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You are too weak, cowardly and divided to stop it. That’s why. Organize, grow a pair and empower each other. You must fight as a group or you will continue to be oppressed and exploited.
and manipulated to fight against each other, against your own interests
imagine life if the people in power were engineers rather than lawyers
Capitalism is basically about making as much money as possible with as few products/services as possible. Health insurance is one of the best ways to achieve that.
You forgot the most important part of capitalism which is exploiting labor.
ah that western bias again…
This is unironically Nixon’s fault.
It’s also unironically Reagan’s fault, as well as both Clinton and FDR.
Prior to FDR doctors and healthcare were run completely not for profit, and part of The New Deal included privatizing hospitals. Nixon did insurance. Reagan and Clinton mostly just took the government further out of healthcare by removing regulations.
Can you point me in a direction for a source of the new deal hospital privatization aspect please?
I’m unfamiliar and want to lean more.
Looking into it, it seems to have been Truman, not FDR, though FDR may have helped create the bill. You’re looking for the healthcare reform act of 1945. I just remember my nurse grandmother going on multiple tirades about the privatization of healthcare starting around then, and healthcare in general being slowly suffocated by admins ever since. She didn’t live long enough to give me her opinions on the ACA.
Thanks. Yeah, I didn’t want to come off as a know it all umm actually guy so I figured I could be wrong and just ask for a source.
I had done my own search too but again, everyone is fallible so better to just ask.
Also I know it means nothing from some rando on the interwebs but good on ya for correcting yourself. In today’s age and all that…hope you’re as well as you can be. Take care! (Goes to look further into Truman’s war criminal ass lol)
Edit: it appears Truman actually tried to make a national health insurance act happen and was defeated by anti-communist sentiments, the American Medical Association, and republicans fear mongering and “they’re gonna raise your taxes!!!” rhetoric. It would have been a part of the social security expansion but alas, congress is corrupt and Americans are gullible (being generous).
Private nonprofit hospitals aren’t even that bad. Its private insurance thats the real problem
I attended an AI/ML training course provided by one of the major cloud providers (it was actually the first one they ever did). In the class were several private hospital executives.
All of them were absolutely giddy about the prospect of using AI to deny care to unprofitable patients.
Well if they are for profit so there’s the problem. All private healthcare companies should be non-profit.
Being non-profit doesn’t make a hospital immune to that sort of greed.
It’s wild how much this contrasts with Australia’s Medicare, like here you can literally just walk into the ER with any issue, show them your Medicare card and get your entire treatment covered for free unless you need any private healthcare, which even then there are rebates and private healthcare competes with public so it’s also moderately affordable.
There were 2 instances where my dad needed to be in hospital for multiple days at a time, once for a broken wrist after slipping at the boat ramp after a fishing trip, and the other was a stingray attack on his leg at that same boat ramp. Both instances didn’t require a single cent exchanged, we just walked in and described the issue, and boom, after a few days he was treated to the extent he could go home and not really worry at all anymore.
Your dad should stay away from that boat ramp…
I vote it be burnt.
Boat Ramps are typically concrete. And partially submerged. Good luck!
Please don‘t extrapolate from the US healthcare system to insurances in general. Insurances collect money from many so in the case something happens to an individual that individual doesn‘t need take the full financial loss. This makes a lot of sense, because it would very inefficient if everyone would save money in order to pay for a potential cancer treatment. Cancer is rare, but in aggregate it is just small amount each month.
The job of the insurance is to define that monthly amount (which is not trivial to do), collect it, store it and eventually pay it out.
On another note, unless an insurance is mandatory you can usually opt to pay yourself.
That is the job of the government. Everyone needs healthcare to one degree or another. If we’re all going to be pooling money anyway it shouldn’t be filtered through a for-profit system first.
On another note, unless an insurance is mandatory you can usually opt to pay yourself.
No I can’t. Everything is too expensive because insurance being involved has inflated the costs.
The cost of insurance goes down the larger the pool of people. The largest pool in a country is everyone, so like utilities it becomes a natural monopoly.
Natural monopolies should be the purview of the government as they allow for abuse.
