OT: Medical Expense

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 6:47:51 PM UTC-5, bloggs.fred...@gmail.com wrote:

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 2:38:29 PM UTC-5, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

If it were just one doctor and one nurse for half an hour (like it
should be) then it oughtn't cost more than a couple bills.

It's the twenty-seven other people in the feed bin that account
for (literally) the other 90%.

Haha- probably the "double"-billing department adds 25-50% overhead.


Obamacare's pushing every tiny thing onto insurance is part of
its insanity.

I don't see where PPACA has contributed anything to the costs listed. It's the exorbitant cost of doing business and the hospital bureaucracy.

The PPACA makes everyone buy insurance to pay all those charges,
that was my point. Rather than question or shop, insurance pays
all.

But now that you mention it, the costs of those websites alone--
such as >$300 million for Kentucky--plus the new billing codes,
plus the HIT requirements (Health Information Technology), for
starters. And the administration imposed by and on the exchanges.

All those are added costs.

Cheers,

James Arthur

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:15:47 -0800 (PST),
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Monday, December 16, 2013 6:29:23 PM UTC-5, Jim Thompson wrote:
Medical expense for cut on palm of hand, requiring cleaning and three

pieces of (very nice) tape to close the wound...

http://www.analog-innovations.com/SED/CutOnPalmOfHand.pdf

Wonder what it'd cost _you_ under Obamacare ?>:-}

...Jim Thompson

I'm seeing about $1000 not covered by Medicare, statement says nothing about your private insurance coverage, that's why they have "This is not a bill" stamped on there. You can chalk all those exorbitant charges up to liability insurance, hospital waste and mismanagement, overpaid people. Next time try SuperGlue

You're not reading very carefully, see notes 1 & 2 on the first page.
On the second page Medicare basically excluded the double billing. The
"benefit" is what my supplemental policy, Mutual of Omaha, paid. I owe
nothing... in fact, in the 11 years I've had Medicare, I've only had
to cough up about $60 for a PSA test that got scheduled sooner than
the allowed once annually.

Now Part D is a different story... $4 to $21 dollar co-pays... but
still only about $100 out-of-pocket... plus the $28/month premium :-(

LOSE THE GOOGLE... why have you been, to borrow a current an ad
phrase, SCOOGLED ?>:-}

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 6:59:40 PM UTC-5, miso wrote:

On 12/17/2013 5:40 AM, dagmargo... wrote:

Obamacare makes freeloading fun.
If we all freeload off each other, then it's freeeee!

(It's like O's recent tweet about minimum wage. It amounts
to "Workers producing five pumpkins a day must be paid at least
six, which will boost the economy, wages, and employment!")





According to the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romeny, plans like
Obamacare are to get rid of free loaders.

Nope. Oft-repeated, but false.

Oh wait, that was when they
were for those plans.

Nope.

But when the black guy proposes the same plan,
they are no longer good ideas.

Black? I thought he was Irish. Is skin color that important
to you?

> They were for it before they were against it.

Just about everyone's against it now that they've seen it.

Did you notice how gladly Massachusetts abandoned RomneyCare?
Obailoutcare came just in a nick of time.

(Google the "BayState Bailout") (Oh what the heck, hereya go--
$4 billion ripoff, for MA:
http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/rightnow?ContentRecord_id=99592eeb-67c1-424f-9f53-5aa39277d865&ContentType_id=b4672ca4-3752-49c3-bffc-fd099b51c966)

MA: Most doctors per capita, longest waits in the US,
skyrocketing costs. Yes We Can!


Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, 18 December 2013 01:21:40 UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Monday, December 16, 2013 8:08:08 PM UTC-5, P E Schoen wrote:
"Martin Riddle" wrote:
On Mon, 16 Dec 2013 16:29:23 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

Medical expense for cut on palm of hand, requiring cleaning and three
pieces of (very nice) tape to close the wound...

http://www.analog-innovations.com/SED/CutOnPalmOfHand.pdf

Wonder what it'd cost _you_ under Obamacare ?>:-}

The deductable would have not been met, so the whole 2K

I guess you have 5 chinese globes now? ;D

Same here. I have $2600 deductible, followed by 80/20 up to $5800 max yearly, and essentially 100% after that. I have an HSA so I can put the deductible in it tax free.

