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Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

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Re: Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

#131

Post by ratelimitsteve »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #110
lisbbb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to question that--I don't see how long wait times for serious conditions leads to better health outcomes. It would logically seem like it would lead to more and earlier deaths if truly spending less per patient. I suspect there are statistical shenanigans.

You seem to be more confident in universal healthcare having "long wait times for serious conditions" than in universal healthcare resulting in better health outcomes at a lower cost per citizen. What makes you trust the first premise more than the second one?

as we delve further into the mass media spectacle one thing has become clear as everything else has become very muddy: the truth isn't what the facts support, it's what you hear three times from people you consider your peers. the fact is that the data that show increased wait times are for elective surgery (https://www.comparethemarket.com.au/health-insurance/feature...) which (by nature of being elective) doesn't correspond to increased mortality or cost, but the wait times on emergency care are comparable for single payer and individual payer systems are comparable, with the US doing slightly better in waits for people who actually receive care but, again, no indication of how many people avoid care due to the cost.

Re: Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

#132

Post by nozzlegear »

rayiner wrote: post #88
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual cost to treat "cancer or whatever" is extremely high in many cases. 15k a year to know you have that covered for a family isn't so bad given the true underlying cost. A family member has a rare disease and I've gone through the details of the various treatments, how many people are involved in ongoing care and treatment etc. It's a lot of very well trained people spending a lot of time. A concrete treatmen…

> but there will always be a desire to save people's lives even if the cost is very high. Also, Americans place extraordinarily high value on life. My wife's grandmother had cancer in her 60s and had a quarter of her lung removed. She then had a stroke in her late 80s. She was in rural Oregon, and they evacuated her via helicopter to Portland. They wanted to give her an aggressive treatment, but she refused, and pass…

> My parents were upper middle class, but there's no way they paid enough into Medicare to cover the amount of medical care they've used just since retiring (last 5 years or so).

It's a common misconception that the money we all pay into Medicare is going into a generational savings account, so we all need to "pull our weight" to make sure there's enough in there by the time we start withdrawing from it. Medicare is a pay-as-you-go system though – the money we pay into Medicare is being used by the people who are on Medicare right now, and when we're old enough to be using Medicare, it will be paid by the taxes of the young people who are working at that time.

Your parents shouldn't feel guilty for using more of the Medicare resources than they feel they paid in. That money was used up years ago by people who needed it back then.

Re: Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

#133

Post by oliwarner »

csa wrote: post #128
oliwarner wrote: post #123

A question to everyone unhappy paying for their insurance: would you be happier paying 50% income tax, 20% sales tax and not having to ever worry about paying for healthcare?

> A question to everyone unhappy paying for their insurance: would you be happier paying 50% income tax, 20% sales tax and not having to ever worry about paying for healthcare? I hope it’s obvious that this is a false dichotomy. There are many ways to have affordable health care that don’t involve “50% income tax, 20% sales tax”. There is very good healthcare in places that don’t have those conditions. It’s not hard…

It's not a dichotomy. I never said those were the only two choices available, but that's how it is in the UK where I am, so I wondered how US insurance payers would feel about our system.

Higher earners' tax feels painful until you see the mental load, gouging, denied claims from US insurance companies.

Re: Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

#134

Post by Workaccount2 »

righthand wrote: post #121
Workaccount2 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health insurance companies are a not the problem, their stocks are trash because their business sucks for profitability. They're not the rich misers swimming in gold piles that they are made out to be. People just get that feeling because the insurers are the proxy for medical costs, but you don't have to dig deep to see that they are getting bent too.

Right what reality is this where the insurers are innocent? Did Luigi Mangione allegedly shoot an insurance CEO in the back for life-taking business practices or not? If insurers aren’t the rich misers and are getting screwed too, then why do they lobby Congress to destroy the ACA and destroy any chance at a real healthcare system? If it’s so terrible for them why wouldn’t they help build a better system and fix the…

I didn't say they were innocent, I said they were/are awful capital extractors. Like, they do a really bad job at making money.

If you are following the money, it absolutely does not lead to health insurers. It passes right through them. But people need to do more than watch tiktoks to learn that. So it's lost.

