Government motto- "If it isn't broken, keep fixing it until it is". Mission Accomplished!
"Health Insurance" (which, just like all insurance, is a goddamned scam**) has never been worse, more expensive, and now... MANDATED!
** Insurance is another made up industry, invented so you can bet against yourself, to pay for things that used to be affordable (homes, cars, medical care), but are now made so expensive, that they must now be "financed", and "insured" (to protect the LENDER). Insurance is a scam, a recurring revenue model, meant to bilk even more money from the dwindling middle class.
Agreed, but it was intentional. Once the permanent majority was established via open borders, BO_Care would collapse into inevitable universal healthcare, one payer system.
I certainly don't regard the shooter as anything like a hero. But I do find it interesting that if, for example, some anonymous shlub nobody working 2 jobs just to get by & keep his bills paid should get killed on the way home from work one night by some lowlife street-thug for drug-money (or maybe because he just didn't like the way the guy looked), it'd get buried by the news-media (if they mentioned it at all) & nobody'd ever hear about. But because it's some rich big shot CEO (that nobody heard of before this) of a big-shot insurance-company (that everyone hates who's ever dealt with it), suddenly it's breaking news all over everywhere on every media channel & we're supposed to all care more about it than even Ukraine. So it just strikes me as a curious double-standard set of priorities, to say the least.
I think the outrage is because the left are a bunch of commies who think big government solves all. Now they want to normalize murder. It is their narrative. As to United Healthcare being evil, I had UH when I had both a bad heart attack and a Heart Transplant 4 years ago. My out of pocket was about $500. My outcome was great. I am 100% better. So they did not ruin healthcare completely. But they penalized companies like mine who paid 100% of their health care. It was a disaster. And Forcing Health care companies to pay for weird sex changes makes as much sense as forcing them to pay for BBLs (Brazilian Butt Lifts). Something's gotta give and, like everything the gov puts its dirty hands on, we end up paying deeply for it. When will the public understand there is no free lunch.
Well I once spent 5 years working for a home healthcare provider, and of all the insurance-companies we worked with, Medicare, both Blues, a couple of others and UHC, UHC was the worst, the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel. The patient would consult with their PCP, who would then order the specific treatment-plan, with the specific therapy, UHC would sign off on the authorizations for it, then after all the treatment was done we'd provide all the clinical documentation to UHC to prove that the treatment was done, providing all the necessary paperwork & even more documentation to justify the costs, we did basically everything we were supposed to at our end....and then UHC would fight tooth & nail to fork over the dough they owed. And they did this every time! Time & again the same thing would happen where we'd spend weeks (and months!) trying to collect the money due from UHC for each patient, and each time UHC would delay, drag their feet & basically not pay, to the point where we'd end up spending more time & money trying to collect than they were even going to pay to reimburse in the first place. It got to be such a big pain in the ass that we finally ended up dropping UHC altogether & refused to take any more patients that were covered by them. And all this was years BEFORE Obamacare was implemented! So if you personally didn't get screwed over by UHC, whoop-de-doo; you're a rare one-in-ten-thousand exception to the rule. (As for sex-change surgeries or whatever, I'm not even going to go there; that's completely irrelevant to the issue as far as I'm concerned.) The point still remains: UHC sucked even before ObamaCare, they suck now, they'll probably still suck in the future with a new CEO.
When I had my big house before I downsized, quite a few doctors lived on my block. During a block party one new neighbor mentioned she was with UHC in CLAIMS.
The mistake of her life.
Every wife of the docs suddenly inundated her with piles of unpaid claims, even chasing her to her local church choir, demanding she take special action for their past dues and even ordering her to “follow up with us Friday, okaaaay?”
She was a sweet quiet person, and after unwisely taking unpaid time at work to investigate a few of the docs claims, she finally left the piles of paperwork on the steps of their homes with timid notes saying sorry I have a workload at work and I simply cannot take this substantial extra time to give yours priority etc.
That didn’t stop them - they banged on her door, tried to chase her car into the garage when she came home from work - pinned notes on her children’s clothes demanding attention to their unpaid insurance, sent her insincere invites to baby showers at country clubs, holiday parties etc, but by then she knew wayyyy better.
She and her family ended up moving.
And though I think these Karens were beyond inappropriate in making these unreasonable demands of her time, it’s an example of how desperate doctors offices must be trying to run their offices without timely, or maybe simply remaining unpaid, insurance compensation.