The combo of HSAs and major medical policies would let people save and pay for ordinary medical expense, would encourage competition and frugal consuming, and cover disasters. That removes the middlemen for most transactions too, saving tons of paperwork, time, labor, and cost.

Obamacare pretty well outlaws all the above.

From what I gathered from my romp through the healthcare.gov site to the MD site I should be able to get as good or better for about half of the $430/month I pay now,

O-care costs more.

In large part because it offers better cover - for pre-existing conditions amongst other things.

> If your premium is lower it's because you're getting the welfare payments.. It's a sad statement when Obama thinks engineers need welfare, and that subsidies make something "affordable" rather than more expensive in the long run.

If engineers get the wrong disease, they need "welfare" too. Healthcare is about insurance, and the wrong disease isn't "affordable" for anybody.

but in April I'll be eligible for Medicare and SSA benefits (which I paid for).

You didn't pay for either one. You paid for the previous lot of retirees - you paid a tax, and the money you paid was spent the moment you sent it in, long ago.

An empty point. He agreed to pay for the previous lot of retirees on the explicit understanding that rising generation was going to pay for him, which they are doing. Most collective cover agreements work this way.

> And, the average Medicare beneficiary receives $3 in benefits for every $1 they put in--you definitely didn't pay for that.

Implying that Medicare is being supported by a 2:1 majority of participants who pay in but aren't - yet - beneficiaries.

Remember, ObamaCare is not insurance. It just offers a choice among several providers and sets minimum standards and affordable prices.

Obamacare is a federal takeover of insurance by brain-dead federal bureaucrats, turning insurance companies into brain-dead feds.

Which is the way similar systems work in other advanced industrial countries, where they offer rather better health care (as judged by life expectancy and other population wide statistics) to everybody for roughly two thirds of the price per head.

The USA tops the international health-care-price per head league table, and sits a long way below the top in the quality-of-health-care league table

http://www.photius.com/rankings/world_health_performance_ranks.html

There's nothing affordable about it. On average, Obamacare was
estimated to cost 32% more.[1] That figure has come down a bit as

Obama scrambles to (illegally) hedge and hide the cost hit until after the 2014 election. The lying is appalling.

[1] http://www.soa.org/Research/Research-Projects/Health/Cost-of-the-Newly-Insured.aspx

James Arthur might - more honestly - have posted a link to the actual report

http://cdn-files.soa.org/web/research-cost-aca-report.pdf

where the extra cost is referred to "the release of pent-up demand". More people will be insured, and they will start seeing their doctors when they should, rather than when they have gotten really sick. They will end up healthier in consequence, and need less spent on them in the long term, but in the short term it's an extra demand on the system that is going to have to be paid for.

That's why O's waiving all sorts of provisions for a year, like
the out-of-pocket-caps

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/08/13/yet-another-white-house-obamacare-delay-out-of-pocket-caps-waived-until-2015/

and the employer mandate, and SHOP, and others.

Sounds sensible. Rapid transitions always generate lots of noise.

It would have been better with a single payer system but that had zero chance of passing due to insurance company lobbying efforts.

And those actual costs on the bills are inflated because health care providers want to get the most money from the system, and not really what is reasonable.

Which Obamacare now sets in stone by simply giving everyone an insurance policy to cover outrageously inflated prices, thereby,reducing said fees. Not.

Obamacare ought to be a step on the road to a more tightly regulated health insurance industry, like the one's other advanced industrial countries have, which deliver to everybody an essentially identical quality of health care to that enjoyed by the fully insured in the US, at about two-thirds of the price per head.

The Tea Party idiots will see this as some kind of violation of liberty, so it may not happen as soon as it should.

Of course probably half the cost is malpractice liability insurance, which would be much lower if proper tort reform were enacted, and if we would "kill all the lawyers".

Estimates are a lot lower--more like 20%--but I think you're right. I think the combo of malpractice insurance and "defensive medicine" is a lot bigger than the estimates, maybe even half. Paperwork and middlemen are huge too.

Canadian health economists place most of the extra cost in excessively expensive administration. "Defensive medicine" as an excuse for the medico's churning the system with more testing than is cost-effective certainly does contribute, but ti does pay off in better survival rates for certain cancers..

Obamacare's solution is more of all the above.

James Arthur certainly sees it that way, but his ideological blinkers do restrict his point of view.

