Healthcare Solution Is So Simple

[martybegan]

The 8 step road to affordable healthcare for all:

1. Price transparency and consistency. Require all providers (hospitals, doctors, etc..) to clearly publish their prices by service and by diagnosis in advance, physically and electronically, in both human and machine-readable formats.

2. Stop gouging the uninsured. Require that providers give people who are paying out of their own pocket “most favored nation” status – giving them the best price that the provider offers to any private insurer.

3. Easier approval for generics in the US – to create more price competition in drugs and devices, and bring prices down.

4. FDA drug approval reciprocity with Europe. Once a drug is approved in Europe or the US, it defaults to an approved state across the Atlantic.

5. Tort reform. Cap pain and suffering awards. Reduce some of the drive for defensive medicine.

6. *Increase* medical R&D from the NIH and elsewhere (instead of decreasing it, as the Trump budget proposed). And specifically fund R&D into more cost-effective treatments that can bring the cost of healthcare down.

7. Allow cross-state exchanges.

8. Slowly phase out the employer health care tax credit – the single thing that most ties health insurance to one’s job, and which significantly distorts insurance markets.

Healthcare Improvements Republicans Could Make

On 2, I would make it the median cost based on the insurances the provider takes. On 8 I would accept this only with a corresponding rate reduction to my current taxes.

 

[Cecilie1200]

How does the so called "price transparency and consistency" work? How can they know the price when they don't know what's wrong with you? And how does that make them any cheaper. Is the problem that people think their treatment is cheap, go and get a bill too big?

The problem is that people don't care what they're paying. Because they're not paying.

True. Most people do not even bother to look at their Explanation of Benefits when they receive it, unless they're questioning the amount of their co-pay and deductible. They just shrug, say, "Hey, it got paid", and toss the thing.

You're so right and most don't even look at the summary of benefits included in their policy's much less the provider network. Same people that call for personal responsibility. duh

Yeah, you wandered right off onto a tangent with that last sentence. I'm afraid I'm going to need to evidential support if you want to make that assertion.

 

[debbiedowner]

How does the so called "price transparency and consistency" work? How can they know the price when they don't know what's wrong with you? And how does that make them any cheaper. Is the problem that people think their treatment is cheap, go and get a bill too big?

The problem is that people don't care what they're paying. Because they're not paying.

True. Most people do not even bother to look at their Explanation of Benefits when they receive it, unless they're questioning the amount of their co-pay and deductible. They just shrug, say, "Hey, it got paid", and toss the thing.

You're so right and most don't even look at the summary of benefits included in their policy's much less the provider network. Same people that call for personal responsibility. duh

Yeah, you wandered right off onto a tangent with that last sentence. I'm afraid I'm going to need to evidential support if you want to make that assertion.

Personal responsibility in that context meant it is your responsibility to read your policy instead of throwing it over in the corner, it is up to you when you purchase to know what you purchase, that is your responsibility. If you bought through an agent and he/she explained and provided a summary of benefits and asked you if you understood and you replied yes, then it's on you after that.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Somewhere over the past 40 years people started demanding co pays for everything when it just used to be you paid until your deductible was met then the insurance company usually paid 80% and you paid 20% up until a certain amount and then you had 100% coverage. Everyone has went co pay crazy over the years. I suppose as I think the co pay thing started with HMO's as I look back.

No, the "copay thing" started with people being outraged by the idea that they should have deductibles that made them pay for things, rather than simply having everything they wanted paid for them from the get-go. Copays were a way to try to make such a silly system at least a BIT more cost-effective.

 

[debbiedowner]

Somewhere over the past 40 years people started demanding co pays for everything when it just used to be you paid until your deductible was met then the insurance company usually paid 80% and you paid 20% up until a certain amount and then you had 100% coverage. Everyone has went co pay crazy over the years. I suppose as I think the co pay thing started with HMO's as I look back.

No, the "copay thing" started with people being outraged by the idea that they should have deductibles that made them pay for things, rather than simply having everything they wanted paid for them from the get-go. Copays were a way to try to make such a silly system at least a BIT more cost-effective.

And that was when HMO's came on the scene, that they should have deductibles. You very seldom saw that until the HMO's.

 

[Cecilie1200]

How does the so called "price transparency and consistency" work? How can they know the price when they don't know what's wrong with you? And how does that make them any cheaper. Is the problem that people think their treatment is cheap, go and get a bill too big?

The problem is that people don't care what they're paying. Because they're not paying.

True. Most people do not even bother to look at their Explanation of Benefits when they receive it, unless they're questioning the amount of their co-pay and deductible. They just shrug, say, "Hey, it got paid", and toss the thing.

You're so right and most don't even look at the summary of benefits included in their policy's much less the provider network. Same people that call for personal responsibility. duh

Yeah, you wandered right off onto a tangent with that last sentence. I'm afraid I'm going to need to evidential support if you want to make that assertion.

