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 WA Health insurers propose 19 percent average rate increase 
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glockgirl wrote:
The cost of health insurance has gone up every year, for as long as I can remember. It is what it is. Insurance companies are, well, companies.

You can choose to buy a high-deductible lower cost plan through your employer or whatever, but don't expect Cadillac coverage when you're paying Volkswagen Beetle prices. Yes, you will eventually receive the same care as someone who purchased a more expensive plan; it'll just take a lot longer to receive that care.

Me, I've always purchased the most expensive plan offered by my employer, mostly for the prescription drug coverage (cheaper plan=higher copay and stricter formulary). That said, the time I really found out how good it is to choose to have excellent if expensive insurance was about 20 years ago. I was working in a radiology clinic and because my mother has neurofibromatosis, which can cause tumours to form on the auditory nerves, my doctor suggested that I have an MR study of my brain done to rule out any possibility of the disease.

The study showed no evidence of neurofibromas but did pick up what is called an incidental finding--like with John McCain, where his physician was looking for something else and happened to find the glioma. My incidental finding was also a tumour--a cavernous hemangioma--roughly the size of a golf ball. Within 72 hours of the diagnosis, I saw three neurosurgeons and then was sent to UWMC and to Dr. Richard Winn, who gave the final verdict--yah, it's a big tumour, but it's benign and because it's in my deep left parietal lobe, the risk of serious damage caused by removing it far outweighed the benefit of having it gone.

Any other patient with a lesser insurance plan would have eventually received the same prognosis, but it would have taken weeks, easily. Because I had insurance that didn't require preauthorisation for specialists or radiological studies, I knew in less than five days what might've taken weeks of worrying and waiting with any other plan.

Here is the problem.
I too have that and thank the Gods daily.
The people that don't work for a company that offers that kind of insurance are stuck. I don't have an answer. Health insurance is NOT a RIGHT.
You have to pay to play. (or find a job that will pay for you)
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Fri Jun 15, 2018 5:29 am
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deadshot2 wrote:
I do believe that the American Public would find the only real cure totally distasteful. Take the profit motive out of all medical care and the pharmaceutical industry. Unfortunately that means that the Government would be running the show. We'd be looking at the Cuban Model.


Like anything socialist, it just means everyone gets equally bad healthcare. Just ask Canadians who come to the U.S. when things aren't moving along fast or well enough back home.

The profit motive is a double edged sword. While it leads to the industry over-focusing on the ailments of late middle age (when people typically have the most money), it also leads to general advancements in all areas. Sure, there are European and Asian companies innovating in countries with nationalized healthcare, but not nearly to the extent we do here in the U.S.

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Fri Jun 15, 2018 12:36 pm
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I think the insurance companies have distorted the cost of health care. Doctors' offices have to hire a lot of administrative help to file and work the claims which adds costs. A person walking in off the street with no insurance still has to help pay for those costs even though their patronage does not contribute to that administrative burden.

Also, since insurance companies can flex their collective buying power, the "regular" prices are inflated to offset those discounts. So Joe Schmoe dropping in off the street is paying from a menu of artificially inflated prices.

Fuck 'em all. I'll wallow in my misery.

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Fri Jun 15, 2018 12:46 pm
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The "Golden Years" only line HC pockets & are a false sense of a glorious retirement. lol

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Fri Jun 15, 2018 1:13 pm
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jukk0u wrote:
I think the insurance companies have distorted the cost of health care. Doctors' offices have to hire a lot of administrative help to file and work the claims which adds costs. A person walking in off the street with no insurance still has to help pay for those costs even though their patronage does not contribute to that administrative burden.

Also, since insurance companies can flex their collective buying power, the "regular" prices are inflated to offset those discounts. So Joe Schmoe dropping in off the street is paying from a menu of artificially inflated prices.

Fuck 'em all. I'll wallow in my misery.


To build on this point, some doctors will offer a cash discount. My chiropractor charges $60 for a visit when paying cash but bills insurance at about $85.


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Fri Jun 15, 2018 6:19 pm
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My cousin left a 3 doc clinic she was a partner in and now has her own practice helping with childhood obesity
Just her, her husband, and an assistant.
Cash only, no insurance.
Said she makes more and is a lot happier without all the insurance paperwork.

