81–90 of 91 posts
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Ditto here. About to run out of COBRA, working fulltime as a freelancer, and unable to get coverage because of chronic conditions.
Hang on until Jan, that's when guaranteed issuance kicks in. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/06/update-on-health-...
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Why is NY/NYC health insurance 5-10x what it is in WA/CA?
New York state law requires strict community rating, which means that an insurance company must charge the same prices to all customers. Elsewhere people with known health problems are charged higher premiums to cover their higher health costs. In New York that's illegal, so instead everyone is charged high premiums.
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The story was covered extensively by bloggers over 5 years ago, and appeared in the press periodically since. Basically, the local NHS trusts fired a lot of hospital staff to save money. They replaced them with service contractors. So instead of a trained nurse feeding helpless patients, a gormless food deliverer drops a tray off at the patient and leaves. On paper they are still being fed, but in reality patients we…
Well, yeah, except that the starving patients bit never actually happened. That's the bit you're missing. I know that they had some problems with some NHS trusts as they went more "efficient private sector", mainly with cleanliness, but this was not pervasive throughout the NHS and suggesting it was commonplace is a flat out lie.
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> Other countries have had such success with this model that it's becoming very difficult to argue that it's inherently flawed ... The British NHS discovered that by not feeding hospitalized patients they could realize tremendous savings in food, shortened length of hospital stay, followup costs, etc. > half the price per person Health care spending will dramatically increase under Obamacare. Americans spend a lot on…
I see from your linkedIn profile you are a defense contractor in Oklahoma. As is typical of defense contractors I encounter, you yourself make your money from a large, taxpayer supported industry while criticizing other nation's taxpayer supported industries that actually fucking do something, instead of supporting a standing army that is 5 times bigger than it needs to be. I have nothing against defense contractors,…
I merely pointed out that nationwide programs tend to go horribly wrong. Obamacare in particular failed before it was introduced since American health care is already cheap, and any good ideas it might have incorporated were destroyed by its secret process of creation and lack of feedback.
Incidentally, defense workers are ideally positioned as experts on national health care schemes. We have seen exactly how large one-size-fits-all programs almost always destroy themselves.
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Well, yeah, except that the starving patients bit never actually happened. That's the bit you're missing. I know that they had some problems with some NHS trusts as they went more "efficient private sector", mainly with cleanliness, but this was not pervasive throughout the NHS and suggesting it was commonplace is a flat out lie.
Once again, I am not talking about the recent media fight about arguably-cooked statistics. I'm talking about reports from a variety of sources starting in about 2007, including nurses and doctors. If it was a disinformation campaign, it was curiously extensive for not having been used in a media campaign of the day.
And you never got around to answering my question: is your private insurance cost competitive with UK private insurance?
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The kind of sentiment that breeds that ignorant opinion is propegated by those that don't want to see single payer because it hurts their profits. The health insurance / for profit hospital / big pharma lobbies are aburdly massive, and like many (most nowadays) industries, they abuse their wealth to exploit faulty political process to see what they want instituted brought into law and to keep advances that invalidate…
Single payer is not necessary to have a good health care system. Proof: Switzerland [1]. [1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/c...
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I see from your linkedIn profile you are a defense contractor in Oklahoma. As is typical of defense contractors I encounter, you yourself make your money from a large, taxpayer supported industry while criticizing other nation's taxpayer supported industries that actually fucking do something, instead of supporting a standing army that is 5 times bigger than it needs to be. I have nothing against defense contractors,…
You appear to be reading rather a lot between the lines. I am not, and nothing in my comment suggested, that government involvement in health care is inherently bad. Nor was there any mention of conservatism, small government, etc. I merely pointed out that nationwide programs tend to go horribly wrong. Obamacare in particular failed before it was introduced since American health care is already cheap, and any good i…
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/07/hi...
Regarding "one-size fits all programs destroying themselves", please explain to me how Obamacare is a one size fits all scheme? It's a conservative policy, designed by the Heritage Foundation think-tank on K Street in DC. (I have a buddy who works at the Heritage Foundation. They all loved Obamacare when Romney was implementing it, and were disappointed that it was only for a single state at the time. Suddenly when President Blackenstein was implementing it, it became evil and socialist.
Frankly, Obamacare isn't the best solution. I would have much preferred a national, single payer system coupled with private providers, like the system in Canada. You know, the one that has vastly higher approval ratings among its patients than the one in the US. But no, the Republicans scared the old people into thinking they would lose their free, socialist medical care if people under 65 got in on the action, so we got stuck with insurance subsidies.
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Hang on until Jan, that's when guaranteed issuance kicks in. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/06/update-on-health-...
yeah that's my hope - unfortunately my insurance runs out in oct and I have expensive RXes to get every month, but hopefully I can figure something out
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You appear to be reading rather a lot between the lines. I am not, and nothing in my comment suggested, that government involvement in health care is inherently bad. Nor was there any mention of conservatism, small government, etc. I merely pointed out that nationwide programs tend to go horribly wrong. Obamacare in particular failed before it was introduced since American health care is already cheap, and any good i…
American healthcare is already cheap? Compared to what industrialized nation? Every metric out there shows this to be wrong. Instead of talking the abstract "healthcare", instead talk about the cost of individual procedures. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/07/hi... Regarding "one-size fits all programs destroying themselves", please explain to me how Obamacare is a one size fits all scheme? It'…
Yes, dirt cheap. As in we could abolish all payment plans and life expectancy would barely budge. Vaccines and generic antibiotics give you the lion's share of what is possible. Blood pressure and diabetes control gives you most of the rest. If you want to get extravagent, add trivial insurance for broken bones, treatable cancer, and the like.
Obamacare is one size fits all because it tries to give everyone the same treatments. There is simply no way to give $400/month anxiety pills and $100k preventative cardic caths to every dirt farmer in Mississippi. Either the poor will get a heavily rationed version of Medicaid or the budgets will explode.
I think the Massachusetts program is a pretty good idea. I have even considered moving there to get on the rolls. If it actually works in the long run, other states would naturally have adopted similar programs. The only reason to try a single national program is to pander to voters.
One of the big problems in American health care is price manipulation. Obama could have become the first black Republican president by proposing that no Medicare provider may render services to anyone else except according to a uniform fee schedule. (If you think a Latino single mother is pissed off about a $300 aspirin, try talking to a country club Republican.)
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Single payer is not necessary to have a good health care system. Proof: Switzerland [1]. [1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/c...
That link gets UK healthcare wrong. There is private insurance in the UK too, and you can directly buy private treatment. We have a mix of both. Most people do without because the NHS covers everything they need.