Thread: How to Fix Healthcare Insurance

Government run healthcare would be a disaster.

There are several problems with our current healthcare insurance system. Not every one can get health insurance. The insurance companies cherry pick. They are in it to make a profit. They exclude high-risk individuals. This maximizes their profit. The whole point of insurance is to spread the risk around. If you are born with diabetes, the insurance companies must be required to accept you at the same rate as another person your age. If you smoke cigarettes, they should be able to charge more money.

They exclude the poor. The poor get the government to pay for their health care. The poor only seek health care long past the cost effective point. We need cost effective health insurance for all Americans.

There should be at least four different plans.

A.
B.
C. Cost Effective Catastrophic
D.

The Cost Effective insurance should cover things like immunizations, prenatal care, cancer and accidents like falling off a ladder. It should not cover lung cancer for smokers. It should not cover pre-mortem surgery. It should cover angioplasty. It should not cover quadruple coronary bypass. Bypass surgery has the same 5-year survival rate as patients who receive neither bypass nor angioplasty. It does make the pain of angina go away for 3-4 years, until the new veins clog. It leaves 1/3 of the patients crippled. The “unneeded” veins in the legs turn out to be needed. There are medicines, which treat angina much cheaper than bypass surgery. A medical board needs to define the coverage. I am not qualified to decide. My present insurance company will not tell me what is covered and what is not under their various plans. Each plan varies from group to group. At least this way it will be published.

Everyone must have “C”.

It should have a high deductible like 4,000 $. The cost of submitting forms is outrageous. There will be no preexisting condition exclusion. You must have this coverage. The employer should not pay for it. Don’t ask me how to enforce it.

A.
B.
C. Cost Effective Catastrophic
D. Deductible

It is obvious that people who make the minimum wage can’t pay a 4,000 $ deductible. The insurance companies may offer Deductible insurance. Many HMOs will offer a plan with “C” and “D” combined. I had Kaiser Permanente HMO in California. It was a good cost effective plan. It was almost ½ the price of the PPO I am now in.

The government is picking up the cost of health care for the poor now. The county hospitals are a fiscal disaster. The government should pay for private health insurance for the poor. The government is already paying. The government run county hospital system is a disaster. Get the government out of the health care delivery system. Let the poor choose which insurance company they want.



A. Augmented.
B.
C. Cost Effective Catastrophic
D. Deductible

Any insurance company may offer Augmented insurance. This is above and beyond the Cost Effective Catastrophic insurance everyone has. People who smoke may elect this. A separate premium will be charged. People, who still think coronary bypass surgery is good, may elect this. They may cover premortem surgery. (My grandmother had premortem surgery. She died from colon cancer a few days later. Medicare paid the surgeons and hospital a handsome fee.) This will be a completely free market with no government involvement. There may be preexisting condition waiting periods. They must publish exactly what is covered. You may want it. I do not want to pay for it.

A. Augmented.
B. Boondoggle
C. Cost Effective Catastrophic
D. Deductible

Any insurance company may offer Boondoggle coverage for acupuncture, herbalists, chiropractors, and podiatrist etcetera. Some insurance companies may offer chiropractor coverage in the Augmented plan. It is a completely free market. Let the buyer beware. You may want it. I do not want to pay for it.

Rationing Healthcare


The key to controlling healthcare costs is rationing. Not every new experimental procedure will be covered in the Cost Effective Catastrophic plan. Educated medical professionals will define what is cost effective-not some person in personnel. This is what they do at Kaiser Permanente. Not every new drug will be offered under the cost effective plan. Only when a drug has been shown to blow the generic drugs away should it be added to Plan “C”, or if the generic drugs are not tolerated for a particular individual. Any insurance company may pay for any new drugs under the Augmented plan, for an additional premium.

Binding arbitration must be required. The lieyers have driven up the cost of healthcare. They take more than 1/3 of any settlement. This drives up the cost of malpractice insurance. Physicians now perform unneeded procedures to cover their ass. Only 3-4% of cesarean sections are medically needed. Why are 25% of babies born by cesarean section? Lieyers. Also insurance companies pay more for cesarean sections. Some doctors deliver 50% of their babies by cesarean section. Some deliver only 3%. Juries can not tell the difference between an undesired outcome and malpractice.

Tort reform is needed. Lieyers should be held liable for twice the legal fees for all torts they initiate which they loose. See how they like it when their insurance skyrockets.

Get Medicare out of it. Get Medicaid out of it.

The government should only be involved in setting the rules for the cost effective catastrophic insurance regulations. The Sherman anti-trust act curtailed most of the excesses of unbridled capitalism. The public utilities commission regulates the monopolies of utilities.

We need slight government regulation of basic health insurance. This will keep basic health insurance available to all at a reasonable price. More advanced healthcare will be available to those who choose to pay for it.

Originally Posted by Fritz

If you are born with diabetes, the insurance companies must be required to accept you at the same rate as another person your age. If you smoke cigarettes, they should be able to charge more money.

Why the distinction? The whole point of insurance is to accurately estimate the risk, and then spread it among the pool of insured.

That no one chooses to have diabetes doesn't alter the fact that they will cost the insurer more money. There's no reason people that don't have diabetes should have to pay for someone who does.

Originally Posted by Fritz

They exclude the poor.

Life's a bitch being poor. That's probably why most people consider it a bizarre lifestyle choice.

Originally Posted by Fritz

There should be at least four different plans.

