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Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

nytimes.com

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Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#401

Post by imechura »

davidw wrote: post #308
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that if the article slants one way, it can be the third cousin of a long-distant relative who knew Bill Gates and suddenly it's something hackers are direly interested in. If it slants another, it can be study of small startups and the economic principles that drive success or failure using a double-blind study and suddenly it's too political for us to touch. For me, the best metric is just looking at what kin…

Nope, it's politics, it should be banned, period. I agree heartily with the point of the article, but it should not be here.

The fact that people think something as important as the nation's health care is politics may be a problem in its self.

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#402

Post by cwp »

Groxx wrote: post #121
cwp wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. I pay $120/month for a family of three, and get pretty good care for it. I know that smug Canadians are a cliche in any discussion of health care, but we are an existence proof that acabal's expectations are totally reasonable.

How much of that is subsidized by your taxes? That counts towards the final cost. Spreading it out doesn't make it less real. edit: answered for you: > In 2009, the government funded about 70% of Canadians' health care costs. > Per capita expenditure in 2009: 3,895 $227 per month, per person, comes from the government, which gets its funding from your taxes. So you're paying $801/month for that plan (three people). S…

So my taxes count, but acabal's don't?

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#403

Post by m_myers »

Confusion wrote: post #310
Groxx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to me, an affordable health insurance plan would be between $50-$100 a month. Fat chance of that happening. And if it did, the deductible would be so high as to make the plan worthless for anything short of a car-crash-emergency-type-situation. This fits a fair number of cost complaints I hear over healthcare. Who wouldn't like to pay $50-100/month to have something better than emergency healthcare support? But thi…

At $50-100/month, they would have to sap you for nearly a decade to make up a single surgery. The point of insurance is that the risk that you need a lot of attention is diluted by being in a pool with insurance takers that mostly don't need that attention. You pay for your surgery together . Insurance has the interesting property of being an inherently Socialist service that you are purchasing from capitalist compan…

You are betting that you will have large bills. Your insurance company is betting that you won't.

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#404

Post by jfoutz »

joe_the_user wrote: post #237
tptacek wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a weird summary of how "free markets" and "supply and demand" work. Yes, you will pay everything you have for a cure. But the guy who will offer you a cure for "everything you have minus one dollar" is going to get your business.

But the guy who will offer you a cure for "everything you have minus one dollar" is going to get your business. Not necessarily. Suppose you have a deadly condition. Your information is extremely limited as non-professional. Would ... you can pay all your money now for the cure your doctor offers or you can wander over to an unknown provider for the best price? The quality of unknown providers is ... unknown and your…

If you dig enough in the medicare automated billing system documentation, you can find prices for particular codes. At least what medicare is willing to pay.

I hope I never have to use this information, but it's out there.

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#405

Post by pzxc »

ThomPete wrote: post #354
maxharris wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few will admit that we don't have anything close to a free market in healthcare today (or for the past several decades). A truly free market is one unfettered by the FDA, medicare, medicaid, doctor regulations, hospital regulations, HMO regulations, insurance regulations, etc. All of these controls were ostensibly put in place to protect patients, but in actuality they serve to slow innovation and true access to medi…

How wrong you are. No man is an island. Neither you, nor anything you create is created in isolation. Dependencies are ever-present and failing to understand this leads to failed ideas such as "true free market" not unlike the idea of "true communism". In reality the very fact that you are alive to write your words is a testament of other peoples effort including your parents to guard you against the many many danger…

Then it's wrong in a very unfortunate Founding Fathers way also. Because the Declaration of Independence states that we DO have inalienable rights and they ARE natural laws (i.e., endowed by our creator, which is a religious way of saying natural law).

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#406

Post by davidw »

imechura wrote: post #401
davidw wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, it's politics, it should be banned, period. I agree heartily with the point of the article, but it should not be here.

The fact that people think something as important as the nation's health care is politics may be a problem in its self.

Politics is generally very much more important than "hacker news" material. I mean, invading Iraq vs some fancy new Emacs extension? Health care vs how to market something to geeks? There's not even a contest. Which is precisely why politics will tend to dominate other subjects if it's allowed to fester on a site like this, and why it should be given the 'root and branch' treatment by the moderators.

