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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On January 13 2017 05:14 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 04:48 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:46 Gorsameth wrote:On January 13 2017 04:44 xDaunt wrote:On January 13 2017 04:42 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:40 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:36 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:34 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:31 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:30 zlefin wrote:
[quote]
how can you keep the no discrimination for previous conditions? that's essentially impossible to keep without keeping the mandate.
I'll let the legislature figure that out. their track record of figuring things out isn't good. also it's pretty close to categorically impossible iirc. I continue to think that universal healthcare is the only sane long term solution for that reason. But perhaps they will throw together a new, smaller scale political compromise that will fill a few gaps in the healthcare structure. perhaps they will, but still pretty sure you can't keep no discrimination on previous conditions without having a mandate. it just doens't work. Neither does Obamacare. The funny thing is that Obamacare doesn't have an effective mandate, which is a large part of why it doesn't work. I'm highly amused that so many of Obamacare's defenders don't grasp this. The fact that people are retarded and more willing to pay a high fine then a lower insurance cost is not the fault of the ACA. the full penalties for obamacare aren't even in effect yet. so from an individual perspective, for many healthy people it is cheaper to pay the penalty, and cover all thier healthcare costs as they come up, than it is to pay for the health insurance. snice the health insurance they receive is far less than the actuarial value they're paying for. until the penalty fully kicks in that problem would continue. Boy, gotta kick those young and healthy people into dirt. How dare they not subsidize the sickly and elderly! That person who smoked for 40 years, who was an alcoholic, who ate too much and now as atherosclerosis, who took risks and has high associated costs - can't discriminate (e.g. different cost-structure) based on their life decisions and associated conditions! That'd be downright immoral. Suck it up you 16-35 year olds. In fact, the problem here, isn't that you're required to do so, it's that the penalty for you saying fuck that - that shit ain't fair - is that we just haven't kicked you in the nuts hard enough. Don't worry though, we'll get right on that, so you can give the bureaucracy more of your limited hard-earned money - oh and also the healthcare companies, because, coverage uber alles (I'm sure the healthcare companies really hate that mandate!). Don't make me chuckle too much.
your snarkiness doesn't change the effect of my point, or it's demonstrative value.
mostly it's just you being needlessly mean, as I made no value judgment on it, but was explaining the situation.
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On January 13 2017 05:14 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 04:48 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:46 Gorsameth wrote:On January 13 2017 04:44 xDaunt wrote:On January 13 2017 04:42 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:40 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:36 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:34 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:31 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:30 zlefin wrote:
[quote]
how can you keep the no discrimination for previous conditions? that's essentially impossible to keep without keeping the mandate.
I'll let the legislature figure that out. their track record of figuring things out isn't good. also it's pretty close to categorically impossible iirc. I continue to think that universal healthcare is the only sane long term solution for that reason. But perhaps they will throw together a new, smaller scale political compromise that will fill a few gaps in the healthcare structure. perhaps they will, but still pretty sure you can't keep no discrimination on previous conditions without having a mandate. it just doens't work. Neither does Obamacare. The funny thing is that Obamacare doesn't have an effective mandate, which is a large part of why it doesn't work. I'm highly amused that so many of Obamacare's defenders don't grasp this. The fact that people are retarded and more willing to pay a high fine then a lower insurance cost is not the fault of the ACA. the full penalties for obamacare aren't even in effect yet. so from an individual perspective, for many healthy people it is cheaper to pay the penalty, and cover all thier healthcare costs as they come up, than it is to pay for the health insurance. snice the health insurance they receive is far less than the actuarial value they're paying for. until the penalty fully kicks in that problem would continue. Boy, gotta kick those young and healthy people into dirt. How dare they not subsidize the sickly and elderly! That person who smoked for 40 years, who was an alcoholic, who ate too much and now as atherosclerosis, who took risks and has high associated costs - can't discriminate (e.g. different cost-structure) based on their life decisions and associated conditions! That'd be downright immoral. Suck it up you 16-35 year olds. In fact, the problem here, isn't that you're required to do so, it's that the penalty for you saying fuck that - that shit ain't fair - is that we just haven't kicked you in the nuts hard enough. Don't worry though, we'll get right on that, so you can give the bureaucracy more of your limited hard-earned money - oh and also the healthcare companies, because, coverage uber alles (I'm sure the healthcare companies really hate that mandate!). Don't make me chuckle too much.
