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People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly

peoplespolicyproject.org

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Re: People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly

#181

Post by nybble41 »

jfk13 wrote: post #170
nybble41 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A more sound statement would be "I as a consumer am willing to pay dollars equal to twice my current premiums to get healthcare coverage while avoiding hassles while receiving routine healthcare" Ah, but are you willing to force everyone else pay twice as much so that you can get the health care you want? That's the real question. You said you were in favor of socialized healthcare, so I would guess the answer to t…

> are you willing to force everyone else pay twice as much Comparisons to other (first-world) countries with socialized healthcare systems suggest that it shouldn't be necessary for everyone to pay twice as much. If everyone paid exactly the same amount as they currently do (in tax + insurance premiums) there should be plenty to fund a first-world-standard national health system. > you're free to buy as much healthca…

> If everyone paid exactly the same amount as they currently do (in tax + insurance premiums) there should be plenty to fund a first-world-standard national health system.

Right. Regardless of whether health care is paid for privately or via taxes, it's obvious that the problem isn't that we're not spending enough money.

> It's difficult to know what you can afford when you can't find out even an approximate price until it's over and the bill arrives.

I agree that prices and billing should be more transparent. It's crazy that they expect you to agree to pay whatever they might choose to bill, months or years after the fact, without even the courtesy of a binding estimate. I think a good argument could be made that these are not valid contracts and you should be able to walk away from them without penalty; they only get away with this sort of borderline-fraudulent behavior because the law grants health care providers special status. This situation is not improved by changing things so that health care providers don't even need your formal consent, or any interaction at all for that matter, to bill you via the IRS, with no contractual obligation on their part to provide any services whatsoever in return.

Re: People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly

#182

Post by antisthenes »

arcticbull wrote: post #90
krapht wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I disagree, but the majority of health care expenses are not time-critical emergencies. I saw a statistic somewhere where it's around 15%?

IMO the biggest problem is that you're not really qualified to judge medical practitioners. How am I supposed to know if what they're recommending is actually necessary? The market price of an MRI? How do I know they're not skipping care I should have to offer a lower price? Or if they're offering unnecessary procedures? The reality is you need an M.D. to make a reasonable evaluation. This is why at an HMO we have pr…

> Or in any other country, GPs. They decide if you need specialized care. However, how am I supposed to pick one of them? It's Russian nesting doctors.

Same way you would pick anything else? I shopped around for my GP and changed several.

Some factors were: years of experience, user feedback, spoken languages, any red flags for the whole practice, how they respond to my concerns and questions in conversation, etc.

Re: People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly

#183

Post by paulddraper »

imgabe wrote: post #52
helen___keller wrote: post #37

The point of health insurance is to pay into a risk pool as a collective so that the small percentage of people who end up needing the largest percentage of health care, nobody dies or goes into monumental debt. This can be done via taxes but insurance is a private market solution which should in theory make it more efficient for the sake of maximizing profit. So then if it's supposedly more efficient, why do I waste…

If private insurance is going to work, then every healthcare provider has to accept payment from every insurance. This clusterfuck we have where you have in-network providers with one price and out-of-network providers with a different price just has to stop. Oh you went to an in-network hospital, but this one doctor walked into the room for five minutes and she was out-of-network, so now your bill is 10x higher than…

The reason this doesn't work is because not all doctors are equal.

Insurance companies want to contract with the healthcare providers with the highest quality outcomes that don't have overprescription, relapses, and readmissions.

Search terms: "narrow networks"

Re: People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly

#185

Post by antisthenes »

aantix wrote: post #40
dv_dt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All other first world nations pay less. On average they pay less than half what the US pays. The fully socialized systems, like the UK, seem to trend lower in cost, as low as one third the cost of the US. But really, the takeaway should be you need universal healthcare with significant government cost controls on drugs and procedures, after that almost any arrangement of public/private administration works (but the c…

Without the U.S. subsidizing the drug research R&D, who pays for it? You could fill notebooks with worthy, approachable hypotheses for any number of diseases that could show promise if given the funding. But if everyone makes it law to cap prices - fewer scientists, labs, studies are performed. The money has to come from somewhere. I think countries take for granted the progress we've made. No progress is made withou…

> Without the U.S. subsidizing the drug research R&D, who pays for it?

I wish we could stop using this tired trope once and for all in debates about medical care.

