Healthcare Question: If we don't force people to get coverage....Who pays if they get sick or injured??

DiscoStu wrote:

join utah wrote:

tell me about the differences in "scanners" if youre so well aware gary. im looking forward to this.

Gary believes he is an expert in every subject. His answer to every problem is 'free market' except when the subject is immigration, then it's to close the market to non-whites.

In 2005 20% of the world's CT scanner's image reconstruction hardware was designed by me.

You picked the wrong time to call my bluff.

baggyballs wrote:

Health is each individuals responsibily.

I do not want to pay for other peoples healthcare. I do not want my tax dollars spent on other peoples healthcare.

I have not had health insurance for 15 years, because it is a scam, and you pay out of pocket anyway. Doctors and hospitals charge way too much for their services. If I don't own a car, I don't pay car insurance (yes Obama fined us for not having his plan!) People need to take responibility for themselves, and not have other people carrry them! The more you give people, the more they take.

Here is the thing:

If you get cancer or need an organ transplant, the cost of the treatment will be more than you can afford.

Or you can some condition that requires expensive medication for the rest of your life.

You may not have the means to take responsibility for yourself even if you lived a healthy lifestyle.

So we take responsibility for each other.

You chip in now which helps someone else.

Later, people chip in to help you.

It is much more efficient to handle this collectively than individually.

Which countries would those be? You know, the ones with no government intervention that have great and wonderfully good health care for all. Just list them for me. Thank you in advance.

Oh I see... wrote:

zephito wrote:

Even when they do get seriously ill, it probably costs less, as they'll wait and wait until their cancer or heart disease is extremely advanced and they'll die a month after diagnosis. An insured individual with the same condition might go through years of expensive treatment. The GOP plan does save money vis a vis Obamacare.

That makes sense. Uninsured people cost less if they wait to get care and die. Great! What if instead of healthcare we assign every individual in society a certain monetary value, and if their healthcare costs exceed that value we just "eliminate the expense"? That could solve all the problems with the healthcare system.

It is based on the assumption they die. But you can also get things like instead of taking care of that stomache pain solved by removing the appendix for 2k, you wait til it bursts, get rushed to the ER and run up a 100k bill.

Maybe a 20 dollar multivitamin would have prevent a birth defect that cost 2 million dollars in health care an education dollars over the kids life.

Maybe treating that liver problem early for 80k prevents spending 600k on dialysis

Each individual disease is going to have a different cost benefit to treating early versus later. It isn't remotely as simple as later treatment saves money.

No. That's the dumbed down mantra that health care industry lobbyists and politicians want you to be reciting. There's only a tiny grain of truth in there.

The tiny grain is that a portion of the health care industry should be allocated to conditions that you describe. That part should be called "insurance", which is of course defined as risk management. Everyone should be part of that risk pool, because you never know what's going to happen. Even most "free market" folks would agree with that.

But for non-catastrophic conditions, we need to eliminate the 1) fee-for-service and 2) third party payment aspects of our system. Our government let health insurance companies become a "health care industry." THEY are at the center of the system, not you and I.

You cannot expect to "handle this more efficiently collectively" if there is zero downward pricing pressure. The little tinkering the ACA did to the system was nothing compared to the impact that could be realized by getting rid of fee-for-service and third party payments.

The problem is that most of the spending is going to be on stuff that people can't handle themselves even if you expect them to pay every sub 10k bill themselves.

HMO's were supposed to radically reduce the cost of health care. You would pay Kaiser a fixed fee to take care of you. We never got the huge reductions in costs that were claimed.

Everyone has some pet idea that will solve health care. So far none of them have worked when widely deployed.

Why didn't ObamaCare work?

DiscoGary wrote:

adfsasdf wrote:

The problem is that most of the spending is going to be on stuff that people can't handle themselves even if you expect them to pay every sub 10k bill themselves.

HMO's were supposed to radically reduce the cost of health care. You would pay Kaiser a fixed fee to take care of you. We never got the huge reductions in costs that were claimed.

Everyone has some pet idea that will solve health care. So far none of them have worked when widely deployed.

Why didn't ObamaCare work?

first of all, we were talking about mri. second of all, if you're such an expert than go ahead and give a brief explanation of the "differences in scanners" that you said you were well aware of. let's see how much of an expert you really are. i cannot wait to see your reply and tear it to pieces.

Educated guy wrote:

But for non-catastrophic conditions, we need to eliminate the 1) fee-for-service and 2) third party payment aspects of our system. Our government let health insurance companies become a "health care industry." THEY are at the center of the system, not you and I.

Sounds wonderful but it is simply not politically or logistically possible to do that.

You have to deal in reality, not theory.

In theory you could eliminate insurance companies and have a single payer system.

In reality, that just could not be done.

In theory, you could reverse all legislation and have total free markets with no government involvement.

That ain't happening.

All you can do is take what you have and tinker with it.

