We're all being hoodwinked!

[g5000]

What are your ideas?

I've been posting my ideas on here for years.

Ready? It is going to be longer than a tweet.

1. We should be buying our health insurance the same way we buy our home, auto, and life insurance. I should be able to pick up the phone and call any insurance company in the country and buy the insurance I want. This way, I have maximum leverage since I can hang up if I am not satisfied and call any one of a constellation of competitors, just like I do now with my home, auto, and life insurance.

2. We need to eliminate employer sponsored health insurance (ESHI). ESHI is one of the biggest drivers of increasing health care costs. Also, employees are completely hostage to their employer's insurance. There is no negotiation. It is a take it or leave it proposition from a single insurer. And if you lose your job, you lose your health insurance. And you don't get new insurance until you have been in your new job for up to six months. With my home, auto, and life insurance, I get bundle discounts and long term customer discounts.

We can easily disincentivize ESHI by eliminating the tax exemption we currently have for ESHI.

3. We need LESS government in health care, not more. The government is the biggest market entity in the health insurance market, and it gets to write the rules for its private sector competitors. This is not the case in the auto, home, and life insurance markets, where prices have been DROPPING.

4. Raise the Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages to 70 immediately and index to 9 percent of the population going forward. When Social Security was enacted, the average life expectancy was 60 and only 6 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. When Medicare was added on top, 9 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. Today, average life expectancy is 78 and nearly 15 percent of Americans are over the age of 65. We have nearly tripled our "entitlement" load.

We are living longer, we should be working longer.

Social Security was insurance. Not everyone was expected to collect. Now it is an entitlement.

We need to index the retirement age to either life expectancy or back to 9 percent of the population.

When we average life expectancy to 100 years, are we going to live one third of our lives on Social Security? I don't think so! We clearly need to raise the eligibility age.

Raise the eligibility age to 70. That's not even life expectancy, but you would be paying into Social Security and Medicare five more years and drawing out five less years. That's an astronomical savings of federal outlays right there.

 

[g5000]

SOTU

Neutron bomb

Start fresh

Outstanding.

(kidding)

Too bad. I kinda liked it.

 

[JGalt]

Free market mechanisms and government policies are mutually exclusive. The reason health care is so expensive is because of excessive government meddling.

 

[depotoo]

Start with tort reform, selling across state lines and get govt out of the avg Americans healthcare. And go from there.

 

[Auld Phart]

SOTU

Neutron bomb

Start fresh

Outstanding.

(kidding)

Too bad. I kinda liked it.

Had to add the last...

(Big Brother is watching)

 

[forkup]

As we all argue about Obamacare vs. Trumpcare vs. Single-payer vs. no federal healthcare program, we're all falling into a nonsensical narrative. NONE of these approaches deals with the real problem in healthcare:

The cost of healthcare is way, way to high!

I'd like you all to tell us your ideas on how to reduce the cost of healthcare. To forget the typical partisanship.

Heathcare cost could be reduced thru free market mechanisms, it could be reduced by government policies. It could be some combination of both...or perhaps some new innovative ideas.

What are your ideas?

I live in a country with socialized healthcare but my wife is American. These are the differences I can identify. My healthcare is roughly half the price of yours. First of becoming a doctor doesn't entail debt in my country, nor does a doctor need high malpractice insurances. This means a doctor needs to charge less money for it to be profitable. Our administration is simpler. No cornucopia of different insurance companies with different plans, coverages, charges. Here everybody is covered in the same way for the same costs. This saves a bundle on red tape. We get our medicine immediately at our pharmacies. Because they don't have to find out if the medicine is covered or not. Very few of our general practitioners have secretaries. My town pop around 35000 is served by about 20 people at our health insurance place. Etc. All these people that handle administration that we don't need drive prices down. And lastly the for profit motive only is there for the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors. Nurses, hospitals and the like are government paid/owned. This means another cost eliminated. In short healthcare doesn't need to be unaffordable but it takes more than calling for single payer. It is a completely different philosophy towards health care.[/QUOTE]

 

[BluesLegend]

I'm sure America's best and brightest will invest 10 years and $400k into earning a medical degree only to be fucked over by the mooching left in a single payer government healthcare cabal. /sarcasm

 

[forkup]

Free market mechanisms and government policies are mutually exclusive. The reason health care is so expensive is because of excessive government meddling.

Explain to me way you think the free market is better suited to dispense healthcare?

 

[g5000]

First of becoming a doctor doesn't entail debt in my country, nor does a doctor need high malpractice insurances.

Why doesn't a doctor need high malpractice insurance?

Let's say a doctor comes to work drunk out of his mind, and he replaces a patient's spleen with a rubber duck. What recourse does the dead man's survivors have?

 

[forkup]

I'm sure America's best and brightest will invest 10 years and $400k into earning a medical degree only to be fucked over by the mooching left in a single payer government healthcare cabal. /sarcasm

First of becoming a doctor doesn't entail debt in my country,

If you drive the cost down of earning a medical degree. You need to earn less during your career.