Thank god! I thought I was the only one thinking the ACA killed that poor man. Somehow the government has perfected the art of screwing up an industry while the public blames the companies in the industry for rising costs and shoddy service. No one notices that since the ACA not only have premiums exploded, but we are getting care in strip malls, often from a PA, never seeing an actual MD?
This is because the AMA refuses to cooperate worn adding more medical seats and residency slots so they can keep their salaries high.
For what it’s worth, with the handheld devices many of these providers are more likely to diagnose you correctly than plenty of recent affirmative action doctors.
Maybe, but there’s no discount for bypassing the doctor. It’s the only way practices can stay in business, they gobble up all the sole practitioners, use PAs for the easy stuff, and triple-book.
You’ve nailed the issue - there should be a discount and proper triage. I’m young and healthy and have basically no reason to see anyone beyond a nurse with prescribing power. Let me pay less and keep the doctor open for my 90 year old great aunt.
Alas.. it doesn’t work that way and my mentally Ill young sister will continue burning physician time and resources chasing made up diagnoses so she doesn’t have to take responsibility for her own poor choices.
Thank you Ann for calling this one out. Score one for Run Spot Run. I can now rest assured that no more beagles brains will intentionally get eaten by bugs—a democratic science experiment in the interest of healthcare. (beagles are used because they are small and docile) no wonder China wants to get rid of them. Researchers considered the dogs highly suitable for toxicity testing which is basically poisoning the animals. Hey, the dog can’t talk so let’s just use him as our patsy. Sick. Agree. Obamacare was a dreadful mistake people are paying for with their lives one way or another.
Well, if insurance pays for sex changes due to sexual dysphoria then shouldn't it also pay for hair restoration for men with baldness dysphoria, and augmentation mammoplasty (breast implants) for women with breast dysphoria and yes, BBLs (Brazilian Butt Lifts) for all those forgotten women with flat-ass dysphoria?
(Sorry, I could not help myself. Lib stupidity has no bounds.)
Oh yes, the elitist propensity to double down on their failures and luxury beliefs. Support for illegal border crossings, support for theft from retail shops, support for BLM violence, support for terrorists, support for Iran and unlimited war, support for fooling the public about Biden, fooling the public about how Kamala is so smart, etc. And support for gov-controlled health care because it has worked so well, people die waiting for treatment. They are surely more enlightened. If only they could force-feed us their luxury beliefs everything would be okay. Obvious, the people are the problem.
If so many people liked their doctor or liked their insurance plan, why was it necessary for the monkey Obama to reform a system that was working?
Honorable mention should have been made of Justice Roberts who changed the tax to a mandate, or the mandate to a tax, in order to rule that MonkeyVision was Constitutional. As Michelle Bachman pointed out when she spoke on a radio call in show that day, Roberts and the Supreme Court ruled on a Bill that wasn't in front of them.
This was a good column, putting the focus back on gov't intervention after reading stories about 32% of policy holders being denied coverage and how anesthesia was not covered after a certain period of time during a procedure. Those were certainly infuriating stories.
Former Congressman / former radio host Jason Lewis used to go on at length about the problems with health insurance in the US, long before ObamaCare.
*he pointed out the trouble with third party payer, ie, getting health insurance through work because of WWII wage and price controls
*the trouble with insurance companies not being able to sell across State lines in return for getting a monopoly in that State
*insurance companies having to cover a wide variety of maladies in return for having been given a monopoly, therefore it is impossible to buy a catastrophic policy that only covers the big things and allows you to pay for small doc visits
I am sure there are many more examples I can't remember or simply am unaware of (as a Canadian living under gov't medicine here; thankfully I am healthy and havent needed to utilize it), but I would hope that somewhere in the Trump transition team SOMEONE is thinking about opening up the insurance market nation-wide and allowing for the sale of simple catastrophic policies.
Jason also talked about how the marketplace comes up with solutions to market problems, citing the example of re insurance markets that would sell insurance that kicked in after a primary insurance policy was maxed out. If your medical bills reached (pick a number) $5 million, a re insurance policy would pick up the balance.
Only Ann-and a very few others-have the brains and industriousness to go to the United Healthcare webpage to see what procedures they cover. The other 98% of "journalists" express their priors or take statements from hack advocacy groups.
"Insurance"-health or otherwise-should provide protection against catastrophic or unforeseen circumstances, not a routine doctor visit or an urge to an add a sexual organ.