Give it time. It will work.

There's zero chance of it working. It inherently costs more,

It's more expensive to provide proper health care for more people.

> eliminates competition,

As if the existing levels of "competition" hadn't left the US with a health care that cost half again as much as the - superior - equivalents in other advanced industrial countries.

> and replaces the wisdom of people who know with people who don't.

By which he means the wisdom of the doctors who are doing very well out of the existing mal-administered system with it's penchant for churning. He doesn't think that more disinterested bureaucrats could do a better job, which is a trifle naive of him.

> It's far less efficient, less caring, less compassionate, and less affordable.

Than the existing US system? Perhaps, but it's going to give many more people health insurance. Since the current system costs half as much again per head than the comparable health insurance schemes in other advanced industrial countries, aiming at being more affordable than the existing system is also a worthy target, but it's not the one currently being tackled.

If Romney had been elected and offered the same thing you (JT) right-whiners would be fawning over how great it is and would excuse the temporarily dysfunctional website. I think it was deliberately sabotaged by well-paid right-wing hackers.

You have remarkable faith in the wisdom of the same geniuses who couldn't make a website with all the money on the planet in three years--who gave no end of lame excuses and outright lies about why--to run everyone's lives, doctors, manage their care, and their finances.

James Arthur can't get it into his head that sub-contracting the job of designing a web-site doesn't call for the same skills as tinkering with the horribly dis-functional US health insurance system.

> "It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it."

Less amazing when you know enough to realise that France and Germany pay for just that bureaucracy, and still get their - universal - health care for two-thirds of the price per head that the US pays for it's less than universal health care.

The current US system pays a lot too much for health care it gets. A better administered system can obviously be cheaper, and there are foreign examples of such systems which are cheaper.

The inhabitants of God's only country are happy to ignore this obvious point - they suffer from American exceptionalism, which also tells them that the US constitution is perfect and that participation in the Tea Party confers a capacity for clear thinking that isn't evident when the members of the party are talking to people outside the charmed circle.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[miso]

On 12/17/2013 4:03 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

It's certainly annoying, and maybe excessive, but the amount of agita
they get from an insurance company is probably a lot less than they
would from a collection of retail customers, especially uninsured ones.

(Another example of charging more to the people who actually pay, to
make up for the ones that don't.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I don't have dental insurance, so I get a cash discount. But I have no
clue if the schmuck price with discount is cheaper than the insurance
price. The problem is I have seen people with dental insurance having to
go to the dentist more times that I think is required, just to get more
things to bill.

In the past two years, I would have made money on the insurance. One
root canal, one crown, and a freakin' dental implant. But perhaps the
insurance company would put out a hit contract on me if I cost them
money. They are no different than organized crime.

 

[miso]

On 12/17/2013 5:40 AM, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

Obamacare makes freeloading fun.
If we all freeload off each other, then it's freeeee!

(It's like O's recent tweet about minimum wage. It amounts
to "Workers producing five pumpkins a day must be paid at least
six, which will boost the economy, wages, and employment!")

Cheers,
James Arthur

According to the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romeny, plans like
Obamacare are to get rid of free loaders. Oh wait, that was when they
were for those plans. But when the black guy proposes the same plan,
they are no longer good ideas. They were for it before they were against it.

 

[miso]

On 12/17/2013 3:39 PM, bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 2:48:25 PM UTC-5, Jim Thompson wrote:


You're not reading very carefully, see notes 1 & 2 on the first page.

On the second page Medicare basically excluded the double billing.

Okay, I saw that, did not realize it was a double meaning. That usually means the hospital strongly supports EEO hiring, staffing and promotions.


The

"benefit" is what my supplemental policy, Mutual of Omaha, paid. I owe

Well that "benefit" was practically nothing.




nothing... in fact, in the 11 years I've had Medicare, I've only had

to cough up about $60 for a PSA test that got scheduled sooner than

the allowed once annually.



Now Part D is a different story... $4 to $21 dollar co-pays... but

still only about $100 out-of-pocket... plus the $28/month premium :-(

That's not too bad.

Except Part D is unfunded. I bitched and bitched to Feinstein's office
when it was in the works. She sent me some letter about taking care of
seniors blah blah blah. Fine, but fund the bill. Bill Clinton did paygo.
Further, it was obviously a scheme to get Shrub more votes from senior
citizens. Everyone knew that, well except for Feinstein.

