Michigan legislative action thread
Posted on 01/25/2015 6:20:08 AM PST by Libloather
**SNIP**
Gov. Rick Snyder just signed a new law that says medical retainer agreements are not insurance.
What does this mean in plain, non-lawyer English?
Under the Michigan law, individuals and doctors may enter into retainer agreements. The customer pays the doctor a monthly retainer and in exchange for that, the customer gets access to a menu of routine services at no additional charge. These agreements, under Michigan law, do not constitute insurance therefore are not subject to all of the laws, rules and regulations that apply to insurance.
This is a great idea. For starters, it gets the insurance companies out of the way.
Insurance has been the greatest disaster for the health care industry in the last 50 years. With health insurance, insurance companies simply dictate the amount they will reimburse for specific procedures. This totally destroyed the free market in health care. Doctors don’t compete on price because they don’t have to.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
More lawyers lawyering on behalf of lawyers. That’s usually what “smarter” means in modern parlance.
Let doctors and patients negotiate among themselves who will perform what procedures for what prices.
Can you get a retainer with a clinic, hospital or medical system?
Can businesses set up retainers for their employees?
I can remember when companies had their own doctors for yearly checkups of their employees.
We might just see the return of the house visit by doctors.
Conn Carroll / Townhall.com / January 20, 2015 | FR Posted by Kaslin
In his State of the Union Tuesday, Obama claimed that Obamacare has helped cut the deficit by two thirds by slowing the rate of health care spending growth. Not only is this claim false, but Obamacare has created a deficit time bomb that will explode just as he is leaving office.
Now it is true that the growth of health care spending has fallen during Obama’s presidency. But that slowdown began not only before Obama passed Obamacare, but even before Obama took office. The reality is that larger economic factors, including the growth of cost-sharing health care plans, began slowing health care spending before Obama came to Washington.
What Obamacare does do is move much more health care spending onto the backs of taxpayers. The year before Obama became president, the federal government spent just $201 billion on Medicaid. Thanks to Obamacare, over half of whose coverage expansion is accomplished through Medicaid, Medicaid spending will reach $395 billion the year Obama leaves office and will reach $461 billion a year by 2020.
In addition to the billions more the government will be spending on Medicaid thanks to Obamacare, the federal government will also be spending another $100 billion a year on Obamacare exchange subsidies.
Due to increases in mandatory spending programs like these, deficits are set to rise from a low of $469 billion in 2015, to $530 billion when Obama leaves office and $737 billion a year by 2020.
By comparison, the highest deficit ever under President Bush was $458 billion.
This is an Idea I had about 10 years ago that I bounced off of my doctor, who smiled and thought it was a good idea ... never went any further than that
I guess we all got caught up in THEIR legal mumbo jumbo
I see my Dr every six months ... basic check-up and freebie inhalers and cialis ... 10 bucks co-pay
I would have no problem retaining him for 10 or 20 a month and he'd be ahead of the game
And what no politician seems to want to talk about is the amortized cost when you count future outlays.
Sounds great to me. Cut out the middle man.
Cook reported that the 1980 Georgia General Assembly was concerned about “the increasing sophistication of various criminal elements on the public payroll.” The Assembly then adopted the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), patterned after a similar federal law.
(RICO is often used to try to prove that a legal business was being used for illegal means, and, in at its inception, RICO was used to prosecute drug traffickers or organized crime members).
In recent years prosecutors have applied RICO to government officials accused of using their offices for personal gain---he activites of former and current Atlanta public school officials.
To bring a case under Georgia’s RICO law, there must be at least two underlying felonies — such as fraud, bribery, witness tampering (among other felonies).
RICO allows prosecutors to include multiple defendants charged with various crimes in the blanket indictment, and to charge that the defendants were allegedly part of an ongoing criminal enterprise......
......such as the botched ACA web site rollout scam, hidden taxes and fees, huge payoffs to buy US Senate votes, untraceable billions secretly added to the ACA bill, Jonathan's Gruber/MIT profiteering...... and the like.
Absolutely correct. Insurance is to mitigate catastrophic loss arising from serious accidents and diseases, not to pay for every doctors visit for the sniffles and scrapes and then pay for cough medicine and antibiotics.
The practice of insurance has become so perverse that the former is no longer covered since coverage for big items has become unaffordable, and the true market price of the latter is no longer discoverable, making it, too, wildly more expensive than it should be.
obamneycare just made the situation even worse.
“. In a centrally planned economy, like Obamacare or a single payer system, patients wait on doctors. Often they wait weeks or months. Often they die waiting on basic treatment that could save their lives.”
—
Grammar question.
“Patients wait on doctors” Wouldn’t that be “wait FOR doctors”?
It also mentions “Wait on basic treatment”—Same question.
Maybe it’s a regional thing.
.
Kudos to the Michigan Gov!!!!
Liz, the ENTIRE O[phony]bama administration is a criminal enterprise!
HST, O[phony]bamacare is but one manifestation of said criminal activity!
One big question they didn’t address was that while medical retainer agreements aren’t insurance, that because of Obamacare, insurance is *required*, even if you don’t need it.
So, does it mean that if you retain a doctor, you *also* still have to buy medical care insurance?
Your question is THE QUESTION - if everyone is required to have insurance, and Retainers aren’t insurance, then I am quite sure our PINO and his DHHS minions will not be happy with anyone trying to evade this Utopia they are trying to build.
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