Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
... pre-extisting condition denials will end...
Denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions ended with the ACA legislation years ago.

I agree about insurance companies and fancy office space. The worst offenders are the "mutual" insurance companies, which are owned by the policyholders. Mutual insurance companies in the end exist just for the benefit of their executives.

Many of the insurance industries ills could be remedied with simple legislation, IMO. For example, forcing every company to use the Medicare claim and administrative forms. About 900 universities have standardized on a single admission form; why can't the insurance industry do something similar? Make claim denial submitted by a licensed physician illegal. Put legal limits on deductibles, co-pays, and out-of-pocket limits. Legislate transparent and universal pricing for hospitals, providers, and drugs, whether you're insured or not. I'm also in favor of what some employers already do, which is lower your premium for good health habits, but implementing that on a national scale might be messy, or maybe not as bad as I think it is. (I agree with your notion of personal accountability.)

There seems to be endless opportunities to improve the current system we have, but the politicians are offering us only two choices, Medicare for None and the current pile of crap further degraded by the Republican agenda.
 
highfigh

highfigh

Seriously, I have no life.
Denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions ended with the ACA legislation years ago.

I agree about insurance companies and fancy office space. The worst offenders are the "mutual" insurance companies, which are owned by the policyholders. Mutual insurance companies in the end exist just for the benefit of their executives.

Many of the insurance industries ills could be remedied with simple legislation, IMO. For example, forcing every company to use the Medicare claim and administrative forms. About 900 universities have standardized on a single admission form; why can't the insurance industry do something similar? Make claim denial submitted by a licensed physician illegal. Put legal limits on deductibles, co-pays, and out-of-pocket limits. Legislate transparent and universal pricing for hospitals, providers, and drugs, whether you're insured or not. I'm also in favor of what some employers already do, which is lower your premium for good health habits, but implementing that on a national scale might be messy, or maybe not as bad as I think it is. (I agree with your notion of personal accountability.)

There seems to be endless opportunities to improve the current system we have, but the politicians are offering us only two choices, Medicare for None and the current pile of crap further degraded by the Republican agenda.
I haven't needed treatment in a long time, but is that absolutely no denials for anything that existed/had been treated in the past?

IMO, health care providers want to treat everyone, but from a financial survival standpoint, I guess I could see why someone would deny an expensive procedure if they were certain that they wouldn't be paid for it but I know that some facilities have funding for those patients.

I was genuinely surprised when I heard that some insurance companies were lowering rates and paying for gym memberships for people who might quit smoking, exercising, etc. I thought it was so unlike them to do that- it was always a case of letting people do what they wanted and deny coverage when it would cost too much. So many needlessly died from heart, lung and vascular ailments.....
 
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
I haven't needed treatment in a long time, but is that absolutely no denials for anything that existed/had been treated in the past?
Coverage, issuing a policy, can’t be denied based on pre-existing conditions, with no exceptions I’m aware of. Individual claim denials are a different situation altogether, and IMO they need to be legislated away too.
 
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
There seems to be endless opportunities to improve the current system we have, but the politicians are offering us only two choices, Medicare for None and the current pile of crap further degraded by the Republican agenda.
What I said isn't correct. Joe Biden's healthcare platform advocates a public option "like Medicare" that has premiums associated with it. He also advocates increasing the ACA subsidies for healthcare premiums, and expanding Medicaid coverage for people living in states that don't participate in the ACA expansion of Medicaid.


Overall, Biden's plan strikes me as the most realistic of all, even talking about some of the problems I listed previously. Of course, he would need Democratic control of the House and the Senate to have a chance at getting legislation like this sent to him.

Unfortunately, Biden tries too much to lure progressives with his climate change plan, carbon emissions plan, and "environmental justice" (ugh), which in IMO is expensive and unnecessary nonsense, but overall if he won the Democratic nomination he just might knock Trump out of the White House. But without the Democrats winning the Senate he'd be toothless.
 
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mtrycrafts

mtrycrafts

Seriously, I have no life.
With the right guidelines, maybe. ...
Seems like it is all relative. Whose right guidance?Yours? Mine? the 130+ million voters? Combo? The others who don't vote at all.
A dilemma, isn't it.
 
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Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
Indeed. And money is power and speech now. So, it is unlimited. More money more speech and power. Less/no money, well, you are out of luck.
At least Bloomberg proved you can't buy a Presidential election, even for $600M.
 
G

Gmoney

Audioholic Ninja
I haven't needed treatment in a long time, but is that absolutely no denials for anything that existed/had been treated in the past?

