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I Now Have a Cardiologist

joecieplinski.com

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Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#51

Post by cbsks »

usaphp wrote: post #22
tasty_freeze wrote: post #15

It is odd to me how he keeps describing his $500/month insurance as being useless: he is generally in excellent health and his yearly expenditures are low enough that he is always paying down the deductible. Does he feel car insurance and home insurance are useless since he didn't total his car last year and his house didn't burn down? He knows this (as he mentions it obliquely) that he could lower his deductible but…

Imagine a regular sized family of 4, you have to shell out more than $20K/year for the most basic health insurance for your family if you are self employed, $20,000! and you still have to pay for EVERY doctor visit for your kids and regular checkups, and your family deductible is around $10-12K. And every year they send you a new increased quote by 10-15%. There should be some kind of a discount for families, like wh…

In my expensive area of CA, a gold insurance plan for a family of 4 costs $20,400 per year. That’s an insurance plan with a $0 deductible and $30 co-pay per doctor visit. That is far from the most basic health plan. A plan with a $12k deductible is $13,500 per year.

Even so, a $20k a year is peanuts compared to the out-of-pocket expenses of a serious medical emergency. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking insurance is not with it just because you haven’t had to use it yet.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#52

Post by wiggler00m »

dwhit wrote: post #7
laurencei wrote: post #4

If you put a popular device, with a medical detection tool into the wider population, it would be logical that the device would pick up on patients who would other not notice the symptoms (at least initially, if any). So then the question becomes what other daily device(s) could be made to do automatic health checks of certain specific indicators, which would give an early indication to the possible condition, thus i…

A toilet that monitored urine and stool samples would be a major lifesaver.

A startup in Japan is building this.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#53

Post by goshx »

risaacs99 wrote: post #47
tasty_freeze wrote: post #15

It is odd to me how he keeps describing his $500/month insurance as being useless: he is generally in excellent health and his yearly expenditures are low enough that he is always paying down the deductible. Does he feel car insurance and home insurance are useless since he didn't total his car last year and his house didn't burn down? He knows this (as he mentions it obliquely) that he could lower his deductible but…

Yeah the negativity struck me as well. After being in Afib for a month, he was at high risk for having a stroke. I guarantee you that insurance would have been appreciated then. Just to add to the discussion, I've been self employed and on ACA plans for several years now (with my family). I'm grateful to have the option, and it's miles ahead of what we had prior to the ACA.

It seems to me that only people who were born in the US "appreciate" paying this much money for health insurance and see someone criticizing it as being negative.

The whole health system in the US is horrible. Nobody should need to go through a middle-man (a.k.a. insurance) in the first place. No wonder prices for everything are absurdly high.

Edit: and I have an anecdote about this too. Last year I had an episode of AFib. I've been taking medication since then. So after almost 1 year taking a certain medication, my insurance rejected it, saying they wouldn't pay for it and that I had to switch to something else. Now, why is it OK for an insurance company to dictate what I can or cannot take, if my doctor prescribed me something? How on earth is it OK for insurance to dictate what treatments I can or cannot have? I feel like a piece of meat when I go to a clinic and they need to call my insurance to see if it is OK to give me a certain treatment. This is nuts.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#54

Post by rayiner »

kbos87 wrote: post #18
tasty_freeze wrote: post #15

It is odd to me how he keeps describing his $500/month insurance as being useless: he is generally in excellent health and his yearly expenditures are low enough that he is always paying down the deductible. Does he feel car insurance and home insurance are useless since he didn't total his car last year and his house didn't burn down? He knows this (as he mentions it obliquely) that he could lower his deductible but…

It feels useless when you know that after paying in $500 a month for decades your insurance could be cancelled for making a claim.

It generally cannot.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#55

Post by barry-cotter »

laurencei wrote: post #4

If you put a popular device, with a medical detection tool into the wider population, it would be logical that the device would pick up on patients who would other not notice the symptoms (at least initially, if any). So then the question becomes what other daily device(s) could be made to do automatic health checks of certain specific indicators, which would give an early indication to the possible condition, thus i…

This will lead to a massive increase in false positives, unnecessary treatment and worry; par for the course for precautionary screening and preventive medicine generally.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/upshot/preventive-health-...

> Preventive Care Saves Money? Sorry, It’s Too Good to Be True

> The idea that spending more on preventive care will reduce overall health care spending is widely believed and often promoted as a reason to support reform. It’s thought that too many people with chronic illnesses wait until they are truly ill before seeking care, often in emergency rooms, where it costs more. It should follow then that treating diseases earlier, or screening for them before they become more serious, would wind up saving money in the long run.

