The Right Scoop
In one of my examples below I made an educated guess that premiums would be around $15000 per year. Check out this article today on Fox.
I suppose that there are many reasons for increases in medical care costs, but none are more prevelent than currency devaluation. Inflation happens accross the board, so the cost of medical care being inflated 4% is pretty good, considering how much money is being created.
I would say that the insurance companies are probably holding back a bit. Obama is their buddy, and they want to keep mandated health insurance going. Insurance companies are already government run, and government is run by insurance companies. (at least where regulation is conserned)Obama Care was written long before Obama showed up. He was just the guy to get it passed with a liberal house and senate.
Romney is the guy to keep it going as well. Nothing substancial will get repealed with Romney in there.
We are losing our liberties faster now, but they have been chopping away at them for a long time. Free markets are long gone due to federal government intervention in everything. We will either have massive shift toward freedom, or we will continue to sink into the quagmire of socialism/authoritarianism.
The speed at which most people are getting agitated is not matching the speed of our decline. People like us are the exception to the rule on this.
I thought he said on Glenn Beck's radio program today that pre-existing conditions should be covered.
I agree you need competition in health care but to get costs down, get the unions out of health care.
Free markets are the only solution. You can't have them if government protects unions that price fix wages and benefits, or if government regulates any industry.
My life depends on medications that I can only afford with tremendous help from medical insurance. I know how critical health insurance can be, and I had insurance when my condition developed.
But buying medical insurance only because you have gotten sick, is exactly like buying life insurance after you're dead.
Insurance is there to give you money IF you develop a problem that's covered by your insurance - NOT just to give you money for your problems, like a charity would do.
That is essentially what covering pre-existing conditions does.
It turns insurance companies into charities.
Thus destroying the whole concept of insurance.
And ultimately resulting in the destruction of the insurance industry.
Which was the Left's aim all along. DON'T DOUBT ME ON THAT.
Admittedly I cringed when I heard Romney say he wanted to see those with pre-existing conditions could get coverage, but it seems that we might be reading more into his words than was said. He didn't actually say that he liked the 0-care solution for this issue.
I think it's a very small number of people that lose their coverage and have a hard time getting another policy. But it does happen. It can easily happen to someone who loses his job and his employer sponsored health insurance. Once COBRA runs out, he must find his own plan. Any conditions or illnesses diagnosed while insured under the employer plan will constitute a pre-existing condition.
Also, each health policy has a lifetime benefit maximum. Once the lifetime maximum is exceeded, the insurance is cancelled. Some plans have very small lifetime maximums ($500,000 for instance) that a major illness can easily burn through. No standard insurance carrier is going to write a policy under these circumstances. For any amount.
Having said that, it seems like these cases could be treated in the same manner that assigned risk auto insurance pools are arranged for drivers that are uninsurable in the standard and high risk markets. The driver still has to purchase the insurance but the insurance risk doesn't fall on just one insurer and is managed by each state. It isn't something you can buy "just in time".
I'm sure Mike the Marine knows more about this than I do - my own personal lines insurance experience was many years ago. The important thing to me is that with assigned risk, the individual is responsible for his own insurance premium (though it would probably be funded on a sliding scale or something).
Anyway, lets not throw Romney to the wolves just yet. We will have to continue to pound real reforms based on free markets and limiting torts. (I think class action lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies are one of the most egregious and costly inventions the scumbag lawyers could possibly dream up)
I see what you're saying about the lifetime maximums, but we also need to address WHY health care is so expensive that you would burn through half a million dollars so quickly.
Just look at the cost of cell phones when they were first introduced in that cost over $8,800 in today's dollars. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7432915)
And what brought those prices down? Competition!
No one knows the true market value of an MRI, because the prices are so skewed and hidden that there are no market signals to react to.
Competition in health CARE leads to lower costs in health INSURANCE.
And competition in health INSURANCE will lead to even lower costs still.
FOP, it's my opinion that the minute they signed Medicare into law is the moment health insurance costs (and care) began to increase. Once insurers knew they had a never ending stream of customers paid for by the inefficient hands of government, the wheels started turning. Over time it snowballed and now contains a huge element of fraud and abuse that is forever un-addressed by any congress.
I say get the government out of it and get back to free market principles where competition is king of innovation and efficiency.
You hit it right on the head. I think that the way uninsurables USED to be handled was that they would go to a teaching hospital, like Johns Hopkins and get treatment as an instructional case. Both of my neck surgeries were done at Hopkins. I had and have insurance but I'm convinced that they have the best surgeons on the planet and since they teach they need tough cases for their up and coming doctors.
Just try after a your car is wrecked, now an existing condition, to get car insurance to cover the NOW pre-existing condition condition of your car. It is the same with health care.
