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42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

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Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#121

Post by FabHK »

rayiner wrote: post #86
toomuchtodo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

United Healthcare's CEO received $17.4 million in compensation last year. I don't know anyone on the GS pay scale making that. That excessive compensation could've been directed towards healthcare delivery instead of padding someone's pockets. Private insurance is beholden to shareholders, universal healthcare is beholden to citizen stakeholders. It's plainly obvious that the private insurance market in the US has fa…

UHC paid out over $100 billion in care. How much it pays its CEO is completely irrelevant, except as an emotional appeal and rage bait. The system may not be functioning properly, but it has nothing to do with how much UHC's CEO makes, or shareholders make. (UHC's profit margin is just 7.5%). The decision of whether to have limits on how much you're willing to spend for one case exists whether you have a private syst…

What strikes me as disingenuous about your posture is this: You are basically arguing that the insurers are introducing lifetime caps (making life much worse for the affected individuals, basically nullifying the whole point of insurance) not out of concern for their profit margin, but out of the goodness of their hearts to keep the premiums low for the paying public. That strikes me as unlikely.

Of course, if you don't impose these limits, the costs must be borne by the collective insured. However, if there is one government/single payer insurer, nobody would ever dream up the insane idea of saying, hey, if you're really fucked, we'll stop paying your health bills, so we can shave off a few dollars of everyone's premiums.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#122

Post by twoheadedboy »

Pharmakon wrote: post #4

Sometimes I’m just amazed that people haven’t risen up in bloody revolt yet. Recently my mother had a flare-up up radiation-induced pneumonitis and the PPO insurance she pays $14,000 annually wouldn’t approve a single unit of Advair. It took a week of talking to doctors and insurance drones to figure out that they were pushing her to an alternative that cost them $100 less. If I woke up tomorrow and people were burni…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#123

Post by apo »

Of the 9.5 million cancer diagnoses studied between 2000–2012, researchers discovered that 42.4 percent of patients (median age 68.6±9.4 years) spent all of their money, averaging $92,098. This follows disturbing news from earlier this year that 40 percent of Americans can't afford to pay $400 in case of an emergency. The math is not adding up.

No, the math doesn't make sense. Either the author of the linked article misinterpreted the journal article, or the authors of the journal article didn't reports their numbers correctly.

The only other conclusion might be that cancer strikes the "wealthy" (those with 100K in savings) more than the poor.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#124

Post by mikeash »

FabHK wrote: post #108
rayiner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absurd to say that imposing a limit is somehow misleading for something sold as "insurance." "Actual insurance" almost always has a policy limit. Everything from car insurance to corporate liability insurance has a limit. I can't think of any "actual insurance" besides health insurance that doesn't have a limit. Again, I'm not arguing against having health insurance be unlimited. I'm taking exception to your rhe…

FWIW, insurance in other countries has limits, but rather high ones. For example, my private liability insurance (50 EUR/a premium) is limited to 50 million EUR/event. So, yeah, if I ever accidentally create 60 million EUR damage (in one fell swoop), I'll be broke. My travel health insurance is 12.50 EUR/a, and pays 100% of medically necessary out-patient and hospital treatments (for an unlimited number of trips up t…

This raises a really important point. A limit that’s basically impossible to hit is very different from a limit that you’re basically guaranteed to hit if you have a major problem.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#125

Post by [deleted] »

so_tired wrote: post #49

I am sympathetic. From HN stories, the US health care situations seems abysmal. BUT, i want to make 3 counter points, if only for the sake of discussion. a. Cancer for many is a terminal disease. There are always some very very expensive and experimental or marginal treatments. If u have money, and are going to die, and decide to spend all you can to squeeze an extra year of life , i am very sympathetic but even the…

[deleted]

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#126

Post by jahaja »

dionidium wrote: post #107
PenguinCoder wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By those metrics (and others), United States isn't a civilized country either.

This is silly. Please don't make easily-refuted, throwaway political statements like this. On almost any corruption index, the United States ranks far, far better than China. Here's one example: https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept... People do try to measure this stuff.

That link measures peoples perception. My perception is that the influence of money is blatantly epidemic in US politics. But it uses an euphemism; lobbying. Luckily it's not corruption if it's legal.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#127

Post by 738472527784 »

so_tired wrote: post #49

I am sympathetic. From HN stories, the US health care situations seems abysmal. BUT, i want to make 3 counter points, if only for the sake of discussion. a. Cancer for many is a terminal disease. There are always some very very expensive and experimental or marginal treatments. If u have money, and are going to die, and decide to spend all you can to squeeze an extra year of life , i am very sympathetic but even the…

Regarding A: I think it is important to note, that cancer is usually survivable, if caught early. This might make the "all in" phenomenon not inherent to the disease, because affordable, frequent checkups and education, might prevent many late stage cancer cases. Especially for colon and skin cancers.

Regarding C: Sure, everything is fine in healthy years, but 20% of the population is going to die from cancer alone. So it's not like only a tiny fraction is going to experience this dread.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#128

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #34
mikeyouse wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before people get too comfortable -- Every single "Obamacare replacement" plan does away with the ban on lifetime caps either directly or indirectly. These are enormously beneficial to insurance companies (they essentially have unlimited liability without them) and there is a ton of money to have the caps reinstated.

> These are enormously beneficial to insurance companies (they essentially have unlimited liability without them) and there is a ton of money to have the caps reinstated. I don't understand why you'd phrase it this way. Under the ACA, 80% of premiums have to go to medical care. A dollar saved providing care disproportionately benefits the premium payers, not the company. People act like all this money comes out of in…

> I don't understand why you'd phrase it this way. Under the ACA, 80% of premiums have to go to medical care. A dollar saved providing care disproportionately benefits the premium payers, not the company.

The retained premiums rule and the lifetime limit ban were both adopted as part of the ACA; lifetime limits only existed before the ACA, and indeed benefited the insurance companies.

> Lifetime caps insure that you, the ratepayer, aren't on the hook for unlimited liability.

No, ratepayers are not on the hook for unlimited liability without lifetime caps. They are on the hook for insurers expected costs plus capped profit margin, given the insurer being subject to uncapped liability for covered, medically necessary services, but the ratepayer’s exposure is well-defined upfront.

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#129

Post by _ea1k »

rayiner wrote: post #34
mikeyouse wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before people get too comfortable -- Every single "Obamacare replacement" plan does away with the ban on lifetime caps either directly or indirectly. These are enormously beneficial to insurance companies (they essentially have unlimited liability without them) and there is a ton of money to have the caps reinstated.

> These are enormously beneficial to insurance companies (they essentially have unlimited liability without them) and there is a ton of money to have the caps reinstated. I don't understand why you'd phrase it this way. Under the ACA, 80% of premiums have to go to medical care. A dollar saved providing care disproportionately benefits the premium payers, not the company. People act like all this money comes out of in…

I think that operating margin might not be a good metric for measuring this. Although, I do think that there is too much focus on the 80% rule in general.

I mean, if all of the insurance companies are really close to that already (or even marginally above it), then it shouldn't matter either way, right?

Re: 42 percent of new cancer patients lose their life savings

#130

Post by travisoneill1 »

pascalxus wrote: post #58

Normally, I'm all for invisible hand capitalism for most things, but clearly in the case of medical services it's completely broken. What we need is price ceilings on medical procedures, something reasonable. Perhaps, cap procedures cost in some way, maybe 1k to 4k based on what it is (make it illegal to charge more and hold hospitals financially accountable). There has to be some kind of cost control, either from th…

So killing people who need expensive treatments is better than bankrupting them?
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