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'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

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Re: 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

#161

Post by dogemaster2028 »

jdlshore wrote: post #86
dogemaster2028 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is buying first class tickets bad?

GP is saying that they’re okay giving up buying first-class tickets if it means someone else gets to live. (Because they pay more for health insurance, which allows someone else to pay less.)

It’s good that they choose to do that themselves. In fact, the US allows you to SEND THE GOVERNMENT A GIFT at https://www.pay.gov/public/search/global?formSearchCategory=...

(You can even Venmo)

If you want to do it, do it for real, instead of just being performative.

But don’t try to force everyone to follow your performative pseudo gift.

Re: 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

#162

Post by robocat »

nradov wrote: post #58
czhu12 wrote: post #49

One thing that I’ve been trying to understand about this discourse: Is the sum of the increase in costs some people are now paying greater than the subsidies that previously existed? In other words: was there always a massive bill to be paid here, but it was just previously socialized and hidden in the form of taxes/ public debt? Or does the act of subsidizing it actually decrease the total?

Yes to both. High costs were previously partly hidden by subsidies for some consumers purchasing individual or family policies on state ACA exchanges, and now many of them will be forced to pay something closer to the true market price. But just like with college tuition, when the government throws money at a problem that ends up causing costs to explode without permanently improving affordability.

> true market price

There can be no market clearing price, because healthcare demand is unlimited.

In some countries supply is rationed by using different means such as waiting lists, budgets for funding, or even corruption (I witnessed this in Cuba).

Re: 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

#163

Post by alecco »

Unpopular opinion: Evil and greedy insurers are not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the socialized costs of sugar drinks, junk food, and sedentary life. The food industry operates like a drug cartel who starts the pipeline getting children addicted.

That combined with outrageously expensive magic pill healthcare. A situation partly caused because doctors can't tell patients they are too fat and lazy. Because feelings and hate-crime.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7524435/ (I think their 27% figure is way too conservative)

It's like the worst possible combination of free market capitalism/libertarianism with social liberalism.

Re: 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

#164

Post by orwin »

docdeek wrote: post #146
tirant wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s absolutely not an exception. I’m in Germany, and for a family of four, the public healthcare system, covering my wife and my two kids costs us around 2,200€ per month. The company pays half. A switch to a private insurance would lower the costs around half.

I was under the impression that German healthcare was essentially free (government funded) at the point of delivery, with additional top-insurance carried by most people similar to how it is in here in France. Here I am self-employed and pay about 100 euros a month in top-up insurance (mutuelle) for myself and a couple of kids. Of course, the healthcare costs more, that’s why my taxes are high; but the insurance cost…

That will be hard to explain in English but you can find what you're paying to French healthcare system by looking at your paycheck (the document you receive every month that detail your paycheck rather). It basically either 7% or 13% of your paycheck (and .5% of non-work income via the CSG), and you have a hard cap on total contributions (4k/month, and healthcare if a bit more than half of that, so a bit more than 2k/month). It cover universal healthcare of course , but also maternity/paternity leave and invalidity benefits.

Paternity/maternity also cover the pension parents get (half a year of contribution to the pension system per child if you take care of them til they are 13, plus half a month for giving birth) (that's so awkward explaining this in English, sorry)

Re: 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

#165

Post by ben_w »

docdeek wrote: post #146
tirant wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s absolutely not an exception. I’m in Germany, and for a family of four, the public healthcare system, covering my wife and my two kids costs us around 2,200€ per month. The company pays half. A switch to a private insurance would lower the costs around half.

I was under the impression that German healthcare was essentially free (government funded) at the point of delivery, with additional top-insurance carried by most people similar to how it is in here in France. Here I am self-employed and pay about 100 euros a month in top-up insurance (mutuelle) for myself and a couple of kids. Of course, the healthcare costs more, that’s why my taxes are high; but the insurance cost…

My understanding (British citizen living in Berlin) is that the German system looks and acts like a tax, but is actually mandatory payments to one of a handful of almost-but-not-quite-identical private insurance companies, with care being free-at-point-of-use.

It's possible to opt out if you're rich enough, but if you change your mind later it's very hard to return to the normal system.

I'm currently not working*, my monthly insurance cost is €257,78.

* thanks to my very cheap lifestyle, my passive income of only about €1k/month means I don't strictly speaking need to work ever again.

Nevertheless, I am treating this time as a learning opportunity with a view to being able to change career path, given that I think LLMs make the "write the code" skill I've been leaning on for the last two decades redundant in favour of, at a minimum, all the other aspects of "engineering", "product management", and "QA", and possibly quite a bit more than that.