Re: Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

#135

Post by righthand »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #134
righthand wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right what reality is this where the insurers are innocent? Did Luigi Mangione allegedly shoot an insurance CEO in the back for life-taking business practices or not? If insurers aren’t the rich misers and are getting screwed too, then why do they lobby Congress to destroy the ACA and destroy any chance at a real healthcare system? If it’s so terrible for them why wouldn’t they help build a better system and fix the…

I didn't say they were innocent, I said they were/are awful capital extractors. Like, they do a really bad job at making money. If you are following the money, it absolutely does not lead to health insurers. It passes right through them. But people need to do more than watch tiktoks to learn that. So it's lost.

Can you be a bit more clear as to something someone could reference to start following the money? Perhaps the awareness of the issue would spread faster if the advice wasn’t so inactionable.

Follow what money? My insurance payment? How? Are you alluding to political payments? Lead me to water or we’re all doomed. Being coy helps nothing only misunderstanding. As demonstrated by my previous response to your comment. It’s lost because I have no clue what you’re talking about.

Re: Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

#136

Post by JohnFen »

rayiner wrote: post #108
thehoff wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just took a look at our annual medical contributions and employer's part. We pay just over 10k for health insurance through our (different) companies. Our different employers cover almost 28k. So around 38k for insurance. This doesn't even include dental or vision which is separate. It just seems so crazy how much we pay and still have deductibles. I understand we have small copays and get items covered like age-re…

Just talk to people in the healthcare industry about what kind of patients they have. We cover a tremendous amount of treatments in the U.S., at an arguably unsustainable level of service. My aunt had a kidney infection in Canada and my cousin had to pull teeth to get her scheduled for an MRI. My five year old got a black eye from running into a table and they scheduled him for an X-ray and CAT scan (“just in case “)…

Here in the US, I see wait times for medical care comparable from what I hear from my Canadian friends. I don't think we our system can really tout that as an advantage over theirs.

Re: Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

#137

Post by vablings »

ethin wrote: post #62
vablings wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to chime in. I still have a HSA? Something interesting is that the ACA was probably making normal people's insurance cheaper because for people with the Medicaid plans were specifically targeted for aggressive coding knowing that the taxpayer was footing the bill It really does baffle me that the USA continues to subvert "socialism" by taking socialist programs and painting them with a capitalist brush^[1…

Ah, but don't you know? Socialism is evil! Capitalism is GOD and is perfect! - Republicans pretty much everywhere in the US Seriously. This is pretty much why single-payer/universal healthcare systems aren't available in the US. It's also why UBI has never been tried. I'm sure someone is going to come in and say that I'm painting an overly-simplistic picture, but we seriously do have people still thinking that people…

Honestly, I don't think the USA does a terrible job at managing these systems it's just funny to me how the song and dance pretend is such a thin facade. Something like UBI is too idealistic and out of reach for policymakers until the USA moves away from the concept that if you are poor, you are inherently evil.

Really all the USA needs to do is make a fork of the VA healthcare and fix the rough-around-the-edges and start offering it as a well-controlled attractive option in the market that is taxpayer funded, maybe roll it out for union workers and blue collared folk first for maximum political appeal

Re: Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

#139

Post by toast0 »

oliwarner wrote: post #123

A question to everyone unhappy paying for their insurance: would you be happier paying 50% income tax, 20% sales tax and not having to ever worry about paying for healthcare?

California residents with high income are already paying 50% income tax; if you include social security and medicare tax, it's even more. 20% sales tax is high, but if you're buying imported things that are being tariffed at high rates and then paying sales tax on that it's about there.

IMHO, if you look at European tax rates vs benefits, and US tax rates vs benefits; US taxes simply aren't efficient, our rates are a little lower and our benefits are a lot lower. Healthcare costs could be significantly reduced if the whole thing were managed as a whole. Do we really need every medical office to have an insurance billing expert whose only job is to interface between the chart and the various insurance rules? OTOH, if you cut out 10% of the cost, healthcare is still expensive, and insurance billing coders and the people who work the other side of that would all be out of work.

Managing healthcare as a whole, you'd be able to do systemwide interventions like increasing residency spots to increase supply of Doctors, and set standards for what care can be delivered by Nurse Practitioners to balance demand against supply.

OTOH, you'd have people complaining that life clocks are a lie, and carousel is a lie and that there is no renewal.

Re: Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

#140

Post by mikewarot »

I got yeeted out of the work force by Long Covid back in 2020. Thanks to this change, I'm feeling quite fortunate that my "early" Security starts in December (otherwise who knows what would happen, medical bankruptcies are going to go astronomical next year). This might allow us to continue health insurance if all of it (plus some) goes into premiums.

I've been avoiding looking at the new options, for my own mental health.

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