There are 300,000,000 Americans. No reason there can't be 300,000,000 different plans. We've got computers, you know. Just make those 300,000,000 people pay their own way.

Originally Posted by Fritz

It should not cover lung cancer for smokers.

Why not? Smoking isn't the only cause of lung cancer.

Originally Posted by Fritz

It should not cover pre-mortem surgery.

All surgery is pre-mortem. That's usually the whole idea, unless you're Chelsea Clinton looking for a new nose.

Originally Posted by Fritz

Everyone must have “C”.

Easy. Let the people who choose not to pay for "C" die.

Evolution will proceed apace.

Originally Posted by Fritz

It is obvious that people who make the minimum wage can’t pay a 4,000 $ deductible.

If that ain't an incentive to study in school, what is?

Originally Posted by Fritz

The government is picking up the cost of health care for the poor now.

That should stop.

Originally Posted by Fritz

The county hospitals are a fiscal disaster.

IN VA SION...

Originally Posted by Fritz

The government should pay for private health insurance for the poor.

Fuck that. Let'em die. We can always find more poor people. There's no shortage.

Originally Posted by Fritz

The key to controlling healthcare costs is rationing.

The key to not worrying about paying for someone else's medical bills is to make the government stop robbing you to do so.


Only 3-4% of cesarean sections are medically needed. Why are 25% of babies born by cesarean section? Lieyers.[/quote]

And because obstetricians make more money doing them, as do the hospitals, and no one cares because it's the insurance company's money or the government's money, not the patient's, and not the taxpayer's money.

C-sections do produce newborns with nice round heads, though, don't they? And the babies are sooo quiet and calm, too.

Originally Posted by Freedom for All

Fuck that. Let'em die. We can always find more poor people. There's no shortage.

awwweesoooommme...

Just out of curiosity, you're not big on altruism are you?



lol. =|

Originally Posted by Oneder

awwweesoooommme...

Just out of curiosity, you're not big on altruism are you?



lol. =|

There is no such thing as altruism. Every single action a human being consciously takes is for a selfish reason alone.

Originally Posted by Fritz

Government run healthcare would be a disaster.

There are several problems with our current healthcare insurance system. Not every one can get health insurance. The insurance companies cherry pick. They are in it to make a profit. They exclude high-risk individuals. This maximizes their profit. The whole point of insurance is to spread the risk around. If you are born with diabetes, the insurance companies must be required to accept you at the same rate as another person your age.

LOL, I guess the insurance companies should also be forced to sell your beneficiaries life insurance once you are dead.

Originally Posted by Freedom for All

Only 3-4% of cesarean sections are medically needed. Why are 25% of babies born by cesarean section? Lieyers.

And because obstetricians make more money doing them, as do the hospitals, and no one cares because it's the insurance company's money or the government's money, not the patient's, and not the taxpayer's money.

You got that one right. It takes less time to do a cesarean than natural childbirth. It pays a whole lot more money.

How do you propose we stop HillaryCare? Either we come up with a plan to fix Medicare or we will be doomed to government run healthcare. I choose the lesser of two evils.

What's a lieyer?

This plan will never go over, although the instance of some who smoked and have lung cancer I agree it should not be covered, but then again what do we do with the poor idiot, let him/her lay there and suffer and die ? This simply isn't America as we know it

As for the deductables, the high deductable you mentioned is way too high for the average Joe, he/she can't pay $4,000 he/she simply don't have it, what do we do, let them go broke and lose their house ?

I'm having that problem now, the total out of pocket expense for my last hospital stay was $4,500 I'm on the edge of going broke, I may have to cancel all insurance and be like the other 47 million who have no insurance, I can't afford it.

By the way, what about those who get some form of cancer who do not and never did smoke, do they get covered while we allow everyone else to suffer ? Don't you think they're being made a victim for a 3rd time, once by tobacco companies, then by greedy government raising taxes on tobacco products they are addicted to and can't quit, and now a 3rd time because you want to let them suffer because you don't think we ought to cover lung cancer or heart bypasses?

Don't tell me bypass surgery don't help/work because my Father had triple bypass surgery 14 years ago, if he didn't have it I would bet he'd be dead by now, he grew new veins at some time or other that is a fact not all patients do, some still have pain some do not none the less when they have that serious a problem they have no choice, but to do a bypass. he's now 80+ yrs old and able to take care of himself, tomorrow he may not be alive but I thank God for the 14 yrs his life was extended.

I agree something needs to be done to allow for health insurance to be effective and affordable to all, if it were effective meaning not such a ridicilious high deductable and covered most everything we have FDA approved up to this date, after this it will depend on what insurance companies want to do to be competative, if this were the case most if mot all people could afford decent health insurance.

I hope something can be done, I'm just not sure what - whatever it is it must be made affordable, effective with "reasonable" deductables so the average Joe won't go broke just trying to pay his out of pocket deductable expenses - I don't have the answers, I truly hope someone does soon.

Dude, not everyone chooses to be poor, no one chooses to be born let alone born with medical problems yet you are like Hitler you think all the poor or people with medical problems ought to be dead so you don't have to be bothered by these poor people, that is just plain Un American !

Even if everyone was equal and equally educated there are only so many jobs available that will pay enough to the average Joe so he/she can purchase their health insurance so he/she don't have to die according to you, some will always lose out and according to you "too bad" let them die that's just ridicilious.

Well it sucks for me because i don't live at home anymore so i don't have health insurance. So if i got really sick, i'm pretty much screwed.