Plus, y'know, get that B1 certificate so I can get dual citizenship.

Re: 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

#166

Post by Delphiza »

fragmede wrote: post #151
simianwords wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value addition do the administrators provide? It might be helpful to understand why competing hospitals still find it useful to employ these people even if the cost is so high. If a competing hospital can provide equivalent service while also not spending so much on an administrator, why didn't they already do it?

The administrative overhead is necessary in order to get money from the insurance companies. Without the administrators too administrate and fill out copious amounts of paperwork, the hospital won't get paid by the insurance companies, and if the hospital don't get no money, they can't pay their staff, and staff tend to like getting paid.

This is how the world ends. Administrators on both sides being replaced by AI and consuming all the worlds available compute arguing with each other about healthcare bills.

Re: 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

#167

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dogemaster2028 wrote: post #161
jdlshore wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP is saying that they’re okay giving up buying first-class tickets if it means someone else gets to live. (Because they pay more for health insurance, which allows someone else to pay less.)

It’s good that they choose to do that themselves. In fact, the US allows you to SEND THE GOVERNMENT A GIFT at https://www.pay.gov/public/search/global?formSearchCategory=... (You can even Venmo) If you want to do it, do it for real, instead of just being performative. But don’t try to force everyone to follow your performative pseudo gift.

> the US allows you to SEND THE GOVERNMENT A GIFT

How is this relevant? Cutting the deficit doesn’t solve the problem. And the folks who created this mess just blew out the deficit by trillions.

Re: 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

#168

Post by sumuyuda »

tirant wrote: post #144
vunderba wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And naturally you make this absolute claim because you've undoubtably lived in more countries than just the United States, right? As point of reference, I lived in Taiwan for years - they have a national health insurance system, and taxes are comparable if not lower in some situations to the United States.

I have lived in 3 countries with socialized health care system and the public systems were just average to poor, and costing me a lot. In Germany if you’re mid to high earner, a private insurance can cost you less than half than the public healthcare system and you get much better service. Starting with appointments with specialists, who always give preference to privately insured people. In this day and age public h…

> In Germany if you’re mid to high earner, a private insurance can cost you less than half than the public healthcare system and you get much better service. Starting with appointments with specialists, who always give preference to privately insured people.

The solution here is to get rid of private insurance in Germany and only have public. It creates a two class system and private is a terrible choice once you are older, as costs will skyrocket.

Re: 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

#169

Post by tirant »

docdeek wrote: post #146
tirant wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s absolutely not an exception. I’m in Germany, and for a family of four, the public healthcare system, covering my wife and my two kids costs us around 2,200€ per month. The company pays half. A switch to a private insurance would lower the costs around half.

I was under the impression that German healthcare was essentially free (government funded) at the point of delivery, with additional top-insurance carried by most people similar to how it is in here in France. Here I am self-employed and pay about 100 euros a month in top-up insurance (mutuelle) for myself and a couple of kids. Of course, the healthcare costs more, that’s why my taxes are high; but the insurance cost…

Free at point of delivery does not mean free at all. Netflix is also free when delivering you movies, but it costs a monthly fee.

I think it’s time that we all stop with the nonsense that government funded healthcare is free. Because who ends up funding the government are us, the citizens, and that costs lots of money.

Some governments, like the German one, still make the costs transparent to the citizen, something you can even see in your payslip. Other governments, after failed policies and extreme inefficiencies, hide that and just budget healthcare costs out of the rest of the taxes.

In your case you believe your cost is only 1200€ a year, because your government has not made at all clear to you how much you’re paying from your other taxes into the healthcare system. When governments hide that type of information is because they actually do have something they don’t want the normal citizen to see. And that’s worrying and not democratic at all.

Re: 'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs

#170

Post by salawat »

harmmonica wrote: post #109
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #26

Mine has tripled, but last year, I was actually getting some govt help. Not this year. I am fortunate to be able to afford it, but it’s just less than my mortgage. This month is when all hell breaks loose, because people will get their first invoice at the new rate. They already know how much, but seeing it in the form of a demand, will drive it home. Obamacare is like the NHS, in the UK. Everyone likes to bitch abou…

The equally insidious thing is that when they get hit with the new premium anyone who took better coverage, like a silver plan for the ACA, will likely be "forced" to downgrade to a lower (bronze) plan, which means that when they actually get services their costs will further skyrocket (higher deductibles and out of pockets). Talking about all hell breaking loose... Marjorie Taylor Greene announces her resignation sp…

MTG just got her pension. I doubt healthcare costs have anything substantively to do with it. Someone just wants to avoid digging a hole any deeper than they have.
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