{{ ObamaCare’s biggest beneficiaries have been insurers because it subsidizes people to buy overpriced products they don’t need. }}
I find it hard to believe that anyone is buying health insurance they don’t need. But I agree that the 20% skim rate collected by Obamacare insurers is absolute theft, but with the bipartisan culture of corruption in Washington voters are powerless to prevent it. We’ll just have to continue to pay the “Obamacare Tax on Public Ignorance”.
intercst
Rather than eliminate the skim, what is the Speaker’s concept of a plan to address the inefficency?
Bring back the pre-existing conditions exclusion. It’s much cheaper if you only offer health insurance coverage to the healthy.
Of course, about half the population has some kind of pre-existing condition that would either prevent coverage, or price a for-profit health insurance policy well beyond the ability to pay. No doubt these folks would vote the “reformers” out in the next election.
So we’re left with a system where Private Equity and the health insurers are able to weaponize the most racist, ignorant and innumerate 35% of the population with cries of “Socialism” and “minorities are going to get health care they don’t deserve” while extracting these massive skim rates from the taxpayers.
It’s just like Lyndon Johnson described in the 1960’s.
" “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best {{redacted}}, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9150190-if-you-can-convince-the-lowest-white-man-he-s-better
intercst
That sounds like a variation of Marie Antoinette’s alleged poorly chosen words “Let them eat cake.” This one would be, “Let them eat dirt.”
“Bring back the pre-existing conditions exclusion”
The VP candidate on that side has already said as much.
Obamacare fact check: Vance’s promise to cover people with preexisting conditions | CNN Politics
"We want to make sure everybody is covered,” he continued. “But the best way to do that is to actually promote some more choice in our health care system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families.”
How anybody with pre existing medical condition(s) can read that quote and not have chills sent down their spine is beyond me.
???
Doesn’t everyone (minus the ultra wealthy) need health insurance? Even the young and healthy often need acute care - and that means insurance.
Dude, do you not remember when there was no cap on the skim rate? You cry over this without a sense of context. Before ACA, there was no cap. There were no protections for pre-existing conditions.
Here are your three alternatives:
Note: Of course #3 is the very least likely to happen in our lifetimes.
The context is that traditional Medicare spends 98.8% of program costs on actual hospital charges, doctor’s visits and drugs and about 1.2% on admin costs.
Medicare Advantage (MA) only spends 85% of the money CMS transfers to the for profit insurer you select on actual medical care, and the other 15% goes to big sales commissions to MA brokers, excessive Executive Compensation, and the for-profit bureaucracy designed to frustrate and delay the access to the medical care you’ve paid for.
For Obamacare, the ratio of skim to health care jumps to 20% of the total premiums collected.
In both Obamacare and MA, big health insurers can collect another 3% to 5% in excess profits with price gouging on generic drugs through their captive Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM). If they get you to pay triple the cost for a drug, that’s considered a medical expense to the insurance plan rather than additional overhead and profit, such is the level of corruption in the system.
Mark Cuban said in a recent interview that most business owners have no idea how much they’re getting robbed by the for-profit health insurance industry.
{{ What we spent $160,000 on at the [Dallas Mavericks], we could have purchased for $19,000 for Cost Plus,” he tells Fortune. “We decided once that plan ended last year, we were going to replace it, and so I wanted to go through the entire process of understanding what I did right or wrong.”
He first turned to the employee benefits consultant who had assured him he was getting a great deal—someone whose advice also cost $30 per employee per month.
“That’s insane, that was millions of dollars,” Cuban says. “The person who put me into a program where I was paying eight times more than I should have for generic medication, they’re done.”
Around the time he dropped the consultant, Cuban was planning to get a CT colonoscopy, which he says would’ve cost more than $2,000 through insurance. Yet the walk-in cost for the same procedure was less than $500.
“What is the purpose of this insurance company that I’m working with—and the PBM that they’re connecting me to—when I can just walk in off the street and save myself a ton of money?” Cuban asks. “What we’ve done at my companies is we’ve walked away from the traditional way.” }}
I don’t want a for-profit insurer between me and my doctor any more than I want a financial advisor between me and a S&P 500 index fund.
intercst
Medicare for All is getting rid of “all private insurance” The Public Option is giving people the choice of buying into Medicare at the actuarilly correct premium (i.e., Medicare currently pays $16,000/yr in benefits to the average beneficiary age 65 and older. A 25-year old would probably pay a fifth of that or about $3,000/yr in premiums.
I don’t have a problem with Medicare Advantage being offered as an option. If people in the rural areas are choosing MA while their hospitals are closing because MA reimburses hospitals at a lower rate than traditional Medicare, have at it. But at least be honest with them that it’s the private health insurers causing the shortfall, not black and brown people. {{ LOL }}
intercst
As you know, I live in WA State. The Democrat has near 100% assurance that Washington’s 12 Electoral Votes will be in his column. (Just as the Republican had 100% assurance that Texas’s Electoral Votes would be his when I resided in that state.} It doesn’t matter who you vote for President unless you’re in one of the “swing states”
Cornel West got my vote this time. {{ LOL }} Kamala still has a lot to prove.
intercst
That reasoning sounds a lot like the financial industry’s talking points about their being held to a fiduciary standard. They said something along the lines of, if they aren’t allowed to make their first priority using their client’s money to enrich themselves, their clients would suffer from reduced choices.
Steve
Right! Anyone who has not actually been in the position, including the two you named, have a lot to prove. However, someone who has already been in the position has proved a lot or, sometimes, very little.
Pete
Out of the blue, I had heart surgery just over a year ago. Billed to insurance at $530,000, insurance negotiated to $140,000 or so. Out-of-pocket to me was under $4,000.
Care to rethink your statement?
I’m talking about people over age 65 where they’re pushing you to take Medicare Advantage. You might be dead before the insurance company OKs an expensive surgery with all the pre-approval nonsense they put you through.
Also, on traditional Medicare, a $1 MM hospital bill costs you just $1,632 out of pocket in 2024. (But you will pay 20% of the surgeon’s bill under Part B Medicare)
intercst
Sorry. I got confused. And speaking of confused, this entire thread has made me dread turning 65…
When Tim went in for his gall bladder surgery, he said the only time anyone said anything about payment, was when he went to pick up a prescription after he was discharged from the hospital.
But then, Canadians are socialists. “Better dead than red”, right?
/sarcasm
Steve
Obamacare benefits all of society. Which is why so few people do not want to lose it.
That is what makes it socialistical, thus unacceptable in Shiny-land, where ideological purity rules.
Steve
The objective of Shiny-land believers is to become a totally socialistical society–with ONLY the monopoly companies in charge.
So just to clarify, out of all the things at stake in the 2016 election, the most important thing to you - the one thing that got you to vote for a major candidate just the second time in 30 years, was their ability to be snarky.
I am at a loss for further commentary.
Like most of America, you need a better understanding of arithmetic.
In US Presidential Elections, if you don’t live in one of the 5 to 7 “swing states”, your vote for president literally doesn’t matter. I won’t change my view until the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is enacted by a sufficient number of states.
Ignorance and innumeracy will eventually kill America.
intercst