Personal responsibility in that context meant it is your responsibility to read your policy instead of throwing it over in the corner, it is up to you when you purchase to know what you purchase, that is your responsibility. If you bought through an agent and he/she explained and provided a summary of benefits and asked you if you understood and you replied yes, then it's on you after that.

Thank you, I know what personal responsibility is, and I didn't request a definition of the term. What I asked for was empirical evidence of your assertion that the "same people that call for personal responsibility" are the ones who don't read their summary of benefits.

 

[debbiedowner]

The problem is that people don't care what they're paying. Because they're not paying.

True. Most people do not even bother to look at their Explanation of Benefits when they receive it, unless they're questioning the amount of their co-pay and deductible. They just shrug, say, "Hey, it got paid", and toss the thing.

You're so right and most don't even look at the summary of benefits included in their policy's much less the provider network. Same people that call for personal responsibility. duh

Yeah, you wandered right off onto a tangent with that last sentence. I'm afraid I'm going to need to evidential support if you want to make that assertion.

Personal responsibility in that context meant it is your responsibility to read your policy instead of throwing it over in the corner, it is up to you when you purchase to know what you purchase, that is your responsibility. If you bought through an agent and he/she explained and provided a summary of benefits and asked you if you understood and you replied yes, then it's on you after that.

Thank you, I know what personal responsibility is, and I didn't request a definition of the term. What I asked for was empirical evidence of your assertion that the "same people that call for personal responsibility" are the ones who don't read their summary of benefits.

I can't or I'd give myself away. End of discussion for me.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Somewhere over the past 40 years people started demanding co pays for everything when it just used to be you paid until your deductible was met then the insurance company usually paid 80% and you paid 20% up until a certain amount and then you had 100% coverage. Everyone has went co pay crazy over the years. I suppose as I think the co pay thing started with HMO's as I look back.

No, the "copay thing" started with people being outraged by the idea that they should have deductibles that made them pay for things, rather than simply having everything they wanted paid for them from the get-go. Copays were a way to try to make such a silly system at least a BIT more cost-effective.

And that was when HMO's came on the scene, that they should have deductibles. You very seldom saw that until the HMO's.

I get that your particular vision of the anointed requires you to cast everything as "the fault of the eeeevil corporations", but I have to tell you that it's seriously skewing your perception of cause and effect.

Have you considered that HMOs are not the cause and copays the effect, but rather that BOTH are two effects of another cause?

 

[dblack]

How does the so called "price transparency and consistency" work? How can they know the price when they don't know what's wrong with you? And how does that make them any cheaper. Is the problem that people think their treatment is cheap, go and get a bill too big?

The problem is that people don't care what they're paying. Because they're not paying.

True. Most people do not even bother to look at their Explanation of Benefits when they receive it, unless they're questioning the amount of their co-pay and deductible. They just shrug, say, "Hey, it got paid", and toss the thing.

You're so right and most don't even look at the summary of benefits included in their policy's much less the provider network. Same people that call for personal responsibility. duh

Yeah, you wandered right off onto a tangent with that last sentence. I'm afraid I'm going to need to evidential support if you want to make that assertion.

Personal responsibility in that context meant it is your responsibility to read your policy instead of throwing it over in the corner, it is up to you when you purchase to know what you purchase, that is your responsibility. If you bought through an agent and he/she explained and provided a summary of benefits and asked you if you understood and you replied yes, then it's on you after that.

Very true. And in a free market, this would shake out to a reasonable balance. People would avoid schemes that don't make any sense. But when government policy attempts to push people into decisions they might avoid otherwise, it skews the end result. We currently over-insure as a society, and it's costing us.

 

[Cecilie1200]

True. Most people do not even bother to look at their Explanation of Benefits when they receive it, unless they're questioning the amount of their co-pay and deductible. They just shrug, say, "Hey, it got paid", and toss the thing.

You're so right and most don't even look at the summary of benefits included in their policy's much less the provider network. Same people that call for personal responsibility. duh

Yeah, you wandered right off onto a tangent with that last sentence. I'm afraid I'm going to need to evidential support if you want to make that assertion.

Personal responsibility in that context meant it is your responsibility to read your policy instead of throwing it over in the corner, it is up to you when you purchase to know what you purchase, that is your responsibility. If you bought through an agent and he/she explained and provided a summary of benefits and asked you if you understood and you replied yes, then it's on you after that.

Thank you, I know what personal responsibility is, and I didn't request a definition of the term. What I asked for was empirical evidence of your assertion that the "same people that call for personal responsibility" are the ones who don't read their summary of benefits.

I can't or I'd give myself away. End of discussion for me.

Why do I think that doesn't mean you're actually going to shut up, but instead, will just demand that we take your word for it because you can't "give yourself away"?

We'll see. Maybe I'm just overly cynical.