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I Now Have a Cardiologist

joecieplinski.com

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Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#171

Post by saagarjha »

Tepix wrote: post #167
saagarjha wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it kinda creepy to have my heart beat monitored & sent to a server far away and not under my control. Heart rate information, like all health information gathered by Apple Watch, stays on your device unless you choose to back it up to iCloud. In this case it is end-to-end encrypted.

Data backed up to iCloud is not yet encrypted in a way that Apple cannot access it.

Health data is encrypted with a key that Apple does not have access to. It’s true “end-to-end” encryption.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#172

Post by veryworried »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #109
veryworried wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, with cars you can only be driving one at a time so it doesn't make sense for insurance to double or triple just because you now have two or three cars. With family members, they are all absolutely living in parallel and at the same time.

I've owned 5 cars at one point, and dropping or adding cars never changed the amount of the premium attributed to the other cars. (That is to say adding car 5 was an increase similar to adding car 4, for example.) I never understood why, seeing as how I can only drive one at a time, but I've always just assumed this is customary.

Maybe I’m daft but it seems like the premium is for cases of theft or damage not caused by driving. Seems pretty clear to me.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#173

Post by [deleted] »

est31 wrote: post #19

IDK about this. I find it kinda creepy to have my heart beat monitored & sent to a server far away and not under my control. I mean, ad companies already have so much data about me, do they also need to know how my heartbeat reacts to an ad? Does my insurer need to know it? I wonder whether it can detect sex and be used to e.g. track infidelity. On the other hand, of course it's great to save lives and help you detec…

[deleted]

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#174

Post by ken »

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…

I'm not the author, but I pay out of pocket for my health insurance, too. To answer one of your other questions:

I don't own a home. I drive an old (and thus, inexpensive to replace) car. To save money, I have the highest deductible offered by my insurance company. That ensures that when something small happens, unless it affects drivability, I'm not going to fix it.

The value I see that I get out of car insurance (besides the legal requirement) is its health insurance, e.g., if I get in a crash and need $50K for emergency surgery, or if I get in a wreck with another driver who was (illegally) driving without insurance and they needed surgery.

In other words, apart from the health insurance aspect (which should be single-payer anyway), yes, I think car insurance is pretty much useless for me.

I understand why governments institute requirements like this -- it's a systems-thinking solution which is probably better than not having it -- but pretty much by definition any private insurance system is going to be a financial loser for a lot of people.

I don't have to pay to insure my money -- the bank pays the FDIC from my capital. It seems weird to me that I have to pay for personal insurance at all. Why don't fuel taxes and license fees provide for auto insurance? Why doesn't federal income tax provide for health insurance? Various other countries do these and they seem to work fine. Yeah, I know: politics.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#175

Post by ABCLAW »

mbreese wrote: post #158
yoz-y wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France a 1 day stand in hospital is billed around 1000€, of course it is almost entirely covered by insurance. You have to pay a fee of 17€ a day if you have some standard insurance package. If you 'stay' at the hospital then all costs are bundled in this price, if you only follow exams they can actually get more expensive in total (usually they offer you to stay the night if you have exams that would cost more th…

Thanks for the insight into how things work in France. Like I said -- I don't know much about how non-US healthcare systems are funded. But, I think the main question I was trying to get at is -- how much are the French (or Japanese from a different thread) hospitals subsidized by the government. I expect for there to be indirect costs that might have to be covered by direct billing in one country, but not another. F…

> Like I said -- I don't know much about how non-US healthcare systems are funded.

Then shouldn't you read up on that before expounding upon how a 38k price tag for a scheduled routine procedure is reasonable? Healthcare billing isn't that shocking when you travel outside of the states.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#176

Post by haukilup »

mr_toad wrote: post #74
haukilup wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Still not in Canada, though it seems to be in more countries. Very frustrating! Original: I don't think they enable the ECG feature for anyone outside the US. It's locked based on the point of sale last I checked. Very frustrating to buy something so expensive to find out it's been region-locked!

It counts as a medical device, which means it has to go through extensive certification. Different countries have different procedures.

Correct! The frustrating part (for me) is Apple’s lack of transparency in the extended delay in the release of this feature. It was heavily promoted, yet to find out that the ECG feature wasn’t available prior to purchase you had to dig through their support documents to find the list of countries it is available in - which at the time of my purchase, was between 1-4.

But I only found that out after spending 3 days income on the device - because who would expect that a heavily promoted feature WASN’T available?

I understand Apple’s choices of communication from their perspective as a for-profit business, which only makes me unhappier.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#177

Post by tptacek »

throwaway9d0291 wrote: post #142
rayiner wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Switzerland I moved from the US to Switzerland. The systems can't be compared. Yes Switzerland has private insurers but the industry is highly regulated: - Costs of medications and procedures are regulated and capped. - There's a mandatory level of insurance everyone must have. This covers basically everything except dental. - The pricing of this mandatory insurance has a cap based on age (younger people pay less),…

For what it's worth, the US system under the ACA has many of these (probably in large part because Switzerland has them, as our system is modeled in part on theirs). We don't do strong price controls, but we do mandatory insurance, with mandatory coverage levels, that can't be denied or repriced based on age, and public funding subsidizes a large fraction of the insured.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#178

Post by milemi »

Tharkun wrote: post #120
milemi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my dad died of a heart attack at a relatively young age, and I've been paranoid about my cardiovascular health ever since. Half an hour of that HR at rest and I'd be off to the ER.

What you describe sounds like health anxiety. Please consider seeking help for that.

I’m definitely aware that I suffer from hypochondria, but what if I’m just imagining that I do? All joking aside, I never even thought about getting help for that, maybe I should.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#179

Post by pcwalton »

tptacek wrote: post #177
throwaway9d0291 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Switzerland I moved from the US to Switzerland. The systems can't be compared. Yes Switzerland has private insurers but the industry is highly regulated: - Costs of medications and procedures are regulated and capped. - There's a mandatory level of insurance everyone must have. This covers basically everything except dental. - The pricing of this mandatory insurance has a cap based on age (younger people pay less),…

For what it's worth, the US system under the ACA has many of these (probably in large part because Switzerland has them, as our system is modeled in part on theirs). We don't do strong price controls, but we do mandatory insurance, with mandatory coverage levels, that can't be denied or repriced based on age, and public funding subsidizes a large fraction of the insured.

The difference is that Medicaid is a patchwork of various state systems rather than a no-questions-asked federal subsidy. Some states are hostile to Medicaid (e.g. Kentucky with its work requirements). Furthermore, the entire future of the ACA system is in doubt, because of executive sabotage, legislative attempts at repeal, and judicial overreach. All of that leads to people not being confident that they will be able to get the health insurance they need. That's why the Swiss system can fairly be described as universal health care, while the American system cannot.

Re: I Now Have a Cardiologist

#180

Post by tptacek »

pcwalton wrote: post #179
tptacek wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, the US system under the ACA has many of these (probably in large part because Switzerland has them, as our system is modeled in part on theirs). We don't do strong price controls, but we do mandatory insurance, with mandatory coverage levels, that can't be denied or repriced based on age, and public funding subsidizes a large fraction of the insured.

The difference is that Medicaid is a patchwork of various state systems rather than a no-questions-asked federal subsidy. Some states are hostile to Medicaid (e.g. Kentucky with its work requirements). Furthermore, the entire future of the ACA system is in doubt, because of executive sabotage, legislative attempts at repeal, and judicial overreach. All of that leads to people not being confident that they will be abl…

What reform could the US pass that would escape the criticism that Republicans might in the future choose to repeal it?
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