You are assuming that you will be live healthier / cleaner when you are 65 than 65 year old now, and the 16-36 then won't be just as disgusted. Of course it isn't fair when your life is perfect. The whole point of universal coverage (and insurance in general) is that when life sucks for you, it won't suck as much.
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On January 13 2017 05:14 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 04:48 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:46 Gorsameth wrote:On January 13 2017 04:44 xDaunt wrote:On January 13 2017 04:42 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:40 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:36 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:34 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:31 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:30 zlefin wrote:
[quote]
how can you keep the no discrimination for previous conditions? that's essentially impossible to keep without keeping the mandate.
I'll let the legislature figure that out. their track record of figuring things out isn't good. also it's pretty close to categorically impossible iirc. I continue to think that universal healthcare is the only sane long term solution for that reason. But perhaps they will throw together a new, smaller scale political compromise that will fill a few gaps in the healthcare structure. perhaps they will, but still pretty sure you can't keep no discrimination on previous conditions without having a mandate. it just doens't work. Neither does Obamacare. The funny thing is that Obamacare doesn't have an effective mandate, which is a large part of why it doesn't work. I'm highly amused that so many of Obamacare's defenders don't grasp this. The fact that people are retarded and more willing to pay a high fine then a lower insurance cost is not the fault of the ACA. the full penalties for obamacare aren't even in effect yet. so from an individual perspective, for many healthy people it is cheaper to pay the penalty, and cover all thier healthcare costs as they come up, than it is to pay for the health insurance. snice the health insurance they receive is far less than the actuarial value they're paying for. until the penalty fully kicks in that problem would continue. Boy, gotta kick those young and healthy people into dirt. How dare they not subsidize the sickly and elderly! That person who smoked for 40 years, who was an alcoholic, who ate too much and now as atherosclerosis, who took risks and has high associated costs - can't discriminate (e.g. different cost-structure) based on their life decisions and associated conditions! That'd be downright immoral. Suck it up you 16-35 year olds. In fact, the problem here, isn't that you're required to do so, it's that the penalty for you saying fuck that - that shit ain't fair - is that we just haven't kicked you in the nuts hard enough. Don't worry though, we'll get right on that, so you can give the bureaucracy more of your limited hard-earned money - oh and also the healthcare companies, because, coverage uber alles (I'm sure the healthcare companies really hate that mandate!). Don't make me chuckle too much.
Well, the 16-35 year olds are going to be paying for the 40 year smokers anyway because Republicans would never dare touch the sacred Medicare cow. At least this way the 16-35 year olds can also not go bankrupt after an incidental breast, colorectal, or bladder cancer diagnosis.
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On January 13 2017 05:23 ragz_gt wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 05:14 Wegandi wrote:On January 13 2017 04:48 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:46 Gorsameth wrote:On January 13 2017 04:44 xDaunt wrote:On January 13 2017 04:42 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:40 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:36 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:34 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:31 LegalLord wrote:
[quote]
I'll let the legislature figure that out. their track record of figuring things out isn't good. also it's pretty close to categorically impossible iirc. I continue to think that universal healthcare is the only sane long term solution for that reason. But perhaps they will throw together a new, smaller scale political compromise that will fill a few gaps in the healthcare structure. perhaps they will, but still pretty sure you can't keep no discrimination on previous conditions without having a mandate. it just doens't work. Neither does Obamacare. The funny thing is that Obamacare doesn't have an effective mandate, which is a large part of why it doesn't work. I'm highly amused that so many of Obamacare's defenders don't grasp this. The fact that people are retarded and more willing to pay a high fine then a lower insurance cost is not the fault of the ACA. the full penalties for obamacare aren't even in effect yet. so from an individual perspective, for many healthy people it is cheaper to pay the penalty, and cover all thier healthcare costs as they come up, than it is to pay for the health insurance. snice the health insurance they receive is far less than the actuarial value they're paying for. until the penalty fully kicks in that problem would continue. Boy, gotta kick those young and healthy people into dirt. How dare they not subsidize the sickly and elderly! That person who smoked for 40 years, who was an alcoholic, who ate too much and now as atherosclerosis, who took risks and has high associated costs - can't discriminate (e.g. different cost-structure) based on their life decisions and associated conditions! That'd be downright immoral. Suck it up you 16-35 year olds. In fact, the problem here, isn't that you're required to do so, it's that the penalty for you saying fuck that - that shit ain't fair - is that we just haven't kicked you in the nuts hard enough. Don't worry though, we'll get right on that, so you can give the bureaucracy more of your limited hard-earned money - oh and also the healthcare companies, because, coverage uber alles (I'm sure the healthcare companies really hate that mandate!). Don't make me chuckle too much. You are assuming that you will be live healthier / cleaner when you are 65 than 65 year old now, and the 16-36 then won't be just as disgusted. Of course it isn't fair when your life is perfect. The whole point of universal coverage (and insurance in general) is that when life sucks for you, it won't suck as much.
