Health Insurance Costs

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  • Clipdat
    Clipdat Posts: 12,557
    Someone mention the SR-71? Quite possibly my all time favorite looking jet. Or if not absolute favorite, definitely up there.

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  • rpf65
    rpf65 Posts: 2,127
    Think is back in ‘87 that I saw a flight of 117’s.

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  • nooshinjohn
    nooshinjohn Posts: 25,034
    edited November 2018
    A pair of them landed under cover of darkness when I was stationed at Beaufort MCAS.

    They turned off all lights on the runway, hangars, and just about everything else. They taxied under their own power into a hangar and the doors were closed, while that hangar was surrounded by armed military police spaced at about 50 feet apart all the way around the building. Anyone attempting to peek inside would have been shot before they ever had a chance to get even close.

    The next day, a C130 landed and taxied into the hangar. Later that day, the Air Force sent a couple of stern-faced Tech Sergeants to our engine shop and scooped up a few parts and borrowed some tools they needed and left without saying a word.


    A couple nights later, again under blackout, the two birds fired up and left the hangar under their own power and flew away, with the Hercules following right behind. That is how I first learned of the F-117.
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  • Tony M
    Tony M Posts: 11,009
    The F-117's pilot's sleeping bed. ;)
    And it took a woman to think of it!
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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,902
    deronb1 wrote: »
    tonyb wrote: »
    Some have said....most other countries have government run HC. Why can they do it and not us.

    Know why ? Look at the common denominator in all those other countries. Most are either socialist, communist, Marxist......are we any of those ?

    Way off base Tony and the government doesnt have to run it, just do their job to ensure its citizens dont get fleeced. Draw a line instead of continuing to allow this laissez faire attitude towards healthcare.

    Am I ?

    Don't we right now, have a government in charge of drawing those lines so we don't get fleeced ? How's that working out ?

    You can say...they aren't doing their job, and you'd be right. So what makes anyone confident they'd stand up and do their job once they ran the whole thing ?
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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,902
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthem-among-health-insurers-refusing-to-pay-er-bills-doctors-say/

    This from todays headlines. Ridiculous, and a perfect example of getting fleeced while government does nothing.

    Much of the problems stem from insurance companies. They set the policy, terms and conditions of coverage. They decide what you pay, what they will cover, or not. They also have to work inside a box of rules set up by government policy, state policy.

    Seems to me, if we eliminate all the hands in the pie, costs would come down considerably. Eliminate the middlemen, get rid of the insurance companies all together. The savings alone on just the paper work, would be huge.

    I see no reason why Hospitals/doctors can't offer their own plan, with reciprocal steps for out of area care. Keep everything in- house, instead of farming it out. That idea has been in practice in a few areas of the country for some time now. You won't hear about it, because they don't want anything catching on that interferes with their flow of money.

    You do that, get rid of the lobbyists who buy what they want in congress, and we can make real changes. Don't expect anyone in congress to do any of this on their own, the noise has to come from the people with a direction.

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  • Tony M
    Tony M Posts: 11,009
    edited November 2018
    Anthem...another scam operation it seems in her case. Just like SS disability claims. They ALWAYS deny the first application for just being the first application...BS. :#

    I'm glad Brittney got her bill paid by that Anthem Ins. Co. after all!

    Good for her! :)
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  • I liked the John Stossel video. I think it's right on the money as to why costs go up when patients don't care about the costs when they aren't footing the bill. I think they care even less when they pay high costs for health care coverage and want to see a "return" for the money spent.

    A few stories.

    10 years ago I went to Australia to visit my wife's family. I got a terrible sore throat and needed to see a doctor. My medical in the States wouldn't cover a doctor visit overseas. I thought for sure it was going to cost me a pretty penny based on what a doctor visit costs here. I went in, told them I was American and didn't have insurance. I asked what it would cost to visit the doctor. I was told it would be $25 AUS which was about $20 American at the time. I got right in and sat in an actual office with the doctor across from a desk. Got a prescription and was out the door. Couldn't believe a visit was that cheap, but they don't go through insurance either with that type of visit.

