111–120 of 130 posts
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Maybe we shouldn't be funding healthcare on a profit-driven basis then.
Being a non-profit or a government would not help solve that. Those organization types are just as motivated to save money as for-profit is.
A fair number of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies, for example.
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Maybe we shouldn't be funding healthcare on a profit-driven basis then.
Being a non-profit or a government would not help solve that. Those organization types are just as motivated to save money as for-profit is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being a non-profit or a government would not help solve that. Those organization types are just as motivated to save money as for-profit is.
I've heard a lot of complaints about government organizations. "Motivated to save money" isn't one of them.
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Competing across state lines means all insurance will be regulated by the state with rules that most favor the insurer, it isn't all that likely to be good for consumers. The banking renaissance in South Dakota is a result of a similar situation. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/07/how-cit...
> Competing across state lines means all insurance will be regulated by the state with rules that most favor the insurer Not really; states are still free to set additional requirements for insurance plans that cover members of that state. To be honest, competing across state lines would not actually do much in the long run. It'd provide an extra degree of competition in the short-term, but ultimately then insurers w…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/clairetsosie/2017/04/14/why-so-...
This is the kind of thing that induces panic attacks in my business because so much time is spent on the look and feel of any letter going out to customers, and so little time is spent on the finished product (ie QA process for the letter in the envelope). It's probably not a matter of the company being evil (although Aetna could probably be described that way at times). It's more than likely 1) the lack of proper pr…
To contract this out would be a terrible breach of protocol.
Note that the USPS also scans and stores images of the front and back of all mail it delivers, even if you don't opt in for their digital delivery service[0]. So this means that the USPS - and anybody else with access to their images, which includes law enforcement - now knows the HIV status of these people. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/us/postal-service-confirms...
And I've seen a new complex in the bay where, for reasons unknown to me, it shows you the scans of all your neighbors.
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I fully expect to get downvoted for this, but it's an important point that I have to address. > Some non-zero percent of those 12k people live with a partner who doesn't know their HIV status. It is totally unethical for those people to fail to disclose their status to their partners This is itself based in old misinformation about HIV that serves to perpetuate harmful stigmas around HIV. HIV is treatable, and when p…
So then how are people still getting HIV? When thinking about the ethical implications you have to take the real world into consideration, not the perfect world.
Some folks don't know they have it, and there are big gaps in health care. Not everyone that needs to be tested or should be tested has the means or transportation to do so, let alone afford the medications. Theoretically, we could test this with normal bloodwork and have tax dollars pay for the medications, treating it like a public health cause. We just don't, partially because of outdated views on it, bigotry, and so on.
Granted, this is completely ignoring the world outside the US, where there are other difficulties.
This is the real world you were referring to, right?
It should also be obvious that he's referring to folks that have medication available. HIV isn't the death sentence it used to be because we've made great strides.
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> As a result it is very transparent what is sacrificed - e.g. you can find NICE [1] documentation on evaluations of individual drugs and treatments and their benefits, and documentation of the decision making processes of the NHS trusts, so they can be debated and used as a basis for deciding funding, or you're free to sign on to additional private cover if the exemptions worry you. The decisions that NICE makes are…
The point is not that NICE is perfect, but that these limitations are subject to democratic control - if people feel that the NHS treatments are inadequate based e.g. on the NHS being unable to fund treatments that are recommended by NICE, the government has a direct and immediate ability to control the funding. It happens quite regularly that public debate over NHS funding of specific treatments leads to concrete ch…
That's like saying "people additionally have the option of paying out-of-pocket". Remember, by definition, the expected monetary value of insurance is negative, so unless the private insurance is being subsidized by taxpayer dollars (defeating the whole point), this is equivalent to saying that people are still free to pay for treatments themselves.
> NICE's recommendations are not subject to the NHS budget. They are independent for a reason. Cost efficiency of a treatment enters into their assessments, but they do not have final say on which treatments are offered. They make recommendations based on the clinical need and document efficacy, outcomes and costs. It's up to the NHS to then allocate funds accordingly.
You can't escape the fact that, at the end of the day, the process still amounts to the same thing. Given a finite budget, decisions are made on how to allocate that funding based on clinical data, resulting in some people not receiving treatment, even though they would otherwise benefit clinically from it. What the NHS does is not fundamentally different from what insurance companies do.
Saying that it's subject to "democratic control" doesn't really mean a whole lot, except that the process ends up being a lot slower, and it becomes a political battle. (Notice that PrEP has been available in the US for five years at zero cost to patients, and it's still not available in the UK. Or, notice that the cure for HCV is generally accessible on private insurance in the US, but almost nobody in the UK is able to receive it through the NHS.)
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Being a non-profit or a government would not help solve that. Those organization types are just as motivated to save money as for-profit is.
I've heard a lot of complaints about government organizations. "Motivated to save money" isn't one of them.
Any government run healthcare would be money constrained the same way, and they would have to do exactly the same as the insurance companies to try to save money in order to have enough to at least give the impression of being fair to everyone.
The issue here is not for-profit insurance companies, it's that there is no competition on the Doctor side of things, so costs just go up and up and up.
This is the kind of thing that induces panic attacks in my business because so much time is spent on the look and feel of any letter going out to customers, and so little time is spent on the finished product (ie QA process for the letter in the envelope). It's probably not a matter of the company being evil (although Aetna could probably be described that way at times). It's more than likely 1) the lack of proper pr…
> 3rd party was contracted out by Aetna to do the mass mailing and they you could probably wrap back through #1 and #2 for them as well. To contract this out would be a terrible breach of protocol.
That's false. HIPPA covered entities are allowed to engage contractors, who are allowed to handle protected health information (they also must comply with HIPPA, of course).
Source: have worked for an HIO (health information organization, a type of HIPPA compliant contractor), and https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/faq/547/to-what-...