The POTUS and Congress should be preventing doctors and hospitals from charging over-inflated prices for procedures that cost 1/10th as much in other countries.
It’s not about ‘coverage’, it’s about access. A lot of Americans are what I call Functionally Uninsured. Technically, they have insurance. But, the deductibles are so high, they’ll never be able to actually use their insurance. Thus, they’re insured, but have no access to health care.
Dems want you to believe that insured =access.
Please cite to me the specific section of the Constitution that gives Congress the authority to create a healthcare program of any kind.
See, that’s the real issue here is that Congress has no business creating a health care bureaucracy.
to address price health insurance needs to actually be insurance not prepaid heath care. Just making individuals pay out of pocket or HSA for routine care would drop the price 60% because on average it takes 3hrs of back office time for every our MD’s see patients. The issue is Fed and state gov’s derive a lot off power presiding over the health care system in the USA
I disagree. Price means nothing of other people are buying all or a portion of your insurance contract for you ,does it?
The question is free market vs communism. There is no constitutional mandate that I have to but anything for some one else. Absolutely not in there. That is outside the constitutional restrictions and is another form of economic system that we fought for 50 years. We never intended to replace sicialized medical insurance anther socialized medical insurance policy. This is RINOCARE. Did you know that if adopted our premiums reduce less than 10% ( if any) because we have to pay for other people and pre existing dread diseases and conditions. That is insane!! Turn back to the free market for those that produce and do some safety net for those that can’t produce or just pick up their ER tab like before? What was wrong with that?
The secret is to get rid of the insurance companies altogether and then everything else falls in line. Have government offer interest free loans for actual medical costs backed by the US tax payer.
Forced savings accounts for people under 40 that grow interest free and must be depleted before you can get a medical loan.
In 20-30 years most Americans would be able to self insure for all but the most catastrophic cases.
Allow the medical savings accounts pass tax free to the heirs for their medical expenses.
And what was once “crap” insurance is now the standard for “good” affordable insurance. Unfortunately, we are all stuck with this new “crap” standard.
The POTUS and Congress should be preventing doctors and hospitals from charging over-inflated prices for procedures that cost 1/10th as much in other countries.
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6:06 Minutes
Ex-hospital chief: Health care swindling must end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEeggIl4l5Y
Former Hospital Chief Sending Trump Petition To End Predatory Pricing In Health Care
Karl Denninger on his MarketTicker.org site has figured out the whole scam. Problem is, for any political party to genuinely address it, they have to both take a machete to some of their biggest political contributors and risk a major stock market reset. That’s why we are playing around with silly “insurance coverages” that have nothing to do with ending medical cartel racketeering. Everybody in DC is evading reality.
I say - go back to all those laws and get rid of them. Then put in all the stuff that truly helps people to "manage" their own care.
Let the insurance companies cater to us and the medical doctors.
Once again.
I wonder if there's anything out there analogous to Section 401(k) of IRS code - the one that was a tiny loophole for some way of deferring income that ballooned into a major industry and savings medium?
If someone could slip in a crafty amendment like that, maybe one, say, allowing health plan subscribers to buy Rx across borders, or making healthcare providers receiving govt $$ subject to anti-trust protections?
I would bet the market would destroy the need for health "insurance" on its own in a pretty short time.
Exactly!
My son was recently in a relatively minor accident, could have been a lot worse. Not his fault, a lady came out of a parking lot the wrong way into oncoming traffic. Anyway his airbag hit him in the face and later that evening he started having a bad headache and since he went through a long period with some bad headaches after a go-ped accident years ago, he decided to go to the ER. He was only there 3 or 4 hours and left with over a 10,000 bill.
It broke down as follows:
$3800 Emergency Room
$2900 MRI (Head)
$3300 MRI (Body)
$170 Pharmacy
#1) he only had one MRI
#2) he only got one percoset in the ER which they billed him $170 for, then sent him home with a prescription for 12 more that he had filled at Walgreens for $16...
To charge him $170 for one should be criminal!
Its just my opinion, but nothing they could do in 5 hours, that the treatment was a few pain pills could be worth remotely close to $10K which is more than my taxable income for each of the past 3 years.
Yep. One thing that would be a huge help is to get rid of monopolies. Every one of my 20+ trips to the emergency room with kids went something like this because of the AMA’s doctor monopoly:
1) Wait 60 minutes
2) Get general exam by a nurse - 2-3 minutes
3) Wait for doctor - 10-20 minutes
4) Get specific exam of problems by nurse (e.g. xrays) - 5-10 minutes
5) Nurse diagnoses problem (e.g. the arm is broken you need to go to a doctor who can fix it - not here) - 1-2 minutes
6) Wait for doctor - 10-20 minutes
7) Doctor agrees with nurse and signs referral/prescription/etc - 1 minute
So, I’m in the waiting room 60 minutes, the exam room another 60. All the “work” is done by a nurse in 10-15 minutes. And I wait for the doctor for 20-40 minutes. And the nurse is quite capable of doing it all. I’d be in/out in under 30 minutes if the doctor’s “advice” wasn’t mandated.
The AMA has a monopoly on reading x-rays and other things that nurses are capable of. They insist on a doctor’s approval even for something obvious. Having a doctor available in case the nurse doesn’t see the break is ok. But requiring the doctor when even I can see the break is ridiculous. The AMA will say that there’s a 1 in something chance that the nurse is wrong and BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN without a doctor. (Though, I have had doctors get things wrong). I know there is about a 1 in 2 chance that I tell my kid to deal with it for a day and see if it gets better because it’s not worth 2 hours at the emergency clinic for something that may be nothing.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also the AMA’s fault that I have to go to the emergency clinic my insurance prefers before going to the big orthopedic clinic which repeats the x-ray and sets the arm. But I’ll blame the insurance company for that one.
yup! it’s about price, everybody else wants a piece of pie and we get nothing when we show up for care.
We pay a bunch up front (premiums, copays) and get sometimes substandard care, and it’s not fully or sometimes even partly covered. (deductible or get a bill from doctor or medical business afterwards that it wasn’t fully covered and more is owed.
I’m about ready to bail on my insurance. This trump care ain’t looking any better.
I agree, 100%!
Damn right. Took a spill last month, went to the emergency room, CT scan and a tetanus shot = $6,632.00.
I was in the CT machine for 15 seconds. Charge?
$2,024 to scan head
$2,024 to scan face
Emergency room fee = $1,834
Tetanus shot = $550
My deductible? $2600 so I get off “lucky” paying $2,532.00. And I supposedly have GOOD INSURANCE! I may not pay them a dime just for stealing from me and colluding with the insurance company.
Spit!
If Trump lets Ryancare go thru, and signs it, I will stay home in 2020.
The average government reimbursement (Medicaid/Medicare) is 15-25%, thus a $3000. MRI charge becomes a reasonable $500. charge. (http://www.mripathways.com & http://northwestmri.com). “Insurance” companies tie their reimbursement closely to the government schedule but average a bit higher reimbursement rate (20-30%). The actual cost of healthcare services is about 70-80% less than what is being billed and the only way to get back to reasonable pricing is to get the government out of healthcare and reintroduce capitalism/competition into the system. (i.e. a posted price list & “shopping around”). Doctors & hospitals aren’t the problem.
There will be no free-market solution. It is all about "coverage" and how many illegal alien criminals will be "covered" by RyanCare, and how much will will be forced to pay to cover it.
Did this all start with "medical malpractice suits" back in the '70s?