    Cut my finger preparing food once and thought about putting on super glue to stitch it myself. Decided to go to the urgent care down the road instead. As I was self employed and had a high deductible it was going to cost me out of pocket for the whole thing. I asked how much and they wouldn't tell me the cost. "If we tell you, you might refuse and deny yourself the coverage you need. It won't be that much". I stayed and got the medical super glue treatment (no physical stitches) and took less than 5 minutes. Cost for me $580 when I got the bill. I would have stuck with my own super glue if I would have known it would have been $580.

    My daughter was born premature at 25 weeks and weighting less than 13oz. Before she was born we were told she wouldn't make it and were referred to UCSF (University of California San Francisco) for a second opinion. They performed a sonogram on my wife and a heart specialist did an echo cardiogram as well. Total cost for the 4 hours we were there (maybe an hour with doctors) - $12,000. We had insurance, but when I got the bill, the sonogram alone was almost $7000. Same ones they do every time my wife went in for checkups. Her local doctor was $150 per sonogram. I was pissed to say the least. Insurance picked up about $8000 of the bill. I had to pay the rest. I wrote them a long letter and mentioned their exorbitant costs and how out of line they were and how they had already received more from insurance than the visit should have cost. I received a written letter back saying that they would clear my account and I wouldn't owe any more.

    When my daughter was born, at 25 weeks, she was in the NICU for 142 days. Hospital bill for that time period - $1.1 million. Doctor costs for that time period, over $600k.
    The insurance company negotiated the total bill to something over $800k. Without insurance that would have broke us. My max out of pocket was $7800 - which for catastrophic insurance is great in my opinion. Things happen, we will never be without insurance. And the result of our daughter... she's small for her age but she has no known issues. Those costs would make anyone think twice about not having insurance - not only for the payment, but also the negotiation power to lower the bill.

    Here's a historic account of our daughter's journey.

    Yes, the insurance and costs of medical are way to high in my opinion and there have been lots discussed here about potential ways to fix it. It's all good dialog. However, the result is that I would not go without insurance as you are gambling everything you have on not having a tragedy.

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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,902
    I liked the John Stossel video. I think it's right on the money as to why costs go up when patients don't care about the costs when they aren't footing the bill.

    Spot on my friend. Same can be said for many things. College tuition is one. The day we told emergency rooms they absolutely could not turn people away, had to treat everyone regardless of their ability to pay, was the day costs started to go north.

    Like I said, you can walk into any emergency room, get treated, walk without paying. That's essentially free care for many, that the paying customers absorb. This also creates the problem of many using emergency rooms for simple things that a regular doctor visit might cure.

    There is no free lunch, in spite what many may have been told in college. Someone pays...but many think as long as that someone isn't them, then it's all good. We saw this with the implementation of Obamacare. Subsidized HC for one segment of the population, at the expense of the other segments of the population. Some saw their HC premiums triple in one year. I know mine did, and I'm no 1% dude. At the same time we saw deductibles rise like crazy....creating even more out of pocket expenses. Also was the drop in benefits that came with it too.

    That was a lesson in just subsidized care, not even a completely free type system. I can't even fathom the costs of a free system, with decent benefits, for a country our size.

    Sure, you can "spread out" that cost of a free system to taxes on goods and services. Ask Canada about that, the Netherlands. Maybe you don't mind paying 50 bucks for a case of beer or 7 bucks for a gallon of gas. Every item you buy, would reflect a price to pay for that free care. Like I said before, once you let government decide what your entitled to, you're going to be surprised at how little they believe you need.

    The other mistake I see, is that many believe a free system would be equal in quality and benefits as a paid for system. Nay nay my friends. They are under the illusion that a free system would provide the same level of quality care and benefits as they enjoyed under the paid system. If you believe that, then you've been lied to.
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  • Tony M
    Tony M Posts: 11,009
    edited November 2018
    Thanks for sharing Naomi's challenging beginning to make it into this world.

    I worked very closely with a man who had a son go through something similar so I know what you and your wife and son went through for months hoping Naomi would grow stronger. And she did! :) So did my boss's son and he grew into a fine man too.

    He had great insurance like you that he had just purchased a year before and it paid for most of the costs also. Over 1 million+ bill also but I never heard how much they were left to pay but it wasn't enough to hamper their living style that I ever saw.