While everyone knows today's GOP is full of fucking shitheads, they
forget what fucking bastards they were just a few years ago. The house
vote for Medical Part D stunk to high heaven. Here is a refresher:

"But that is not the end of Republican manipulation to get the
prescription drug giveaway enacted. When the legislation came up for a
final vote in the House of Representatives at 3 a.m. on Nov. 22, 2003,
it failed after a standard 15-minute vote, with 194 for and 209 against.

Rather than accept defeat, Republican leaders simply kept the vote open
while they twisted arms to get opponents to switch their votes. By 4
a.m., the legislation was still losing, 216 yeas to 218 nays, according
to an excellent report in The Hill. Finally, at 5:52 a.m., the vote
closed, with Republicans eking out a 220-to-215 victory."

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/medicare-part-d-republican-budget-busting/?_r=0

So the selected not elected POTUS ran up the deficit to get somewhat
legally elected if you exclude the dirty tricks run in Ohio.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 12/17/2013 6:56 PM, miso wrote:

On 12/17/2013 4:03 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

It's certainly annoying, and maybe excessive, but the amount of agita
they get from an insurance company is probably a lot less than they
would from a collection of retail customers, especially uninsured ones.

(Another example of charging more to the people who actually pay, to
make up for the ones that don't.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


I don't have dental insurance, so I get a cash discount. But I have no
clue if the schmuck price with discount is cheaper than the insurance
price. The problem is I have seen people with dental insurance having to
go to the dentist more times that I think is required, just to get more
things to bill.

In the past two years, I would have made money on the insurance. One
root canal, one crown, and a freakin' dental implant. But perhaps the
insurance company would put out a hit contract on me if I cost them
money. They are no different than organized crime.

Which I gather is your rationalization for the train wreck that
Osamacare has made of the health insurance of millions of people. In
Stalin's day it was "liquidate the kulaks as a class".

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 12/18/2013 9:16 PM, miso wrote:

On 12/17/2013 6:54 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Which I gather is your rationalization for the train wreck that
Osamacare has made of the health insurance of millions of people. In
Stalin's day it was "liquidate the kulaks as a class".

Cheers

Phil Hobbs



The health insurance business is so bad that nothing can ruin it. Just
the fact that doctors now have to get the money is a vast improvement.
No more God damn fucking pieces of shit like Rick Scott or Bill McGuire.

Fucking Rick Scott takes no salary as governor, but does things to
benefit the family business, like mandatory drug screening.
http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2013/09/governor-rick-scott-still-hiding-money/


Kind of like that shit head George H W Bush, who cranked up the drug
laws to 11 then went in the private prison business. [Correction
Corporation of America.]

Why the fuck can't these God damn republicans just get an honest job?
Why do they have to use politics to steal taxpayer money?

How do you live with that amount of hatred?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[ehsjr]

On 12/17/2013 11:13 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Wednesday, 18 December 2013 01:21:40 UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

You didn't pay for either one. You paid for the previous lot of
retirees - you paid a tax, and the money you paid was spent the moment
you sent it in, long ago.

An empty point. He agreed to pay for the previous lot of retirees on the
explicit understanding that rising generation was going to pay for him,
which they are doing.

Apparently you are not aware of the way it works here, Bill.
He did not agree - FICA is mandatory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Insurance_Contributions_Act_tax

Ed

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Thursday, 19 December 2013 16:55:57 UTC+11, ehsjr wrote:

On 12/17/2013 11:13 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Wednesday, 18 December 2013 01:21:40 UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

You didn't pay for either one. You paid for the previous lot of retirees - you paid a tax, and the money you paid was spent the moment you sent it in, long ago.

An empty point. He agreed to pay for the previous lot of retirees on the
explicit understanding that rising generation was going to pay for him, which they are doing.

Apparently you are not aware of the way it works here, Bill. He did not agree - FICA is mandatory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Insurance_Contributions_Act_tax

He could have emigrated .... voted with his feet. To the extent that he didn't, he agreed.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[miso]

On 12/17/2013 6:54 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Which I gather is your rationalization for the train wreck that
Osamacare has made of the health insurance of millions of people. In
Stalin's day it was "liquidate the kulaks as a class".