I believe the main problem in the US is the focus on shareholder value. Some people invest into shares of healthcare companies to turn a profit. That is just insane. In Germany (which‘s healthcare system is not perfect) there are many private health insurance companies, but there are not allowed to make a profit (or pay out dividends to shareholders, because there aren‘t any). If there are profits they need to be reinvested into the system. It leads to much better outcomes in my opinion.
If we’re all going to be pooling money anyway it shouldn’t be filtered through a for-profit system first.
Not to sound like someone who wants a small government, but instead paying money to shareholders you can also pay tons and tons of government workers. In Germany when you work for the government you can‘t get fired which leads to a lot of overcapacity. In the tax department it is very often the case that there is only work for less than half a day. A friend of mine actually quit their (very safe) job there, because they couldn‘t stand being bored half a day and being mocked for working too fast.
Again I believe everything is better than the system in the US, but there is some nuance to the alternatives.
Anything critical to the life of an individual citizen, like health and home insurance, should be publicly run. It just doesn’t make sense for a private company to manage that because their profit motive is in direct opposition to the individual (i.e. they must fight claims and inflate premiums to increase revenue).
The state loses money anyway if the person is homeless or destitute so they might as well pay out. Yes there are still agents to manage funds and adjust claims and set rates but they’re now operating as impartial public servants instead of antagonists.
You would think that. But most decent sized companies self insure. That means they figure out how much to hold in savings to cover potential costs. They probably pay someone for that number. The premium is just to pay the insurance company to manage billing. It is basically an administrative fee. That puts them in the position that employers will choose the insurance company that cost them the least, mainly by denying claims. It’s a system designed to extract as much money as possible from the people and pass it on to the largest shareholders (the board of directors).
It’s all a scam and if it doesn’t feel like that yet just you wait!
I just bought a new car. Been driving over twenty years, not a single accident or ticket ever in my life. It was a fucking Toyota Corolla. THEY TRIED TO CHARGE ME MORE A MONTH FOR INSURANCE THAN THE FUCKING CAR PAYMENT!
I was on the phone and I said to geico, you think you deserve a car and a half every fucking month to insure my one car? They told me I would never find a lower rapt that’s what everyone is going to be paying soon.
I found a lower rate… like 10% of what they quoted. Fucking con artists. Every single person that works in insurance should know they are the enemy.
I‘ve heard that car insurance is too expensive in the US, but keep in mind that you are usually not insuring your own car, but everyone else‘s, so if you are causing an accidents the other party can buy a new car for example. An old car (due to the lack of safety systems) is often more likely to end up in car crash than a newer one. In Germany (where insurance prices are much saner) this applies as well. You either get an expensive car and pay less for insurance or an old one and pay more. Also in Germany fees are pooled by model, so if your car is used by a lot young people (who get into accidents more) you also pay more. The good thing is that you can inform yourself about it before you buy a car to factor it into a buying decision from the start.
Sounds like communism to me, son.
waiting for a medical group to bypass them and collect premiums directly. if only to end insurance paperwork costs. it is a drag on everyone’s bottom line. aside from price distortions.
A couple of my doctors did that before I left the US in 2021. They stopped accepting insurance and started charging a monthly “membership fee” that would cover a certain number of visits per year.
My parents are part of a clinic exactly like this. I legit thought it might be a scam at first because “how have insurance companies not shut this down?”
It sorta works for kaiser - they administer the insurance and the hospitals. Very convenient for people who both have the insurance and access to their facilities.
Nowhere near as good as a single payer system of course.
I don’t love Kaiser - the prices still suck. But they sometimes suck less, and their system is far more streamlined than I’ve had with other insurance providers. Still ridiculous to be trapped in a system with no control over or transparency into costs.
It would convert nicely enough to a single payer. Granted costs might suck but if they were just absorbed into the system, I wouldn’t really care. I could at least believe they are trying to be efficient. As it is, I’m left believing I get charged as much as they think they can get away with. And wth else am I going to do? Kaiser is much cheaper than my employer’s other option (there are literally 2), and I’ve had the other before. It just sucks (slightly) differently.
I’ve seen it with dentists, they have a membership plan that covers cleanings and certain things which can be useful and affordable if you don’t have access to affordable dental insurance.
I have something like that, sorta. I work for a very tiny company (literally 4 people), and so we couldn’t get a good insurance plan that covered vision and dental because insurance companies suck ass.
So my dentist has a thing where I pay a single price once a year and get 2 cleanings out of the deal. Though anything beyond that is still out of pocket.
Horrible place for a conflict of interest
conflict with insurance interest in taking your money. nurse i know spends 2 hours of insurance documentation for every hour on actual nursing.
I’m not claiming that’s a good thing but I’m fine with my medical provider being incented to provide proper care and to get everything they deserve from my insurance. I would not be fine with them being incented to provide only the care I can afford right now or being incented to maximize how much I’m stuck paying
the calculation i try to do. total insurance payments for a year minus healthcare received equals profits wasted building bigger office buildings and yachts for insurance execs. i’ll bet you a hundred dollars a month your house won’t burn down. or the extended car warranty scams are also same deal. house always wins because people don’t have common sense to save money for ‘rainy days’. schools don’t teach basic finance.
Here in Argentina that we have free healthcare, insurance is a signal of wealth so you get attended in the private hospital away from the common folk. And even in the private hospital everything is relatively cheap because they have to compete with the free option.
Yeah, I wish health insurance was just “you’ll never pay more than 20k a year on medical bills” or something like that. Let me find my own damn doctor
20k a year? That would be better that what you have now? Sincerly, a non-USAian
Well, most insurance is only for emergencies, and it is priced accordingly. For example, when I drove a car, I didn’t have to deal with my auto insurance plan at all while getting gas or normal maintenance. However, when I got into a few bad accidents, the car insurance was vital for continuing to have a car, and it paid towards helping me get it fixed. Car insurance is insurance against something catastrophic happening to a vital part of life in most of America, not something to use everyday, and is priced accordingly.
Health insurance here is very different from car insurance. Rather than an emergency contingency, health insurance is woven into most healthcare purchases in the U.S. Accordingly, it is very expensive, limiting, and inefficient. Due to the dynamics of the system it creates, Americans must usually pay through the nose for even everyday healthcare without insurance.
If health insurance was operated more like car insurance, except of course that a human life should never be “totaled out,” the system would eventually adjust and normalize.
Are you suggesting routine visits not be covered? That’s how it reads… Do we think less (because it costs) basic preventative care and planning will lead to less catastrophic/etc issues? Or by not covering it are we expecting “competition” to lower the price?
Yes, that’s what I’m suggesting. Keep in mind that in most other countries where insurance has less of a role, these are vastly cheaper than they are here. I expect more people will ultimately go then, especially the uninsured, because prices would no longer be artificially inflated by bureaucracy and for the purposes of negotiation with insurance.
The hard problem, the way I see it, would be taking us from here to there with minimal suffering during such a transition.
We could also go the opposite direction towards single-payer healthcare. That also can be more efficient than what we have if politicians don’t sabotage it, but I am concerned that here, they will, and we’ll end up with something like the U.K. NHS. Therefore, for the U.S. specifically, I don’t see this as a good option due to instability.
What we have now is a compromise that works for nobody.
I get what you’re saying and completely agree the current situation works for no one, but covering routine care is important. Sure, people probably could pay for routine care directly and it would be cheaper but all too many won’t. When it turns into a serious problem that could have been prevented, it’s not just their health affected but cost to the insurer and employer.
I’m pretty sure that 100% coverage of routine care has been proven cheaper than letting the person decide
You guys pay for insurance and for medical treatment?
Not everybody. Some of us just die instead.
We pay a premium, which is a monthly or weekly payment to the insurance company in the same amount each time.
Then, when we see a doctor, we have to pay a copay (a single payment in a fixed amount), coinsurance (payment of a particular percentage of the whole cost), and a deductible (either a per-visit or per-year amount where we have to pay ourselves before an insurance company pays). Together, these types of payments are known as member payments, member responsibility, or out of pocket payments, and they’re capped at a particular amount per year (at most $9,200 for an individual or $18,400 for a family).
It’s a complex system, and insurance is only a part of the problem. Plenty of countries have private insurance and don’t have these issues (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea). And many of the providers in the US (hospitals, doctors, clinics, labs) are scummy corporate profit-driven providers and try to enrich themselves at the expense of insurance (including government and nonprofit insurance), so there’s a lot of fraud and anti-fraud measures creating messy overhead and inefficiency.
Yeah in Germany we have mandatory health care. Everyone must pay for the insurance but we don’t pay anything for the treatment
We pay for insurance, out of pocket deductibles and copays. Even when everything is covered.
Naw just insurance, can’t afford the treatment.
If you have good insurance, this is absolutely what it can be. My work pays for mine, and the max out-of-pocket is $3.6k/yr. I had already hit my max, then wound up with a $4k ER visit, so it wound up being free. Unfortunately, most insurance is fucking awful unless your company is willing to pay a shitton for some very expensive plan.
Pretty much every plan has an annual out of pocket max, and in order to be listed on an exchange it has to be under $9,200 for an individual or $18,400 for a family. Balance billing is also now illegal, so whatever the insurance won’t pay can’t be billed to you. That’s the bare minimum, and it’s already the law.
So if you can find a plan that will cover any doctor you find (even if “out of network”), you can have what you’re looking for. It probably won’t be cheap, but what you’re asking for is in most plans in some way or another.
They do, but of course it depends on your company offering it.
The combination of “high deductible health plan” (cover everything after $x,000) and a “health savings account” (set aside pretax money, accumulate and invest) really seem like a solid improvement over everything else. If your company offers it. If you can afford to keep at least the full annual deduction in an HSA
That being said I’ve never been able to take advantage so I could easily be wrong. I currently pay for “old fashioned insurance” which really is the way your parents remember it,covers everything, low deductible and copay no out of network nonsense, but oh so expensive. Y’all with crappy insurance can at least applaud not paying premiums I’m stuck with
Health insurance is a decent solution to no universal healthcare…on paper. But the way the US executed it is poor
Health insurance is rent on your life. Healthcare should be provided by your government through taxes. It is the best interest of everyone to do it that way. That isn’t insurance. That’s just healthcare.
I agree with you. But I think you missed the point of my comment.
Yep! Japan (only other country I have experience with) has a government run health insurance. Since the interests aren’t profit, the prices remain reasonable even without it
it would be known as usury in an earlier period, say, 13th century Italy
iirc, usery is a sin. says so in the manual
Crack open a history book or read a brief history. The product is risk pooling
a strategy where individuals, businesses, or governments combine their risks into a large group to share the financial burden of unexpected losses, making costs more predictable and manageable.
Post needs text alternative.
Images of text break much that text alternatives do not. Losses due to image of text lacking alternative such as link:
- usability
- we can’t quote the text without pointless bullshit like retyping it or OCR
- text search is unavailable
- the system can’t
- reflow text to varied screen sizes
- vary presentation (size, contrast)
- vary modality (audio, braille)
- accessibility
- lacks semantic structure (tags for titles, heading levels, sections, paragraphs, lists, emphasis, code, links, accessibility features, etc)
- some users can’t read the image due to lack of alt text (markdown image description)
- users can’t adapt the text for dyslexia or vision impairments
- systems can’t read the text to them or send it to braille devices
- web connectivity
- we have to do failure-prone bullshit to find the original source
- we can’t explore wider context of the original message
- authenticity: we don’t know the image hasn’t been tampered
- searchability: the “text” isn’t indexable by search engine in a meaningful way
- fault tolerance: no text fallback if
- image breaks
- image host is geoblocked due to insane regulations.
Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.
What if, instead of lots of little risk pools, we had one really big risk pool, with the whole country in it? That would reduce the risk even further.
And get this, revolutionary idea …. That single giant risk pool does not need to be a profit taker, reducing costs further
Yes. And the best possible product for all is one pool. I.e. universal care.
No disagreement there. As the history indicated, the idea was always there since Roosevelt, but there was always an enemy of progress.
- disinterest limiting scope of Social Security
- convergence by Socialist and Progressive parties, labor unions, & regulatory pressure toward the rise & political dominance of employer-sponsored coverage
- the Chamber of Commerce, the American Hospital Association, & the AMA
- Nixon
- the Republican party
- moderates
This might be a case where the imperfect has been the enemy of good.
- usability
Now imagine a country where there is public healthcare, but it is blasted and underpaid so often by crony politicians because “healthcare” companies AND medics have a large pool of crony politicians to pay
Now imagine the lesser of two evils.
I was just asking people to imagine Brazil :P
- You only say that because you live in Brazil and think the problems you list must be unique.
- You were making a cheeky stab at public healthcare, so I made a cheeky stab back.
- I don’t think nor implied the problems are unique
- I made a stab at what it is like to have public healthcare while there is a profit driven “health industry” running parallel
Everyone is aware no healthcare system is perfect. If that’s really all you were trying to say, I think you wasted your time.
…but I don’t think that’s all you were trying to say.
And the UK and Canada. Maybe not as bad as Brazil, but the NHS is Britain is being eroded every single day.
This is why even the best welfare states are not good enough. The greed of the rich and the bendy spines of politicians will slowly chip away at the systems and privatize them.
lmao cnews mentioned. i feel this paper isnt based on a lot of evidence rather than vibe and wishfull thinking
I think you might be in the wrong thread with this comment.
thanks, didnt know how this happen.
When the US was having actual discussions of single-payer health care (i.e. the “public option” during Obama’s first term), one major argument against it was “do you really want the government between you and your doctor?!”
Even though insurance companies are literally already between you and your doctor, and they exist purely to extract money from that interaction.
It’s never made sense.
The old arguments were “Look how long they (the socialists) wait to get appointments and get seen!” Yep, we’re there now. I have insurance, I still pay a bunch, and seeing specialists is a luxury at this point. If I have an issue, I don’t even consider calling specialists, because I know it’s weeks til I can get in.
Weeks lol, try months to years round these parts
And then the same party decided to get the government in there too anyways
Ahaha that’s a good point. Tbh despite the nickname “Obamacare” it had slipped my mind that the ACA was the bastardized, castrated version of that whole thing.
They chopped it down to Romneycare
I don’t trust the government, but I trust them a hell of a lot more than insurance companies of all people
I don’t want anyone between me and my doctor. Doctors should be deciding what care I require and billing the govt for it. If the government thinks something fishy is going on, they can audit them after the fact. I need not be involved. As it stands I don’t go to the doctor at all because I’m worried they’ll do some test or something that wasn’t actually approved by my insurance and I’ll get slapped with a bill for 1000s of dollars.
Just as an aside, often the bill you first receive from stuff like that is the fake price they bill insurance for, so the insurance company can “negotiate” a better deal.
If you get a bill like this and insurance denies the claim, you can often call the billing department and get a significant reduction.
I knew someone who racked up like $250k in denied claims from cancer treatment. They went to the hospital to work out a payment plan, and the billing department was so surprised someone actually wanted to pay their bill they dropped it to $2500.
Obviously it’s still fucked that you have to do it, but the price can often be lower than the sticker price.
You can also call your doctor to ask what tests they’re going to run and which lab they use, then call your insurance to verify coverage. Or if the testing is done in house the office staff can check for you.
While true, it’s also just ridiculous that going through that whole process is even a possibility. So many hours of wasted time.
I don’t care. I’m not engaging with that system unless I think I’m dying. Even then I’ll probably try and sleep whatever it is off first and die anyway. At least my bank account will be intact to leave to my family.
I’m pretty sure the ACA included at least some protection against that, although I don’t know if the current administration repealed that
You forgot that Clinton tried as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_1993
during Obama’s first term
Lol this was just about the first thing Clinton tried to get done in 1993. It’s one of the things that led to the creation of Fox News.
It’s never made sense.
It makes perfect sense for the americans who have been conditioned for literal decades to react certain ways to certain things, while being kept ignorant of nice things that exist in the rest of the world.
For instance:
Government-run anything? It is mathematically and physically impossible for it to benefit society. It will, without fail, become a corrupt dumpster fire that furthers evil in our world.
Market-based solution that leans heavily on “personal responsibility?” Well that’s just great I tells ya! It lobs like the best, kindest, and most Christlike solution is to do nothing and let them fend for themselves! They will be stronger for it and will thank us!
