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Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment

latimes.com

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Re: Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment

#81

Post by Ididntdothis »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #34
Ididntdothis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With employer based insurance and lack of price transparency there is almost nothing the patient can do to reduce costs. You can’t get any upfront pricing, it’s hard to evaluate whether a test is needed, you can’t change insurance. You are giving the patient responsibility for something they have almost no chance to understand.

On top of that, it's impossible to shop around for some of the biggest purchases. Broke your leg, now what? Start calling local hospitals to see who offers the best price? It's impossible to be an educated consumer with healthcare. Impossible.

“Broke your leg, now what? Start calling local hospitals to see who offers the best price?”

Any responsible citizen would have received insurance approval and checked out hospitals before breaking his leg. Same applies to car accidents :)

Re: Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment

#82

Post by mAEStro-paNDa »

mises wrote: post #80
mAEStro-paNDa wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For which are you advocating? A single-payer system, as I said. >Why could I not buy my own insurance? Or why can't I self-insure? These are leading questions. There exists healthcare systems that are a hybrid of single-payer/private insurance.

These are not leading questions. "Single payer" definitionally means there is a single entity which pays , meaning no insurance or private pay. You're using it like it means a government plan; it doesn't. The reason I'm asking is because some politicians are crazy enough to want to prohibit any thing but a government plan, and I don't know where you fall.

They are leading questions. You're assumptions about single-payer, based on what you think "some politicians" said, are baked into your questions. Again, there exists hybrid systems. Take a look at Spain or Australia. Canada almost exclusively works off it's public system, yet private insurance still has a minor role.

Maybe I'm "crazy enough" to think that there should be zero profit-motive in health insurance, but even I can confidently say that a public policy scenario wherein all but a government plan is prohibited just isn't realistic, nor does it reflect what many other western countries have done for 30+ years.

Re: Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment

#83

Post by 1PlayerOne »

mises wrote: post #79
1PlayerOne wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about the consequence for society as a whole if everyone did what you did.

1. I act in the interests of society, rather than my own. It's the issue of the prisoners' dilemma; I'm not going to be the sucker. 2. I honestly don't know what you mean here. I will almost certainly not draw much in the way of health expenses; this is exactly the way insurance is supposed to work . What is wrong with not billing every thing to insurance and not paying for the privilege? If every one did this, consu…

I am not sure what you are describing is "exactly the way insurance is supposed to work." If you have an open mind about it, you might want to read about the three-legged stool[1].

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20170716081909/https://www.nytime...

Re: Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment

#85

Post by pmorici »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #27
pmorici wrote: post #11

All I know is that in 2013 I was able to get insurance in the private market to cover myself. It was ~$80 a month and the deductible was $2000. Now, there is only one company left in my state that will even offer plans in the private market. The closest plan to what I used to have has gone up ~6x in price and the deductible has tripled. The prices started going up immediately after the ACA came into being I think the…

Your $80 insurance was trash. You think you had coverage but the moment anything serious happened to you, you'd get thrown off. Cancer? Bye. Heart problems? See you later. They were a fraud and you were getting ripped off. ADA put an end to that fraud. Insurance companies could no longer arbitrarily throw you off. That's why premiums went up from $80. They had to actually provide coverage. Now you know two things.

I liked it just fine, I'm aware of the change the ACA brought into effect with regard to the preexisting conditions. I'd rather have affordable options than a single un-affordable choice. Whether the insurance company doesn't cover a pre-existing condition or you can't afford the premiums the out come is the same. I'd argue that no insurance at all is worse but reasonable people could differ on that.

Re: Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment

#86

Post by smsm42 »

scroot wrote: post #20
MichaelApproved wrote: post #6

I have $6,500 deductable. It's insane how much work I need to do to get healthcare. The biggest issue is price transparency. To get a price, I need the tax-id of the medical office and the procedure code. Often times the procedure code is unknown because I might have any number of different procedures, depending on what the diagnosis is. So, I take my list of codes to the health insurance company with the tax ID and…

I once tried to find out how much some blood tests were going to cost me. This entailed a 3-hour ping-pong session between Quest Labs and my insurance company, each claiming the other would be able to tell me. Finally after reaching what sounded like some people in a basement somewhere -- who were baffled at the idea I was calling them, by the way -- I was able to get the "list price" for each individual test and add…

I tried to do the same with an HMO - where everything is inhouse, lab, accounting, insurance, billing, they do everything. The result was the same - nobody knows how much anything costs (or at least nobody will tell me), you'd know when you get the bill. Completely insane system.

Re: Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment

#87

Post by turk73 »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #6

I have $6,500 deductable. It's insane how much work I need to do to get healthcare. The biggest issue is price transparency. To get a price, I need the tax-id of the medical office and the procedure code. Often times the procedure code is unknown because I might have any number of different procedures, depending on what the diagnosis is. So, I take my list of codes to the health insurance company with the tax ID and…

UnitedHealth Group’s second-quarter 2019 revenues grew $4.5 billion, or 8.0 percent year-over-year, to $60.6 billion, led by double-digit percentage revenue growth at UnitedHealthcare Medicare & Retirement, OptumRx and OptumHealth.

Second-quarter earnings from operations grew 12.8 percent, or $540 million year-over-year, to $4.7 billion. Adjusted net earnings of $3.60 per share advanced 14.6 percent.

Re: Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment

#89

Post by scarface74 »

germinalphrase wrote: post #35
linuxftw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally half the country tried to warn against this exact same thing happening before the ACA passed.

This pattern of exploding healthcare costs didn’t begin with the passage of the ACA (though the ACA is also obviously not the solution). The ACA did increase costs as insurance companies couldn’t suddenly refuse service because they are actually sick (preexisting conditions), but what is our healthcare system doing if it’s NOT treating sick people?

I keep seeing this but it does t real jibe with facts on the ground.

Insurance is still priced based on the group you belong to. If you have a preexisting condition and you belonged to an eligible group - you worked for a company that provides insurance - they’ve always had to provide insurance regardless of preexisting condition.

The exchange group plans are priced separately.

Re: Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment

#90

Post by scarface74 »

linuxftw wrote: post #60
germinalphrase wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This pattern of exploding healthcare costs didn’t begin with the passage of the ACA (though the ACA is also obviously not the solution). The ACA did increase costs as insurance companies couldn’t suddenly refuse service because they are actually sick (preexisting conditions), but what is our healthcare system doing if it’s NOT treating sick people?

> ACA did increase costs as insurance companies couldn’t suddenly refuse service because they are actually sick Insurance companies are in business to make a profit. What the ACA did was ensure insurance companies have captive customers. A plan with a $6500 deductible vs pay a fine, nonsense. I should be free to choose between the plan or no fine. If it's all sick people in the plan pool because healthy people opted-…

I should be free to choose between the plan or no fine

That’s fine as long as you support getting rid of laws that force hospitals to treat you whether or not you have insurance and you medical bills are not dischargeable in bankruptcy if you don’t have insurance.

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