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

The health insurance business is so bad that nothing can ruin it. Just
the fact that doctors now have to get the money is a vast improvement.
No more God damn fucking pieces of shit like Rick Scott or Bill McGuire.

Fucking Rick Scott takes no salary as governor, but does things to
benefit the family business, like mandatory drug screening.
> http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2013/09/governor-rick-scott-still-hiding-money/

Kind of like that shit head George H W Bush, who cranked up the drug
laws to 11 then went in the private prison business. [Correction
Corporation of America.]

Why the fuck can't these God damn republicans just get an honest job?
Why do they have to use politics to steal taxpayer money?

 

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 11:13:26 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Wednesday, 18 December 2013 01:21:40 UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Monday, December 16, 2013 8:08:08 PM UTC-5, P E Schoen wrote:

Same here. I have $2600 deductible, followed by 80/20 up to $5800 max yearly, and essentially 100% after that. I have an HSA so I can put the deductible in it tax free.

The combo of HSAs and major medical policies would let people save and pay for ordinary medical expense, would encourage competition and frugal consuming, and cover disasters. That removes the middlemen for most transactions too, saving tons of paperwork, time, labor, and cost.

Obamacare pretty well outlaws all the above.

From what I gathered from my romp through the healthcare.gov site to the MD site I should be able to get as good or better for about half of the $430/month I pay now,


O-care costs more.

In large part because it offers better cover - for pre-existing conditions amongst other things.

If your premium is lower it's because you're getting the welfare payments. It's a sad statement when Obama thinks engineers need welfare, and that subsidies make something "affordable" rather than more expensive in the long run.

If engineers get the wrong disease, they need "welfare" too.

They don't need welfare. We buy insurance or save for such
things. Or not. It's a choice.

> Healthcare is about insurance, and the wrong disease isn't "affordable" for anybody.

Insurance is a way to give doctors fake pieces of paper after
you're already sick, and support a bunch of other paperwork
that does nothing useful. It has almost nothing to do with health.

The point was that the Affordable Care Act's mechanism assumes
even the highest-earners--engineers--can't afford ACA premiums
without sponging off someone else.

If the highest-earners have to sponge off others to afford
it, who is everyone else supposed to sponge off of? Are we
all supposed to steal our O-care from each other? To make
it affordable?

It doesn't work.

But since you're saying it's okay to overcharge people for
unnecessary insurance, one assumes you'll guarantee it isn't
for nought. You are willing to promise their spending <even
more money> will cure them of <whatever>, right?

[...]

Remember, ObamaCare is not insurance. It just offers a choice among several providers and sets minimum standards and affordable prices.


Obamacare is a federal takeover of insurance by brain-dead federal bureaucrats, turning insurance companies into brain-dead feds.

Which is the way similar systems work in other advanced industrial countries, where they offer rather better health care (as judged by life expectancy and other population wide statistics) to everybody for roughly two thirds of the price per head.

By using lifespan as a proxy, one assumes you're prepared to show that
Europeans have the same demographics as Americans; the same ethnic
mix; are equally sedentary and obese; and have the same number of
accidents, murders, and premature teen births.

If lifespan is a proxy for medical systems' efficacy, what can we
all assume about the lifespan of Australian aborigines? It must
be stellar.

Oh dear, according to this it's 17 years shorter.
http://adiama.com/ancestralconnections/2012/01/28/australia-to-finally-recognize-aborigines-as-first-people/

Oops. But at least you've stopped killing them explicitly, anyhow.


Cheers,
James Arthur

 

On Wed, 18 Dec 2013 23:06:20 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 12/18/2013 9:16 PM, miso wrote:
On 12/17/2013 6:54 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Which I gather is your rationalization for the train wreck that
Osamacare has made of the health insurance of millions of people. In
Stalin's day it was "liquidate the kulaks as a class".

Cheers

Phil Hobbs



The health insurance business is so bad that nothing can ruin it. Just
the fact that doctors now have to get the money is a vast improvement.
No more God damn fucking pieces of shit like Rick Scott or Bill McGuire.

Fucking Rick Scott takes no salary as governor, but does things to
benefit the family business, like mandatory drug screening.
http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2013/09/governor-rick-scott-still-hiding-money/


Kind of like that shit head George H W Bush, who cranked up the drug
laws to 11 then went in the private prison business. [Correction
Corporation of America.]

