Insured 20 year old man stuck with $11,000 hospital bill

Yes, you gave me a link, not to the accountings "for every penny", but to a paper written by employees of the Heritage Foundation, quoting, of all people, Robert Book, another employee of the Heritage Foundation.... Have you even looked the Book's resume? These are no accountings, as you promised, but propaganda papers by a group that has an agenda, as you apparently do.

 

No need to type a different response.

 

I checked with the Heritage Foundation, and they confirm that healthcare is not, repeat NOT, 18% of Steve Forbes' gross domestic product, thereby disqualifying him from advising the rest of us on this subject and casting serious doubt upon his motives.

 

/yawn zzzzZZZZZZzzzzzzzz........

 

CIHI is not the health care establishment. How often do I have to give facts? You just ignore them. Canada is ranked 30th and the U S is raked 37th. We spend so much more on health care than any other country and still rank 37th.

 

There is not less fraud in the private sector but the insurers are th guilty parties. In Medicare most fraud is by the private sector's healthcare providers.

 

Fraud by private sector health care providers. There is not enough oversight because the right refuses to pay for more investigators. Holder is asking for more help. The right denies the money for the investigations.

 

Why would Holder be asking for more oversight and spending more AG money on catching this fraud? Why didn't the Bush administration spend more time on this? Mostly private sector health care provider fraud. Why party cares about that?

Your copynpaste is biased. Why was it necessary to restrict insurers to 20% administrative overhead? Even Ryan's attempt to privatize Medicare has been shown to cost Seniors most in out of pocket expenses. The private sector does not want to cover these costly customers without very large increases in the customers' premiums.

All Republican plans at privatizing usually do not affect customers for 10 years? They must know how bad their plans are and want to put distance between action and effect.

 

Yes, on what they consider "fraud". Guess what they do to prevent this fraud? They spend more money on investigations. Guess what the rightists in Congress do? They try to cut more money from investigations.

 

CIHI is tasked by Canadian law to annually collect and report on all aspects of the Canadian health system. They survey every doctor and medical center every year (by law, all MD's must co-operate). The Canadian govt bases its policies on the results of the CIHI.

Those are the facts.

 

Not true. CIHI was incorporated under the Canada Corporations Act in 1994.[4] Federal, provincial, and territorial governments created CIHI as a “not-for-profit, independent organization dedicated to forging a common approach to Canadian health information

They are a private, not-for-profit entity. They charge for their services and membership.

 

Then PROVE it.

Then PROVE it. Why can't you lefties just ACCEPT the fact that GOVERNMENT is NEVER accountable for your money?????

A. It's not their money

B. They actually get REWARDED for spending it.....

For political purposes DUH..... Do you REALLY believe he cares about LOWERING money the government spends?????

The MORE they spend, the MORE they attempt to justify further spending increases. You just haven't figured out the government yet.

It wasn't NECCESSARY. It was a POLITICAL ploy to make the ACA actually look like it's doing something.

And THANKS to ACA, premiums are going to SKYROCKET over the next two years because not enough healthy young'uns are signing up to offset costs.

ACA is a DISASTER in terms of lowering healthcare insurance......

Where you pull that out of and did you wipe it off first at least?

You actually believe the government cares about your money and wants to drastically cut spending.....

The indoctrination is strong with this one.

 

When you say "We should not be paying 18% of the gross domestic product for health care, and we should not have so many uninsured" what are you saying? It sounds like you want your neighbors to pay for your care. Also, We do not pay 18%. The government has unconstitutionally involved itself in health care. It needs to stop. When it does you will have affordable health care.

 

No. Your strong wish for plundering your neighbors is not constitutional. It is theft. Those who want it are tyrants and thieves.

 