I was embarrassed just reading the procedures that insurance covered. Perhaps they should include in Congress’s benefit package, the replacement of their Brains with make believe Brains and then have them vote on this crap. The outcome could not be any worse.
The issue began long before ObamaCare. Insurance in general is a big part of the problem. Once people got insurance, they went to the doctor, or the ER, for every sniffle, ingrown toenail, etc., for the cost of a co-pay. I liken it to student loans and grants. When the money is there for the students, the colleges and universities increase the tuition, so the education isn't any more affordable, in fact, it costs more.
That's how it is with insurance. Before insurance came along, you could ask your doctor what a procedure costs. The doctor would tell you that a tonsillectomy costs XXXX.XX dollars. That included the hospital portion too. Now, no one asks what it costs if they have insurance. When insurance began picking up the tab, they didn't/don't care what it costs, because they "weren't/aren't paying for it". So, like the tuition, the costs grow massively. And if insurance would cover it, many procedures that weren't really needed were recommended, because the procedures took little time and were lucrative.
Then insurance began looking at how necessary the recommendations were, and denying as many as they could if they were not completely justifiable. And the insurance companies began negotiating and getting special procing, in order to allow a doctor to be an allowable provider for that company. But there is a HUGE downside to that. An initial consult with a neurologist might cost an insurance company $125, but if one is going to pay out of pocket, it will likely cost them $450. (These numbers are examples, although I'd be willing to bet an initial visit to a neurologist is WAY more than $450 if you are paying your own way.) This is to make up for the lack of reasonable payment from the insurance companies.
After nearly a century of insurance milking every dime, the ACA was shoved down our throats. Now the ACA fits what you have described, but it allows everyone signed up on the system to go in for the ingrown toenail, free of charge. In fact, those who could least afford the visit, used it for ear aches, sniffles, general malaise because they had been out drinking the night before, and they did it for a large family, so not just the individual who took out the policy. Then came the transgender BS, and you have explained that better than I ever could.
But here's an actual event that occurred to me, more than 2 decades ago. A routine procedure was recommended by my doctor at the time. It was to be done in a hospital setting, but only because every clinic doesn't own and ultrasound machine, as it was a non-invasive procedure. I was paying out of my own pocket. I asked at check in, while getting the paperwork done what the cost of the procedure was. I was quoted a price, and I was smart, I asked for that in writing. About 3 weeks after the procedure, I was hit with a bill from the hospital for almost double that, in the US mail. I headed down and announced to everyone in ear shot that I was about to OWN their damned hospital, due to deception. (I'm not a lawyer, and DPPA wasn't part of my vocabulary when I was much younger.) I demanded, out loud, to be seen immediately by whomever could rectify the situation, or I was leaving that facility and heading straight to an attorney's office. Squeaky wheel, and all that, my bill was reduced to the price I had in writing, within 20 minutes. When I went to my MD to get the results of the US, I told him about the ordeal. He informed me that I was not alone. He and his wife had gone in for routine screening procedures, (his and hers colonoscopies), a week before I got my results. He said he was paying out of pocket too. He also said he was turned in to collections for non pay, before he received the bill 10 days after their procedure.
Had we all been using insurance at the time, our bills would have been less than half of the cost we paid. And, there would have been no argument. But, insurance is a racket. The job is to make money. I have no issue with anyone making money. But the art of medicine was actually MUCH more affordable, before insurance was invented. Now, it is all about coding for payment, and not about the patient. Well, unless you want to cut off your pecker, or your breast, in some mental illness being catered to by the medical establishment, because after all, it's big business. And if they don't cut off said pecker/breast while the patient wants it done, the patient might change their mind, and they would have lost that money.
my aforementioned friend, Jason Lewis, said many times on his radio show when the topic was health insurance, that he still had a copy of the cheque that his dad wrote to the doctor to cover Jason's birth (1955), ie, people paid for their health care in the good old days.
Further to your example of pricing, I am reminded of Limbaugh having to be taken to the hospital in Hawaii. When it was time to leave, he pulled out his chequebook and asked how much was the bill? The hospital at first was unable to take his cheque because everything was always paid by insurance.
"But I don't have insurance."
After some wrangling, the hospital was in fact able to accept his payment via cheque.
Later recounting his experience during his program, Rush wouldn't say exactly what it cost, so a few doctors phoned in to give their estimate. 'ambulance, EKG, private room, blah blah blah..... I'm going to say $19,000,' said one doctor; another offered his estimate of $12,000.
