America, the home of the we need to not fuck ourselves anymo

[SNAKEBITE]

"Bill Leonard is a conservative columnist who works in the California Board of Equalization and has a weekly newsletter dealing with poliical issues that affect the state. This is an idea that's crossed my mind before, and he puts it into a better explanation than I could. His website is http://billleonard.org

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Abolish Health Insurance

Now that we have heard the President’s thinking on expanding government funded insurance, I offer my own version of change. If you want to restore doctor-patient relationships, if you want to make your own decisions over medical care, and if you want to eliminate arguing with the health insurance bureaucracy, then it is time to toss out the current system of health insurance that does not work well and adds to the cost of health care.

Insurance is a useful system to insure against unforeseen risks. But if you know you are going to do something annually—like get your physical—then it is no longer a risk, rather it is a planned expense. Can you imagine if car insurance covered regular maintenance like oil changes?

I do support an insurance policy that covers major risks-- those catastrophic expenses that can bankrupt a family. Not every family has such expenses, so they become true insurance risks more like auto accident insurance. Without all of the regular medical expenses included, the cost of this catastrophic medical insurance should be very reasonable. When consumers have to pay out of their own pockets for regular and preventative health care, they will shop around for the best rates and that will encourage cost savings as well.

I would also like to see generous tax credits given to doctors and other medical providers who serve poor people at no charge. Let's give medical providers an incentive to serve the poor instead of burying them in bureaucratic government regulations and punitive cost control measures.

Consider that my doctor does not have email available for his patients. Partly, it is because my health insurance will not pay him for the time he would spend to read and respond to my email. Yet many health questions I have and many requests for medicines that we both already know I need could be handled by email. I know there are some HMOs and physicians that do have e-services, but the insurance system is not designed to encourage it.

Kaiser Steel and other industries get the credit for helping their employees by creating a managed health care system. Yet this system has morphed into a trillion dollar industry no longer run by doctors.

Managed care has now become a system to minimize care. This is wrong. Employers today should fund medical savings accounts for each of their employees if they can afford to do so. Those accounts should be a deductible business expense for the employer and a tax free account for the employee. The employee can then use that money to pay for medical care and to purchase catastrophic health insurance. Employees can then shop around for the best doctor at the best price.

Hillsdale College hosted an excellent seminar on this topic that featured a discussion of health care.

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/ ... 9&month=03
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[SNAKEBITE]

just posting. I'm not for or against any solutions presented here. I just know we need to start thinking about solutions and getting rid of the incompetent people in office is one way IMHO.

hey fuck ups, YOU"RE FIRED!

[Laura]

When my husband's employer switched to a health-savings account system, I was at first confused and frustrated with it, because our out-of-pocket expenses were pretty expensive right at first, since we didn't have the savings built up. We had to pay out the first $3000 ($1500 each) in doctor bills, prescriptions, etc. Randy is diabetic and his myriad medications cost A LOT. But once it was explained how it worked, and we got past the initial outlay, it was (and is) pretty darn cool. I mean, it's not quite the same thing as what Bill Leonard is talking about; once we hit our deductible, the insurance covers all checkups and prescriptions, and the HSA is a backup for any non-covered items (including over-the-counter medications, dental, etc.). We're building up the HSA again to be ready for next calendar year's outlay.

I'm sure this system isn't quite as good for the healthy person who just needs to go to the doc once or twice a year. That person is going to be paying full price and may never hit the $1500 deductibe. We managed to hit the deductible within three months...and yet, we were both hesitant to go to the doc for seemingly small things when we had to spend our own money.

I do wish our HSA could be used for gym memberships, though.

== Laura

[robbdaman]

Just watch Micheal Moore's Sicko and you'll learn more than enough about the flaws of the healthcare industry in America, it's a travesty IMO. I swear I want to move to Canada, UK or, pretty much anywhere else but here for good healthcare.

[Sweeney]

How health companies are standing in the way of health care reform.

Interview with Wendell Potter, former health insurance industry worker.

With almost 20 years inside the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter saw for-profit insurers hijack our health care system and put profits before patients. Now, he speaks with Bill Moyers about how those companies are standing in the way of health care reform.