And it takes 60 Senate votes for any change.

9 1/2 inches long wrote:

So do RepubliKKKans think car insurance should be optional? If we follow their flawed logic the government shouldn't "force" anyone to buy insurance.

Next to die will be insurance of any kind. No more malpractice insurance. No more liability insurance. If you are injured by a drunk driver you are on your own to sue them. The new RepublKKK insurance will be entirely No-Fault.

joinutah wrote:

first of all, we were talking about mri. second of all, if you're such an expert than go ahead and give a brief explanation of the "differences in scanners" that you said you were well aware of. let's see how much of an expert you really are. i cannot wait to see your reply and tear it to pieces.

I'm not sure what you're looking for here. Within the context of this discussion the same concepts apply to both CT and MRI scanners in that the more powerful scanners with more detectors can scan faster and get better resolution than less powerful machines. It is also true of both modes that the most powerful machines, and therefore the most expensive ones, are really only needed in a limited number of cases. Heart scanning in the case of CT, and detailed brain scanning in the case of MRI. The idea that any facility without a state of the art scanner will immediately lead to deaths is a scare tactic used to justify spending huge amounts on a shiny new piece of equipment, therefore justifying increased costs passed on to the patient or insurer.

I have a basic understanding of the back-project method of reconstructing a CT image, but I could not describe the Fourier transformations necessary to create an MRI image without spending a lot of time on it. I suspect its similar.

HMO stands for "health management organization." Why would that save any money? It's still fee-for-service care and employs the third party payment system. You have to understand the economics and incentives behind the system before you start promoting something as "cost savings."

From Wikipedia page for HMOs:

"Although businesses pursued the HMO model for its alleged cost containment benefits, some research indicates that private HMO plans don't achieve any significant cost savings over non-HMO plans. Although out-of-pocket costs are reduced for consumers, controlling for other factors, the plans don't affect total expenditures and payments by insurers. A possible reason for this failure is that consumers might increase utilization in response to less cost sharing under HMOs.[4] Some[5] have asserted that HMOs (especially those run for profit) actually increase administrative costs and tend to cherry-pick healthier patients."

xlev2 wrote:

Art is correct. Ultimately the bills will go unpaid or be classified as uncollectable, and to cover these losses, rates and deductibles are increased on those who are insured. This was one of the concepts Obamacare tried to address.

That may be correct, however there's a more fundamental economics issue at play insurance market. If we don't force people to get coverage then generally people with poorer health will be more likely to seek out coverage. Insurance companies expect this and then price insurance higher to cover their higher expected costs. They raise prices through some mechanism like setting higher premiums or requiring larger deductibles. This in turn leads to more people opting out of the insurance market, thus repeating and reinforcing the cycle.

This is the more fundamental reason for why universal coverage should lead to lower average insurance costs. Whether or not those who opt out are more likely to pay their bills is a different issue and has not theoretically been proven and may not be empirically true as well.

Educated Guy...many thanks for your posts here. I've never seen such a good explanation of why the whole healthcare thing is such a mess...and what can be done to solve it. Brilliant!

Unfortunately...as you say...the very last thing those in power want to do is fix it.

Just like a typical lib, to lazy to look it up yourself. Here is the list....

...you see EVERY country ranked above the US has a true free market healthcare system. FACT! If they had a socialized system, a universal coverage system, or a system based on tax payer funding they COULDN'T possibly be ranked higher than the US in terms of economic freedom by the prestigious and conservative Heritage Foundation because we all agree with the FACT that socialized/universal/tax payer funded healthcare DESTROYS economies.

These real world factual (rather than deeply held rigid ideological theories) are the basis for the GOPs well-thought out and detail healthcare plan. I mean, look at the FACTS man! Open your lib eyes to REALITY! There are TONS of real world examples of free market reform revolutionizing healthcare!

The GOP controlled congress voted what like 60+ times to repeal the disaster that is OBUMMERcare over the past few years. They fought tooth and nail with passion because they had a clear and detailed plan to replace this disaster. That's why the almost instantenously were able to reveal their awesome and detailed plan to us once Trump (praise be upon him) took office. They were not simly voting to repeal for years based on emotion, politics, and playing to their base. These are serious people with serious ideas--which, of course, can be distilled into 140 characters or less. In fact it can be simplified into 3 words: FREE MARKET reform.

#MAGA

#unpresidented

#whoknewhethcarewassocomplex

so you consider yourself an expert and this is all you can say about the differences between scanners "more powerful scanners with more detectors can scan faster and get better resolution than less powerful machines"? do you post drunk as well as drive drunk, chief? no comments on what makes a scanner more powerful or how that impacts resolution. this post, as with all your other posts, show what a fraud you really are.

Since I am a 'typical lib' please tell me where this link says anything about the health care exiting for all in these countries? And where it speaks about what their specific systems are?

I mean you are such a deep thinker and all.