Posted on 05/28/2025 9:24:07 AM PDT by bitt
The industry’s blame game will not end the US national health care nightmare.
The shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was met by many people online with a morbid sense of inevitability. The often callous nature of the US health care system has long been a point of wide discussion, with evidence piling up that the way the country provides medical services is costly in both money and human life. The health industry’s executives — insurers, pharma, even hospitals — have become popular villains.
The killing of a human being is morally repugnant — full stop. But many people still found themselves asking: If it turns out, as may well be the case, that the shooter was primarily motivated by the injustices of American health care, would that be surprising?
On the same day as the shooting, news that a different insurer would restrict coverage for anesthesia during surgeries went viral, serving as a kind of cosmic confirmation of this line of thinking. A health insurance executive is shot in New York City over (it is assumed) the industry’s avaricious practices, while another insurer affirms the worst stereotype with such a seemingly arbitrary limit on people’s benefits to be given anesthesia during surgery.
The reality, however, is more complicated. As Vox’s Eric Levitz covered, this policy would not actually result in higher bills for patients; it is instead the kind of cost control that policymakers will often vouch for when public attention is elsewhere, something meant to rein in high payments to health care providers. But public and political outrage didn’t stop to make that connection, and the insurer quickly reversed the policy.
Put every aspect of this tragic episode together and you have the rotten core of American health care. The cruelties of the US medical system and
(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...
ALSO, People are VERY DISTURBED as to why we sit in an emergency room WAITING ROOM bleeding for 9 hours...
So what are they going to replace it with? Britain’s system? LOL.
As far as I can tell from a quick scan, this journalist loves Obamacare and loves Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. These progressive pieces of legislation, I guess, have done wonders for America’s healthcare system. But people are still unhappy (I wonder why?) and we need more progressive pieces of legislation to make it all perfect.
The best of the best outcomes would be to replace this insurance-based monstrosity with health savings accounts.
That would instantly bring prices down because it would re-introduce capitalism to a system(health) which has not known capitalism for about a century.
The worst thing that ever happened was employer-based offerings.
Why was this provider was killed over something Obamacare fixed?
Give it one year and cancel it altogether. That will give Trump one year to come up with his own plan. Market driven.
Why? ‘Cause this abomination was Obama’s doing and unconstitutionally dicked around with by that other arsehole, Roberts.
It’s roots were corrupt and it was implemented by corrupt “leaders”. Expecting me to like that is like expecting any rational person to forgive anything hamas said or does.
What wonders would those be?
No it wasn’t. The worst thing that happened was the government intrusion into healthcare with Medicare and Medicaid. Government uncoupled the direct link between physicians and patients for reimbursement. When government’s interference led to reimbursements that were below provider cost, those costs were shifted to insurance carriers. The carriers then did everything they could to reduce their expenses from hospitals and pharmacies. They merged created a near monopoly on subscribers who became commodities to both sides.There is no longer any direct relationship between what health care is provided and what those to whom it is provided pay for.
I was at the ER a month or so ago for what turned out to be (another) cyst on my ovary, and I was in so much pain I blacked out. It took that to get them to bring me back, and I waited another hour for the doc. The nurse was shocked when she checked on me and I said I hadn’t been seen.
Gentlemen, you know this pain. Same as getting kicked in the pills. Imagine it going on for hours on end, leading into days. Not fun.
“No it wasn’t.”
It most certainly was. Employer-based healthcare is what laid the cultural groundwork in the U.S., paving the way and establishing in the mind of average Americans that health is “someone else’s responsibility” as well as doing the de-coupling between physician and patient. Medicare did not create that; employer-based did the dirty work.
Once health was someone else’s responsibility, it was easy for government to just be another “someone else”, since Americans had already for several decades become accustomed to “someone else” controlling their health by the time Medicare/Medicaid was established in the 60s.
We should have had health savings accounts from day one. This is what a free people deserve. A free people do not deserve to be at the mercy of 6 or 8 or so mega-corporations with their own agenda or even worse, a government monopoly like that rotten NHS.
Employer-based health offerings is just slavery with a softer velvet glove. The sooner America abolishes the concept of employer-based health, the better.
HSAs are the answer. Ask anybody who’s ever had one HSAs are amazing to deal with. It’s just doctor and patient. No government, no employer, no insurance setting arbitrary rules. No red tape. Doctors will usually offer discounts because they don’t have ridiculous paperwork to fill out, they can just be a doctor when you have an HSA.
HSAs are the solution.
I waited in the ER for 4 hours literally having a stroke. There were maybe 4 other people there. When I got called into triage my temp was 101.3. The triage nurse was mad with me because it was right after covid was over and I should have been aware that I had a fever. Actually, the pain in the back of my head was the only thing I was aware of. So I sat there moaning for 4 hours watching everyone else go in. I was begging my son to just take me home. Finally they called me in. I wasn’t having a stroke. I was having TWO strokes.
Medicare gets in between Dr and patient by not only dictating reimbursement amounts, but by also saying what’s not covered, even though it’s medically necessary.
(example: annual checks for cholesterol if it’s out of spec and the Dr is having the patient eat proper foods or taking meds for it or both).
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