 

[JGalt]

Free market mechanisms and government policies are mutually exclusive. The reason health care is so expensive is because of excessive government meddling.

Explain to me way you think the free market is better suited to dispense healthcare?

Because the free market has worked for thousands of years. Communism has only been around for 90 or so odd years, and it's failed every time.

 

[forkup]

First of becoming a doctor doesn't entail debt in my country, nor does a doctor need high malpractice insurances.

Why doesn't a doctor need high malpractice insurance?

Let's say a doctor comes to work drunk out of his mind, and he replaces a patient's spleen with a rubber duck. What recourse does the dead man's survivors have?

They can charge him. And they would get damages and the doctor would be criminally charged. They wouldn't however be able to demand millions as is the case in the US.

 

[Ringel05]

Well first of all health care begins at home.
Something Americans almost never heard of - PREVENTION.
Prevention plays almost no part in American healthcare, only treatment.
Consider 70% of every dollar Americans spend on treating an illness is self inflicted.
Over eating tops them all, then smoking, then a sedentary lifestyle.
Eat well, don't smoke and moderately exercise and your healthcare cost will, on average, drop 70%.
Just don't expect your insurance premiums to drop however, because you still have to pay for all of the other fat, lazy people who eat garbage and their health costs.

Nah, more like you have to pay for the CEO's new solid silver faucets throughout his/her 10k square foot mansion or for his/her yacht upgrades..........

 

[forkup]

Free market mechanisms and government policies are mutually exclusive. The reason health care is so expensive is because of excessive government meddling.

Explain to me way you think the free market is better suited to dispense healthcare?

Because the free market has worked for thousands of years. Communism has only been around for 90 or so odd years, and it's failed every time.

There is a huge difference between communism and the government providing basic services that shouldn't have a for profit motive. As I said it works in my country and we have a free market economy, just not for things that are deemed human necessities. Education, health, prisons , food, shelter, to name some basics.

 

[g5000]

I think you should use the British model.

Trump prefers Slovenian models.


Kidding aside, Trump has said he prefers the Canadian and Australian health care systems.

 

[BluesLegend]

I'm sure America's best and brightest will invest 10 years and $400k into earning a medical degree only to be fucked over by the mooching left in a single payer government healthcare cabal. /sarcasm

First of becoming a doctor doesn't entail debt in my country,

If you drive the cost down of earning a medical degree. You need to earn less during your career.

Are you dumb? Holy shit what dimwit liberal arts college taught you that?

 

[g5000]

Did somebody say hoodwinked?

What are your ideas?

You're gonna love my health care plan, bleev me. It will be terrific. ObamaCare is a disaster. Total. Disaster. I can't wait to run this guy out of town on a rail, folks. (cheers, applause, hoots) Won't it be great? No more Obama! (yeehaws, applause) You're gonna get tired of winning. My beautiful health care plan will cure cancer. It will pay for my daughter's fake tits. And no Mexicans will ever be able to get insurance again! (wild stomping, cheers) We are going to build more hospitals, more clinics, hire more doctors, and hot nurses, I promised hot nurses didn't I? (laughter) Yeah! I love nurses. Sometimes I wish I was as sick as Hillary so I could visit some nurses, you know what I mean? (laughter, applause, "locker up! locker up!") You got that right! Locker up!

And that's my health care plan, folks. What do you think? Do you love it? (applause, cheers, whistles, music) It's beautiful! Beautiful.

 

[forkup]

I'm sure America's best and brightest will invest 10 years and $400k into earning a medical degree only to be fucked over by the mooching left in a single payer government healthcare cabal. /sarcasm

First of becoming a doctor doesn't entail debt in my country,

If you drive the cost down of earning a medical degree. You need to earn less during your career.

Are you dumb? Holy shit what dimwit liberal arts college taught you that?

Please explain the fault in this reasoning if you are that smart.

 

[BluesLegend]

I'm sure America's best and brightest will invest 10 years and $400k into earning a medical degree only to be fucked over by the mooching left in a single payer government healthcare cabal. /sarcasm

First of becoming a doctor doesn't entail debt in my country,

If you drive the cost down of earning a medical degree. You need to earn less during your career.

Are you dumb? Holy shit what dimwit liberal arts college taught you that?

Please explain the fault in this reasoning if you are that smart.

Okay, do you want the best and brightest performing your surgery? Well that cost a more money. Pay doctors shit and the best and brightest will do something else for a living.

 

[Crixus]

stop giving free care to illegals
Cap treatment charges(no reason to pay for an xray machine 45 times every year)
Allow generics on the market without a wait time
Nationwide shopping
equal tax treatment.
Require all hospitals and clinics to make charges public

Im not really down for capping prices though. And "equal tax treatment" would be like giving tax breaks to individuals instead of just businesses and self employed. I would rather nobody get a tax break for taking precautions for their lives. Thats stupid. But i bet it would work...
Of course i would rather the govt stay out of healthcare. Them regulating 20% of our economy irks me. Especially with single payer where they completely control it...

Those precautions though, if one is going to smoke 5 packs a day you should not have to pay more because that person is dumb. 100% agree about gov in health care. Not much government does right.