Most medical care is routine and does not require cutting edge drugs. Things like insulin, epinephrine, anesthetics, antibiotics, antihistamines, vaccines, most of those things have been developed in the 1st half of the 20th century.

How much do the cutting age drugs account for in the scope of the total health care costs in the US? Even if it was higher than 1% (I'm willing to bet money that it isn't), the marketing budgets for drug companies far exceed their R&D spending.

Re: People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly

#186

Post by paulddraper »

Glyptodon wrote: post #46

Employer sponsored health insurance is an outpost of neofeudalism. Swear your fealty to a lord or go without.

Yes. And it was made even worse by the ACA which effectively required employers to be feudal lords, whether they wanted to or not.

Before, the possibility of sane choose-my-health-insurance-like-I-choose-my-car-insurance was at least on the table.

Re: People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly

#187

Post by vharuck »

aantix wrote: post #150
munk-a wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making sure doctors are well informed about treatment options are one thing... egging patients on to request a possibly mismatched medication and taking doctors out to lunch to encourage the prescription of a possibly mismatched medication is entirely different. The ideal case for drugs is that no one actually needs them so no one takes them - this is a large contributor as to why this market should be heavily nation…

The patient can egg on all they want - it’s still the doctor’s (expert) decision whether to prescribe. And as an informed patient, I want to know my options. My doctor and I will discuss trade offs, he’ll sign off if he thinks it’s appropriate.

I'll admit I have no evidence advertising to patients increases drug sales. But, considering how often I see drug commercials on television explicitly targeting patients, it seems the drug companies have evidence it works.

Re: People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly

#188

Post by CloudFormation »

helen___keller wrote: post #37

The point of health insurance is to pay into a risk pool as a collective so that the small percentage of people who end up needing the largest percentage of health care, nobody dies or goes into monumental debt. This can be done via taxes but insurance is a private market solution which should in theory make it more efficient for the sake of maximizing profit. So then if it's supposedly more efficient, why do I waste…

Churning health insurance with a high deductible plan + HSA is an even bigger timesuck.

Just yesterday I sent in the paperwork to roll over my HSA from one bank to another-- the punchline is, my insurance provider didn't change and my insurance login was the same (Premera ConnectYourCare), but it looked like the 15k in my HSA account inexplicably disappeared. Needless to say, this was concerning.

A few phone calls later, and I come to find out that my 15k with Bank_0 was available on the backend, but since Bank_1 was preferred by my new employer, Premera shows Bank_1 on the frontend. Keep in mind, all interactions with your HSA bank account are abstracted away from you. So you must track down your Bank_0 and Bank_1 account numbers (I used my tax paperwork) and mail in honest to god physical signed forms authorizing the rollover.

Then I come to find out that I should have done this anyway-- HSA accounts are laden with monthly account fees, paper billing fees and investment fees that my previous employer wasn't paying anymore, and these aren't covered by my current employer. HSA bank accounts are one hell of a moneymaking venture for the big banks-- 0 risk because employers send yearly contributions into the account; high likelihood that people will forget to roll it over and the account will drain via fees.

HSAs have the hugely hidden cost of managing this separate account+tax entity, and I did not know this when I signed up for one. I'm not even sure that my hours of labor on it are worth the tax savings.

Re: People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly

#189

Post by [deleted] »

paulddraper wrote: post #186
Glyptodon wrote: post #46

Employer sponsored health insurance is an outpost of neofeudalism. Swear your fealty to a lord or go without.

Yes. And it was made even worse by the ACA which effectively required employers to be feudal lords, whether they wanted to or not. Before, the possibility of sane choose-my-health-insurance-like-I-choose-my-car-insurance was at least on the table.

[deleted]

Re: People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly

#190

Post by willio58 »

helen___keller wrote: post #37

The point of health insurance is to pay into a risk pool as a collective so that the small percentage of people who end up needing the largest percentage of health care, nobody dies or goes into monumental debt. This can be done via taxes but insurance is a private market solution which should in theory make it more efficient for the sake of maximizing profit. So then if it's supposedly more efficient, why do I waste…

I’m about to graduate college and I just last week had to take an hour to learn insurance vocabulary to decide if I should go to a doctor for something. It’s disgusting how complicated it is now compared to how simple the concept of insurance initially was when it was created.

The insurance companies profit massively from the confusion they have created.

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