    I agree with some other people on your Facebook page that she is truly a miracle from above and beautiful little angel. I'm glad she is going strong. My boss's son had a slow growth in height for a few years also but he grew out of it around the age of 4 also. No pun intended. :)

    Yep, Insurance is a necessary evil another boss told me a little later in life. ;)

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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,902
    edited November 2018
    Yep, a "necessary evil" is a good way of putting it. We need more choices in that evil though. Can you imagine the costs....if we had one or 2 cell phone companies ? One or 2 TV's to choose from ? One or 2 choices in cars to drive ?

    Choices, competition, bring down prices. We haven't had that in the HC industry for what....50 years or so ?

    Yet nobody....is talking about it. All you hear is how to spread out the cost, or have government take it over and...spread out the costs. No talk on how to keep it in the free marketplace and make it cheaper. That option seemed to have died with Elvis.

    Why is that ?

    Because the beneficiary of such an idea is....you. Not the big corporations, not the politicians taking lobbyists money, not government.

    Ever hear the expression, "you have to cut off the head of the snake" ? Same holds true here. To solve our ongoing issues, we have to eliminate the aspects causing the most damage to it. In Marvel superhero terms, you can't defeat a villain by simply attacking a minion here and there. You have to go to the root of the problem, cut off the head of the snake.
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  • deronb1
    deronb1 Posts: 5,021
    So what is the head? The government or an unregulated free market system? Only one head. Make your choice.
  • BlueFox
    BlueFox Posts: 15,251
    We can always go back to the way it used to be where the insurance companies only covered you if you were healthy. Get sick, use the insurance, and they would drop you.
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  • rpf65
    rpf65 Posts: 2,127
    The federal government should be involved in that they ensure contracts are upheld, and the individuale states are able to limit insurance sales in they’re state to those that have agreed to abide by their laws and restrictions. As far as requirements for individuale policies, just that catastrophic insurance is a viable option in all states

    The states should have more oversite in the industry. They should be allowed to review policies that are being offered, and decide if that option is permitted to be sold in their individual state.

    An example would be for catastrophic, call it the base line. One state may require coverage at say $5000 and another may say $7500 is acceptable, while both may say $1 million could be maximum benefit. The federal government job will be to go after the company trying to sell the higher minimum benefit policy in the lower minimum benefit state.

    The catastrophic should be the baseline. Everything else should be additional coverage. The individuale could then decide what other benefits they wish to pay for, but restrictions should be allowed.

    For instance I see no problem with a person who is 30 years old, and never bothered with insurance being given some percentage of benefits for 3 or 6 months. Likewise those that are uninsured, and have some catastrophic event, and never been insured to be deemed ineligible for insurance for that condition for 6 months or even a year.

    One other thing the states, and even federal governments should both be involved with is law suites. Then again maybe the judiciary branch should do more on this particular topic. Law suites against the industry as a whole needs to be curtailed. For instance, if the FDA approves some drug for treatment, after all the trials a drug company has been required to preform, and no fraud has been detected during those trials, monetary awards should be eliminated or severely curtailed.

    Likewise against doctors who didn’t preform the &25k test for some exotic disease that has the exact same symptoms as the common cold shouldn’t be crucified in court. Probably the best solution would be to have professional jurists for medical and insurance trials, but that won’t happen.

    That’s probably the best starting point.
  • mrloren
    mrloren Posts: 2,454
    I just had to complete the enrollment at work today. I was grinning when I selected no coverage for medical. Thank goodness for my wife'd plan. I looked at the cost and We would be poor quick.

    I was talking to an XRay Tech a few years ago. He was telling me that he gets paid different depending on the insurance for the same XRAY. I've heard others say the same thing.

    There is a lot wrong with how our system is run, no doubt. Would going to government run HC be better. NO! Go to the DMV and that is how it will be within 5 years. I do agree the best thing to do is get government out of our HC. Best idea I heard is move government employees and elected officials to the same HC system we have. Watch how quick it gets fixed and cost go way down.