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Fri Jun 15, 2018 6:34 pm
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Guntrader wrote:
My cousin...now has her own practice helping with childhood obesity .....


Really? Aren't kids fat enough, she's now helping them be obese!?!

Just kidding....very admirable work :thumbsup2:

I'll piggy-back on some of the thoughts here & agree that a majority of the problem is the billing.

Even if you aren't actually billing Medicare, the whole system is based on Medicare CODES....

There are coding errors all the time, which leads to claims or coverage being denied...

Most places have to hire additional people, just to review coding errors & try to resubmit the claim....

That's more salary, more benefits, & more overhead, to add to the overall cost.

A lot of healthcare organizations send out reminders....'time for a flu shot'....'time for a cholesterol check'...'time for bloodwork or a colonoscopy'....but look at the small print!

Oftentimes it says it's free, or covered, "as long as its billed correctly from an approved provider..."

They hire tons of people to find a way to not pay, and healthcare professionals have to hire more & more people to try & get paid.

Somebody has to pay for all those salaries...


Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:08 pm
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hkcavalier wrote:
Just ask Canadians who come to the U.S. when things aren't moving along fast or well enough back home.



Ask Canadians what now? Yes, some Canadians do travel abroad for certain elective procedures or non-urgent diagnostics or care. Some. A few. I do not personally know anyone who has travelled to the U.S. specifically for care, and I know a metric f*ck ton of Canadians (Eh, we're all related, dontcha know?).

Given my propensity for arguing with gravity, I have had the opportunity, on multiple occasions, to receive emergent or urgent care in Vancouver, Toronto, Hamilton, Regina and Victoria. In all cases, I received either no bill at all or received a bill so ridiculously low as to be laughable. My own birth is a great example of the Canadian system--my mum was at St. Paul's in Vancouver for nearly a month before giving birth to me, at 30 weeks gestation.

She spent over a month in hospital, and because I was so premature, I was kept at St. Paul's for over two months. The total bill for the entirety of the cost of care? Roughly $27 (USD).

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Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:08 pm
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glockgirl wrote:
hkcavalier wrote:
Just ask Canadians who come to the U.S. when things aren't moving along fast or well enough back home.



Ask Canadians what now? Yes, some Canadians do travel abroad for certain elective procedures or non-urgent diagnostics or care. Some. A few. I do not personally know anyone who has travelled to the U.S. specifically for care, and I know a metric f*ck ton of Canadians (Eh, we're all related, dontcha know?).



Canadians with money do.
If the Premier of a Canadian province can't get acceptable health care up there I doubt the average touk wearing seal clubber can either.
Knew a girl that lived in BC around 2003. She had been waiting several years to get rid of a bone spur on her heel, couldn't work so the government just paid her disability.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/po ... le4311853/

"This is my heart, it's my health, it's my choice."

With these words, Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams defended his decision to hop the border and go under the knife for heart surgery in Florida.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/cardiology ... rome/18279

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Last edited by Guntrader on Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.



Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:17 pm
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Don’t get me started. My grandmother died of cancer because the Canadian system discounted her issues early on then decided it wasn’t worth fighting once she was diagnosed.

Countless friends have waited for surgery. One waited over two years for a knee replacement. Once that was done she had to wait over two more to get the other one done.


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Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:26 pm
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When I was at Harborview, waiting to meet with an orthopedic surgeon, I was wondering if I was in the right place for a horrendous surgery I was about to have done.

Sitting next to me in the waiting room, was a Saudi Prince that was there to have his leg amputated.

He had mangled it skiing in the Swiss alps.

He could have gone anywhere in the world with his money, and had been injured in Switzerland, yet he ended up here.

I messed up my other leg before, and ended up at a hospital in Vienna, Austria, supposedly the best there...

Between the pain they put me through just examining it, and the paint peeling off the walls, I got on the phone with an Uncle who worked on Capitol Hill and got the hell outta there.

This was during the Gulf, and there were zero flights, but I got out.

Our system is fucked up.

Filled with greed, over-regulated, and yet unmonitored....

But I wouldn't want to go anyhere else for the actual treatment.


Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:28 pm
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glockgirl wrote:
hkcavalier wrote:
Just ask Canadians who come to the U.S. when things aren't moving along fast or well enough back home.



