Posted on 03/09/2017 9:50:03 AM PST by SeekAndFind
RE: I would not suggest this strategy with a car which is five or six years old.
Well for health insurance, that would also apply to an older person would it not?
Thank you sir. Likewise!
As Warren Zevon said, Life’ll kill ya!
Ok .. here’s my 2 cents worth. Make the basic plan a major med plan ... $2-5K for deductible ... 80/20 co-insurance split ... maximum out of pocket .... say $5-10K.
For anything else ... riders to purchase for a 90/10 co-insurance split, lower out of pocket max, RX co-pays, preventative ... and the list goes on.
Make it a so that a person can customize their policy to match their needs and budget.
Oh ... and also sell across state lines and allow the free market to work.
Amen. The constitution reserves all of this to the states and the PEOPLE! They shouldn’t even be discussing it at the federal level other than to REPEAL it immediately and REMOVE any and all federal roadblocks to free markets. If the GOP passes any kind of national healthcare plan and it’s not shot down immediately by the SCOTUS as unconstitutional, then we’ll be saddled with cradle to grave socialist healthcare as an “entitlement” forever (or until we go bust).
One of the common arguments that reinforces your point is that auto insurance covers major damage in a crash, but doesn't cover oil changes. That's true, but if your auto insurance policy also covered a catastrophic powertrain failure, you can be damn sure your insurance company would insist on regular oil changes -- even if the pay for them and include the cost in your premiums.
We should be free to negotiate such terms with willing insurance providers. It’s none of the federal government’s business. In fact, the constitution prohibits federal involvement. This stuff is reserved to the states and the people.
Sure, these specific details can be negotiated between willing buyer and sellers. It’s none of the federal government’s business. It’s unconstitutional for the feds to even get involved.
So perhaps health insurance needs to become more like auto insurance. With auto insurance you choose coverage like Collision, Comprehensive and liability. You choose the coverage limits and deductibles.
Health insurance gets renamed to “prepaid Health care” and that premium in effect prepays for routine care. With no deductible - once you exhaust what is prepaid the rest is on you. Your premium is based on your general health and occupation.
Then you select the level of coverage you want for “catastrophic” care - perhaps you pick up to half million dollars with no deductible. Once you have exhausted your coverage the rest is on you. Just like prepaid your premium is based on general health and occupation.
You could layer on Prescription prepayment too.
No preexisting exclusions should be permitted.
The problem today is the deductible. If someone is forced to buy insurance they purchase the cheapest they can get with the highest deductible. Then they get sick and go to the ER and ignore the bill which gets supplemented by everyone who actually pay their bills. There needs to be a method by which people are FORCED to pay for the care they receive so everyone else isn’t covering their failure to pay. If someone could not afford insurance before Obamacare by what measure did the Government think they could afford to pay both a premium AND a deductible? Makes no sense.
Alternatively just pass a bill that every employer must provide some basic level of coverage to every employee - no matter full or part time. Every employee is covered as is their family. Now every employer would raise their prices to cover this additional cost. Each employee would be responsible for some percentage of the premium - say 15%.
As an employer I offered health insurance to each employee. They all paid 15% of the premium. I bought a 2K deductible plan that was quite comprehensive. I paid the deductible for each employee so it kept my premium down. I saved even with paying the deductible.
“I would be curious to know what the yearly health insurance would be....if my deductible was around $10,000.”
The first year of Obamacare, I looked up what my rate would be, I was, I think, 60 at the time; very healthy and male. My deductible on the paper Mache plan was $10,000 and the insurance, with no drug coverage, was a mere $8,000 per year. Essentially it was a catastrophic care policy. But I would need to keep paying the policy while paying the $10,000, which, if I was catastrophized, might have been difficult.
I agree with that 100%!
.
>>If you are going to buy an insurance policy to cover every routine office visit, scratch, boo boo and pill, it’s going to be a very expensive policy for you.
That’s what copays are for. When you have to pay $25 for a band-aid after a scratch or a boo boo, then you’ll go buy a box of band-aids. As for pills, the Medical-Industrial Complex is the one that makes pills only dispensable by a doctor.
When I was in the Navy on subs, all my medical needs were taken care of by an Independent Duty Corpsman. If I go to see the equivalent in the civilian world, a PA or NP, I still pay the same as if I had seen a doctor.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not disagreeing with what you are saying about insurance. It should only cover big ticket problems. But the small stuff should not cost $150 for a simple office visit and close to $500 if the doctor has to actually do anything like lance a boil.
I understand that the theoretical economist who lives in his protected little “ceteris paribus” world will say that we have to make health care so expensive that people are dying before market forces will “fix” it (ceteris paribus, of course).
The system has to change, because a year without diabetes drugs while the market “fixes” itself (ceteris paribus) is a death sentence.
How in the world did my working class parents raise 9 children between the 30’s and 60’s without health insurance? And their parents before them raised families of 7 children each from the turn of the century on with no health insurance? Health insurance for most people was unheard of before the 50’s.
>>How in the world did my working class parents raise 9 children between the 30’s and 60’s without health insurance? And their parents before them raised families of 7 children each from the turn of the century on with no health insurance? Health insurance for most people was unheard of before the 50’s.
Because a simple doctor visit cost less than today’s copays, even adjusted for the CPI. Also because a working man made about 1.5 - 2 times what the same job pays today, also adjusted for the CPI. A family car cost half what it does today. A home cost half as much. (Both adjusted for CPI)
See where this is going? Higher wages. Higher employment. Lower costs.
But....
You also needed something called “exploratory surgery” to figure out an expensive MRI or ultrasound will diagnose today. Your car back then got 8 mpg and belched out pollution and you died in a car crash. Your house was smaller and had one bathroom, 1 duplex receptacle per room, and you had to open windows for A/C.
So, the higher costs of things today can be accounted for. Even the doctor.
But, that is why your parents raised 9 kids and a family of 3 today is struggling on a blue collar wage.
As I keep saying (because I don’t want to be taken out of context by someone else), the whole system needs to change. Changing one piece, especially health care, is not a viable option if you care about lives.
You can’t fix big government by making it bigger. Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. —RR
Abide by the constitution! Repeal Obamacare! Return healthcare to the states and the PEOPLE!
>>Abide by the constitution! Repeal Obamacare! Return healthcare to the states and the PEOPLE!
Median income in the US is about $56k. Median income among families who depend primarily on a paycheck is considerably less. Returning health care to the PEOPLE will require a lot of new ways of dispensing inexpensive health care that are not physician-based. It could be done, via the internet, but would require total revamps of present laws and regulations on health care providers, and a reduction on patient expectations. After all, the neighborhood shaman won’t have an MRI machine.
What are we doing as conservatives to create new health care delivery methods that are revolutionary in their low costs?
What we should be doing is getting rid of big government.
That is absolutely the truth. All you have to do to demonstrate that lack of understanding is to make mention of "preexisting conditions".
When the fool starts babbeling nonsense, ask them if they thought they should be able to total their car while they are uninsured, and then buy a policy and have the insurance company be on the hook for repairing it.
I object to hearing that my premium is going to double AND that my deductible is going up into the stratosphere. That happened 3 years in a row. I was paying more and more and getting no benefits.
>>What we should be doing is getting rid of big government.
Yes we should. But you can’t just flip a switch and stop a battleship instantly.
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