Link has video, and transcript if you'd prefer to read it.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html

[monkeybutter]

making people pay directly for preventative medicine seems like a great way to breed communicable diseases and general ill-health that will mushroom into catastrophic issues later in life.

people won't go to the doctor until its too late. I mean, honestly, if you had flu-like symptoms, would you pay $300 just to make sure you didn't have pneumonia or whateve too, or would you just pocket the money and wait until you got better or much worse?

health care is not just about keeping one person heathy, its about keeping us all healthy as a group.

[Zombie Dave McCaig]

"Bill Leonard is a conservative columnist...
Abolish Health Insurance
"

This is idiotic, mostly for the reasons Monkeybutter states. Also, if someone suspects they have a lump or a weird spot on their skin, too many people would miss out on early cancer detection because they didn't want to pay for a doctor's visit. I mean really, I can think of a million reasons why this is a stupid notion. This guy should have given this 2 minutes thought.

[Eagle]

people won't go to the doctor until its too late. I mean, honestly, if you had flu-like symptoms, would you pay $300 just to make sure you didn't have pneumonia or whateve too, or would you just pocket the money and wait until you got better or much worse?

My family back home will take my brothers to the clinic or hospital immediately if anything goes wrong.

Down here, we can't get Mahayr's daughter to take her kids to any doctors, at all, fucking ever. 104 fever? Eh. It'll pass.



It made us crazy when we were still babysitting for them. They'd come back from work early "to take them to the doctor" because they'd be just too insanely sick for us to do anything about, and just go home instead. They'd be sick for weeks at a time and there was nothing we could do or say to convince them to do anything about it.

[robbdaman]

Eagle that is sort of the sentiment that a lot of the Canadians they interview talk about in Sicko. Going to a doctor here must suck so badly. Michael Moore's Canadian relatives wouldn't go to the US without purchasing health insurance first because if anything were to go wrong they can't trust the healthcare system to not fuck them over.

[monkeybutter]

and yet somehow Canadia isn't going bankrupt from the cost of healthcare!

It's almost ... almost as if ... socialized medicine works! But wait! That can't be right! Reagan's Ghost told us that socializing things was bad!

[Sweeney]

Eagle that is sort of the sentiment that a lot of the Canadians they interview talk about in Sicko. Going to a doctor here must suck so badly. Michael Moore's Canadian relatives wouldn't go to the US without purchasing health insurance first because if anything were to go wrong they can't trust the healthcare system to not fuck them over.

I won't go to US for even a day without medical insurance coverage. Any visit to US hospital could cost thousands, or even tens of thousands for anything simple.

[monkeybutter]

I won't go to US for even a day without medical insurance coverage. Any visit to US hospital could cost thousands, or even tens of thousands for anything simple.

don't you guys have some kind of reciprocity thing set up with american hospitals where your gov't pays our hospitals if you get mauled by one of our smaller, non-polar bears while you're down here?

that was sort of the impression I got when I was setting up my canadian insurance when I was a student up there.

[SNAKEBITE]

Well, I like the idea of making coverage deals directly with providers in ones community instead of going through this agency that dictates the rules.
thats a free market after all. I like what he says about retuning competition to the health care arena. Its so out of wack right now, why not let providers choose
how they take care of the community they choose to work in? We deregulate things that destroy our economy but we tie the hands of the people who want to provied
health care.

This dude might not have the answers but he certainly raises good points about the free market aspect of this system...I mean, shit, with the statistics lately its not
like their way is working. why not give us more choices, more freedoms in how we take care of our bodies.

[Sweeney]

I won't go to US for even a day without medical insurance coverage. Any visit to US hospital could cost thousands, or even tens of thousands for anything simple.

don't you guys have some kind of reciprocity thing set up with american hospitals where your gov't pays our hospitals if you get mauled by one of our smaller, non-polar bears while you're down here?

that was sort of the impression I got when I was setting up my canadian insurance when I was a student up there.

Nope. We're treated just like any uninsured American.

[SNAKEBITE]

actually, uninsured people from other countries get treated better then the locally uninsured.lol