People just don't understand insurance. It is a for profit business. It is a bet. The bet is if they insure enough people there will be enough premium money to cover the payouts for accidents/diseases and make a profit.
Government can NOT require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions without forcing them into bankruptcy or charge super high premiums.
Economics should be taught in high schools.
Which is hay I keep saying that if Maobamacare isn't struck down we will ALL be on medicare. There will be no private health insurance companies for the reasons you outlined above.
The moral answer for someone without insurance who gets cancer is not regulation or taxation - it's charity. Every dollar taken by force is another dollar not available to go into the collection basket.
Yep, churches and communities used to be the charities in our country. You would give to your church if you could afford it and the church would help out that family down the street that needed the assistance.
Nowadays, the feds think they have a better idea and going to a church apparently makes you a lesser person. Somehow, I think it was better the way it was.
I was born in the wrong century.
I agree with Rand Paul. I'm sick to death of politicians proselytizing on this as well and telling me it is good economics. Tell me why it is good for society and the country as a whole but stop trying to sell this under a false premise.
The GOP and Libertarians need to figure out how to communicate the message that every American has the right to do everything in their OWN power to try to live forever, but that does not mean that a person can use the power of GOVT to take a dollar out of my pocket to pay for it.
The liberals like to bash us over the head that we aren't compassionate or that we don't walk the Christian talk. That is true BS. Society has orders, which go like this: Person, Family, Friends, Church Family, Neighbors, Township/City, State, Federal. I regularly pitch in money, time, and effort for the first 4 levels above myself when people at those levels need help because I know someday I might need that help myself. This is the way society is suppose to work.
Very well said... I think the Republicans would be a lot better off embracing more libertarian positions than kowtowing to the Left as they seem so want to do.
It doesn't matter what Romney wants congress still has to pass it. That's why we're trying to put more real conservatives in congress so they don't just go along with the president when he has stupid ideas like they did with Bush. If they go along with unconstitutional crap we gotta keep firing these a--holes 'til they get the picture.
Exactly and this is why we have to keep this issue alive and in the forefront. Romney thinks he can put us all back to sleep.
For sure, I've learned my lesson. I made a fool of myself defending people who in the end could care less about our country. I won't let it happen again.
With Boehner, McConnell, Cantor at the helm....whatever Mitt wants/doesn't want passed will be so.
Mitt has already made sure that that the bill to bypass senatorial approval for Presidential appointments was passed....and that was before he's elected.
Good like trying to hold Mitt's stinky feet to the fire after the election.
This sounds just like Barrack. You mean Romney is going to change the rules legally? Just like the vote on the floor of the Convention when it was declared, "the ayes have it"? If the people say they don't want something, Govt. will just jam it down our throats from the back room crony deal center? Hmmm, "extreme conservative" is starting to make sense, now. Is that like radical? Makes no difference who we elect as our representatives? Hmmm, Is Romney elite? Is George Soros laughing at us? "MMMMM....MMMMM....MMMMM".
Buy ammo and keep your guns cleaned and oiled. That is what the 2nd ammendment is all about.
Have Americans and politicians completely forgot what the word "insurance" even means?! Health INSURANCE and health CARE are completely separate ideas...
When I go to Vegas, I don't get to buy insurance after the dealer shows he got a Blackjack.
I don't get to buy home insurance after my house has burned to the ground.
I can't wreck my car and then call up State Farm to get my policy to cover the accident.
Here's my solution.
1. Offer health insurance like car insurance with multiple levels of insurance and things like "distaster" plans with high deductibles and low premiums.
2. Allow tax free health savings accounts with no annual limits and that roll-over each year.
3. Increase competition for doctors by offering direct payment for medical care.
4. Allow for insurance to be sold across state lines
5. Decrease insurance regulations and mandates to allow for customizable insurance plans.
6. Allow private pooling to diversify the risk of insurance.
7. Give buying health insurance as an individual the same tax incentives that employers have for offering it.
Competition has been the most effective and efficient way to bring better services at a lower cost. Everything the government has done with regards to health care has LIMITED competition and led to oligopolies within the market place.
Did I miss anything? Does anyone have any other ideas that I should consider?
What other ways can we increase competition in the health care market?
What if everything you thought you knew about health care was wrong? And what if that meant the the next time you needed to see a physician that there was a good chance that the care you recieved would be unnecessary or less effective than it could have been, even to the point of causing potentila serious harm? And what if thereason behind this was THE fundamental issue in health care today? Cost is not the problem. Cost is a symptom. So called 'free market' soluton will fail and ObamaCare will fail miserably.
If cost were the problem then competition might help reduce costs. Cost, however, is not the problem but only a symptom of a much more important and fundmental problem. What is it that everyone, regardless of financial status, even Warren Buffett, wants from health care? Consider what it is you want from an airline carrier. What is it that trumps everything else? If health care were free you would still want this.