Another person who doesn't understand.
1) The mere fact that insurance is required because healthcare costs are so high IS a major problem; it wasn't always this way before the Government grabbed their dirty paws into the industry
2) Denying insurance companies from pricing their coverage based on an individuals condition is asinine. It cannot be called insurance at that point because the entire point of insurance is PRICING RISK. Do you understand? What people want of insurance isn't actually insurance, so let's just be honest here. People have unrealistic expectation of what they want in healthcare and the way it should be structured and the associated costs. Fine you want FDA, you want licensing and the AMA, you want a billion regulatory burdens to open up a hospital or clinic, etc. You can have that - but it won't be cheap.
Nationalizing healthcare more than all ready is (your lovely named "public option" [editorial: lol, you guys are like the marketing execs in a large corporation..or whoever named the patriot act]) will have a negative effect on healthcare prices, not a positive one.
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I'm just curious, regarding the private health insurance companies like BlueCross and Kaiser and Cigna et al.: how much of their revenue goes to research, equipment, treatments, practitioners' salaries etc. (things that are useful to society), and how much of it goes to administration, bureaucracy, lobbying, accounting, etc. (things that are only useful to them because they are for-profit businesses)?
Even if we assume very generously something like a 9:1 ratio, that's still 10% of the health care industry's revenues that are a net loss to society. I suspect the actual ratio is a lot worse.
Anyway, smokers, extreme alcoholics, etc. usually die when they're young, meaning they don't really tax society. The people that are healthy their whole lives and die at the ripe ole' age of 90 after being retired for decades are the ones that cost the most. Why social Darwinists don't seem to grasp this when they oppose UHC is beyond me.
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On January 13 2017 05:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 05:14 Wegandi wrote:On January 13 2017 04:48 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:46 Gorsameth wrote:On January 13 2017 04:44 xDaunt wrote:On January 13 2017 04:42 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:40 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:36 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:34 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:31 LegalLord wrote:
[quote]
I'll let the legislature figure that out. their track record of figuring things out isn't good. also it's pretty close to categorically impossible iirc. I continue to think that universal healthcare is the only sane long term solution for that reason. But perhaps they will throw together a new, smaller scale political compromise that will fill a few gaps in the healthcare structure. perhaps they will, but still pretty sure you can't keep no discrimination on previous conditions without having a mandate. it just doens't work. Neither does Obamacare. The funny thing is that Obamacare doesn't have an effective mandate, which is a large part of why it doesn't work. I'm highly amused that so many of Obamacare's defenders don't grasp this. The fact that people are retarded and more willing to pay a high fine then a lower insurance cost is not the fault of the ACA. the full penalties for obamacare aren't even in effect yet. so from an individual perspective, for many healthy people it is cheaper to pay the penalty, and cover all thier healthcare costs as they come up, than it is to pay for the health insurance. snice the health insurance they receive is far less than the actuarial value they're paying for. until the penalty fully kicks in that problem would continue. Boy, gotta kick those young and healthy people into dirt. How dare they not subsidize the sickly and elderly! That person who smoked for 40 years, who was an alcoholic, who ate too much and now as atherosclerosis, who took risks and has high associated costs - can't discriminate (e.g. different cost-structure) based on their life decisions and associated conditions! That'd be downright immoral. Suck it up you 16-35 year olds. In fact, the problem here, isn't that you're required to do so, it's that the penalty for you saying fuck that - that shit ain't fair - is that we just haven't kicked you in the nuts hard enough. Don't worry though, we'll get right on that, so you can give the bureaucracy more of your limited hard-earned money - oh and also the healthcare companies, because, coverage uber alles (I'm sure the healthcare companies really hate that mandate!). Don't make me chuckle too much. Well, the 16-35 year olds are going to be paying for the 40 year smokers anyway because Republicans would never dare touch the sacred Medicare cow. At least this way the 16-35 year olds can also not go bankrupt after an incidental breast, colorectal, or bladder cancer diagnosis.
