Will You Pay More So That I MIGHT Live?

[Dr.House]

I won't give money to the GOVERNMENT to buy you time.

But if I'm not taxed into extinction, I might choose to contribute to a charitable drive, or contribute to an organization that researches and/or treats your particular ailment.

BINGO!



If Americans were allowed to keep more of their hard-earned money they'd be more charitable with it... When you force charity, it never works...

Why do we need the gubmint to play middle-man?

 

[sherp]

This was my experience. I had the Pitutary gland removed cause it was enlarging. After the surgery, I needed to see the ONcologist to determine if I needed radiation. His office staff handed me a payment schedule that included thousands of dollars weekly if my insurance did not cover the entire treatment if needed. I handed it back to them and said, "No, I am not spending my life saving for radiation. I will take whatever time I have left having a good time and not spend the last months of my life suffering and throwing up". They persuaded me to see the Doc. As it turned out I did not need radiation which was good but I would not have incured expensive treatments". It is one thing for rich Steve McQueen to get the Mexican Berry treatment and another for us schmoos. In any event, if this stuff was effective, it would be standard protocal in cancer treatments. My opinion only, of course.
When George W. increased prescription coverage my monthly copay increased by $50.00 to $96 and I think that is enough for me to pay.

 

[frazzledgear]

The Scenario:

I am a 63 year old male. I'm married with grown children and grandkids. To everyone but my family, I am somewhere between a nobody and a statistic. I work at a job that is tolerable and stable enough to look forward to retiring at my full retirement age of 66, even though I could live on the Social Security that was available to me at 62. I have health coverage through my employer via private insurance.

I have just been diagnosed with a very serious condition that breaks down like this:

Without treatment I will die within 3 months. There is a treatment available which has a 100% chance of extending my life for 9 more months and a 6% chance of curing me.

The cost of the treatment is huge in both dollars and health care resources.

Here is the question for discussion:

Are YOU willing to suffer a 5% increase in your premiums so that the insurance underwriter we share can afford to give me 6 months + lottery odds at a cure?

Is it fair of me to ask you to?

Money is a finite resource and with a single payer system (and it must be if everyone must have their premiums kicked up to pay for your treatment), government will say it is a waste of that resource when it could be better spent on someone else with much better odds of being cured AND someone who will be more likely to contribute to society. As someone nearing retirement, you aren't likely to return to the work force again. Which means your value to government as a citizen takes a nosedive because you would be considered a burden even when cured. Government isn't supposed to consider some citizens to be of more worth than others and when government does the job for which it was actually set up to do -which is GOVERN, it does not. But when government takes over an entire private industry and decides to run it itself -then your value to that system suddenly becomes an issue and your value as a contributing versus burdensome citizen becomes a significant variable. When government gets into the health insurance business for EVERYONE, then your worth as a citizen can and will determine whether government will even allow you access to that treatment. NOT whether people agree to have their premiums raised or not.

However, under our current system my premiums don't have to be raised at all in order for you to receive treatment because the odds are that under your current policy through your employer - if that is the recommended treatment for that illness -then your policy very likely will cover it. If your insurance company's outlays in any given year are too high and is unprofitable, premiums would rise for everyone who has a policy with that company but after the fact. They do not need to be raised in order to cover your treatment when whether or not that was even covered under your current policy would already be known.

Or you could immediately retire since you are eligible for Social Security, there is no waiting period for Medicare -and any recommended treatment would also most likely be covered. Under the current system, what is and is not covered by Medicare is already spelled out up front, they cannot alter it - and your worth and value to government as a citizen was never any part of that equation about what would and would not be covered under Medicare.

But with a single payer system, government can and will change its mind about what is and is not covered-and there isn't really anything you can do about it. They control the entire game -not us. We just get stuck paying for it even when government decides to deny us treatment. So government will NOT take into consideration you paid into the system for years before ever needing it, but WILL take into consideration what worth and value you are to the system even if cured before deciding to allow you access to treatment or to deny it. So good luck under a single payer system because even if we all agreed to raise our premiums, WE are NOT the ones controlling whether you will be allowed access to treatment. Unlike our current system the fact that you are no spring chicken, have poor odds for a good outcome even with treatment AND even if cured very unlikely to return to the work force and at least continue contributing to society and instead most likely would be a continuing "burden" on society even if cured -then the odds are actually quite high that government will deny you access to this treatment as well as treatment for any OTHER illness you may also have or will contract. Even if denying it to you means it negatively impacts your quality of life for your remaining time and even if it means forcing you to die prematurely. As is happening in the UK right now. Under a single payer system the people who benefit the most are the ones who need it the LEAST and the ones harmed the most are the very people who need it the most.

