Truthmatters
Diamond Member
- May 10, 2007
- 80,182
- 2,272
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- Banned
- #21
Profit does not belong in prisons or hospitals
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Well, although HMO and health insurance companies would not be needed if we had universal health care, the public would insist that they remain, and contract with the government to provide care, just like they do with Medicare Advantage plans, which is a private alternative to Medicare. This is the reason that my stock in health care companies has almost doubled in value since 2008, and why I have no intention of getting rid of it.
The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.
Fact.
I mean, why would there even be any? They don't provide any medical service. If anything they would only slow things down. And I'd also assume they'd artificially drive the cost of healthcare up, as they would essentially be making profits without offering any real value. And they do make quite a bit of profit.
Health care should be consumer driven for reasons of both efficiency and ethics. When in possession of adequate information and faced with appropriate incentives, consumers make better choices for their own health than does any third party, be that third party motivated by the most praiseworthy of intentions. Moreover, as a matter of ethics, it is the patient and consumer, not the physician or insurer or employer or regulator, who should be vested with the right to make tradeoffs in the emotionally and sometimes spiritually charged domain of health care.
That said, one must acknowledge that consumers often need support if their choices are to promote their well-being and constraint when they are spending other peoples money. Health care is complex at best and not infrequently rife with nontransparent, anticompetitive, and even fraudulent behavior on the part of the many self-interested agents. Individual consumers can benefit from some of the efforts by governmental and employer sponsors, health insurance plans, provider organizations, and medical management programs. Consumers need others to create meaningful products and processes from which they can choosebundles of products and services that can be measured, priced, purchased, and used not only by the highly educated and motivated individual but by those who are sick and scared, of only modest means and financial sophistication.
The blind spot in the consumer-driven analysis of market performance concerns the importance of coordination in insurance, delivery, and sponsorship. The obdurate insistence on á la carte choice and retail purchasing pushed the theorists of consumerism into positing organizational and market dynamics that have not been observed in the real world. The important issue is not, however, the current status and structure of health care and health insurance but the trend into the future. It seems safe to say that insurance product design will continue to move toward consumer-driven elements and that managed care elements will be recrafted into forms in which consumers choose but are subject to incentives structured by insurers. Enrollees will have more information but also more financial responsibility at the time of receiving care. Products will continue to proliferate and differentiate to accommodate the preferences and purses of potential enrollees. Health plans will specialize in data collection, aggregation, and analysis that can be used not only to support patient choice but also to evaluate provider and product performance through registries, observational studies, and clinical epidemiology.
As it moves further along the consumer pathway, health insurance is likely to strengthen rather than weaken some vestiges of its managed care heritage, especially the development of programs seeking to improve the care of enrollees along the spectrum from full health to dire illness. These include preventive and wellness programs for healthy enrollees, service coordination for patients needing acute care, disease management for enrollees with chronic conditions, and intensive case management for enrollees with severe conditions. These likely will be presented as options rather than mandates, consistent with the consumer-driven ethos, although perhaps with higher cost sharing for those who are eligible but choose not to participate. What is unclear, over the long term, is the extent to which more choice for consumers will prevent health insurers from being able to continue to offer the steep discounts they currently wrest from their provider networks.
The market is no more stuck on first-generation high-deductible insurance products and individually purchased coverage than it was stuck on HMO products and employment-based sponsorship models under managed care. The market continues to pioneer hybrid forms that incorporate elements of both managed care and of health care consumerism. We can name the emerging system managed consumerism or facilitated consumerism, or we can find some more felicitous phrase.30 The important point is that for choice to be meaningful, it has to be choice among meaningful options, and meaningful options need to be designed, built, and managed.
The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.
Fact.
And I LOVE my advantage plan and HAPPY as hell they make a profit!
Profits means TAXES! MY advantage plan net before profit was 2%!
The AVERAGE health insurance net before profit is 4.6%
After paying out an average of 80% in claims, 14% in overhead they have 4.6% left over... BIG F...king DEAL because idiots forget these companies PAY TAXES!!!! Can't take it off shore!
I was thinking about it this morning.
If the government is in the process of socializing medicine and making it available to everybody, wouldn't that eliminate the need for insurance companies?
.....in VERMONT!!
The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.
Fact.
Like in Cuba.
Laugh.
Then let the government allow the companies to COMPETE for its single payer payment.
Prices will drop dramatically.
Then let the government allow the companies to COMPETE for its single payer payment.
Prices will drop dramatically.
THERE IS NO NEED FOR A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM!!!
A) Be honest and tell me why do you think there are 50 million uninsured when the FACTS counter that?
10 million are illegals, 14 million covered already by Medicaid and 18 million pay their own health expense and don't want coverage!
That leaves 4 million!
B) Force all hospitals to send their uninsured claims to the company that is low bid to manage the 4 million truly uninsured and paid by the below.
Hospitals can not then "pad and pass" the uninsured costs to Medicare/insurance companies that pay them!
C) Lawyers making $200 billion should be taxed as tanning salons are under Obamacare. Use the $20 billion to pay the premium for those
that want but can't afford.. and tie the reduction in the tax rate to the reduction of the $850 billion a year in defensive medicine caused
as doctors attest by duplicate tests all out of fear of lawsuits by lawyers!
These 3 steps will cover all the truly uninsured that want insurance. Reduce the $850 billion in defensive medicine and reduce costs sent by hospitals to Medicare/insurance companies.
These steps will reduce insurance premiums/Medicare by 20 to 50% a year!
The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.
Fact.
But they aren't free...
The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.
Fact.
But they aren't free...
“Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.”
The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.
Fact.
Like in Cuba.
Laugh.
Health Care in Cuba
The Cuban health care system is respected around the world, and is literally decades more advanced than any system found in Latin America. For this reason, the Cuban system serves as a model for Third World developing nations.
Why is that funny?
Healthmyths,
Please don't start with your personal insults and screaching rhetoric. First of all, you are going to give yourself a coronary. Second, you have zero credentials in health insurance compared to me. My 50 year career was spent in health insurance, including over 25 years in senior managment at the VP level. Go to the library, and read the March 3 issue of Time Magazine, which is dedicated totally to health care costs, then get back to me. It is the first time I have ever seen the whole convaluted system exposed in a way that people can understand.
The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.
Fact.
Like in Cuba.
Laugh.
Health Care in Cuba
The Cuban health care system is respected around the world, and is literally decades more advanced than any system found in Latin America. For this reason, the Cuban system serves as a model for Third World developing nations.
Why is that funny?
If we Socialize Medicine, can we get rid of Insurance Companies?
Republicans would never let it happen. I'm pretty sure making a profit on suffering is in their party platform, but I'm not sure.
Cantor to Disaster Victims - The Government Shouldn?t Be Picking UP the Tab