Rush wouldn't confirm or deny either of the the estimates; he said that his point in telling the story was that most of the audience probably thought his bill would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably 150 minimum, and that is because thanks to third payer health care, no one has the foggiest idea of what anything costs.
What he would 'admit to' is that 'the cost is less than what any average family spends on their SUV. The cost of an SUV at the time was in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, so his medical bill was less than that.
As to the people who declared that that is not possible to average people who don't make $50 million (or more) a year, like Rush did, his reply was simply that if doctors and hospitals had to deal with patients as customers, not insurance companies as customers, the cost would be far less not only because of no red tape, but more importantly, 'you can't charge a price that people can't afford to pay.'
Co pays could be almost anything for some patients including their beer or cigarettes. Everyone has to pay something. Even $5-10 would cause people to think before seeking help and cover any administrative costs.
Great column Ann! It can be added that insurance CEOs ran to the Democrats so they could force all of us to buy insurance policies we don't need, only to be denied coverage when we finally need them. That's a legalized robbery! Just because Democrats made insurance companies to cover sex change operations, it's no excuse to cheat those who pay for it. Perhaps after this assassination, CEOs will think twice before screwing their clients.
Great points, Ann! Your food stamp analogy helped me understand why Obamacare is faulty. Republicans haven't talked much about Obamacare since the Tea Party movement, so we need these reminders. I made the regrettable decision to Google image "Penectomy." It's crazy to me that: 1) patients are willing to undergo this "treatment"; and 2) doctors are willing to perform it. Here are my favorite lines from your column:
"Democrats decided you should not be allowed to buy a health insurance plan that fails to cover penis chopping…"
"Now, if your baby wanted to trade his penis for a make-believe vagina, well, NOW you're talking!"
"...people who can't figure out how to use a condom…"
"Yeah, it was hard work, but we finally passed a bill to force people to pay for someone else."
Government motto- "If it isn't broken, keep fixing it until it is". Mission Accomplished!
"Health Insurance" (which, just like all insurance, is a goddamned scam**) has never been worse, more expensive, and now... MANDATED!
** Insurance is another made up industry, invented so you can bet against yourself, to pay for things that used to be affordable (homes, cars, medical care), but are now made so expensive, that they must now be "financed", and "insured" (to protect the LENDER). Insurance is a scam, a recurring revenue model, meant to bilk even more money from the dwindling middle class.
That's hilarious! You're a treasure, Ann.
Agreed, but it was intentional. Once the permanent majority was established via open borders, BO_Care would collapse into inevitable universal healthcare, one payer system.
excellent point.
Cloward Piven
I certainly don't regard the shooter as anything like a hero. But I do find it interesting that if, for example, some anonymous shlub nobody working 2 jobs just to get by & keep his bills paid should get killed on the way home from work one night by some lowlife street-thug for drug-money (or maybe because he just didn't like the way the guy looked), it'd get buried by the news-media (if they mentioned it at all) & nobody'd ever hear about. But because it's some rich big shot CEO (that nobody heard of before this) of a big-shot insurance-company (that everyone hates who's ever dealt with it), suddenly it's breaking news all over everywhere on every media channel & we're supposed to all care more about it than even Ukraine. So it just strikes me as a curious double-standard set of priorities, to say the least.
I think the outrage is because the left are a bunch of commies who think big government solves all. Now they want to normalize murder. It is their narrative. As to United Healthcare being evil, I had UH when I had both a bad heart attack and a Heart Transplant 4 years ago. My out of pocket was about $500. My outcome was great. I am 100% better. So they did not ruin healthcare completely. But they penalized companies like mine who paid 100% of their health care. It was a disaster. And Forcing Health care companies to pay for weird sex changes makes as much sense as forcing them to pay for BBLs (Brazilian Butt Lifts). Something's gotta give and, like everything the gov puts its dirty hands on, we end up paying deeply for it. When will the public understand there is no free lunch.