Ask Canadians what now? Yes, some Canadians do travel abroad for certain elective procedures or non-urgent diagnostics or care. Some. A few. I do not personally know anyone who has travelled to the U.S. specifically for care, and I know a metric f*ck ton of Canadians (Eh, we're all related, dontcha know?).

Given my propensity for arguing with gravity, I have had the opportunity, on multiple occasions, to receive emergent or urgent care in Vancouver, Toronto, Hamilton, Regina and Victoria. In all cases, I received either no bill at all or received a bill so ridiculously low as to be laughable. My own birth is a great example of the Canadian system--my mum was at St. Paul's in Vancouver for nearly a month before giving birth to me, at 30 weeks gestation.

She spent over a month in hospital, and because I was so premature, I was kept at St. Paul's for over two months. The total bill for the entirety of the cost of care? Roughly $27 (USD).


$27???, someone was either working for free or it is welfare......your argument is shallow and invalid


The problem is no one is asking the most important question: Why is health care (forget about insurance) so damned expensive????


Answer that question first, then we can talk about solutions, until then it is all hyperbole

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Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:38 pm
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 99234e020d

As of this weekend, there are now seven Gruber videos, in which he mocks the “stupidity” of American voters and boasts of the Obama administration’s ability to take advantage of it. In a new video that surfaced Friday, Gruber explains that the Obama administration passed the so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-value employer health plans “by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people, when we know it’s a tax on people who hold these insurance plans.” Americans would not support a tax on individuals, so “We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on the higher prices . . . it ends up being the same thing.” The ruse, Gruber says, was “a very clever . . . basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”

In another video, Gruber boasts about how the Obama administration fooled Americans into paying to cover the uninsured by using sleight of hand, focusing on their concern over rising health costs. “Barack Obama’s not a stupid man, okay? He knew when he was running for president that quite frankly the American public doesn’t actually care that much about the uninsured. . . . What the American public cares about is costs. And that’s why even though the bill that they made is 90 percent health insurance coverage and 10 percent about cost control, all you ever hear people talk about is cost control.”

In yet another video, Gruber says the Obama administration knew the individual mandate was a tax, but that if Americans knew the truth “the bill dies.” So the bill “was written in a tortured way to make sure [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes.” He adds that “the lack of transparency is a huge political advantage” and that “the stupidity of the American voter . . . was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

President Obama insists none of this represents the views of his administration. Asked in Australia whether he had intentionally misled the American people to get the law passed, Obama replied curtly, “No, I did not.”

Yes, he did. Put aside his now infamous lie of the year in 2013 that “if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan.” Obama also insisted repeatedly that the individual mandate “is absolutely not a tax increase.” In a 2009 interview with ABC News, George Stephanopoulos pressed him on it no less than five times. He even read Obama the definition of “tax” from Webster’s dictionary. Obama was adamant: “My critics say everything is a tax increase. . . . I absolutely reject that notion.”

Then, after Obamacare passed, his administration cynically turned around and argued before the Supreme Court that it was in fact a tax. At one point, Justice Stephen Breyer asked Obama’s solicitor general, Donald Verrilli, “Why do you keep saying tax?,” drawing peals of laughter.

The reason he called it a tax is because — as Jonathan Gruber now admits — members of the Obama team knew all along that it was a tax. They intentionally deceived Americans about it because if they had called it a tax, Obamacare would never have become law.

It’s one thing for Americans to suspect that their president lies to them. It’s quite another to hear a key Obama adviser boast of it.

So thank you, Jonathan Gruber. We now know how the Obama left sees the American people. We are like children who don’t understand what is best for us. We need experts such as Jonathan Gruber to make decisions for us. If we are too “stupid” to agree with them, they can use our ignorance to deceive us and enact policies we would never otherwise support. And if we’re too stupid to catch the deception, well, that’s our problem.

Keep in mind this is the Wa Post, not the Wa Times.


Sat Jun 16, 2018 6:07 am
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https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/mn ... e-its-true

When Bartiromo asked about allegations that the Obama Administration took money from Fannie and Freddie to pay for the implementation of ObamaCare, Mnuchin responded, “It is true. They used the profits of Fannie and Freddie to pay for other parts of the government while they kept taxpayers at risk.”

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody pays.


Sat Jun 16, 2018 6:10 am
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