<p>Hey mini why don’t you watch the movie “dead meat” and maybe you will think twice about their amazing system. Oh and on your percentages you quoted:</p>
<p>“That’s why, in British Columbia, when asked, 88% of residents given the choice favor their system to ours, and why, when Washington residents are asked, 70% of residents (including a majority of Republicans) prefer their system to ours.”</p>
<p>Just because people prefer it doesn’t mean that it is a better system. That stat you put up is just a logical falicy.</p>
<p>Drivers in some states (including mine) are required by law to carry auto insurance. It is not a choice, unless you choose not to drive. It is also much cheaper than $9,500 per year.</p>
<p>I am not advocating that anyone should go without medical insurance coverage. I was merely putting a number on the example you gave, because it didn’t look so crazy to me that a healthy family might prefer to self-insure at the rates you cited.</p>
<p>In TX drivers are required to have liability only. People who have nice, new cars choose to have full coverage, which is an extra cost, beyond the legal requirement, to pay for that nice, new car 'just in ‘case.’</p>
<p>Of course healthy families can choose to take their chances. But what usually ends up happening is that something happens, and suddenly they want health insurance, and they can no longer get it except for risk pool. Every day people call me practically begging me to insure them, and I can’t, because they waited too long and now they’re not insurable.</p>
<p>I think I may have already shared the story about the man who kept putting me of for several weeks and then it was too late - he had to have triple bypass surgery. He said he was ‘kicking himself.’</p>
<p>Personally, as one who favors alternative treatments for illnesses, I like catastrophic plans. But those wouldn’t work well for most people, who would go the chemo route. But the option is there for those who would choose it.</p>
<p>My main point is that people should get more educated about their options, and not just assume that as soon as they are diagnosed with something, an insurance company will swoop in, accept them, and pay for everything. That’s not how it works.</p>
<p>I also run into people calling me up wanting a dental plan AFTER they find out they’ll need several thousand $$ worth of dental work. Obviously they plan to drop the coverage as soon as the work is done. Now just how is the company supposed to stay in business if they covered people like that?</p>
<p>There’s another side to this. I would be willing to self-insure - but there are higher charges to the uninsured than those negotiated by insurance companies - and these are significant. So I feel I have to carry insurance just for the this reason.</p>
<p>“And MINI what you aren’t disclosing here is the WA high risk pool is for individual coverage, not group.”</p>
<p>“I know exactly what I’m saying - I also know I will reach Medicare age 7 years before my wife.”</p>
<p>No, I’m sorry you don’t on this subject. WA is guaranteed issue for small group 2-50 with the ONLY underwriting applied to gender and age… for the blues. Which are the two best nonprofit providers in WA and they dominate the market. </p>
<p>So, you are incorrect, you could start your own business and find insurance. If you came in without prior coverage you would be subject to pre-ex conditions which would mean at a max, a certain condition wouldn’t be covered for 12 months. There after not a problem. </p>
<p>If you were going to work for boeing or mirco or another WA business and had prior coverage, again your wife would be covered immediately, unless she had no prior coverage… The only exception could be where a business self insures or is dominciled in another state and uses federal guidelines, rather than state. They are more commonly called erisa plans. </p>
<p>I sell this stuff everyday and mini, you are incorrect in your statement. Now if you’re lamenting quiting your job and moving out of state, I can’t help you and you may very well be correct. But for your state (and mine) you are incorrect.</p>
<p>I wonder how those socalled health surveys were worded. I doubt anyone in my office would prefer the Canadian system. Neither would anyone in my wife’s sugery office as they treat full pay Canadians all the time.</p>
<p>Medicare is an expensive program for those being covered by it. A small number of people do have to pay a premium for Part A. The monthly premium for it is $420. Its deductible is $1024 every 60 days, and it will only pay up to a certain amount before you have to pay again. Part B is normally a 20% coinsurance and has a monthly premium of $96. Part D’s average premium is about $26, and it has two deductibles, the initial $275 and then the second donut hole of I believe $2500.
Medicare/Medicade was set up in 1965.
To lower healthcare costs, you need to have more collaborative and prophylatic care. You need to get the MD off the pedestial. You need to encourage people to see dieticians, diabetes educators, Medication therapy management with pharmacists, and so on.</p>
<p>I find it interesting that people posting on this subject studiously avoid the most basic - and defining - truth of our health care system: We have universal health care. We just do an incredibly inefficient job of delivering it. No one will be denied care just because they have no insurance and no money. So if you let companies or individuals “select out” the high risk individuals, that just pushes them onto somebody else’s bill - eventually, some level of government. And the process of playing a financial zero sum game with a universal health care system like ours ensures that a tremendous amount of wasted time, energy, and money is spent on the musical chairs game of “who gets stuck with the bill.”</p>
<p>Don’t like “ambulance chasing lawyers”? Guess what - with single payer there’s no point to the chase. I’m rarely directly involved in injury cases, but I have gotten a view into the behind the scenes fighting over which insurance company has to pay a particular medical bill. Talk about a lawyer’s full employment act!</p>
<p>Not having a single payer system of some type warps our society in more ways than you guys can imagine. The hidden and unanticipated costs of funding medical care through the patchwork of overlapping, mutually exclusive, and otherwise byzantine systems of reimbursement for medical care is a huge drag on our nation’s pocketbook and psyche. If there weren’t some huge corporations making huge sums of money of the status quo we’d have fixed this travesty long ago.</p>
<p>we do have programs for those who do earn a sufficient amount of money to purchase their own. It is others choice to prioritize other things over health care. Many people that don’t have health care don’t because they feel it is unnecessary.</p>
Yeah - our delivery of health care to those 40 Million is really inefficient and expensive - but it’s delivered anyway. Break your leg - go to the ER at the county Hospital. Chronic disease? - ignore it until you’re hospitalized. But you will be hospitalized. We don’t just leave people to die of curable diseases. We may bankrupt them first (or try to) but they get treated, even if every last penny has already been squeezed out of them.</p>
<p>Yeah - the health care is universal. It’s just poorly delivered, in the most expensive manner possible.</p>
<p>I agree with you, Kluge. All you need to do is take note of the fact that the number of American residents dying in the streets is few to none to know that we do, in fact, take care of every American. From a global perspective, it is impressive, but it IS incredibly inefficient. As a society we have decided that free choice is more important that equality of care for everyone. Perhaps this will change in the near future.</p>