Well I once spent 5 years working for a home healthcare provider, and of all the insurance-companies we worked with, Medicare, both Blues, a couple of others and UHC, UHC was the worst, the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel. The patient would consult with their PCP, who would then order the specific treatment-plan, with the specific therapy, UHC would sign off on the authorizations for it, then after all the treatment was done we'd provide all the clinical documentation to UHC to prove that the treatment was done, providing all the necessary paperwork & even more documentation to justify the costs, we did basically everything we were supposed to at our end....and then UHC would fight tooth & nail to fork over the dough they owed. And they did this every time! Time & again the same thing would happen where we'd spend weeks (and months!) trying to collect the money due from UHC for each patient, and each time UHC would delay, drag their feet & basically not pay, to the point where we'd end up spending more time & money trying to collect than they were even going to pay to reimburse in the first place. It got to be such a big pain in the ass that we finally ended up dropping UHC altogether & refused to take any more patients that were covered by them. And all this was years BEFORE Obamacare was implemented! So if you personally didn't get screwed over by UHC, whoop-de-doo; you're a rare one-in-ten-thousand exception to the rule. (As for sex-change surgeries or whatever, I'm not even going to go there; that's completely irrelevant to the issue as far as I'm concerned.) The point still remains: UHC sucked even before ObamaCare, they suck now, they'll probably still suck in the future with a new CEO.
Most anything involved with government is going to suck! Is there anything that government doesn't ruin.
When I had my big house before I downsized, quite a few doctors lived on my block. During a block party one new neighbor mentioned she was with UHC in CLAIMS.
The mistake of her life.
Every wife of the docs suddenly inundated her with piles of unpaid claims, even chasing her to her local church choir, demanding she take special action for their past dues and even ordering her to “follow up with us Friday, okaaaay?”
She was a sweet quiet person, and after unwisely taking unpaid time at work to investigate a few of the docs claims, she finally left the piles of paperwork on the steps of their homes with timid notes saying sorry I have a workload at work and I simply cannot take this substantial extra time to give yours priority etc.
That didn’t stop them - they banged on her door, tried to chase her car into the garage when she came home from work - pinned notes on her children’s clothes demanding attention to their unpaid insurance, sent her insincere invites to baby showers at country clubs, holiday parties etc, but by then she knew wayyyy better.
She and her family ended up moving.
And though I think these Karens were beyond inappropriate in making these unreasonable demands of her time, it’s an example of how desperate doctors offices must be trying to run their offices without timely, or maybe simply remaining unpaid, insurance compensation.
The insurance companies actually do increasingly
Pay for BBLs - for “transgender” identifying males. They post regularly about it on Reddit.
You know who Obamacare works well for? Elderly legal immigrants. Yup- health insurance for less than $50 a month for some of them...
Thank god! I thought I was the only one thinking the ACA killed that poor man. Somehow the government has perfected the art of screwing up an industry while the public blames the companies in the industry for rising costs and shoddy service. No one notices that since the ACA not only have premiums exploded, but we are getting care in strip malls, often from a PA, never seeing an actual MD?
This is because the AMA refuses to cooperate worn adding more medical seats and residency slots so they can keep their salaries high.
For what it’s worth, with the handheld devices many of these providers are more likely to diagnose you correctly than plenty of recent affirmative action doctors.
Maybe, but there’s no discount for bypassing the doctor. It’s the only way practices can stay in business, they gobble up all the sole practitioners, use PAs for the easy stuff, and triple-book.
You’ve nailed the issue - there should be a discount and proper triage. I’m young and healthy and have basically no reason to see anyone beyond a nurse with prescribing power. Let me pay less and keep the doctor open for my 90 year old great aunt.
Alas.. it doesn’t work that way and my mentally Ill young sister will continue burning physician time and resources chasing made up diagnoses so she doesn’t have to take responsibility for her own poor choices.
Thank you Ann for calling this one out. Score one for Run Spot Run. I can now rest assured that no more beagles brains will intentionally get eaten by bugs—a democratic science experiment in the interest of healthcare. (beagles are used because they are small and docile) no wonder China wants to get rid of them. Researchers considered the dogs highly suitable for toxicity testing which is basically poisoning the animals. Hey, the dog can’t talk so let’s just use him as our patsy. Sick. Agree. Obamacare was a dreadful mistake people are paying for with their lives one way or another.
Well, if insurance pays for sex changes due to sexual dysphoria then shouldn't it also pay for hair restoration for men with baldness dysphoria, and augmentation mammoplasty (breast implants) for women with breast dysphoria and yes, BBLs (Brazilian Butt Lifts) for all those forgotten women with flat-ass dysphoria?
(Sorry, I could not help myself. Lib stupidity has no bounds.)