Republicans are just as bad as Democrats which is why I find it so funny how much you guys bitch about them and healthcare. They're like 90% in agreement with most Democrats. Who gave us Medicare D? A fucking Republican and Republican congress. The Republicans gave us the FDA. To someone like me, I don't see much difference between the two. No, the Republicans are not going to get rid of the FDA. No, they're not going to get rid of SCHIP, Medicare, or Medicaid. According to Trump anyways, the mandate is staying. By the way, spending gonna go up some more, so you guys have that to look forward to. For all the bitching about Republicans besides the fringey social stuff you guys see eye to eye on quite a bit - way more than for instance I do with the Republicans or Democrats.
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On January 13 2017 05:04 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 04:47 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:45 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:45 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:42 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:40 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:36 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:34 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:31 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:30 zlefin wrote:
[quote]
how can you keep the no discrimination for previous conditions? that's essentially impossible to keep without keeping the mandate.
I'll let the legislature figure that out. their track record of figuring things out isn't good. also it's pretty close to categorically impossible iirc. I continue to think that universal healthcare is the only sane long term solution for that reason. But perhaps they will throw together a new, smaller scale political compromise that will fill a few gaps in the healthcare structure. perhaps they will, but still pretty sure you can't keep no discrimination on previous conditions without having a mandate. it just doens't work. Neither does Obamacare. that's inapt and you know it. the extent to which obamacare doesn't work isn't remotely nearly to the same extent. At the very least, would you concede that Obamacare is politically unfeasible? yes, I would certainly concede that. and moan about it only being because of scummy politicians not interested in the welfare of the people. The ultimate "saboteurs" of the bill were the so-called "conservative Democrats" who didn't want the public option because socialism.
Democrats also killed an amendment on prescription drug prices, basically claiming Canadian drugs (often manufactured in the same places as American drugs) are too dangerous.
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Isn't the whole health insurance industry going to fall apart now? I mean, lack of confidence in the markets already had a few companies pulling out, now there is no solution being proposed and the only real details known are bad for the companies - no mandate but keep preexisting coverage. And it will inevitably be the GOP's problem. It was always going to happen, but this repeal seemed ... Extremely rushed and somewhat I'll advised.
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On January 13 2017 05:29 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm just curious, regarding the private health insurance companies like BlueCross and Kaiser and Cigna et al.: how much of their revenue goes to research, equipment, treatments, practitioners' salaries etc. (things that are useful to society), and how much of it goes to administration, bureaucracy, lobbying, accounting, etc. (things that are only useful to them because they are for-profit businesses)?
Even if we assume very generously something like a 9:1 ratio, that's still 10% of the health care industry's revenues that are a net loss to society. I suspect the actual ratio is a lot worse.
Anyway, smokers, extreme alcoholics, etc. usually die when they're young, meaning they don't really tax society. The people that are healthy their whole lives and die at the ripe ole' age of 90 after being retired for decades are the ones that cost the most. Why social Darwinists don't seem to grasp this when they oppose UHC is beyond me.
iirc obamacare put in a mandate on how much they have to spend on healthcare stuff vs the for-profit stuff.
something like 80% has to go healthcare, and I think that's around what most companies do.
medicare has very low administrative costs compared to health insurance companies iirc, not sure though.
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On January 13 2017 05:29 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm just curious, regarding the private health insurance companies like BlueCross and Kaiser and Cigna et al.: how much of their revenue goes to research, equipment, treatments, practitioners' salaries etc. (things that are useful to society), and how much of it goes to administration, bureaucracy, lobbying, accounting, etc. (things that are only useful to them because they are for-profit businesses)?
Even if we assume very generously something like a 9:1 ratio, that's still 10% of the health care industry's revenues that are a net loss to society. I suspect the actual ratio is a lot worse.
Anyway, smokers, extreme alcoholics, etc. usually die when they're young, meaning they don't really tax society. The people that are healthy their whole lives and die at the ripe ole' age of 90 after being retired for decades are the ones that cost the most. Why social Darwinists don't seem to grasp this when they oppose UHC is beyond me.
For context on Kaiser and Insurance.