Why the fuck can't these God damn republicans just get an honest job?
Why do they have to use politics to steal taxpayer money?


How do you live with that amount of hatred?

It's the leftist lifestyle.

 

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 7:32:03 PM UTC-5, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

I don't see where PPACA has contributed anything to the costs listed. It's the exorbitant cost of doing business and the hospital bureaucracy.



The PPACA makes everyone buy insurance to pay all those charges,

that was my point. Rather than question or shop, insurance pays

all.



But now that you mention it, the costs of those websites alone--

such as >$300 million for Kentucky--plus the new billing codes,

plus the HIT requirements (Health Information Technology), for

starters. And the administration imposed by and on the exchanges.



All those are added costs.



Cheers,



James Arthur

Your complaint is with the government bureaucracies who can't do anything economically. Didn't four states fire their chief political appointees tasked with the implementation, three of whom were women unsurprisingly? The governors must have yanked the tokens out of Romney's "notebooks full of women.."

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, 20 December 2013 04:11:25 UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 11:13:26 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Wednesday, 18 December 2013 01:21:40 UTC+11, dagmarg...@yahoo.com
wrote:
On Monday, December 16, 2013 8:08:08 PM UTC-5, P E Schoen wrote:

Same here. I have $2600 deductible, followed by 80/20 up to $5800 max yearly, and essentially 100% after that. I have an HSA so I can put the deductible in it tax free.

The combo of HSAs and major medical policies would let people save and pay for ordinary medical expense, would encourage competition and frugal consuming, and cover disasters. That removes the middlemen for most transactions too, saving tons of paperwork, time, labor, and cost.

Obamacare pretty well outlaws all the above.

From what I gathered from my romp through the healthcare.gov site to the MD site I should be able to get as good or better for about half of the $430/month I pay now,

O-care costs more.

In large part because it offers better cover - for pre-existing conditions amongst other things.

If your premium is lower it's because you're getting the welfare payments. It's a sad statement when Obama thinks engineers need welfare, and that subsidies make something "affordable" rather than more expensive in the long run.

If engineers get the wrong disease, they need "welfare" too.

They don't need welfare. We buy insurance or save for such things. Or not. It's a choice.

"Welfare" is merely mutual insurance. The government is acting as insurer of last resort.

Healthcare is about insurance, and the wrong disease isn't "affordable" for anybody.

Insurance is a way to give doctors fake pieces of paper after you're already sick, and support a bunch of other paperwork that does nothing useful. It has almost nothing to do with health.

That depends on your insurer. Sensible insurers encourage you to get tested so that diseases are found early, when they can be treated more cheaply and more effectively.

> The point was that the Affordable Care Act's mechanism assumes even the highest-earners--engineers--can't afford ACA premiums without sponging off someone else.

Insurance always means "sponging off someone else" if you need it. Everybody else's premiums pay for the reconstruction of your house if it burns down..

> If the highest-earners have to sponge off others to afford it, who is everyone else supposed to sponge off of? Are we all supposed to steal our O-care from each other? To make it affordable?

I think you've failed to understand how insurance works.

> It doesn't work.

It doesn't look as it is working to you. If your ideological blinkers didn't blind you to reality quite so effectively, you might do better.

> But since you're saying it's okay to overcharge people for unnecessary insurance, one assumes you'll guarantee it isn't for nought. You are willing to promise their spending <even more money> will cure them of <whatever>, right?

This has to be one your sillier straw man arguments. Since I regularly point out that US medical care costs half again more than it ought to, the proponent of over-charging has to be you.

Remember, ObamaCare is not insurance. It just offers a choice among several providers and sets minimum standards and affordable prices.

Obamacare is a federal takeover of insurance by brain-dead federal bureaucrats, turning insurance companies into brain-dead feds.

Which is the way similar systems work in other advanced industrial countries, where they offer rather better health care (as judged by life expectancy and other population wide statistics) to everybody for roughly two thirds of the price per head.

By using lifespan as a proxy, one assumes you're prepared to show that
Europeans have the same demographics as Americans; the same ethnic mix; are equally sedentary and obese; and have the same number of accidents, murders, and premature teen births.

I certainly wasn't using lifespan as the only proxy - it's always one of a number of indices. It's true that no country is exactly the same - and the fact that Americans are exceptionally prone to obesity doesn't increase their average lifespan - but they are uniquely short-lived amongst all the other advanced industrial countries, most of whom come out much the same, despite their various differences in ethnic mix and life-styles.