Oh yes, the elitist propensity to double down on their failures and luxury beliefs. Support for illegal border crossings, support for theft from retail shops, support for BLM violence, support for terrorists, support for Iran and unlimited war, support for fooling the public about Biden, fooling the public about how Kamala is so smart, etc. And support for gov-controlled health care because it has worked so well, people die waiting for treatment. They are surely more enlightened. If only they could force-feed us their luxury beliefs everything would be okay. Obvious, the people are the problem.
If so many people liked their doctor or liked their insurance plan, why was it necessary for the monkey Obama to reform a system that was working?
Honorable mention should have been made of Justice Roberts who changed the tax to a mandate, or the mandate to a tax, in order to rule that MonkeyVision was Constitutional. As Michelle Bachman pointed out when she spoke on a radio call in show that day, Roberts and the Supreme Court ruled on a Bill that wasn't in front of them.
This was a good column, putting the focus back on gov't intervention after reading stories about 32% of policy holders being denied coverage and how anesthesia was not covered after a certain period of time during a procedure. Those were certainly infuriating stories.
Former Congressman / former radio host Jason Lewis used to go on at length about the problems with health insurance in the US, long before ObamaCare.
*he pointed out the trouble with third party payer, ie, getting health insurance through work because of WWII wage and price controls
*the trouble with insurance companies not being able to sell across State lines in return for getting a monopoly in that State
*insurance companies having to cover a wide variety of maladies in return for having been given a monopoly, therefore it is impossible to buy a catastrophic policy that only covers the big things and allows you to pay for small doc visits
I am sure there are many more examples I can't remember or simply am unaware of (as a Canadian living under gov't medicine here; thankfully I am healthy and havent needed to utilize it), but I would hope that somewhere in the Trump transition team SOMEONE is thinking about opening up the insurance market nation-wide and allowing for the sale of simple catastrophic policies.
Jason also talked about how the marketplace comes up with solutions to market problems, citing the example of re insurance markets that would sell insurance that kicked in after a primary insurance policy was maxed out. If your medical bills reached (pick a number) $5 million, a re insurance policy would pick up the balance.
Merry Christmas, Ann, and to other readers, too.
Only Ann-and a very few others-have the brains and industriousness to go to the United Healthcare webpage to see what procedures they cover. The other 98% of "journalists" express their priors or take statements from hack advocacy groups.
"Insurance"-health or otherwise-should provide protection against catastrophic or unforeseen circumstances, not a routine doctor visit or an urge to an add a sexual organ.
I was embarrassed just reading the procedures that insurance covered. Perhaps they should include in Congress’s benefit package, the replacement of their Brains with make believe Brains and then have them vote on this crap. The outcome could not be any worse.
The issue began long before ObamaCare. Insurance in general is a big part of the problem. Once people got insurance, they went to the doctor, or the ER, for every sniffle, ingrown toenail, etc., for the cost of a co-pay. I liken it to student loans and grants. When the money is there for the students, the colleges and universities increase the tuition, so the education isn't any more affordable, in fact, it costs more.
That's how it is with insurance. Before insurance came along, you could ask your doctor what a procedure costs. The doctor would tell you that a tonsillectomy costs XXXX.XX dollars. That included the hospital portion too. Now, no one asks what it costs if they have insurance. When insurance began picking up the tab, they didn't/don't care what it costs, because they "weren't/aren't paying for it". So, like the tuition, the costs grow massively. And if insurance would cover it, many procedures that weren't really needed were recommended, because the procedures took little time and were lucrative.
Then insurance began looking at how necessary the recommendations were, and denying as many as they could if they were not completely justifiable. And the insurance companies began negotiating and getting special procing, in order to allow a doctor to be an allowable provider for that company. But there is a HUGE downside to that. An initial consult with a neurologist might cost an insurance company $125, but if one is going to pay out of pocket, it will likely cost them $450. (These numbers are examples, although I'd be willing to bet an initial visit to a neurologist is WAY more than $450 if you are paying your own way.) This is to make up for the lack of reasonable payment from the insurance companies.
After nearly a century of insurance milking every dime, the ACA was shoved down our throats. Now the ACA fits what you have described, but it allows everyone signed up on the system to go in for the ingrown toenail, free of charge. In fact, those who could least afford the visit, used it for ear aches, sniffles, general malaise because they had been out drinking the night before, and they did it for a large family, so not just the individual who took out the policy. Then came the transgender BS, and you have explained that better than I ever could.
