Is it just me or does anyone else get chills at the thought of HOW the Health Insurance Industry will save $2 Trillion over the next 10 years?
There it is all over the news... Some how the Health Insurance industry is promising to save $2 Trillion over the next 10 years. The problem is that they aren't really telling anyone how they plan to do it. Or perhaps it might be better to say they haven't told anyone exactly WHO it is they are gonna screw, out of treatment.
I swear to God, that until WE ALL realize that Health INSURANCE for profit is a parasitic plague on "U.S." we are all gonna suffer.
Here is the ONLY way to truly fix Health Care in America.
Only allow Health Insurance Companies to make .5% profit after taxes and make it illegal for them to pay dividends. We can not fix health care until we take the profit from health insurance companies and use it to ACTUALLY pay for HEALTH CARE.
Thoughts?
Ah, Mr. Anderson you do not need an MRI, you just need to take more calcium tablets and those calves will be up to par in no time.
Mrs. Blaze, an EKG is not necessary at this time, the ole ticker sounds good to me.
SAVING MONEY, yeah. I am more than skeptical.
Get rid of private corporations, as far as health care.
I agree with your conclusion.
May 11, 2009 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
2D,
I can not figure out how they could come up with NEW ways to screw "U.S."
May 11, 2009 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, they would not. Bureaucrats all want bigger budgets so pending money creates the need for more money next year. It is the core reason government is as expensive as it is.
May 12, 2009 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
This was supposed to be a reply to Glaivester. oops.
May 12, 2009 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
The MRI facility, the doctor, and the patient would all want the MRI. The bean counter would question the need for the MRI. How does the bean counter gain power by rejecting the MRI?
You might be mixing up the revenue stream to MRI facilities with the operating budget of the bureaucracy. The latter is what a criminally-minded bureaucrat might want to fudge in favor of more power, absent good controls. The actual cost of the MRI is not in his or her budget.
Such a bureaucrat might seek to get more budget by showing that more resources are needed to decide which MRIs to fund. Would such a person reject significant numbers of MRIs to make this case? I'm skeptical.
May 12, 2009 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Get rid of private corporations, as far as health care.
Yes, because the government would never deny MRIs and EKGs to save a buck.
May 12, 2009 12:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Face, how dare you propose a .5% profit for those vultures! That is way too much! Heh, heh! Great idea!
May 11, 2009 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
CV D,
You are correct the sooner we snuff out the insurance companies the better... any way we can come up with negative dividends?
May 11, 2009 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't hear talk of privatizing utilities or the postal service to private companies and limiting them to 0.5% profit. It's just not workable. My first thought at reading your plan is that a single payer healthcare plan would not only be preferable but even politically more palatable.
May 11, 2009 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
JP,
That was the plan. Glad you saw the point.
May 11, 2009 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ooo, Oooo!! (Waving hand in the air) I know! I know!! Those of us with chronic diseases are all too familiar with the way the health care industry cuts costs; First, they deny coverage, then, they deny coverage, and finally, and most importantly, they deny coverage.
May 11, 2009 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
MS1,
Seems you might have read some of my rants on
THE PAIN TAX. Just TODAY I called my insurance company for the 5th time on one bill. Insurance companies ARE NOTHING BUT PARASITES.
May 11, 2009 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's great to be the insurere because not only do you set the premiums for the insured, but you set the cost for the provider. Your only true function is to extract money whenever and wherever possible.
May 12, 2009 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Those of you who have Netflix "Instant download" can take a look at Frontline's "Sick Around the World." It's very good - looking at the national health care systems of Japan, U.K., Switzerland, Germany and Taiwan.
Guess what? While each of the five countries has different systems, all share one feature: health insurance firms who participate in national health care are NON-PROFIT only!
If you want to know what's medieval about our U.S. system (or lack thereof), look for the Highwaymen. .5% is unreasonable - way too much.
May 11, 2009 5:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
NB,
EXACTLY... "HIGHWAYMEN"... EXACTLY! I will forever put Highwaymen together with insurance companies. Until we kill off the parasites the system will never get well.
THANK YOU for the perfect word "Highwaymen"!
May 11, 2009 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
1. Deny coverage
2. Deny care
Costs reduced 100%.
Patient died? Death isn't a healthcare cost.
May 11, 2009 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
BB,
I REALLY believe that most if not all insurance companies root for just what you describe so adeptly.
May 11, 2009 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
And I am sure that when big deficits occur, it will never, ever occur to government to save money this way.
May 12, 2009 12:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure too. I mean, it's not like the gov't could take a poll and bury it, or do research and bury it, like, say, a tobacco company.
It's not like the gov't can hide behind a phalanx of attorneys when probed following the release of any information.
May 12, 2009 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
How is single payer going to limit real health care cost increases? Sure, it might reduce overhead, but overhead of 30% only grows with fundamental growth in outlays.
I like the idea of Single Payer, but I don't like the arguments put out to support it or to try to ridicule other approaches.
That said, the $2T savings is bullshit as far as I can tell. 1.5% will not save $200B/year unless it is 1.5% of the total GDP.
May 11, 2009 8:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
That 1.5% is supposed to compound; in theory the costs 10 years down the road will be somewhere around 10-15% lower (the exact amounts depend on what the actual projected annual increase with and without the 1.5% savings are).