IMO, health care providers want to treat everyone, but from a financial survival standpoint, I guess I could see why someone would deny an expensive procedure if they were certain that they wouldn't be paid for it but I know that some facilities have funding for those patients.

I was genuinely surprised when I heard that some insurance companies were lowering rates and paying for gym memberships for people who might quit smoking, exercising, etc. I thought it was so unlike them to do that- it was always a case of letting people do what they wanted and deny coverage when it would cost too much. So many needlessly died from heart, lung and vascular ailments.....
Cheapest thing to replace is a human life.
Just how much is a human life Worth?
Got good Insurance coverage your good, don’t your dead. The Greedy have no boundaries and they don’t care if your baby boy or girl or Mom Dad Sister brother doesn’t have Insurance. Medical industry drug industry some of the most corrupt industries on the planet.
 
chris357

chris357

Senior Audioholic
"He notably opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

"Goldwater lost to President Lyndon Johnson by a landslide, pulling down the Republican Party which lost many seats in both houses of Congress."
you forgot part of the quote from wiki.

"Although he had supported earlier civil rights legislation, he notably opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as he believed it to be an overreach by the federal government"
 
JerryLove

JerryLove

Audioholic Samurai
You really like to point your bony finger and proclaim others as inferior, don't you? You just can't accept the fact that an attack on someone can't be taken at face value. I suspect that if I said I prefer coffee to tea, you would try to make it sound like I support Trump.
Hrm. There's an attempt at an insult of my finger, an adhominem that my position is based on "what I like" rather than fact, and a claim of your moral superiority based on an asserting that I claim superiority. You are amazingly passive-aggressive.

Your suspicion is false. I suspect you don't actually have that suspicion. Now. If you said drinking tea made you a communist and Trump's opponent was known for drikning tea...

I wasn't referring to universal health care as the revolution, I was referring to Biden's comment- Sanders is too different for most people to accept and the Left is making that clear-
That's an amazing logical leap.

1) Not everyone voting in the DNC primary is left-wing. With no GOP primary; many republicans are voting in the DNC primaries (Trump called on them to do exactly that).

2) Because someone votes for Biden doesn't mean they "cannot accept" Sanders. It means that they want Biden to win the primary. Maybe they like him more. Maybe they think he has a better chance against Trump. Maybe they think he has a worse chance against Trump (and want Trump to win). Maybe they don't like Jews. Maybe they like the taller candidate (statistically, the taller candidate wins). The list of reasons go on and on.

to your last statement, I agree but you must have missed my comments about the glaring flaws in the US system of health care. Problem is, the candidates aren't addressing the faults in a way that is logical and constructive.
Problem: People lack health insurance.
Bernie: Give health insurance to everyone.

Problem: Administrative costs are too high.
Bernie: Single-payer

Problem: Costs are too high.
Bernie: Untie the governments hands. Remove the law forbidding negotiating for better pricing.
Also Bernie: Eminent domain patents that are abused.

Drug pricing and denial of treatment absolutely need to change.
Single payer with negotiating power, patent override power, and a single payer with no incentive to deny coverage (a government program)

The need for doctors and hospitals to negotiate their payment needs to change (although regional differences are understandable, within reason).
Also covered.
 
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JerryLove

JerryLove

Audioholic Samurai
Denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions ended with the ACA legislation years ago.
That will likely change given the erosion of the ACA.

Imagine: the insurance company cannot turn me down (ACA), cannot charge me based on anything but age/gender (ACA), and cannot deny pre-existing (ACA).

But I can pickup and drop insurance whenever I want with no penalty. What do I do?

Easy. I don't pay for insurance until I get sick, then I sign up, then drop it if I get better.

But if only sick people are on "insurance", then its not insurance, and its not affordable.

The financials simply don't work to allow people to avoid coverage while also covering pre-existing.

There seems to be endless opportunities to improve the current system we have, but the politicians are offering us only two choices, Medicare for None and the current pile of crap further degraded by the Republican agenda.
There's a reason for that. Small improvements are blocked or countered later by laws that, for example, forbid medicare from bargaining for better prices.
 
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Out-Of-Phase

Out-Of-Phase

Audioholic General
you forgot part of the quote from wiki.

"Although he had supported earlier civil rights legislation, he notably opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as he believed it to be an overreach by the federal government"
"he believed it to be an overreach by the federal government"

Obviously, other people didn't. Thankfully.
 
Out-Of-Phase

Out-Of-Phase

Audioholic General
Even Nixon disagreed with him and they were buddies.
 
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panteragstk

panteragstk

Audioholic Warlord
An interesting take on having non-government healthcare that actually makes sense. From the comments section of an article no less.

