Health Care, Are you happy with yours?

[lilranch2001]

it looks like TBN people are in full agreement with the american public, now if the american public had any control over the people who are supposed to represent them..........

 

[brin]

Baby Boomers retiring has troubled the government and economists for some time..they have fretted over the boomers retiring and withdrawing their money from the stock market and selling their homes to downsize and they have known it was going to happen for 60 yrs. now...Get ready for the solution to spiraling health care costs...health rationing by a government board...pulling the plug on gramps and granny is a reality.

 

[FallbrookFarmer]

Baby Boomers retiring has troubled the government and economists for some time..they have fretted over the boomers retiring and withdrawing their money from the stock market and selling their homes to downsize and they have known it was going to happen for 60 yrs. now...Get ready for the solution to spiraling health care costs...health rationing by a government board...pulling the plug on gramps and granny is a reality.

Hey Brin,Keep away from that electrical outlet! I'm armed
Speaking of pulling the plug, got to go to WallyWorld, but in the immortal words of our Governator "I'll be back!"

 

[brin]

Hey Brin,Keep away from that electrical outlet! I'm armed
Speaking of pulling the plug, got to go to WallyWorld, but in the immortal words of our Governator "I'll be back!"

LOL - Don't drink anything green...I mean it could just be Soylent green especially if they put you in an easy chair and begin to show a movie of your life.

 

[dave1949]

Hi Dave,
Welcome to the fray.
I agree that health care costs have risen much faster than the Cost of Living index, but if you were to look at when the costs began to spiral out of control, you would find a correlation between that and the beginning of more and more government involvement.
Simple economics, If a product becomes too "expensive" people will either not buy the product, or find an alternative. Unless of course, something(??????) distorts the market.

I wish I had a peacock Sounds, cool.

Well, we could put Medicare up for bid to the private insurance industry and see what shakes out. That would be the beginning of the 'gray revolution'

From the claims I have heard, Medicare is running at a significantly lower overhead than the typical private health insurer. I have heard no rebuttal to those claims. If that is true, and given most people would agree the government would not usually be the most efficient provider; it says the private insurers aren't running a very tight ship, or they are over-compensated for the type of product they are selling, or they are not operating in a truly open, competitive marketplace.

What are some examples of increased government involvement and/or market distortion you speak of?
Dave.

 

[brin]

I wish I had a peacock Sounds, cool.

Well, we could put Medicare up for bid to the private insurance industry and see what shakes out. That would be the beginning of the 'gray revolution'

From the claims I have heard, Medicare is running at a significantly lower overhead than the typical private health insurer. I have heard no rebuttal to those claims. If that is true, and given most people would agree the government would not usually be the most efficient provider; it says the private insurers aren't running a very tight ship, or they are over-compensated for the type of product they are selling, or they are not operating in a truly open, competitive marketplace.

What are some examples of increased government involvement and/or market distortion you speak of?
Dave.

Did you not see this post by Bird ? Just Imagine he is paying $844.75 for he and his wife in retirement. I have a friend in California that is 60 yrs. old and up until I told him otherwise he had always thought Medicare was free and that Senior Citizens got free government health care. There is no way an elderly couple should be paying $844.75 a month for their health care and it will only go up from here if they can even find a doc who will take Medicare after this passes...
____________________
Birds post

"We may have to be careful with this topic to avoid politics that are prohibited on TBN. Now I don't know how your health care compares to ours, but . . . I thought maybe my costs would go down a bit when we got old enough to get on Medicare. Well, now we're on Medicare and we pay $298 a month for the medigap, or Medicare Supplement, insurance, $280 a month for Medicare Part D (prescription medicines), I pay $110.50 and she pays $97 a month for Medicare Part B, then we pay $48.96 a month for some very limited dental insurance and $10.29 a month for very limited vision insurance. Yep, $844.75 a month."

 

[2manyrocks]

I was without health insurance for a couple of years recently before I got health insurance coverage again.

Even though I paid cash and there was no extra back office work for having to chase down insurance payments while I was uninsured, I paid more for routine doctor visits and so forth in comparison to what I am now charged because I'm part of an insurance plan that has negotiated lower rates with healthcare providers.

IMO, healthcare costs are out of control because the government and insurance companies are the largest buyers of health care services--not individuals. You might think you're the buyer, but in real dollar terms, government and insurance companies are the major buyers of health care services.

There is no way to comparison shop for medical services the way things are structured now. I tried to get firm cost estimates for my wife's recent surgery, and wasn't successful despite several calls to the hospital and the insurance company. Other hospitals and providers wouldn't waste the time of day to give quotations for services so I could comparison shop. I still don't know what the final bills are going to be.

I would also say that the majority of health care expenses are incurred late in life before dying. A friend's dad died yesterday after his doctor gave him too much medication that shut down his kidneys. He had spent about 12 days in the hospital while they induced a coma and then put him on a ventilator to try to remedy their mistake. He was elderly and his system couldn't take all this "treatment," and so he passed yesterday only a few months after his wife passed. He was just so humble and trusting in his doctor to prescribe the appropriate medications for him, and now he has passed, but not before the health care providers ran up those final, large bills.

So no, I'm not happy with the health care system and it looks to me like it will get worse.

 

[dave1949]

The problem seems to be that folks don't know or care what anything having to do with their health care costs anymore except what their monthly insurance premium is. Remember back up untiil the late 1970's there was no co pay...you went to the doc and paid the bill, same with the lab or any minor procdure and when you went to the drug store you paid for your prescription and it was never a big deal..Now the consumer / patient has been taken out of the equation and it is all co-pay this and co- pay that ..the docs or anyone else never give you a price and you have no reason to ask..the insurance company or the government pays so no one cares anymore. The system is broken.

Bob, it is broken. Although, the doctor we used before moving had a fixed discount percentage for patients not paying through insurance for office visits.

Your statement about pulling the plug on the Grands really needs to be examined. It is new moral and ethical territory IMO. Medical technology has advanced to the point where it is often possible to keep a body alive (in the legal sense) far beyond what was considered 'being alive' earlier.

Without wanting to sound like a kook, I think it is time to consider the implications of that.

'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.'

We perhaps need to combine some Old Testament wisdom with modern technology to get to the most ethical answers. It won't happen overnight.

Dave.

 

[MikePA]

The original, non-political question was "Are you happy with your health care?"? Please take the comments about current issues to another site.

 

[kenstrac]

Last visit to the hospital was 16K for only 21 hrs, ins would pay set amount of 12K I paid 1.2k thats 2 X Rays ER room stress test and 1 meal the thing on the bill that caught my eye was $600 for oxygen.
Two weeks later I had to go to another place to have X-ray done that was $240 and no one could tell me what I had,the hospitals are out of control on there charges they are not building hospitals anymore they are building Taj Mahal's.
Quite a few years ago they were putting an addition on one of the hospitals and I saw on the newspaper police blotter that someone had stolen a 15ft tree valued at 2K before they planted it.
And in the news today there was a story about those food cards they give out, they go to the store and they get a pack of cigarettes and a bag of chips and $100 cash and the store debits the Gov. for $220 anything the Guberment puts there hands in ends up costing the taxpayer 2X.