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#407

Post by jfoutz »

joe_the_user wrote: post #237
tptacek wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a weird summary of how "free markets" and "supply and demand" work. Yes, you will pay everything you have for a cure. But the guy who will offer you a cure for "everything you have minus one dollar" is going to get your business.

But the guy who will offer you a cure for "everything you have minus one dollar" is going to get your business. Not necessarily. Suppose you have a deadly condition. Your information is extremely limited as non-professional. Would ... you can pay all your money now for the cure your doctor offers or you can wander over to an unknown provider for the best price? The quality of unknown providers is ... unknown and your…

here's the medicare fee schedules. You need to map codes to costs and locations, but it's doable.

http://www.cms.gov/FeeScheduleGenInfo/

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#408

Post by BrandonM »

carlygeehr wrote: post #120
SandB0x wrote: post #32

I would have died at the age of 19 if it weren't for the help of the UK's National Health Service. My parents and I didn't have to worry about hospital bills, future insurance issues, being tied to a job, any of that crap. Just get some rest, get better, go out there and be productive again. The American system looks like a horrible joke from over here. I just can't understand any of it.

I challenge anyone with a painful but non-life-threatening injury - say, a torn labrum, or a torn ACL - to go live in Canada or the UK and see what their treatment is like compared to here. Anyone?

I had a torn ACL in the US while uninsured. I waited a few weeks before I saw anyone in hopes that it was some kind of major sprain. I finally made an appointment with the Ohio Orthopedic Center of Excellence (I highly recommend it), and the first doctor I saw (a non-knee specialist, for $85 for about a half hour) said it probably wasn't a torn ACL, but he scheduled an MRI anyways.

The MRI was on the order of $1200, and another appointment later (this time with a knee specialist), it turned out that I did, in fact, have a torn ACL. By now, however, it had happened nearly a month prior, and the doctor recommended waiting at least two more months for the swelling to fully subside.

Reluctant to make such a big investment and being fearful of such a major surgery, I waited about 9 more months before I finally had the surgery. Since I didn't go to a hospital, the costs were actually reasonably low: ~$2500 each for the facilities, the anesthesiologist, and the surgeon. From diagnosis through final checkup, the cost was about $10K, and I was fortunate enough to have my doctor advise me on personal rehabilitation (I didn't go to a single session of rehab).

So I was lucky to get into a good facility with a good doctor and get reasonably-priced care, and now I'm stuck in a job I don't like with high credit card bills in order to pay off a large cost for a fluke basketball accident. Call me crazy, but I'd be interested in taking my chances in Canada or the UK. I've only just now (a year later) paid off the anesthesia, and I'm halfway done paying off the surgeon.

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#409

Post by gte910h »

acabal wrote: post #29
Groxx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to me, an affordable health insurance plan would be between $50-$100 a month. Fat chance of that happening. And if it did, the deductible would be so high as to make the plan worthless for anything short of a car-crash-emergency-type-situation. This fits a fair number of cost complaints I hear over healthcare. Who wouldn't like to pay $50-100/month to have something better than emergency healthcare support? But thi…

All good points, but the fact remains that at my income, it simply doesn't make financial sense for me to be insured. If I must declare bankruptcy in case of cataclysm, then the system just lost much more money than they would have were I paying an affordable (sliding?) amount per month over my lifespan. Anyway, this isn't the place to get in a discussion about how to fix the system. But as it stands now, it's just a…

> declaring bankruptcy in the event of a cataclysm

Some procedures are not covered in your scenario depending on your state. Organ Transplants in Arizona etc.

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#410

Post by natep »

pzxc wrote: post #405
ThomPete wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How wrong you are. No man is an island. Neither you, nor anything you create is created in isolation. Dependencies are ever-present and failing to understand this leads to failed ideas such as "true free market" not unlike the idea of "true communism". In reality the very fact that you are alive to write your words is a testament of other peoples effort including your parents to guard you against the many many danger…

Then it's wrong in a very unfortunate Founding Fathers way also. Because the Declaration of Independence states that we DO have inalienable rights and they ARE natural laws (i.e., endowed by our creator, which is a religious way of saying natural law).

The Declaration of Independence says it, so it must be true? The DoI is, among other things, a social contract that most Americans have agreed to, which is exactly what ThomPete said.
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