Being an insurance company does not mean you are a research firm.
Kaiser came from Kaiser Steel who decided to start the practice of giving health insurance to their workers.
You would then be able to add people to your healthcare package at cost. (your wife and kids for example)
Over time Kaiser switched to full time Insurance instead of Steel.
Labs do the research, hospitals give the bill, insurance pays both while consumers pay insurance.
"National Healthcare" is a discussion of what counts as easy costs vs what counts as difficult costs.
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On January 13 2017 05:29 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 05:23 ragz_gt wrote:On January 13 2017 05:14 Wegandi wrote:On January 13 2017 04:48 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:46 Gorsameth wrote:On January 13 2017 04:44 xDaunt wrote:On January 13 2017 04:42 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:40 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:36 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:34 zlefin wrote:
[quote]
their track record of figuring things out isn't good.
also it's pretty close to categorically impossible iirc. I continue to think that universal healthcare is the only sane long term solution for that reason. But perhaps they will throw together a new, smaller scale political compromise that will fill a few gaps in the healthcare structure. perhaps they will, but still pretty sure you can't keep no discrimination on previous conditions without having a mandate. it just doens't work. Neither does Obamacare. The funny thing is that Obamacare doesn't have an effective mandate, which is a large part of why it doesn't work. I'm highly amused that so many of Obamacare's defenders don't grasp this. The fact that people are retarded and more willing to pay a high fine then a lower insurance cost is not the fault of the ACA. the full penalties for obamacare aren't even in effect yet. so from an individual perspective, for many healthy people it is cheaper to pay the penalty, and cover all thier healthcare costs as they come up, than it is to pay for the health insurance. snice the health insurance they receive is far less than the actuarial value they're paying for. until the penalty fully kicks in that problem would continue. Boy, gotta kick those young and healthy people into dirt. How dare they not subsidize the sickly and elderly! That person who smoked for 40 years, who was an alcoholic, who ate too much and now as atherosclerosis, who took risks and has high associated costs - can't discriminate (e.g. different cost-structure) based on their life decisions and associated conditions! That'd be downright immoral. Suck it up you 16-35 year olds. In fact, the problem here, isn't that you're required to do so, it's that the penalty for you saying fuck that - that shit ain't fair - is that we just haven't kicked you in the nuts hard enough. Don't worry though, we'll get right on that, so you can give the bureaucracy more of your limited hard-earned money - oh and also the healthcare companies, because, coverage uber alles (I'm sure the healthcare companies really hate that mandate!). Don't make me chuckle too much. You are assuming that you will be live healthier / cleaner when you are 65 than 65 year old now, and the 16-36 then won't be just as disgusted. Of course it isn't fair when your life is perfect. The whole point of universal coverage (and insurance in general) is that when life sucks for you, it won't suck as much. Another person who doesn't understand. 1) The mere fact that insurance is required because healthcare costs are so high IS a major problem; it wasn't always this way before the Government grabbed their dirty paws into the industry 2) Denying insurance companies from pricing their coverage based on an individuals condition is asinine. It cannot be called insurance at that point because the entire point of insurance is PRICING RISK. Do you understand? What people want of insurance isn't actually insurance, so let's just be honest here. People have unrealistic expectation of what they want in healthcare and the way it should be structured and the associated costs. Fine you want FDA, you want licensing and the AMA, you want a billion regulatory burdens to open up a hospital or clinic, etc. You can have that - but it won't be cheap. Nationalizing healthcare more than all ready is (your lovely named "public option" [editorial: lol, you guys are like the marketing execs in a large corporation..or whoever named the patriot act]) will have a negative effect on healthcare prices, not a positive one.
None of what you posted has anything to do with your previous post, which is what I addressed. Don't blame me when you can't keep your argument straight.
