Posted on 01/17/2025 4:49:52 AM PST by MtnClimber
Anti-Trump progressives are shouting the now-ascendant Republicans are going to “take away your healthcare” and “deny Americans their ACA insurance.” Bravo! Because if that happens then finally, maybe, Americans might get the health...care they need when they need it without declaring bankruptcy.
There is healthcare, health insurance, and health care: all different yet frequently conflated. Healthcare as one word is a massive, byzantine system that consumed nearly 18 percent of U.S. GDP in 2023 ($4.9 trillion, more than the entire GDP of Japan.)
Health insurance is a promissory note to deliver specified “benefits” (medical care) in return for a premium paid. Such insurance is widely considered, albeit falsely, the necessary key to getting medical care. People with insurance frequently cannot get care, and most uninsured do get care because of EMTALA’s (Emergency Medical Transport and Labor Act of 1986) unfunded mandate.
The benefits or medical care provided by insurance is at the discretion of the insurer rather than chosen by the patient with advice from the doctor. Denials of needed care are common. Wait times to see a physician are dangerously long, with an average maximum of more than 132 days. Death by queue has been documented in both Medicaid and Tricare patients — they are dying while waiting in line (a queue) for technically possible care that is not provided in time to save them.
Health care (two words) is an intimate, confidential service contract between one patient (buyer) and one physician (seller) to provide medical care in exchange for compensation. Medical autonomy — a patient’s right to choose — is a fundamental, supposedly legally protected element of the patient-doctor fiduciary relationship.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Word count counts.
It's why these lowlife companies can advertise on TV every season all day long. Lots of money there - then they can charge what they want and use incentives from hell to sign old people up to system that cheap when you don't need it and bankrupts you when you do need it.
MAHA
CMS, the Centers for Medicare abs Medicaid Services, employs about 6,700 people.
And there’s the God only knows number of contractors that CMS uses.
People on Medicare and/or Medicaid aren’t clients or customers.
They’re just the grist for Deep State’s insurance and medical mills.
MIGA.
Make Insurance Great Again.
BUMP
BUMP
Government doesn’t make anything better.
If health care becomes a basic business transaction in a national marketplace, then it will be maximally efficient and cheap.
$100K per Senior?? Source, please as that sounds waaaay overstated.
Return to the days of “Hospitalization insurance” where doctor visits and most drugs were paid for out-of-pocket. Only major medical was covered. Costs would reduce dramatically. Imagine how expensive car insurance would be if it paid for oil changes, air filters and wiper blades.
Many people go to places like Singapore and pay out of pocket for 1st-world healthcare, that is affordable, rather than deal with the US system.
However, Singapore has massive amounts of government guidance in their system. They force all workers to contribute 20% of their wages into a health savings account, with a matching 17% by their employer. Really hard to compare Singapore to the US though. Singapore has vastly more government regulation in guiding what hospitals can do, and other healthcare concerns. One of the most obvious ones, is that you have to opt out of donating your organs at death, government already mandates your a donor.
That was my reaction when I first heard the number and it’s why I asked a few more times. This number comes from close to the beginnning of the program so part of it might have been incentive. But knowing how corrupty our trade and military ‘deals’ are - this doesn’t surprise me. Trump said once looking at some of our trade agreements that the people who made the deals were either very corrupt OR stupid. And he didn’t think they were stupid.
BTT
You can’t get back to reasonable health care costs just by picking on the health insurance industry.
We also need federal tort reform, changing the practice to “loser pays.” That would stop all these fishing expeditions by personal injury ambulance-chasers, dramatically reducing how much doctors pay for malpractice insurance and how much hospitals and medical equipment manufacturers pay for liability insurance.
I have talked to several Medicare insurance agents and they indicate that “Advantage” reimbursement rates to insurance companies vary (based on demograpics of the client base and performance) but are generally between $1,200. & $1,400. per month/per beneficiary....so more like ~$15,000. per year cost to the Feds per Medicare client on “Advantage” (AKA “Dis-Avantage”).
No doubt that tort reform is needed. I wonder how much the average OB GYN pays a year in malpractice insurance. I knew one 20 years ago and they paid $100k a year back then.
Are they guessing? Because I doubt the information is given out at the ‘agent’ level. I would love it if you were right...
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