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  • lunazul
    lunazul Posts: 780
    vtm2zd7nmh80.jpg

    This is why I will always carry insurance. These figures are for 9 months of a 1 year hospital stay. Without insurance we would have lost everything.
  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,902
    mrloren wrote: »
    . Best idea I heard is move government employees and elected officials to the same HC system we have. Watch how quick it gets fixed and cost go way down.

    Indeed, should have been that way from the beginning. Even so, a good portion of members of congress are millionaires. If they had no insurance at all, it still wouldn't be a catastrophic event financially for them.
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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,902
    BlueFox wrote: »
    We can always go back to the way it used to be where the insurance companies only covered you if you were healthy. Get sick, use the insurance, and they would drop you.

    Just like car insurance did, and still does.

    We could also go back to the way it was before when HC was offered to you as a benefit of full time employment, for free. The obvious question is, what happened between then and now.

    Costs, government mandates/regulations/policy...Obamacare....aging baby boomers, increases of people using the emergency room as their only doctor. Increases of people simply not paying.

    End result, a convoluted mess. We don't respond well or in a timely fashion to fix whats wrong with things. Not just HC, but anything government has a hand in. The reason why their is so much fraud and abuse in government run programs, policy, is because of one reason. They don't have to turn a profit. That's why we have 22 trillion on the credit card. That's why the Post office is broke, Medicare, social security.

    The HC industry has to turn a profit to sustain itself, just like any other business does. How much profit is debatable. The normal person doesn't get to see what goes on behind the curtain. They don't see the regulations/requirements and the costs involved to meet those. Not that it's all bad, most are there to protect the consumer, but much isn't too. They don't see the frivolous lawsuits, and crazy amounts of money awarded to some of those. They don't see that making some common sense changes is nearly impossible with out having to jump through 1000 hoops. They don't see the amount of administrative staff it takes to comply with everything.

    In audio terms, everything matters. Everything plays a part in the final costs to you. Making changes though comes too slowly, often diluted because of lobbyist money, and never attacks the problems at their core. Instead we are offered band-aid solutions that just reduce the severity of one problem, while creating yet another.

    This is what happens when you have too many Chefs in the kitchen, so to speak. Doesn't have to be Rocket science to problem solve, you just have to have the freedom and ability to do so. The HC industry lacks that.

    You also can't have different requirements state to state. That adds to costs and drives up prices. Just like gasoline, every state has a different requirement, which adds costs to refineries and you the consumer in the long run.

    The only involvement government should have would be to set a uniform policy across the board for everyone to follow as a minimum. Then get the fook out of the way. Let torte reform happen, let them sell across state lines, let them source products where it will be cheaper for them. Give them the latitude to make changes without having to jump threw a million hoops. Let them adapt to their surroundings, so they can better meet the needs of the people in a geographical area. Let them have more flexibility with experimental drugs, flexibility to make changes that may keep costs in check.

    None of the answers will happen until we separate the lobbyist money from the politician. That's the core problem. Until that happens, everything in HC will continue to be a convoluted mess of band-aid solutions.
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  • nooshinjohn
    nooshinjohn Posts: 25,034
    lunazul wrote: »
    vtm2zd7nmh80.jpg

    This is why I will always carry insurance. These figures are for 9 months of a 1 year hospital stay. Without insurance we would have lost everything.

    That is one hell of a bill. What was it for, if you don’t mind answering.... the drugs alone are half the bill!
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  • Joey_V
    Joey_V Posts: 8,505
    I think I have an idea for what that bill is for. HBO therapy is a clue.
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  • dolbyd
    dolbyd Posts: 430
    mrloren wrote: »
    I just had to complete the enrollment at work today. I was grinning when I selected no coverage for medical. Thank goodness for my wife'd plan. I looked at the cost and We would be poor quick.

    I was talking to an XRay Tech a few years ago. He was telling me that he gets paid different depending on the insurance for the same XRAY. I've heard others say the same thing.

    There is a lot wrong with how our system is run, no doubt. Would going to government run HC be better. NO! Go to the DMV and that is how it will be within 5 years. I do agree the best thing to do is get government out of our HC. Best idea I heard is move government employees and elected officials to the same HC system we have. Watch how quick it gets fixed and cost go way down.