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On January 13 2017 05:29 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 05:23 ragz_gt wrote:On January 13 2017 05:14 Wegandi wrote:On January 13 2017 04:48 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:46 Gorsameth wrote:On January 13 2017 04:44 xDaunt wrote:On January 13 2017 04:42 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:40 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 04:36 LegalLord wrote:On January 13 2017 04:34 zlefin wrote:
[quote]
their track record of figuring things out isn't good.
also it's pretty close to categorically impossible iirc. I continue to think that universal healthcare is the only sane long term solution for that reason. But perhaps they will throw together a new, smaller scale political compromise that will fill a few gaps in the healthcare structure. perhaps they will, but still pretty sure you can't keep no discrimination on previous conditions without having a mandate. it just doens't work. Neither does Obamacare. The funny thing is that Obamacare doesn't have an effective mandate, which is a large part of why it doesn't work. I'm highly amused that so many of Obamacare's defenders don't grasp this. The fact that people are retarded and more willing to pay a high fine then a lower insurance cost is not the fault of the ACA. the full penalties for obamacare aren't even in effect yet. so from an individual perspective, for many healthy people it is cheaper to pay the penalty, and cover all thier healthcare costs as they come up, than it is to pay for the health insurance. snice the health insurance they receive is far less than the actuarial value they're paying for. until the penalty fully kicks in that problem would continue. Boy, gotta kick those young and healthy people into dirt. How dare they not subsidize the sickly and elderly! That person who smoked for 40 years, who was an alcoholic, who ate too much and now as atherosclerosis, who took risks and has high associated costs - can't discriminate (e.g. different cost-structure) based on their life decisions and associated conditions! That'd be downright immoral. Suck it up you 16-35 year olds. In fact, the problem here, isn't that you're required to do so, it's that the penalty for you saying fuck that - that shit ain't fair - is that we just haven't kicked you in the nuts hard enough. Don't worry though, we'll get right on that, so you can give the bureaucracy more of your limited hard-earned money - oh and also the healthcare companies, because, coverage uber alles (I'm sure the healthcare companies really hate that mandate!). Don't make me chuckle too much. You are assuming that you will be live healthier / cleaner when you are 65 than 65 year old now, and the 16-36 then won't be just as disgusted. Of course it isn't fair when your life is perfect. The whole point of universal coverage (and insurance in general) is that when life sucks for you, it won't suck as much. Another person who doesn't understand. 1) The mere fact that insurance is required because healthcare costs are so high IS a major problem; it wasn't always this way before the Government grabbed their dirty paws into the industry 2) Denying insurance companies from pricing their coverage based on an individuals condition is asinine. It cannot be called insurance at that point because the entire point of insurance is PRICING RISK. Do you understand? What people want of insurance isn't actually insurance, so let's just be honest here. People have unrealistic expectation of what they want in healthcare and the way it should be structured and the associated costs. Fine you want FDA, you want licensing and the AMA, you want a billion regulatory burdens to open up a hospital or clinic, etc. You can have that - but it won't be cheap. Nationalizing healthcare more than all ready is (your lovely named "public option" [editorial: lol, you guys are like the marketing execs in a large corporation..or whoever named the patriot act]) will have a negative effect on healthcare prices, not a positive one.
Yes, all the misnomers hurt the debate. Insurance is pricing risk. What we're talking about now is a massive subsidy and redistribution program. And maybe we can have a debate about subsidizing the poor like other subsidy or welfare programs already in place. But then we can talk about price inflation in an industry with government meddling and a market where prices ade negotiated by insurance companies and hospitals/providers, not the actual purchaser.
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On January 13 2017 05:37 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 05:29 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm just curious, regarding the private health insurance companies like BlueCross and Kaiser and Cigna et al.: how much of their revenue goes to research, equipment, treatments, practitioners' salaries etc. (things that are useful to society), and how much of it goes to administration, bureaucracy, lobbying, accounting, etc. (things that are only useful to them because they are for-profit businesses)?
Even if we assume very generously something like a 9:1 ratio, that's still 10% of the health care industry's revenues that are a net loss to society. I suspect the actual ratio is a lot worse.
Anyway, smokers, extreme alcoholics, etc. usually die when they're young, meaning they don't really tax society. The people that are healthy their whole lives and die at the ripe ole' age of 90 after being retired for decades are the ones that cost the most. Why social Darwinists don't seem to grasp this when they oppose UHC is beyond me. iirc obamacare put in a mandate on how much they have to spend on healthcare stuff vs the for-profit stuff. something like 80% has to go healthcare, and I think that's around what most companies do. medicare has very low administrative costs compared to health insurance companies iirc, not sure though.
Does that not therefore mean that 20% of the health care industry is a useless burden to society, and that all of our health care costs are 20% more expensive than they need to be because we're paying that percentage in order to keep a horde of bureaucrats, advertisers, lawyers, etc. employed? And for what--so that the shareholders in these private health insurance companies can get super rich off of their success, and those bureaucrats can be employed?