> Unfortunately, almost none of this is true.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#56

Post by m0zg »

cbsks wrote: post #51
usaphp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a regular sized family of 4, you have to shell out more than $20K/year for the most basic health insurance for your family if you are self employed, $20,000! and you still have to pay for EVERY doctor visit for your kids and regular checkups, and your family deductible is around $10-12K. And every year they send you a new increased quote by 10-15%. There should be some kind of a discount for families, like wh…

In my expensive area of CA, a gold insurance plan for a family of 4 costs $20,400 per year. That’s an insurance plan with a $0 deductible and $30 co-pay per doctor visit. That is far from the most basic health plan. A plan with a $12k deductible is $13,500 per year. Even so, a $20k a year is peanuts compared to the out-of-pocket expenses of a serious medical emergency. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking insurance i…

In my area (Seattle) such plans aren't even available. So don't blindly assume that they're available outside CA. The deductible ranges between "high" and "crazy". Dental that you can buy through health exchange doesn't cover anything at all. I'm seriously at a loss as to why anyone would pay for it, if you can buy a better plan from the same company outside the exchange. And this year, Kaiser Permanente just nonchalantly raised the premium by a little under 20%. It'll probably do the same thing next year, too, because hell, why not. We need to seriously look into opening up (and stimulating) competition between health insurance companies, hospitals, and so on, to upend this blood sucker of an industry.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#57

Post by milemi »

atomical wrote: post #23
tasty_freeze wrote: post #15

It is odd to me how he keeps describing his $500/month insurance as being useless: he is generally in excellent health and his yearly expenditures are low enough that he is always paying down the deductible. Does he feel car insurance and home insurance are useless since he didn't total his car last year and his house didn't burn down? He knows this (as he mentions it obliquely) that he could lower his deductible but…

His insurance sucks. We don't need to look at a chart to realize that. I have a low deductible and I pay under $100/mo.

Where do you live, and how far are you from 40?

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#58

Post by rayiner »

goshx wrote: post #53
risaacs99 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the negativity struck me as well. After being in Afib for a month, he was at high risk for having a stroke. I guarantee you that insurance would have been appreciated then. Just to add to the discussion, I've been self employed and on ACA plans for several years now (with my family). I'm grateful to have the option, and it's miles ahead of what we had prior to the ACA.

It seems to me that only people who were born in the US "appreciate" paying this much money for health insurance and see someone criticizing it as being negative. The whole health system in the US is horrible. Nobody should need to go through a middle-man (a.k.a. insurance) in the first place. No wonder prices for everything are absurdly high. Edit: and I have an anecdote about this too. Last year I had an episode of…

Many countries rely on privately-managed health insurers (Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, etc.).

> Edit: and I have an anecdote about this too. Last year I had an episode of AFib. I've been taking medication since then. So after almost 1 year taking a certain medication, my insurance rejected it, saying they wouldn't pay for it and that I had to switch to something else. Now, why is it OK for an insurance company to dictate what I can or cannot take, if my doctor prescribed me something? How on earth is it OK for insurance to dictate what treatments I can or cannot have? I feel like a piece of meat when I go to a clinic and they need to call my insurance to see if it is OK to give me a certain treatment. This is nuts.

Dictating what treatments you can and cannot have is how health systems all over the world control costs. Many systems do this much more aggressively than in the U.S. The U.K. NHS, for example, will only spend about 20-30,000 pounds per "quality-adjusted life year," or about double that for end-of-life drugs. In the U.S., it is routine to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get a couple of extra years. (The historic practice in the U.S. was to have lifetime limits--typically in the several million dollar range, but even those are illegal under the ACA.)

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#59

Post by milemi »

itissid wrote: post #27

While this is great for Afib detection it's its very rare CDC says 2.7-6 Million people[1]. Still great for those people! I still think we need to do much better. High BP and hypertension is way more important to measure since they can be diagnostic in a larger percentage. My dad is a triple bypass heart patient. ECG and stress tests did diddly squat to detect it, until it was too late and it was diagnosed by a CT An…

Do you know how many sieverts you get each time? I had one of those and I think I got one year's worth of background radiation in those few seconds that it lasted.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#60

Post by avemg »

Waterluvian wrote: post #9

A friend of mine in his early twenties drowned a few months back due to a cardiac event related to atrial fibrillation. He was otherwise in phenomenal shape and living life to the fullest.

I'm sorry about your friend. I hope this isn't insensitive, but could you elaborate any more on what happened? I'm an a-fib sufferer with a pool so I'm quite curious.
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