snyps said:
Kasz216 said:
DevilRising said:
papamudd said:
All I know is that since obama has been in office health care has no longer been affordable... |
Sorry, but get a clue. Healthcare has been a massive and rising issue in this nation for decades, specifically BECAUSE we've left it in the sole hands of the "private market", the health insurance companies and the pharmacudicals. The only reason over half the medical shit we need costs anywhere near what it does, is because they say it should. The so-called "Obamacare" act wasn't what we needed, what we NEEDED was the "Public Option" (accent on OPTION) that he originally championed, but Congress and special interests saw to that. Still, at the very least, the bill makes it so that stupid things like being denied coverage for pre-existing health problems will no longer happen. More people can GET insured. It's just going to still cost everyone money. It's not perfect, in fact it's still fucked. But it's better than it would have been under McCain/Palin, if that's where you're trying to go with that statement.
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I'm guessing you haven't actually done a lot of resarch on the topic.
that's a condescending way to begin a discussion. He knows he was lied to on the campaign trail, and both parties would have screwed up the system. He's also correct that the system is dictated by the cost of insuring people and not buy the cost of providing care.
Non-profit health insurance costs the same and often times more as for profit health insurance which DEFINITLY shows that it isn't artificially inflated costs.
Why then, In the past decade, nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield health insurers set aside billions of dollars in surplus – essentially retained profits – even as they raised premiums for consumers by as high as 20 percent annually? Insurance premiums shouldn’t keep going up year after year when insurers are hoarding such huge surpluses. http://consumersunion.org/news/nonprofit-health-insurers-hoard-billions-in-surpluses/
Healthcare costs so much in the US because US Hospitals and Doctors are always upgrading their machines to the newest best product, it costs so much to get through medical school and because our patent laws are somewhat fucked up.
You don't have an opinion of this? When you or I go in for a sprain or break. We want to pay for the doctors schooling, his new machine that goes 'BING', and somebodies patent? No. I want to pay for my cast and x-ray. Which, by the way, cost nothing. I also wanna pay the doctor for his time. Which is 5 minutes (waiting doesn't count) i guess $20 a minute is good. That equals $100 for 5 minutes.
That and people with insurance will get everything treated.
If they don't get sick they're losing money! Are you making a case for insurance rate increases being due to ppl using the insurance they went broke for? Can't you see how ridiculous health insuance is? You're forced to buy a product you are not supposed to use,and you don't always know when you should use it. Cause it'll get more expensive. That's a scam.
In Europe, they'll only upgrade things like MRI scanners every so often rather then every new model. The US is so expensive because it's a driver of new medical technology... and because people with insurance will do EVEYRTHING to save their own lives, well after europeon medicine decides it's enough.
That's not trailblazing, that's just wasteful. Throwing out good equipment for the sake of innovation just because you can pay for it by ripping people off. No just no. I'm not aware of any statistics of numerous american lives being saved by miraculous new technology unavailable in European hospitals.
It's also worth noting, rising healthcare costs are generally a problem everywhere.
no where is more expensive than the U.S.A. http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn574healthcareed |
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What's up with the replying in quotes? That's so annoying.
Outside of which....
1) Hording Billions of dollars. Billions sounds like a lot I know... but it really isn't.
I mean what, do you NOT want healthcare companies to keep money in reserve to make sure they don't go bankrupt?
The article you are talking about is complaining about insurance companies having a surplus greater then state miniums.
Boy it sure would of been great if Banks had kept surplus' greater than what was legally required back when credit default swaps were skyrocketing right?
Sort of like going into a situation where the baby boomers are entering the age where they need the most health insurance, at the same time health insurance costs are rising?
No... it's far better to be at the state minium required levels and if you just go out of buisness because healthcare costs skyrocket, all those people will just be out of luck.
As for private insurance companies....
http://biz.yahoo.com/p/sum_qpmd.html
Health Insurance has a net proft margin of about 9%. Which isn't exactly setting the charts on fire... and coincidentally is a lot higher then the 4-5% it was at before Obamacare was passed.
2) Your joking right? So your point is, you don't want to pay for the cost of doing buisness? That's like saying I want to buy a hamburger at Burger King but not pay for the oven that cooks it or the time spent training the workers. That equipment and training is part of the cost of a product is common sense. Without the training, equipment etc. The buisness couldn't exist.
3) I'm not sure what your talking about. Health insurance doesn't get more expensive as you use it. It's not car insurance. Everyone in the same age group pays the same rate for health insurance minus a few factors like smoking. I can use my healthcare a dozen times, you could use it never. We'd pay the same rate.
4) Only because healthcare statistics are mired by a ton of different confounding variablse like culture, crime, accidental deaths.
The US actually tends to perform worse on large scales... though mostly due to stuff like are ridiculiously large prison population, high stress culture, accidents/sucides and crime and obesity rates.
As fun a chart now as it was when the data was released...
(Note some countries decrease in life expectancy on the right because it's standarded not just removing fatal injuries. The actual results aren't quite as neat, but this does illustrate the point failry well.)
If a Machine works .5% better though. For every 2000 people, it's saving 1. Minor gains? Sure. Given the choie though... i'd rather have the best possible chance.
5) I never said that it was. Simply that Healthcare costs are generally always going to rise, at least as long as we find new ways to save peoples lives. This will be biggest in the US, because we focus the most on innovation? Is it fair we're paying so much more for an increase in medical technology?
No, but i'd rather medical technology keep being refined. In a perfect world, Europe would abandon their system to be like ours, and we could have medical advancmenets 2,3 maybe even 4 times as fast.
As it stands though, the US government even spends more per captia than other countries do towards healthcare research. Why? Because for them it's counter productive. Every advancment they find only increases their bill, and the benefits they create are ones people didn't know where possible...
so they don't miss them.