But here's an actual event that occurred to me, more than 2 decades ago. A routine procedure was recommended by my doctor at the time. It was to be done in a hospital setting, but only because every clinic doesn't own and ultrasound machine, as it was a non-invasive procedure. I was paying out of my own pocket. I asked at check in, while getting the paperwork done what the cost of the procedure was. I was quoted a price, and I was smart, I asked for that in writing. About 3 weeks after the procedure, I was hit with a bill from the hospital for almost double that, in the US mail. I headed down and announced to everyone in ear shot that I was about to OWN their damned hospital, due to deception. (I'm not a lawyer, and DPPA wasn't part of my vocabulary when I was much younger.) I demanded, out loud, to be seen immediately by whomever could rectify the situation, or I was leaving that facility and heading straight to an attorney's office. Squeaky wheel, and all that, my bill was reduced to the price I had in writing, within 20 minutes. When I went to my MD to get the results of the US, I told him about the ordeal. He informed me that I was not alone. He and his wife had gone in for routine screening procedures, (his and hers colonoscopies), a week before I got my results. He said he was paying out of pocket too. He also said he was turned in to collections for non pay, before he received the bill 10 days after their procedure.
Had we all been using insurance at the time, our bills would have been less than half of the cost we paid. And, there would have been no argument. But, insurance is a racket. The job is to make money. I have no issue with anyone making money. But the art of medicine was actually MUCH more affordable, before insurance was invented. Now, it is all about coding for payment, and not about the patient. Well, unless you want to cut off your pecker, or your breast, in some mental illness being catered to by the medical establishment, because after all, it's big business. And if they don't cut off said pecker/breast while the patient wants it done, the patient might change their mind, and they would have lost that money.
my aforementioned friend, Jason Lewis, said many times on his radio show when the topic was health insurance, that he still had a copy of the cheque that his dad wrote to the doctor to cover Jason's birth (1955), ie, people paid for their health care in the good old days.
Further to your example of pricing, I am reminded of Limbaugh having to be taken to the hospital in Hawaii. When it was time to leave, he pulled out his chequebook and asked how much was the bill? The hospital at first was unable to take his cheque because everything was always paid by insurance.
"But I don't have insurance."
After some wrangling, the hospital was in fact able to accept his payment via cheque.
Later recounting his experience during his program, Rush wouldn't say exactly what it cost, so a few doctors phoned in to give their estimate. 'ambulance, EKG, private room, blah blah blah..... I'm going to say $19,000,' said one doctor; another offered his estimate of $12,000.
Rush wouldn't confirm or deny either of the the estimates; he said that his point in telling the story was that most of the audience probably thought his bill would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably 150 minimum, and that is because thanks to third payer health care, no one has the foggiest idea of what anything costs.
What he would 'admit to' is that 'the cost is less than what any average family spends on their SUV. The cost of an SUV at the time was in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, so his medical bill was less than that.
As to the people who declared that that is not possible to average people who don't make $50 million (or more) a year, like Rush did, his reply was simply that if doctors and hospitals had to deal with patients as customers, not insurance companies as customers, the cost would be far less not only because of no red tape, but more importantly, 'you can't charge a price that people can't afford to pay.'
Tort reform followed by co pays for everything and everyone (including Medicare and Medicaid) would drastically reduce the cost of health care.
Co pays could be almost anything for some patients including their beer or cigarettes. Everyone has to pay something. Even $5-10 would cause people to think before seeking help and cover any administrative costs.
Medicare does have a co-pay for most things. I'm sure Medicaid does not.
Great column Ann! It can be added that insurance CEOs ran to the Democrats so they could force all of us to buy insurance policies we don't need, only to be denied coverage when we finally need them. That's a legalized robbery! Just because Democrats made insurance companies to cover sex change operations, it's no excuse to cheat those who pay for it. Perhaps after this assassination, CEOs will think twice before screwing their clients.
Great points, Ann! Your food stamp analogy helped me understand why Obamacare is faulty. Republicans haven't talked much about Obamacare since the Tea Party movement, so we need these reminders. I made the regrettable decision to Google image "Penectomy." It's crazy to me that: 1) patients are willing to undergo this "treatment"; and 2) doctors are willing to perform it. Here are my favorite lines from your column:
"Democrats decided you should not be allowed to buy a health insurance plan that fails to cover penis chopping…"
"Now, if your baby wanted to trade his penis for a make-believe vagina, well, NOW you're talking!"
"...people who can't figure out how to use a condom…"
"Yeah, it was hard work, but we finally passed a bill to force people to pay for someone else."