If government confines itself to insurance programs for those with the most difficulty finding affordable insurance in the private sector -like the ELDERLY and DISABLED, and if it had been properly managed all these years when people were paying into the system for decades while they worked and long before they drew any benefits and Congress hadn't mismanaged it and just turned around and spent those funds on their wish list every year instead -then the value of an individual to government is never part of the equation. And only an inhumane barbarian would think it SHOULD be. But once it takes it over for everyone, its a whole new ballgame and the basis government uses to determine who will be the winners and losers in such a system is based on the perceived WORTH to government of entire groups of people -with government openly preferring and favoring some citizens over others and at the expense of others. When asked EVERYONE agrees government should not base how it treats citizens on whether government perceives that citizen to be of more or lesser value to government than another citizen. But that is what always happens under government run health care. And those in government pushing for this know it -all while mouthing the most humane sounding words in the hopes you won't find out what an inhumane system they want to inflict on us. Until its too late for you.

So the real question isn't about whether people agree to raise their premiums to cover your treatment when whether or not government will even allow you to receive treatment isn't within our power anyway. It is just how stupid do we have to be to realize it really is possible to come up with ways to address specifically what is not working well in THIS system -without destroying the entire thing for everyone else when the vast majority are satisfied with how it is working for them? AND their value to government is never part of the equation about whether or not they are eligible for treatment. What is it about some people who cannot think outside the box and no matter what the problem, their only suggested solution is always the same -more and bigger government. Do we really have to wait until we actually NEED health care to find out the true price we paid for it was not with just lots more money than we did before. But paid for it with our health, quality of life and even our life expectancy. And only THEN realized what a truly inhumane bargain we made and what a monster we turned our own government into by choosing a system that allowed government to pit the value of one citizen against another.

At some point we will all end up on the losing end of that equation -yet we all KNOW that actually is never the proper role of government.

 

[chanel]

A better question might be: would the caller's friends and family be willing to pick up the tab? I have better insurance than my brothers. Never in a million years would they ask me to pay for a better plan. But if they ever found themselves in that situation, our family would pony up the difference. That's what families do. I often wonder if socialists have alienated everyone that once loved them and that's why they have to run to strangers for handouts. People in their families must hate them.

 

[California Girl]

Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.....

Does that fit this scenario?

And the classic, What Would Jesus Do?

Jesus would want people to give - generously and many, many, many of us would. But Jesus - being no big fan of 'slavery' would, I think, save a place in heaven for those who do it because they want to, not forced to by government.

 

[Emma]

While I might be willing to pony up money or not, it is currently my choice to do so.

Not if you have health insurance.

 

[Modbert]

BINGO!



If Americans were allowed to keep more of their hard-earned money they'd be more charitable with it... When you force charity, it never works...

Why do we need the gubmint to play middle-man?

Where is the link that proves this correlation? The first part anyway.

 

[Modbert]

Jesus would want people to give - generously and many, many, many of us would. But Jesus - being no big fan of 'slavery' would, I think, save a place in heaven for those who do it because they want to, not forced to by government.

Far as I recall, his question was a voluntary raise.

 

[Emma]

Why do we need the gubmint to play middle-man?

Why do we need insurance corporations to play middle-man?

 

[Barb]

The Scenario:

I am a 63 year old male. I'm married with grown children and grandkids. To everyone but my family, I am somewhere between a nobody and a statistic. I work at a job that is tolerable and stable enough to look forward to retiring at my full retirement age of 66, even though I could live on the Social Security that was available to me at 62. I have health coverage through my employer via private insurance.

I have just been diagnosed with a very serious condition that breaks down like this:

Without treatment I will die within 3 months. There is a treatment available which has a 100% chance of extending my life for 9 more months and a 6% chance of curing me.

The cost of the treatment is huge in both dollars and health care resources.

Here is the question for discussion:

Are YOU willing to suffer a 5% increase in your premiums so that the insurance underwriter we share can afford to give me 6 months + lottery odds at a cure?

Is it fair of me to ask you to?

Yes, and yes. I do question the idea that insurers "have" to raise the rates. How many people pay premiums who only access preventative care? I wouldn't be too trusting of their "NEED" to insure their profits. Insurance is based on risk, the risk should not only be ours.

 

[California Girl]

Jesus would want people to give - generously and many, many, many of us would. But Jesus - being no big fan of 'slavery' would, I think, save a place in heaven for those who do it because they want to, not forced to by government.

Far as I recall, his question was a voluntary raise.

Yep, and I answer it. I have already contributed to help pay for anothers misfortune, and I contribute regularly to help others.

I do this willingly - because it is the right thing to do, not because some assclown in DC takes it from me to waste it.

 

[Luissa]

The scenario is actually a dramatization of a story I heard on the radio where a woman in Oregon was denied a very expensive treatment for cancer because of her age and the odds of of the treatment extending her life.