Here is what I want from health care. Allow for competition to drive down treatment prices so it doesn't have to come down to a choice between saving their life and their life savings.
No one will ever choose not to get treatment because they can't pay? I wouldn't and I would never expect anyone else to make that choice. You do what you have to do to live, but why does the alternative have to be the poor house?
Competition competition competition.
Lower treatment costs means lower health care bills which lead to lower health insurance which leads to more people having the financial access to it.
A big give away to Big Pharma and the insurance companies doesn't get to the root of the problem.
We need LESS regulation for MORE competition.
You have your answer. Now you can stop asking people.
Health care can not operate in a 'free market' because the consumers, we used to call them patients, do not have true choice. When you are sick , true illness like an infected gallbladder or cancer of the colon, you do not have an option to say no without life threatening risk. There is no other choice you will make, no purchase you will make in which there is an inherent life threatening risk if you decline. With any other choice 'no' is always an option. With health care 'no' can kill you. So let me ask you or anyone else who may read this, what do you want from health care? The fifty people whom I have asked so far, from business owners to health care professionals, do not actually know the answer to this question. I would be quite surprised if any one of you knew the answer.
Oh, and one more I forgot (besides the tort reform) just to go all Milton Friedman on you, I agree that doctors should not have to be licensed by the government.
I firmly believe that ALL licensing should be completely voluntary. It is not the governments job to give me a warm and fuzzy feeling about a doctor, it is the doctor's responsibility to gain my trust.
You're either a free market, or you're not.
So long as government continually interferes in the market with entitlements no reforms will work. Medicaid and Medicare skew pricing and always have. Doctors will continually make up their losses with other revenue streams such as cash payments and insurance payments. That is how health care became the mess that it is.
Your list is good one but it negates the history behind the health care mess and how we got here in the first place.
Also don't leave out the complete reform of HMOs* as well as medicine costs. Currently we subsidize Canada and that drives up costs here at home.
*HMO"s were invented by Ted Kennedy as an answer to high cost medical insurance. He succeeded in raising costs even more which is more proof Democrats are clueless to economics.
The bigger picture, to me, is that the Fed crashed the system, (great depression) government came in with easy money and created a social system of control, and the people of this country thanked them for it, and still believe that government is trying to do good. Now we have so called conservatives looking to replace Obama Care with their own socialist system. Where is the real solution going to come from?
Thanks for the info Laurel, I can't say I know much about HMO's. Would you mind explaining a bit of the problem they have created and if there is a possible solution?
That's good. Tort reform must be #1 though. Medical malpractice insurance is just a guaranteed paycheck for attornies.
If my experience and knowledge helps anyone, then you've got it. No nomination required. Just ask.....
:-)
Mike we work in provider side of healthcare. The worst specialty that is victim is OB. The lawyers know that no matter what goes wrong to mother or child, whether accident, circumstances, fate, or error, that a jury will always pay huge sums to the mother or father or family.
It does not matter if the obstetrician, hospital or nurse was at fault or not. It does not matter that the defense can prove they were not at fault. The jury awards millions. Worse yet along with the settlement, the doctor can lose their license or the ability to qualify for malpractice insurance. Needless to say it is most often the patients who cannot pay, who file suit.
You left out tort reform. Most tests by a doctor are done for the purpose of insulating them against some stupid lawsuit. You can't even go to the doctor for a minor ailment without him/her calling for a battery of tests.
And governmental paperwork requirements need to be cut. Take a look at the staff of a doctor's office. There's more paper pushers than there are medical personnel.
That's right. The real corruptors of the insurance industry and healthcare are lawyers. That profession should be outlawed. You don't even have to be a lawyer to sit on the Supreme Court. Just as Kagan.
This issue of healthcare is what separates the natural slave, from a free men. Man is a unique being in his fear of death. Throughout history, it is the threat of death that has allowed other men of power, to enslave those who fear it.
As such slavery is both unproductive and illegal for modern tyrants, control our healthcare system is their hold over life and death. Yet we foolishly give them the ultimate power.
No matter how nuanced a social program, what enters the psyche man when beholden to a central power for birth, life, and death?
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" - Patrick Henry
In Massachusetts people with pre-existing conditions (like my brother who has been fighting cancer for 25 years and beat it five times) end up on Mass Health (Medicaid) along with everyone who cannot afford the rise in premiums since Romneycare went into effect!
We have Medicaid - why not fix that program and make people with pre-existing conditions eligible for coverage there rather than crippling insurance providers and forcing everyone's insurance premiums to go up???
I'm very sorry about your brother, but he sounds like a real fighter!
I guess the concern with covering pre-existing conditions is, why would anyone ever get insurance if they could just wait until they have a reason to get covered?
