41–50 of 103 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it’s not up to health insurers to limit healthcare spending, then which organizational role in the healthcare system do you think is appropriate to place this responsibility with?
Elected representatives answerable to their constituents would be a vast improvement in health outcomes.
All the time. I have a UnitedHealthcare “platinum” plan, and it may as well not include pharmacy benefits because it never covers anything. Generic thyroid meds went from $2/month with Aetna to $70 with UHC. ADHD meds went from $10 to $300. The threatened “death panels” we heard about when ACA was being debated are actually employees of insurers who decide what they’re not going to pay for. I was raised a die-hard ca…
> The threatened “death panels” we heard about when ACA was being debated are actually employees of insurers who decide what they’re not going to pay for. The key insight, though, is that this is fundamentally unavoidable. Someone, somewhere has to decide how a limited healthcare budget will be allocated among all the various healthcare it could go towards. You and I agree that it would be best to have a system where…
The system is broken. It’s useless to extrapolate how things might work based on their current functionality. It doesn’t have to be like this. Everywhere else in the world manages it better than we do, and we’re not special snowflakes who require some hellish mashup out of Cyberpunk 2077 to take our kids to the doctor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elected representatives answerable to their constituents would be a vast improvement in health outcomes.
How would it all be paid for if not by increasing premiums (like what happened with ACA)?
The whole overhead imposed by the useless rent seekers is money not spent on making people healthier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elected representatives answerable to their constituents would be a vast improvement in health outcomes.
How would it all be paid for if not by increasing premiums (like what happened with ACA)?
> Health Insurance CEO Reveals Key To Company’s Success Is Not Paying For Customers’ Medical Care [1] 1. https://theonion.com/health-insurance-ceo-reveals-key-to-com...
If it’s not up to health insurers to limit healthcare spending, then which organizational role in the healthcare system do you think is appropriate to place this responsibility with?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would it all be paid for if not by increasing premiums (like what happened with ACA)?
Health insurance companies do not provide any medical services. They are the middle man between patients and the places/people that actual do provide medical services. So when they deny coverage, they just keep all the premiums paid by the patient. That money is sucked up by the middle man. So you don't need to raise premiums, you need to lower profits at health insurance companies. Every billion they make in profit…
All the time. I have a UnitedHealthcare “platinum” plan, and it may as well not include pharmacy benefits because it never covers anything. Generic thyroid meds went from $2/month with Aetna to $70 with UHC. ADHD meds went from $10 to $300. The threatened “death panels” we heard about when ACA was being debated are actually employees of insurers who decide what they’re not going to pay for. I was raised a die-hard ca…
1. A properly competitive marketplace 2. Socialized medicine 3. What we have now I would like to see #1 tried but at this point I’ll gladly accept #2
Is there any hope to clean up the US health system in any foreseeable future? How did the health lobby get so much power and get away with all this abuse?
There's a lot of problems you can point at: - Through extensive lobbying, the US passed the HMO act of 1973 which requires that all employers offer an HMO plan to employees. HMOs were created to keep costs down, but United really took this to the extreme, making it as hard to use your health insurance as possible, and creating vertical monopolies like OptumRX. United takes so long to pay providers for the work they d…
This should be illegal. I have read that UNH also owns around 10% of providers so they own the whole chain.
Is there any hope to clean up the US health system in any foreseeable future? How did the health lobby get so much power and get away with all this abuse?
I'm not sure if there's any hope of US healthcare improving for a long while. The ACA was the only recent improvement. It was a small change, but the electorate decided that it was bad, pushed its supporters out of office, and elected a series of people who promised to "repeal and replace" it, but weren't really serious about any improvement. And then when the "repeal and replace" crowd failed, they were not held acc…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. A properly competitive marketplace 2. Socialized medicine 3. What we have now I would like to see #1 tried but at this point I’ll gladly accept #2
In the USA we've been told that the market will sort itself out and give us item 1 any day now...since 1992.