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Costliest 1 percent of patients account for 21 percent of U.S. health spending
Minnpost ^

Posted on 10/19/2013 10:37:13 AM PDT by Java4Jay

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To: PeterPrinciple

The most insidious aspect is that if taxpayers start paying for your health care...then everything you do suddenly becomes everyone else’s business.


81 posted on 10/19/2013 4:25:50 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: PeterPrinciple

Very true.

In my grandfather’s case, who should have paid?

Most ‘wealthy’ people don’t have the funds to pay for 6m of dialysis.

Sue the drug company for selling a defective drug? Perhaps. You might get a pittance from that 10 years out after the lawyers get their bit. It’s a little late at that point...

Just let him die?

He took very very careful concern with his health his entire life. Never smoked, never drank, never ate too much food, especially desserts and was VERY active until the summer before he actually died.

He never took any public assistance at all. Ever.

He deserved better than the blue pill.

In the case of my great aunt, her granddaughter’s insurance company bit the bullet for that medical care. The illegal got off scotfree and didn’t even do any time for it. In spite of the fact that he was nearly double the legal limit of alcohol when he hit them.

I’d ask just how much of our skyrocketing medical costs are, in fact, due to the presence of these illegals in our country and their ‘lifestyles’. Didn’t we have enough of an underclass before?


82 posted on 10/19/2013 4:39:20 PM PDT by Black Agnes
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To: freeandfreezing

> Instead of tangling up the entire nation in a giant, expensive, and ultimately futile effort the
government should have focused on solving the
actual problem

“The issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution.”


83 posted on 10/19/2013 10:08:02 PM PDT by Slings and Arrows (You can't have Ingsoc without an Emmanuel Goldstein.)
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To: Java4Jay

This is a stupid article

People who have car accidents account for the most percentage of car insurance costs.

People whose houses burn down account for most of the costs of homeowner insurance.

That they don’t understand this shows their fundamental ignorance of the whole issue


84 posted on 10/20/2013 7:17:27 AM PDT by Mr. K (Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and then Democrat Talking Points.)
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To: Mr. K
That they don’t understand this shows their fundamental ignorance of the whole issue

No, I think you are missing the point of the article. The article is describing how there exists a population of people whose overall circumstances dramatically drive up the cost of their usage of the health care system, and that the problems they face are not adequately addressed by the existing health care system. The costs associated with their cases are large enough that solutions could and should be engineered to help them and reduce the costs associated with their care.

The problem is not analogous to the examples you gave, because auto and fire insurance rates rely on experience rating. I can assure you if that whatever house you lived in burned down within six months of your arrival no fire insurance company would take the policy after the third or fourth fire. Same thing for auto insurance. If you had an accident every month the government would ultimately reduce everybody's risk by suspending your license.

This of course highlights one of the problems with health insurance, since in many instances due to governmental intrusion it is no longer true risk sharing insurance, but a type of payment shifting scheme.

85 posted on 10/20/2013 11:02:09 AM PDT by freeandfreezing
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To: freeandfreezing

no, you missed MY point.

They don’t understand insurance. And they are surprised that 1% are responsible for 23% of the cost.

I am not talking about the fraud cases, I am talking about legitimate claims.

If 100% of the insured filed claims, insurance as a business would not work.

You buy insurance IN CASE something goes wrong, and for most people nothing does go wrong.

For example, I have never made a homeowner or car insurance claim, so I would be in the other 99%.


86 posted on 10/20/2013 5:51:12 PM PDT by Mr. K (Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and then Democrat Talking Points.)
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To: Mr. K
If 100% of the insured filed claims, insurance as a business would not work.

But that is true for health insurance as it is presently structured, which is of course one of the reasons our health care system is a mess.

I still think you are missing the point of the article. The examples in the article are of people who make extraordinary demands on the medical system, not necessarily because of the severity of their illness, but because of a number of other factors, like not having phones, or houses, or the ability to follow directions.

So to use the fire insurance analogy, the people being discussed in the article aren't the people who were really unlucky and had their expensive house burn down, thereby causing a typical risk based insurance loss. Instead they would be like a person who set the kitchen on fire every time they tried to make a hamburger, so the fire company had to come out to their house 100 times a year, and the cost of rebuilding their house, and those of other people whose cooking skills were as bad as theirs, was a measurable fraction of the total cost of building and maintaining all houses.

The point of the article is that a major proportion of medical costs, regardless of how they are paid for, are due to a small group of people who make extraordinary demands on the system. And in large part they aren't a result of what you normally think of, namely people with very serious and expensive, but randomly occurring problems.

87 posted on 10/20/2013 6:11:36 PM PDT by freeandfreezing
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To: steve86

Never thought I would see pro-death panel posts here.


88 posted on 10/21/2013 7:48:29 AM PDT by sakic
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