America does have more murders - 5 per 100,000 - than other advanced industrial countries, at roughly 1 per 100,000 and the difference is pretty much exactly the gun murder rate, but it makes very little difference to the life expectancy.

If lifespan is a proxy for medical systems' efficacy, what can we all assume about the lifespan of Australian aborigines? It must be stellar.

Oh dear, according to this it's 17 years shorter.

http://adiama.com/ancestralconnections/2012/01/28/australia-to-finally-recognize-aborigines-as-first-people/

This is a more reliable source

http://www.aihw.gov.au/indigenous-life-expectancy/

My youngest brother - the medico - is an expert in this area and lectures on it from time to time. About half his patients are indigenous people. As the government web-site points out, this isn't a uniquely Australian problem..
What it doesn't point out is that Australia indigenous culture was Old Stone Age, rather than the New Stone Age cultures of Canada and New Zealand. New Stone Age cultures live in larger communities than hunter-gatherers and have evolved better defenses against infectious diseases and other problems.

> Oops. But at least you've stopped killing them explicitly, anyhow.

The US record with their native Americans isn't stellar.

http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/life-expectancy-native-american

Again, American Indian culture was mostly Neolithic, so it's more compatible with modern life than the Australian Paleolithic cultures.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:54:49 PM UTC-5, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Which I gather is your rationalization for the train wreck that

Osamacare has made of the health insurance of millions of people.

Those people had no real insurance, many things not covered, high deductibles, unrealistic lifetime limits and in some cases dropped once they develop expensive chronic illness. PPACA eliminated that charade. You might get a clue and notice that the people who always had reasonably good insurance are having no problems whatsoever, their policy coverage and rates remain unchanged. Their policies were always compliant with PPACA minimums. It's only the gamblers who lost. Then the freeloaders trying to coast through life with no insurance until they get older and ill, the gravy train is up for them, as it should be, you can't make insurance ( a pooled risk) work with vermin like that. The U.S. is a vermin filled cesspool, the vermin will just do as they're told or go to jail.

In

Stalin's day it was "liquidate the kulaks as a class".



Cheers



Phil Hobbs





--

Dr Philip C D Hobbs

Principal Consultant

ElectroOptical Innovations LLC

Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics



160 North State Road #203

Briarcliff Manor NY 10510



hobbs at electrooptical dot net

http://electrooptical.net

 

On Thu, 19 Dec 2013 19:57:59 -0800 (PST),
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:54:49 PM UTC-5, Phil Hobbs wrote:


Which I gather is your rationalization for the train wreck that

Osamacare has made of the health insurance of millions of people.

Those people had no real insurance, many things not covered, high deductibles, unrealistic lifetime limits and in some cases dropped once they develop expensive chronic illness. PPACA eliminated that charade. You might get a clue and notice that the people who always had reasonably good insurance are having no problems whatsoever, their policy coverage and rates remain unchanged. Their policies were always compliant with PPACA minimums. It's only the gamblers who lost. Then the freeloaders trying to coast through life with no insurance until they get older and ill, the gravy train is up for them, as it should be, you can't make insurance ( a pooled risk) work with vermin like that. The U.S. is a vermin filled cesspool, the vermin will just do as they're told or go to jail.

Bullshit. If you want to redefine "real insurance" as having paid
breast pumps and birth control pills, maybe not. Under any other
definition they were just as much "real insurance" as what Obamacare
is pushing. It's so nice of you to protect people from themselves,
whether they want it or not.

 

[josephkk]

On Wed, 18 Dec 2013 18:16:50 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

Why the fuck can't these God damn republicans just get an honest job?
Why do they have to use politics to steal taxpayer money?

They do it to compete with the Demoncrats that do the same damn thing.

Any other obvious things you want to know?

?-)

 

On Thursday, December 19, 2013 11:25:36 PM UTC-5, k...@attt.bizz wrote:

Bullshit. If you want to redefine "real insurance" as having paid

breast pumps and birth control pills, maybe not. Under any other

definition they were just as much "real insurance" as what Obamacare

is pushing. It's so nice of you to protect people from themselves,

whether they want it or not.

Those kinds of things were factored into your previous premiums whether you know or not.