Why? What have you got against the insurance model? I don’t see how you could do it otherwise unless you got to the point of Walmart selling hip replacements for $199.98.Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
Why? What have you got against the insurance model? I don’t see how you could do it otherwise unless you got to the point of Walmart selling hip replacements for $199.98.
Jane, the ACA put into place by your favorite president, Barack Obama, very much limited the profit cost of insurance companies and we all have seen refunds from that program, so who is making the profit?
Do you think that physicians should not be paid as much as they are? Specialist surgeons? Respiratory therapists? nurses?
I’m not saying you’re wrong necessarily I just wanna know who exactly in the chain of health care is being paid too much according to the Jane scale of appropriate income.
My larger continuing point about healthcare is that people will complain. No matter what. there’s complaining complaining complaining. We could offer Cadillac healthcare service to everyone in this goddamn country and I will hear nothing but a complaints. Whiners.
I was going to post this NYT article, "Employer-Based Healthcare, Meet Massive Unemployment," last week but never did, but it's a good response to your question, IL.
I really hope you aren't locked behind a paywall because it's worth reading.
In a nutshell:
"In other words, America has created the most expensive, least effective health care system in the modern world, and the most vulnerable Americans have been paying for that failure with their lives since long before the coronavirus came to town.
In many ways, of course, that system is no system at all. It’s a patchwork in which access to care depends on a roster of factors, including age, employment status and state of residence. It’s a free-for-all in which the prices of life-or-death essentials like insulin and heart surgery are set at whatever the market will bear*, and efforts to check those prices are routinely bludgeoned by interest groups that hold enormous sway over lawmakers. It’s a labyrinth in which consultants, billing clerks and administrators vastly outnumber medical professionals. And it’s a voracious beast that feeds American households with well-paying jobs, then devours them with insurmountable medical bills — often at their weakest moments."
*"Market will bear" is a bit misleading because really, no one entity is invested what the price is, except the managed care executives who try to tell doctors how to practice medicine.
"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
www.silententry.wordpress.com
First, let's eliminate insurance and all the costs that come with that.
Second, drugs in this country are way over-priced, partly due to incessant advertising, but mostly due to blatant greed.
I'm old enough to remember when people just paid for medical care, without much fuss. I'd like to return to that paradigm.
Babe, If you and I were running the world we would come up with all kinds of plans that we both agree to.
The populace has left that state of mind. Also, medical care has advanced beyond that which was when we were kids I don’t necessarily mean dress, I mean the operations and hip operations every time you turn around.
Katherine, I will spend some time with that article. Just skimming the premise, I don’t disagree with that necessarily, but it’s not just the managed-care people who are dictating treatment.
I couldn't agree more that there are way too many unnecessary appointments and procedures and operations and treatments. We've overmedicalized the human condition to the point that doctors perform like assembly lines. And, IMO, we're none the healthier for it.
Sure but I think you were not putting the responsibility where it lies.
The population, with its expectations of high-level treatment without solving their social problems of obesity smoking alcohol consumption. Obesity levels now do not touch what they were when we were children.
Expecting the medical community to give exactly the same treatments 50 years ago doesn’t seem practical to me, given the gend- up expectations of the citizen population.
My physician is a direct care physician because I theoretically like that model. No insurance company to dictate to her how to treat me. Or how not to treat me.
But we shall see if this is what I stick with long-term. Right now it’s an experiment.
I don't buy this, that the population expects high level treatment without solving their social problems. I think most people now avoid going in if they can help it, as when they do, they are subjected to things like statins. I also think things like alcohol consumption relate to addictions and we have terrible addiction problems in our society with smoking, alcohol, and food, and I don't think those are merely personal issues--I think they are actual social problems, and community has been deconstructed, along with family support systems.
Anyway, everyone I know works hard to stay away from doctors and tries hard to solve problems before they get bigger, so maybe it just depends on who you know.
I agree with IL people have high expectations of what should be done for them, rather than taking responsibility for their health. A current example is covid. They don't want to stay home if they are high risk, so everyone else has to mask up. I pitied a clerk in the store today lifting her mask off her face and fanning herself because she was stationed near the door and it is brutally hot and humid. This was at J. C. Penney not an "essential" grocery store or pharmacy. No one is telling people lose weight or do other things to reduce their chance of a bad outcome from the virus.
I support a Medicare for all plan that covers basics and people can pay extra if they want extras. No it is not fair to lower income people but neither is the current system.
I'm a fat old broad, and all I expect from the medical community is to be left alone. If i have a medical problem I can't solve, I'll let them know. I've certainly not put any burdens on them so far.
Also, fat old broads did not just spring up this generation in my family...
And our FOBs historically lived average or better lifespans, with little or no medical intervention.
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