She died while fighting her insurance company, which did offer to pay for assisted suicide instead since she resided in Oregon at the time of diagnosis.

Before you ask for a link, I can't provide one as it was a story I heard on the radio on NPR this morning.

there is a cop who was shot in north idaho a few years ago, his family had to have a fund raiser to pay for extensive recontruction surgerory and to pay for the medical costs that his private insurance and the victims fund would not pay for. This is a prime example that our current system is flawed.

Actually it's an example that the system works fine. They raised the money privately. No one was coerced into giving for something they didnt want to. No jobs were destroyed in the process.
Sounds like a win-win to me.

so a cop that is shot in the line of duty should have to pay for part of his medical costs?

 

[frazzledgear]

The insurance companies would of already said you fudged your weight and kicked you off. But don't worry, there is no "health care rationing" in this country.

And I'd do it if I had the opportunity.

Really? Think he'd be the last one with a hard luck story that would be asking you to shell out more? You would very quickly be paying 100% of your income at that rate.

When did people decide to place such an irrational value on health care? The vast majority of us don't NEED it for most of our lives. Most diseases that ail man are self-limiting -meaning they will go away all by themselves. Most people still go see a doctor for those self-limiting conditions anyway -because they paid for health insurance and figure that is what it was for.

If we limited health care insurance to covering catastrophic illness and TRUE medical emergencies -the stuff that would wipe out someone financially -and have people start paying directly for their routine health care services instead of paying it to a third party who then pays while taking their cut off the top -health care costs would sharply drop, the percent it represented of your income would sharply drop -and the cost of that catastrophic illness insurance would sharply drop as well since the price would make it attractive to consumers. Since the vast majority of people who would buy that insurance would never develop a catastrophic illness, it puts no pressure on insurance companies to raise rates and it puts no pressure on the health care system to increase their costs and then increase their prices.

People do not believe it but the vast majority of us are all paying FAR more for health care by paying an insurance company - than we would if we paid it directly at the time of service ourselves. Common sense should tell you that because insurance companies can't stay in business unless we DO pay more to them than we would pay directly for health care. And as a result we end up over utilizing the system and wasting precious resources in time, manpower and supplies. Do you know that doctors now spend mre than 75% of their time having to see people with no medical complaints or problems -and therefore have absolutely no need of their highly specialized knowledge and skill? Who do you think is really paying for that incredible WASTE? We all are -and big time. The problem is -doctors are not educated and trained to treat HEALTHY PEOPLE. They are trained to identify, diagnosis and distinguish between self-limiting diseases that will go away on their own -and those conditions that will NOT go away without their intervention. So forcing doctors to spend nearly their entire day doing nothing but shuffling healthy people in and out of an exam room and filling out all the paperwork that goes with that useless task - is a total waste of that precious skill and knowledge. And VERY, VERY expensive. (To say nothing of creating a dull, very dissatisfying job with a high level of poor morale for the men and women who expected to be helping the SICK, not shuffling healthy people from room to room.)

Doctors, nurses and hospital employees all have to eat and pay their bills too and with no insurance but catastrophic, what they would charge a person directly for their services would drop -because people would also start utilizing the system far more efficiently and make FAR wiser decisions about when to go the doctor. The system would no longer be over burdened and unresponsive because the bulk of the system would no longer be tied up dealing with healthy people who didn't need it in the first place. A doctor would be spending nearly all their day treating people who actually needed their skills and knowledge. If you look at a chart, the sharp rises in health care go hand in hand with the advent of health insurance for routine medical care and as it became more widespread, so too did health care costs start taking a sharp hike upwards.

The insurance serves to separate a person from feeling the true financial impact on their wallet when they utilize the system. As a direct consequence, people make POOR decisions about when to utilize it and start over utilizing it. They rationalize they already paid for it anyway (when they really didn't) and as their premiums continue to go up, it only reinforces their decision to over utilize it. As a result, the entire system becomes over burdened and less responsive to those who actually NEED it -thanks to the poor decisions of everyone who didn't. This drives up costs in the system and forces price increases for several natural reasons, one of which is it is necessary in order to pay for those who must be hired to handle the over burdened system -and they never catch up on that. Continuously rising costs is the free market's way of trying to put back into balance a system that was thrown out of balance by the existence of an entity that separated the consumer from feeling the true financial impact on his wallet when purchasing the service which then led to his poor decision to over utilize the system itself. The insurance company is charged for the added expense of over utilization, the insurance company passes those costs on in the form of higher premiums and out of pocket costs to their customers. Without intervention, this would continue until the system is in balance again. That balance is when the out of pocket expenses for the consumer equals what he would have paid if paying directly for that service himself instead of paying it to a third party. But since he is also paying for insurance, the combined costs to him represents a massive chunk of his income now -when paying it directly would have been less than half as much. But people only feel the true financial impact by their out of pocket costs for the service and discount what they have paid to insurance. So the out of pocket costs, if unchecked -will continue to rise until the consumer feels the full financial impact of his decision to utilize the system since it no longer feels "free". Because it never was. No one is CONSCIOUSLY doing this in this cycle of spiraling costs -these are the natural forces in a free market responding in a rational manner to the insertion of a third party that has separated the consumer from the financial impact on their wallet on their decision to purchase goods or services. But people can't afford to pay both an insurance company and the true cost of their health care which leads to demands for government to cap those costs at some point. At THAT point, the only way to cap them is by rationing health care -denying it to the very people who NEED it the most in order to counter the costs to those who don't.