Even if we adapted Medicaid to accept pre-existing conditions, people would just wait until they need the coverage, and then sink Medicaid?
The reason people don't have coverage isn't because they don't have access to it, it's usually because they can't afford the coverage... I think the best thing we can do is to increase competition to lower the prices to the point where it's no longer a choice between putting food on the table and having health insurance.
I believe the answer is that they do not want to fix the system, they want to collapse it.
The goal is to first take over the existing private payer system (health insurance industry) by collapsing it with regulations like pre-exisiting conditions. Step two, once in control of the payment system, the statists will control all of the healthcare providers (doctors, hospitals, clinics, drug companies). The top tier providers will then take care of the elites and political class - the rest of us will be forced to vote for our healthcare.
This is the Chinese model of state capitalism. Healthcare is the control point.
I just cannot see why anyone would believe Romney will change this trajectory when he is the engineer of it.
The best thing that anyone can do is to get off of the medical grid, and take care of themselves. Get off the poison food grid, and that will solve a lot of problems. Stay away from fluoridated water and vaccines. Supplement with vitamins and minerals, and eat organics, or grow your own food.
There is no stopping this tyranny. It is too late, and the people of this country are too ignorant. They believe what the MSM and government tells them. Just recently they had a media campaign based on a government study that said organics were no better than anything else. Hello people! Can you say "infowar". In other words, it is a war on the people, and we are losing badly.
They will keep us sick, and then take over our health care. Then they will kill off a lot of people with that control. It is simple eugenics finally making some head way.
Organic farmers are not just being hit with SWAT teams by the federal government, they are being hit with false flag attacks as well. Monsanto has actually been caught spreading seed on a farmer's field to infiltrate their non-GMO crops with GMO, then take them to court for patent infringement because their genes showed up in the crop, putting them out of business, or forcing them to buy their seed.
E' Coli can be introduced into a crop, and if anyone thinks this doesn't happen, they should think again. There is a literal war on organics going on.
I don't call our government criminals for no reason. Whether government does it, or their corporate buddies, the fact is that this can only happen if government lets them get away with it, and they do.
I grow my own greens, pick them out of the garden each day, and juice them night and morn. Organic, and no E' Coli. Millions do this, with no problems. The same goes for raw milk.
As a rule, I disregard government studies, and MSM news reports on the subject. (and many others) There are plenty of real scientists and medical professionals that have integrity in their reporting on these things, and they all say that you should know where your food comes from, what is in it, and how it is grown.
Just imagine what the country would look like if we had small farmers producing organic food to feed local populations. Our populations would be healthier, and smarter. Instead, we have massive corporate food monopolies who produce poison that makes the population chronically ill. In a national emergency, we cannot feed our local populations.
I hate to break it to you, but all the deaths in recent years from spinach, etc, has been organic.
I'd like to think that Romney understands the difference between a state law and a federal law. In fact, I think he's said that very thing. Maobamacare wouldn't be a violation of the Constitution IF it were only Illinois that had to obey. Don't like Romeny care? Move out of Taxachusettes.
Well, now I know who to call if the IRS comes to take my property if I don't buy insurance. LUUUUVVV it!
Yep, and the states are pretty much bought off and controlled by the feds. I say that sheriff Mack has it right. It is now up to the sheriffs of the country to push back and hold their constitutional ground in protecting our liberties. A county sheriff can arrest an IRS agent who comes to take your property for not buying insurance.
A sheriff has the right to deputize, and form a posse that could resemble a local militia.
You are correct. States cannot do anything unconstitutional either. Too many folks think the 10th amendment gives state gov'ts unfettered power and that is not the case. In fact, the 10th amendment ends with TO THE PEOPLE. Which is where the ultimate power is supposed to lie.
The states cannot infringe upon our bill of rights any more than the feds can, but from what I can tell, they have a lot more ability to regulate (constitutionally) than the feds do. I sure wish that the founders had focused more specifically on private property rights.
Yeah, Romney is wrong with the "states can do whatever they want". He says states are test kitchens in democracy.
Um, no they are not...they are sovereign republics and they are most certainly NOT test kitchens in socialism.
Oh he does, but it goes to what/who was behind the state law and for what reason.
Myself, I believe RomenyCare was the trial balloon. It is having a chilling effect on the private sector, costs and quality of care across the board in Mass but that story is not being told.
I do not buy his "states can do what they want" argument. Consider if Romney believes the mandate is simply outside the limited powers of the Constitution, or if a mandate is UnConstitutional. If Romney could defend the healthcare mandate on these grounds , then he could, for example, also defend a cloaked state-only gun control law that mandates every gun owner to purchase an $10,000,000 liability insurance policy or lose their carry permit.
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