount my wife needed and then charge accordingly. She said that the medicine wasn't available in vials. I don't know for a fact that her statement was true about the stuff only being available in syringes but I do know the cost was 11k and that most of the medicine was thrown out!
Your Honor, we object.
Over ruled.
Your Honor, we STRENOUSLY object!!
Over RULED.
Yeah, you probably know more about it than Dr. Paul.
He did say for some people. Young healthy people sometimes don’t go to the doctor for years. The risk of an individual in that group of needing catastrophic care is low. I’m assuming the policy would just cover catastrophic care, not addiction, abortions, sex changes, maternity, etc.
I have minimal dealings with health costs but it blows my mind
Routine Lab tests $700 if you have insurance
Negotiated down with insurance company with them paying nothing got it down to $350
If I said I had no insurance and paid $150 up front..would have covered the lab tests and got a refund.
The fact that insurance covered nothing doesn’t give me the same rate as someone who says they have no insurance.
I am not going to use that lab again.
My bad.
From The Hill 5/15/15:
Congressional leaders from both parties quietly and gratefully accepted the special deal from the administration’s Office of Personnel Management. It gives legislators and staff “Gold Level” ObamaCare coverage with a 75 percent subsidy paid by taxpayers or even the option of opting out and retaining their previous heavily subsidized plan. The income of members and staff is simply not counted.
Rand is right. We shouldn’t be propping up any business or industry.
Well I don’t have insurance. My doctor calls in my routine lab to an independent lab. The whole thing costs me $120. If I had an obamacare policy I would have had to pay more cash which I don’t have because the deductibles are so high. That’s why I hope catastrophic policies will be allowed, so I can still afford routine tests and visits.
My car insurance does not cover gas, oil, or tires, because sensible people do not want those routine bills going through an extra and expensive layer of review. My medical insurance similarly should not cover routine bills such as checkups, immunizations, and basic office visits.
I also don’t want my car insurance to cover frivolous customization - fuzzy dice or a custom paint job - and I don’t want my medical insurance to cover implants, “gender reassignment”, or any other recreational surgery. I also don’t want my medical insurance to cover birth control pills or Viagra, except perhaps BC pills for real medical conditions and not just because sex is a hobby and pregnancy is unwanted.
My car insurance does cover major unexpected costs from things like a car crash. That’s potentially a very large expense, and most people don’t budget for it. Many do not have the cash on hand for that expense. Similarly, I want my medical insurance to cover major medical costs, such as cancer, a ruptured appendix, or other unexpected and expensive costs.
With car insurance, I pay a much lower rate than the young drunk man who just graduated college, and that is appropriate because my driving is much safer so their cost of covering me is lower. Similarly, young healthy people with healthy lifestyles should pay the least in medical insurance, people my age should pay more as they reach a higher risk level. Those in high risk lifestyles (drugs, gay men, and the like) should pay the most of all - perhaps even pooling their risk with others who also choose to live dangerously.
I want medical insurance that goes back to being classic insurance. What I don’t want is incremental movement toward socialized medicine.
My bad.
From The Hill 5/15/15:
Congressional leaders from both parties quietly and gratefully accepted the special deal from the administration’s Office of Personnel Management. It gives legislators and staff “Gold Level” ObamaCare coverage with a 75 percent subsidy paid by taxpayers or even the option of opting out and retaining their previous heavily subsidized plan. The income of members and staff is simply not counted.
____________________________________
Perhaps Trump will insist that THEY PAY FOR THEIR PLAN AND THAT IT IS THE SAME PLAN AS OURS!!!
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