As for healthcare, we desperately need less government involvement, not more. We haven't had anything closely resembling a free market in healthcare in the US for nearly a century, so don't try to tell me the market has failed. What we have is instead a series of government enforced cartels. Opaque and incomprehensible pricing structures remove any incentive for patients to shop around. With governments and insurance companies involved in most medical services, there's often little connection between the service received and the direct and visible cost to consumers. Thus, people with poor or no insurance may not get even simple, inexpensive services that might prevent far more costly problems later, while people with "good" insurance may get services that aren't really necessary and don't actually benefit their health.

If we did have a truly free market, it would be entirely possible to set up structures where healthcare providers had incentives to both keep patients healthy and minimize expenses. This isn't some fantastic theory; this actually happened in the early twentieth century. Things only went off the rails in the 1930's, when people advocating greater government involvement and doctors seeking to preserve their prestige collided, only to ultimately team up to plant the seeds of our modern system. As usually happens when you try to mix capitalism and socialism, we ended up with the worst features of both.

Even within our current system, the free market thrives where it's allowed to. Just to give one example, look at cosmetic surgery. Since it's usually considered elective and non-essential, it largely falls outside of the insurance/welfare system. Since people are paying directly out of their own pockets, they have an incentive to seek out the best combination of quality and cost. As a result, providers have an incentive to find ways to provide quality services at reasonable price. As a result, the quality of cosmetic surgery has pretty uniformly improved, while prices have shown little of the explosive growth of the wider medical sector.

It's entirely possible to provide better care for the average person and contain costs, but greater government involvement isn't going to do it. We need drastic reform of professional licensing laws, and Certificate of Need laws should be killed with fire. Health insurance should be restricted to paying for large, unpredictable expenses, while small and predictable expenses should be paid out of pocket. This would both remove some perverse incentives and reduce costs by removing a layer of administration. I'll grudgingly grant the government a role in subsidizing care for people who genuinely can't afford it, but that's about all.
 
PatrickBlossom

PatrickBlossom

Audiophyte
Hi! Sorry for bumping into an old conversation. It's important to note that Medicare for All is a proposal to expand Medicare to cover all Americans, regardless of income or health status. It aims to create a universal healthcare system that would provide comprehensive coverage to all Americans.
 
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Ponzio

Ponzio

Audioholic Samurai
All I know is that in 2012 my monthly insulin dosage was $128, now it's up to $342. For more of a perspective my dad was paying $16 bucks a month for his insulin in 2007, right before he died.

The health care system in this country is broken, mostly by the manufacturers, in conjunction with the health care insurance providers and a wink & nod from the politicians, on each side ... except we don't get any 'thoughts & prayers'. Shameless bastards ... all of them.

Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would vote for Bernie Sanders but now ... all I know is that he's getting more & more attractive, by each passing day.

Bend over and cough, please.
 
Verdinut

Verdinut

Audioholic Spartan
All I know is that in 2012 my monthly insulin dosage was $128, now it's up to $342. For more of a perspective my dad was paying $16 bucks a month for his insulin in 2007, right before he died.

The health care system in this country is broken, mostly by the manufacturers, in conjunction with the health care insurance providers and a wink & nod from the politicians, on each side ... except we don't get any 'thoughts & prayers'. Shameless bastards ... all of them.

Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would vote for Bernie Sanders but now ... all I know is that he's getting more & more attractive, by each passing day.

Bend over and cough, please.
The pharmaceutical mafia has been controlling the physicians in North America and almost everywhere else for a long time. It's a question of money! As an example, statins which are prescribed for elevated cholesterol bring billions of profits annually just in the US. To bring more profits, in the 1980's cardiologists lowered the top limit for normal cholesterol level from 240 to 190mg/DL to increase sales of statins. There is a lot of available documentation which indicates that an important percentage of doctors are on pharmaceutical companies payroll. To end this discussion, about 50% of people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels. Cholesterol is necessary for most of our body and is not the cause of coronary artery disease.

Doctors don't cure illness. They are not interested in finding a cure for your illness. Just pills or an injections will counteract the symptoms. Unfortunately, that's the medical profession. Some of my friends are prescribed about 30 pills daily, that's ridiculous!
 
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blaizx7

blaizx7

Audiophyte
It's always great to hear different perspectives and opinions. And you're right,, Medicare for All is a proposal to expand healthcare coverage to everyone, which can have both benefits and challenges. It's definitely an important topic to discuss and consider. Also, you can check the link to IBG Portland's health coverage https://ibgportland.com/health-insurance/health-coverage-for-oregon-small-business-owners-and-entrepreneurs for small business owners and entrepreneurs. It's important to explore all options when it comes to healthcare coverage.
 
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