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Wegandi's posts regarding pubic option healthcare are extremely heavy on the snark and handwaving for a reason; one can only point at healthcare conglomerates like Aetna and say "deregulate" if one also refuses to interact with the unique economics of healthcare. There are a host of economic arguments that directly conflict with Wegandi's, from perfectly/imperfectly competitive market analyses to good/service-centric criticisms like those I've posted here. Choice, access, cost, and quality operate very differently in the healthcare arena as compared with other goods/services more ripe for free-marketization, and yet, these pushes towards deregulation would have us treat tires, elementary school, gum, and an asthma diagnoses and treatment mostly the same from a regulatory perspective. The inanity of that ought be self-evident.
It's also convenient that nearly every "things were better before doctors needed licenses" perspective fails to say anything about historic mortality rates and overall public health measures, but I suppose that's to be expected.
On January 13 2017 05:43 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 05:37 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 05:29 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm just curious, regarding the private health insurance companies like BlueCross and Kaiser and Cigna et al.: how much of their revenue goes to research, equipment, treatments, practitioners' salaries etc. (things that are useful to society), and how much of it goes to administration, bureaucracy, lobbying, accounting, etc. (things that are only useful to them because they are for-profit businesses)?
Even if we assume very generously something like a 9:1 ratio, that's still 10% of the health care industry's revenues that are a net loss to society. I suspect the actual ratio is a lot worse.
Anyway, smokers, extreme alcoholics, etc. usually die when they're young, meaning they don't really tax society. The people that are healthy their whole lives and die at the ripe ole' age of 90 after being retired for decades are the ones that cost the most. Why social Darwinists don't seem to grasp this when they oppose UHC is beyond me. iirc obamacare put in a mandate on how much they have to spend on healthcare stuff vs the for-profit stuff. something like 80% has to go healthcare, and I think that's around what most companies do. medicare has very low administrative costs compared to health insurance companies iirc, not sure though. Does that not therefore mean that 20% of the health care industry is a useless burden to society, and that all of our health care costs are 20% more expensive than they need to be because we're paying that percentage in order to keep a horde of bureaucrats, advertisers, lawyers, etc. employed? And for what--so that the shareholders in these private health insurance companies can get super rich off of their success, and those bureaucrats can be employed?
You're conflating issues and therein lies the problem. There is a lot of administrative bloat in healthcare, but if you actually start allocating culpability in a meaningful manner, it'll become readily apparent that cost inflation runs in both directions at the same time. For example, it is true that administrative complexity adds to costs unnecessarily, but a large component of that administrative complexity can be attributed to the extreme limits placed on federal program implementation via Supreme Court 10th and 11th Amendment jurisprudence. There's reason to believe that the PPACA would have worked far better at tamping down prices had the Supreme Court upheld the practically mandatory Medicare expansion that came with the law, but alas, our collective decision to lionize the states above the feds renders that an unexplored conclusion. Naturally, that's a contentious subject, but it's a mistake to look at the bloat in healthcare and chalk it all up to public bureaucracy from the top down. In any case, any sort of "basic economic intuition" needs to be heavily disclaimed relative to healthcare.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
The US is a country where the often prohibitive cost of healthcare and the disincentives to reduce costs for medical practitioners make medical conditions fester and grow until they become significantly more expensive than they had to be. Simple, low-cost coverage of such cheap yet highly effective measures like a physical every year and vaccines for all would substantially reduce overall health costs.
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CHICAGO (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department will conclude in a report to be released Friday that the Chicago Police Department displayed a pattern and practice of violating residents' constitutional rights over years, a law enforcement official said Wednesday.
The official, who is familiar with the findings, spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. He declined to offer details. Based on other such investigative reports on other big cities, Chicago's could run well over 100 pages.
The Police Department has been dogged by a reputation for brutality, particularly in minority communities, so a finding of at least some violations isn't a big surprise. Chicago has one of the nation's largest police departments with about 12,000 officers, and the report stems from an investigation launched in 2015 after the release of video showing a white officer fatally shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. Among the questions Justice Department investigators were expected to examine was whether Chicago officers are prone to excessive force and racial bias.
A message seeking comment Wednesday from a police spokesman wasn't immediately returned.