May 12, 2009 12:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, the future costs will be HIGHER not lower, but not AS HIGH. The rate of INCREASE is what will be lowered marginally. At some point the rate of increase might go negative if it keeps dropping by 1.5% of the total health care cost at the time. But when? And how does it add up to an average of %200B/yr over the first 10 years?
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/11/health_care_and_student_loans_the_bad_guys_are_on/#comment-3463945
May 12, 2009 3:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
There should be more of a response to this even though its been only six hours. But stay on this, this is new news. And there should be heavy debate here. Strong calls to the WH.
May 11, 2009 9:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought Matt Miller did a great job on Marketplace tonight.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/11/pm_employer_health_care/
Worth a listen.
Thanks O¿O, rec'd, and I hope you are feeling better. Seems like it
=D
May 11, 2009 9:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I actually laughed when I first heard about the health insurance companies "pledging" to save money. I feel like laughing now just thinking about the idea. The only up side I see is that the insurance companies must be feeling some real heat and like the career criminal, are promising reform before the pleading with the judge before they hear the prison door clanging shut one last time.
May 11, 2009 10:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
If it's not just smoke, it's mirrors?
I think the "pledge" is just PR but it could be they are getting smarter (which is a bad thing, like crooks getting smarter).
"We have been overcharging you by 25% for years now, so starting sometime soon we'll cut back by 1.5 points so that we're only overcharging you by 23.5%. Sound fair? Great, now let's move forward and drop this silly discussion!"
May 12, 2009 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
(Cigar-chomping HMO): Look, we put a coupla $trillion over ten years on the table and that ain't no chicken feed. But hey, it's business (forget all this talk about sick and dying people), everything's negotiable, right? How about $2.5 trillion over six years?
C'mon, let's make a deal. Of course, some of the Dudley Do-right bobbleheads, like those damn doctors and nurses, will ask, if we can cut $trillions in costs when we feel the least bit threatened by gov intervention, why we haven't done it before?
I mean, I guess we could have cut some of our outrageous profit-taking, bankrupting a few thousand less families, or even performed some of those necessary procedures that we denied to people who are now disabled or living in pain, if they survived at all, but that's water under the bridge, my friends. Water under the bridge. We're talking the future.
Yes, yes, yes, if we can cut $trillions now, we could have done a decade ago or a decade before that; we could have even saved all of those $billions donated to political campaigns (ahem, I mean the legal ones). We could have done any of this but nobody really asked. Not seriously.
May 11, 2009 11:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brilliant! It is insanity to perpetuate the system as it now stands because it has already shown it's unable to perform it's function, providing medical services. It is a business and the business of business is making profit. Anything else is little more then a necessary evil. We need a system that has no other purpose then providing healthcare to all.
Single payer would be grand.
Take a look at the history of insurance in this country. The Farmer's developed a mutual insurance company that became so well padded with cash they were returning funds to the members in good years. Private money found this loose cah and invaded. Now, all we have to remind us of what once was a great institution is the names.
BTW, this is perpetuated in many other industries. Insurance: Farmers' Insurance and State Farm. Medical Care, who doesn't have local hospital named after a Saint? and real estate, Forest Glen Homes, well, it used to be a forest, but now it's amaze of pavement and apartments with nary a tree in sight!
May 12, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Arlen Specter making positive noises about the public option:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090511/ap_on_go_co/us_specter_health_overhaul
good news...
May 12, 2009 8:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Obey, have not seen you around much. Are we in different threads or did you get busy? :-)
"Republicans and even some conservative Democrats strongly oppose a public plan, contending it would drive private insurance companies out of business."
Part of the point is to drive down margins on the "payment" side of health care. That will statistically drive some poorly run companies out of business but it will generally only require belt-tightening -- run more efficiently and with less profit margin than before. If they cannot be competitive, they should not be in business... this is a foundation of modern business ethic which embraces competition as a good.
I don't get why I don't see such a sensible reply in the MSM.
May 12, 2009 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've been in the business for over 35 years and believe me, if they save $2 trillion dollars, it won't take another 10 years discover who paid for it and who got hurt in the process. The whole industry is a ponzi scheme.
May 12, 2009 9:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
So, there is no competition, it's all collusion and conspiracy?
May 12, 2009 4:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the words of the next constant for Dancing with the Stars, you betcha!
May 13, 2009 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's important to keep in mind that White House promotional presentations are not the complete story of what's going on--
"45 Centrist Democrats Protest Secrecy of Health Care Talks/
Dozens of Blue Dogs complain to three House chairmen"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/us/politics/12dems.html?ref=todayspaper
....Many Blue Dogs come from usually Republican districts or swing districts and see their stance on health care as vital to their political survival. By contrast, the committee chairmen writing the House bill have safe Democratic seats.
The Blue Dogs said the policy-making process in the House compared unfavorably with the approach in the Senate, where two committees have held open forums and the chairman of the Finance Committee, a Democrat, is working with the panel’s senior Republican....
The committee chairmen writing the House bill are Representatives Henry A. Waxman and George Miller, both of California, and Charles B. Rangel of New York...
May 12, 2009 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink