We need to get rid of the abortion of a bill making it's way through congress and get working on a single payer system.
I am 100% in agreement with the Physicians for a National Health Program...
Physicians for a National Health Program | Single Payer Resources
It's well worth the time to go through all their articles.
Those hacks? Thats the guys that were pushing this study...
Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance | Health | Reuters
produced by these guys
Cambridge Health Alliance cutting workforce, closing clinics - White Coat Notes - Boston.com
Who stand to have benefit to the tune of millions of dollars and in general have their solvency secured in a single payer system.
Yeah, there's no ulterior motives there by any stretch :24:
Regarding those poor insurance companies and their recently
fudged profit declarations? Hmm. Funny how only a few years ago they were shouting about the huge amounts they were making and now they're not. They're choosing to fudge their statistics at this time to get support from people like yourself.
1. Linking to the loonies at "thinkprogress" for "facts" about anything is ridiculous.
2. If you have proof that the profit margins are fudged, I'm sure the US Securities and Exchange Commission would be interested in that information, as "fudging" the numbers is illegal for publicly traded companies.
3. It doesn't appear as if you understand the difference between profit and profit margin.
Take every bodies favorite company, Wal-Mart. They make BILLIONS of dollars in profit every year, but they only have a profit margin of ~5% or 5 cents on every dollar they sell. The reason they can makes billions on such a small profit margin is they sell so much of it.
Its the exact same for insurance companies. Their profits may be high but their profit margin is still around 6%. In other words, if you eliminate insurance companies entirely, you're total savings is 6% assuming no other impacts to the system.
Can you please provide evidence of the non-profit denial rates being the same? I can find plenty of references to for-profit companies denial rates (up to and above 30%).
I don't know where you saw 30%. The AMA's data says the worst claim denier is Medicare...
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/368/reportcard.pdf
As far as the non-profit denials, you can google search enough instances of non-profit Blue Cross/Blue Shields getting sued for claim denial to see its not abnormal by any stretch.
As publicly owned companies they have a legal obligation to be profitable. That profit, in an essentially saturated market can only come from cutting costs - i.e. care. That is why in the industry, a successful claim is called a "medical loss". That's why they employ scores of doctors who get bonuses when they deny care.
If thats the case it should be exceedingly easy to show me the law that says a public company is required to be profitable. I expect to be waiting a damn long time though since it doesn't exist.
A public company has a fiduciary duty to maximize the value of the company to the shareholders and thats it. That can come from many different avenues including corporate growth and expansion.
I could really care less if they do have Doctors evaluating claims and providing bonuses for denial. They're there to enforce the insurance companies interest in a contractual relationship by deciding if the claim is really necessary and covered under the contract. Those bonuses are an incentive to follow the contract to the letter.
You're personal doctor has the exact same incentive to provide extra care and claim its necessary and covered when he's deciding on treatment. For every procedure he does, he gets more money from the insurance company so its in his best interest to claim its covered.
If you don't like that contractual situation, then don't buy insurance. As much as people want to believe it, you don't have a RIGHT to assign your risk to other people.
So denying care keeps customers happy? On which planet exactly?
The one in which you learn how to define who the customer is. Let me supplement that public education some more.
If you go to, say, the BMW , and buy a car you are BMWs customer. They have an incentive to keep you happy so you come back and buy another car.
If you're employer goes to BMW, buys a car, and then provides it to you as a employment benefit, then you're employer is BMWs customer. BMW has an incentive to keep you're employer happy, so they come back and buy more cars, not you.
Its the same damn thing when you're employer buys insurance and provides it to you the individual. You're employer does not give a flying shit whether you, the individual, get a claim denied or not, they only care that the premium is low. The preimum gets kept low by paying out as little as possible.
Well they are denying treatment, aren't they? They refuse to pay up for what they should. Of course you can still pay cash, but who could pay out 60,000$ for a serious operation? Very few people could take that kind of financial hit. If that's a life-saving operation, for 90% of the population a denial is as good as a death sentence.
And yet people manage to pay $30k for cars and $250k for homes all the time. Its called a payment plan and doctors and hospitals are more than happy to work one out for you.
I did it when I was in college to have an oral surgeon remove my wisdom teeth. I managed to pay back high 5 figures when I was making minimum wage half time. If I can do it in those conditions, anybody can.
A denial is only a death sentence in the liberal world where someone else HAS to be responsible and pay for an individuals well being. In the real world well people are capable of taking responsibility for themselves, its simply an irritation.
Simply because in 37 other countries they do. And they do it much cheaper, without the need to deny care. It really is that simple.
No its not that simple. You're denied care, its just masked where you can't or choose not to see it. Whether you wish to believe it or not, waiting lists are a form of rationing and denial of care.
And by you're own WHO study that you love so much, you get worse care than we do here in the US. Thats why our survival rates for major illnesses are so much better. You get what you pay for.
Firstly, I know of no government run system in which a "government flunky" makes decisions on what you get and what you don't. That is down to the doctors. I've never heard of anyone being denied treatment in any of the three countries with universal healthcare I have lived in (UK, Canada, Spain) by a doctor or a "government flunky." You have to remember that the govt works for you, not the other way around.
Then you don't understand the systems you've lived under.
Gov't flunkies set the budget. The budget determines how many people can be treated in a given time frame because you can't treat unlimited people without unlimited money. Thats just a simple truth.
If you can't be treated in that given time frame, then your care has been rationed which is a form of denial. Whether you want to believe it or not.
Rationing By Any Other Name - Megan McArdle
But there is also a real difference between having something rationed by a process and having it rationed by a person. That is, in fact, why progressives are so fond of rules. They don't want to tell grandma to take morphine instead of getting a pacemaker. It's much nicer if you create a mathematical formula that makes some doctor tell grandma to take morphine instead of getting a pacemaker. Then the doctor can disclaim responsibility too, because after all, no one really has any agency here--we're all just in the grips of an impersonal force.
But this won't do. If you design a formula to deny granny a pacemaker, knowing that this is the intent of the formula, then you've killed granny just as surely as if you'd ordered the doctor to do it directly. That's the intuition behind the conservative resistance to switching from price rationing to fiat rationing. Using the government's coercive power to decide the price of something, or who ought to get it, is qualitatively different from the same outcome arising out of voluntary actions in the marketplace. Even if you don't share the value judgement, it's not irrational, except in the sense that all human decisions have an element of intuition and emotion baked into them.
While there is no denying that there is always rationing in healthcare systems, the percentage of patients denied treatment is miniscule compared to a privately run system. My family has gone though hYou sound frightened of your government.
Bullshit. In you're system, everbody is de facto denied. You just choose not to see it. Ignorance is bliss I guess.
And you don't sound scared enough of your gov't. Gov't killed, tortured and oppressed more people in the last 150 years than any other institution hand down. Needless to say I'd rather keep them at arms length.
