Timmah @ 1/3/2017 20:34

Maddie @ 1/3/2017 15:59 Herm @ 1/3/2017 13:18 Maddie @ 28/2/2017 21:33 Speaking of the ACA/healthcare: I have to get an endoscopy tomorrow and they just told me my insurance covers 90% of the procedure. The 10% I have to cover is $978. This is why we need universal healthcare. So without insurance it's almost 10000 dollars? Yikes. Yeah it was $13,000 before hospital adjustment charges. Insane. That's part of the problem. That's not an actual cost, and not at all what they'd charge without insurance. Medical providers charge obscene rates for the sole purpose of pinging the software used to formulate the basis for their contracts with insurance carriers, so that the contract prices for said procedure will be more the following year. It's a song and dance that benefits no one but docs and carriers.

Not quite a song and dance- its similar to lawyer and accountant "percent of standard" systems. I know my 100% of standard makes me feel nice and expensive. Funny enough, in addition to this, Medicare has its own payment regime totally parallel and separate, making hospital cost regimes even more complicated for hospitals and patients (especially when Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance all play into it. And this overcomplication leads to greater inefficiencies, higher costs, and lower outcomes/$. It's just one more market failure on top of the pile.

There is a reason that every other industrialized nation has single payer.

Unfortunately I'm all to familiar with how Medicare operates in much of that sphere and Medicaid is about to bust down those doors too. And you are right about the complications. It's hard to get even the simple info we need from hospitals.

I'm not arguing that our system is great. It's got some serious issues.

The problem is you can't have a market-based solution in health care due to the market failures inherent in it. It's even worse when you add insurance into the mix, which combines the worst parts of adverse selection (which requires you to force the pool to avoid) and moral hazard (leading to higher demand for health care than is efficient). Insurance companies also look at the bottom line, so in cases like drug prescriptions, they will often require a set of less expensive drugs to be used first, even if the doctor knows they will be ineffective, leading to over-prescription, more side effects (leading to additional drugs to deal with the side effects) and a population that is seriously messed up on all this stuff. I won't even get into the imperfect information scenarios. And, as noted previously, the wasted time and money from every corporation in the US that is spent on just health insurance plans is ridiculous- imagine how much time and productivity alone is wasted by the employees of my 100k+ firm just selecting their health benefits *every* November, between discussing plan options and filling out the paperwork. And my annoyance with every school field trip when I have to whip out my insurance information to fill out the backside of the forms. :P

And yes, I do have a single payer solution that addresses most of these (I know I posted the details in the GLB Addicts forum years ago when ACA was getting drafted).

i'd like to thank trump for ending obama's evil plan to get everyone so addicted to gubmint painkillers that they would never risk voting republican.

plus ACA is way better, so who needs obamacare?

Also lol Rand Paul getting really shady about healthcare today: https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/837694764694798339

http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a25714/sean-spicer-white-house-bunny/

o my

This is all a part of some kind of elaborate revenge post isn't it

that disturbs me greatly

oh that was my 1000th post. I'm disappointed.

I fucking died looool

It's not every day a person can meet their idol.

"Hold me tight Spicy"

What a great public servant. Always been serving the American people.