The Justice Department under President Barack Obama conducted around 25 similar investigations of police nationwide, from Miami to Cleveland and Baltimore to Seattle. A report is one step in a process that's typically led in recent years to plans to overhaul police departments that are enforced by federal judges.
Source
Separately, Democrats should be pushing for single payer instead of trying to to save the ACA, then let a government option be the compromise with people like xDaunt (or was it danglars?) that support it from the right.
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His denials – at least some of them – were emphatic, even by the standards that Donald Trump has come to be judged by. The dossier, he said, was a confection of lies; he compared it to Nazi propaganda; it was fake news spread by sick people.
At his press briefing on Wednesday, the president-elect dared the world’s media to scrutinise the 35 pages of claims, before throwing down a challenge – where’s the proof? Nobody had any. Case closed.
But in the rush to trample all over the dossier and its contents, one key question remained. Why had America’s intelligence agencies felt it necessary to provide a compendium of the claims to Barack Obama and Trump himself?
And the answer to that lies in the credibility of its apparent author, the ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele, the quality of the sources he has, and the quality of the people who were prepared to vouch for him. In all these respects, the 53-year-old is in credit.
On Thursday night, as the former spy was in hiding, having fled his home in the south-east of England, former colleagues rallied to defend him. One described him as “very credible” – a sober, cautious and meticulous professional with a formidable record.
The former Foreign Office official, who has known Steele for 25 years and considers him a friend, said: “The idea his work is fake or a cowboy operation is false – completely untrue. Chris is an experienced and highly regarded professional. He’s not the sort of person who will simply pass on gossip.”
The official added: “If he puts something in a report, he believes there’s sufficient credibility in it for it to be worth considering. Chris is a very straight guy. He could not have survived in the job he was in if he had been prone to flights of fancy or doing things in an ill-considered way.”
That is the way the CIA and the FBI, not to mention the British government, regarded him, too. It’s not hard to see why.
A Cambridge graduate, Steele was one of the more eminent Russia specialists for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). The Guardian understands that he focused on Soviet affairs after joining the agency, and spent two years living in Moscow in the early 1990s.
This was a period when Russia and the breakup of the eastern bloc were still the prime focus for Britain’s intelligence agencies, and a successful spell in the region was a good way to get on.
By all accounts, that’s exactly what Steele did. And his interest in Russia did not diminish as he continued to rise up the ranks, a friend and contemporary of Alex Younger – now head of MI6.
Trump dossier: intelligence sources vouch for credibility of report's author
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@Wegandi, your aware that the rest of the West has mandated health insurance and better healthcare for less money right?
The US doesn't have to re-invent the wheel. And you cant blame the FDA either since pretty much all medicine used in the EU is FDA approved.
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On January 13 2017 05:43 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2017 05:37 zlefin wrote:On January 13 2017 05:29 LightSpectra wrote:
I'm just curious, regarding the private health insurance companies like BlueCross and Kaiser and Cigna et al.: how much of their revenue goes to research, equipment, treatments, practitioners' salaries etc. (things that are useful to society), and how much of it goes to administration, bureaucracy, lobbying, accounting, etc. (things that are only useful to them because they are for-profit businesses)?
Even if we assume very generously something like a 9:1 ratio, that's still 10% of the health care industry's revenues that are a net loss to society. I suspect the actual ratio is a lot worse.
Anyway, smokers, extreme alcoholics, etc. usually die when they're young, meaning they don't really tax society. The people that are healthy their whole lives and die at the ripe ole' age of 90 after being retired for decades are the ones that cost the most. Why social Darwinists don't seem to grasp this when they oppose UHC is beyond me. iirc obamacare put in a mandate on how much they have to spend on healthcare stuff vs the for-profit stuff. something like 80% has to go healthcare, and I think that's around what most companies do. medicare has very low administrative costs compared to health insurance companies iirc, not sure though. Does that not therefore mean that 20% of the health care industry is a useless burden to society, and that all of our health care costs are 20% more expensive than they need to be because we're paying that percentage in order to keep a horde of bureaucrats, advertisers, lawyers, etc. employed? And for what--so that the shareholders in these private health insurance companies can get super rich off of their success, and those bureaucrats can be employed?
Those same people would be around in a national healthcare program. If government is good at one thing, its adding bureaucrats to a system.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
A government system would ensure access to the kind of preventative healthcare that would keep prices down. That's one of the stupidest and most avoidable problems with the US healthcare system.
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EPT