If you think our health care system should exist to primarily take care of people who don't really need it while denying it to those who do -yeah, government run health care is the way to go because that is the system you will get. Obama even SAID he wanted our system to change from one of taking care of the sick to one of preventing illness in the healthy -a system that exists for the benefit of those who don't need it. Which means denying it to those who do. Only problem is, it is IMPOSSIBLE to prevent people from eventually becoming old and sick! So it means denying it to those who actually need it. Just don't complain about it when YOU are the one who finds themselves being rationed out and forced to die prematurely and denied even the treatment or medication that would improve the quality of your life for your remaining time. As is happening in the UK right now. And to think, it comes back to allowing the existence of third party payers in the first place when it would have been so much easier and cheaper to forbid it while allowing us to truly help those who could not afford to even pay for their routine medical care. Now no one can.

 

[Dr.House]

BINGO!



If Americans were allowed to keep more of their hard-earned money they'd be more charitable with it... When you force charity, it never works...

Why do we need the gubmint to play middle-man?

Where is the link that proves this correlation? The first part anyway.

You want a link to my opinion?

 

[Dr.House]

Why do we need the gubmint to play middle-man?

Why do we need insurance corporations to play middle-man?

Insurance companies don't force you to buy their service...

Barry and his minions want to do just that...

Why do we need the gubmint to play middle-man?

 

[manu1959]

Interesting way to word the problem. How about if it were a 1/10th of 1% increase.

I really don't know what to do about the medical problem. W/O any other ideas this socialized medicine thing seems worth the try.

how do you feel about social security........

 

[Bern80]

The scenario is actually a dramatization of a story I heard on the radio where a woman in Oregon was denied a very expensive treatment for cancer because of her age and the odds of of the treatment extending her life.

She died while fighting her insurance company, which did offer to pay for assisted suicide instead since she resided in Oregon at the time of diagnosis.

Before you ask for a link, I can't provide one as it was a story I heard on the radio on NPR this morning.

Honestly I think the scenario misses the point....just as the current health care legislation really misses the point (okay they say it will address cost, but anyone with half a brain can see that is highly unlikely).

The issue is how much health care costs. A gigantic industry sprung up because most people can not, quite literally, afford to be treated. There are very practical steps that can be taken to reduce costs that don't require me to pay more for you or for government to run health care. Number one would be take the best care of yourself you can. Make insurance providers compete nationally instead of on a state level, Tort reform, Catastrophy only health plans, pre-tax FSA's, increase the supply of doctors, reform that makes it more affordable to go to med school, etc. And yet none of these things are addressed in the current legislation that I'm aware of.


You wouldn't be inquiring about this scenario if you could pay for this treatment on your own. What I never understood is why people view an insurance companies denial of coverage as the final straw and reside themselves to a death sentence. You are wording your scenario such that I'm a selfish prick for not paying for what you believe to be your only option to live. It isn't the only option. Find out how much the treatment costs and figure out how to pay for it.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.....

Does that fit this scenario?

And the classic, What Would Jesus Do?

Pretty sure it wouldn't involve bureaucracy, whatever it was.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Except in Islam. Where the golden rule is: "Do unto other Muslims as you would have them do unto you. Kill everyone else."

And only those Muslims from the same sect as you.

 

[Cecilie1200]

The scenario is actually a dramatization of a story I heard on the radio where a woman in Oregon was denied a very expensive treatment for cancer because of her age and the odds of of the treatment extending her life.

She died while fighting her insurance company, which did offer to pay for assisted suicide instead since she resided in Oregon at the time of diagnosis.

Before you ask for a link, I can't provide one as it was a story I heard on the radio on NPR this morning.

there is a cop who was shot in north idaho a few years ago, his family had to have a fund raiser to pay for extensive recontruction surgerory and to pay for the medical costs that his private insurance and the victims fund would not pay for. This is a prime example that our current system is flawed.

. . . You lost me on where the system was flawed.