I will tell you this one time, but you are far too highly invested in your position to listen, so I am not hopeful that it will sink in:
1. No one other than me has ever paid for my health care;
2. I am paying for the health care of others, involuntarily, and so are you, whether you know it or not;
3. Items #'s 1 and 2 will continue into the future, without cease;
4. If you want a system of insurance of any kind, including health insurance, you must understand that it was conceived as a cooperative endeavor, where a large group of us, say 300 million of us, pay into the fund a nominal fee monthly, quarterly, yearly or otherwise, and the fund pays all of the losses for all of the group; the fund pays out all of the premiums (as it is a non-profit and needs nothing but administrative expenses, which it derives from the fruits of investing the premiums until they must be paid out); its premiums are calculated, not by how wealthy its administrators wish to be, but by what it believes its cummulative losses will be for the period (usually fiscal year); and it results in the spreading of the risk so that no one is bankrupted by sustaining a loss.
5. It was never meant to be a profitable industry, but a coop for spreading the risk of loss, coops are not communists, we have had them throughout our history in myriad forms;
6. At some point, corruption began to set in, and the industry began to operate and to diminish the percentage of payout of premiums so that, in about 1991 or so, a number of companies (there is an excellent article that I stumbled upon when I bought a newspaper in Biloxi, MS on the way through, explaining this--it can be found on the internet) hired a consulting firm to advise them how to increase profits. That firm determined that the industry, at that time, was paying out about 93% of premiums in claims and that it should adopt the following model to reduce that percentage, all of which savings went directly to the bottom line.
6. The model is this for liability claims: evaluate the fair market value of the claim and offer 40% of that to settle--60% of claimants will take the 40% and go; negotiate with the remaining claimants up to 60% of the fair market value of the claim--another 20% of claimants will settle within that range; the remaining 20% of claims you proceed to trial--you may have to actually pay the actual fair value of those claims, but your will still average less than 100% of fair value on that 20%; In the 20 years after that began, claims payouts dropped from 93% of premiums to 57% of premiums, but I am sure that none of that went into anyone's pocket.
7. This is a model for liability and property damage claims, but the same principle applies to property insurance and health insurance, that is, the spreading of the risk has taken a back seat to the profit motive. In the 70's and 80's, when interest rates were in the teens, as high was 18% apr, the return on the float was substantial (if you have $150 million in your reserve account at any given time, the annual interest is $27 million) and there was plenty of cash floating around the administrative expense fund; when interest rates went down, there were still investments able to bring returns around 10%, but it takes a less liquid profile, and there is still less slush that they were used to.
8. What we have seen since then is that, rather than spreading the risk nationwide, they began demanding that each region of the country turn a profit (remember they weren't supposed to make a profit before, just live on the float); then more discreet regions were required to turn a profit, like states, and then regions within states, then counties, and now, every policy has to turn a profit; and every time there is a natural disaster, they are doing a number of things: a) cancelling policies in areas that were struck and sending their friends in legislatures and congress to establish FEMA flood insurance programs and state quasi-public workers' compensation programs and anything else that will take over any policy that is less than a super-preferred risk (read "no risk"), leaving all of the gravy for the insurance industry and the government to take the risk.
9. So, your precious insurance industry has morphed something that was supposed to protect the lambs into a mutton factory (read that "cash cow") and, at least in the arena of health care, has bloated the cost to 18% of the GDP. (http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...h-20-percent-of-u-dot-s-dot-economy-by-2021);
10. Someone said recenlty, maybe you, that health insurance was a low-margin industry and cited an article that said that companies manipulate their accountings to show a uniform of 3%, although that is not an accurate indication of the companies' profitability because they downplay it. Well the above-cited article notes that we will spend $4 trillion this year on health insurance. I understand that a lot of that is medicare and medicaid, and that health care providers and health insurers pass on the free services to private payers, but even 3% of $4 trillion is, what $120 milion? That's a lot of money. And, according to the article, that is what it is dumbed down to!

Bottom line--insurance model has been perverted to this, and you are accusing me of wanting someone to pay for my insurance? You haven't just missed the target, you aren't even on the same planet!

 

Here is an article that you could have found if you had wanted to find it. It is not the one that I referred to, but it is almost as good. There are more. I will find them for you.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nw&pname=mm_0907_story1.html

 

I agree with mistervertitus.

Libs like you want someone else to supply your healthcare needs.

 

I know that you won't read this, but I'm giving it to you anyway. It adverts to the article that I was telling you about.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/...d-It-Write-A-Sham-Study-On-Healthcare-Reform#

 

Libs?!? I don't know where you come from and you, obviously don't know where I come from, but a lib is something that I have never been called. What's more, I am self-employed and carry my own health insurance and pay heavily for a policy that pays nothing (see above). No one has ever paid for my health care or health insurance (not since I left the State Police in 1981, anyway), and that is the problem. I am paying for the healthcare of others who go to the ER for free and am tired of it. The people who are not concerned about this problem are generally those working on salary with benefits, who have no idea how much their employers are paying for their health insurance or how that impacts what their employers are able to pay them. Is that you?

 

Then prove it.

Then prove it.

Then prove it.

He cares about crimes. Side product is returned money. Prove that he doesn't care.

Prove it. I find that nonsense.

Then why did customers get refunds. Prove that it wasn't necessary.

Prove it.

Prove it.

Where have you been? Prove me wrong.

Stop your dodging. Prove that the GOP did not stop funding for investigators.

I do not believe that you are indoctrinated. I believe that you avoid the truth to parrot the RW propaganda.

 

It is kinda simple. We waste too much money and do not get enough national healthy outcome.

No wonder you needed his comments explained.

Did you leave the country? The country pays 18% of GDP on health care.

No matter your opinion, we still pay 18% of our GDP on health care. Oh, prove that, without government spending on Medicaid and Medicare, we would have affordable health care.

- - - Updated - - -

Prove it.

 

Great post but you are right that it is a waste of effort.

 

See, Geau, it is a waste of time to give facts and reasons to some RW, cough, thinkers.

 

I won't hold it against you.

He is not one of the 5.7% of Americans needing individual plans and he seems not to be one of the small business owners who want to help their employees have good health care coverage. He does seem to be a parrot for RW propaganda. No research, just repeating what he was told.

 

That was quite a pant load.

You be responsible for you. I will be responsible for me. Your neighbor will be responsible for himself and his family. Even if you have paid your way you are demanding that some of your neighbors pay for other of your neighbors.

No thanks. Let's get the government completely out of it and return to insurance as a transfer of risk from one party to another for a fee. Or, we can do as you have done, and choose tyranny.

I will choose freedom. I will choose liberty.