    We switched to my wifes insurance too.
    I had full insurance included for the last 25 years. It sure changed quickly.
    I had to work a part time job until my wife went back to work just to afford the cost.
    Her employer is so employee friendly with the benefits-100% coverage with no deductibles. The savings is crazy.
    Health costs are the scariest part of planning for retirement I think.
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  • lunazul
    lunazul Posts: 780
    lunazul wrote: »
    vtm2zd7nmh80.jpg

    This is why I will always carry insurance. These figures are for 9 months of a 1 year hospital stay. Without insurance we would have lost everything.

    That is one hell of a bill. What was it for, if you don’t mind answering.... the drugs alone are half the bill!

    Reader's Digest Version......It started with a perforated colon caused by diverticulitus. That led to peritonitis requiring emergency surgery. Donated 18 inches of my colon. Had to be reopened due to sepsis. Complications led to more surgeries and an extended hospital stay.
  • nooshinjohn
    nooshinjohn Posts: 25,034
    Ouch! So glad to see you on the mend.
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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,902
    That is one heck of a bill. I'm wondering if you had no insurance, would you have gotten the same care. If the answer is yes, then you can see the problem.

    Many of you have probably noticed by now, how Hospitals inflate their bills and then the insurance company negotiates a lesser amount. That is a simple exercise in what happens to prices when somebody else is paying.

    That's why college tuition is so high too. If we went down that road of "Free HC", where somebody else is paying, costs would skyrocket even further.

    LUNAZUL,

    Glad to see your doing well after that episode. Have a nephew that went threw something similar with Chromes disease, and another who had a bad reaction to that Muscle milk garbage that landed him in the hospital. Both wound up donating parts of their intestines.
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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,902
    I want to offer up an example, and to further validate my other comments, on why our problems never get solved, or at least attempted to get solved.

    In the state of Michigan, the elected officials there, of whom you people of that state pay a pretty penny for them, have decided that their time and resources should be focused on....

    Happy meal toys.

    Yep, Happy meal toys from McDonalds. Any of you in that state see that as a pressing issue ? Are those toys interfering with your life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness ? Are those toys helping or hindering you in anyway ?

    Until we demand, as citizens, that our elected officials focus on real issues facing all of us, then we are stuck in a Groundhog day, repeating the same junk over and over, generation after generation.
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  • cfrizz
    cfrizz Posts: 13,415
    Tony, every business inflates their prices to maximize their profits, not just hospitals, that's how businesses work. Then they have sales when things don't sell as fast as they want them to.
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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,902
    cfrizz wrote: »
    Tony, every business inflates their prices to maximize their profits, not just hospitals, that's how businesses work. Then they have sales when things don't sell as fast as they want them to.

    True Cathy, but I'm talking "over inflated". Ever see a hospital run "sales" ? Because they don't participate in a competitive open marketplace. That's part of the problem.

    Another example would be the over inflated prices of some drugs. Some in the 10-20k range, for a one month supply. Then the paten runs out, and behold...a generic form of the drug at a tenth of the original price. Gone a few rounds with that myself with my grandson who had seizures at 5 years old.

    I'm all for making a profit, you couldn't stay in business if you didn't. However, price gouging is another thing.
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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,902
    edited November 2018
    Another part of this equation, and this may go off the rails a bit, is profits as Cathy said. Doctors, hospitals, they all need to make a profit, earn a living.

    So the question is, is it in their best financial interests, that your sick or healthy ? After all, they get paid by procedure, not whether your healthy, right ? They'd go out of business if the majority of you were healthy. Very least, the prices would come down substantially because the pool of sick people would be smaller, right ?

    Unfortunately that's not the case, and we as a nation are getting sicker and sicker, so the demand for these HC services keep growing. Does anyone stop and ask the question why ? Why are we getting sicker ? In spite of all the advancements we've made ?

    Food....and lifestyle. The amount of food on a store shelf that is terrible for us is just astronomical. The crap that is allowed in it, is approved by the same people whom you trust to keep you protected, government. The horrible practices of how we raise beef, and other farm animals, is OK'd by the same people. I won't even cover fast food, Sodas, because we all know that already....I would hope anyway. Government has already proven, that your health is not necessarily a top priority, yet some want to hand over the whole shebang to them.

    Combined with a society that today wants to make everything easy as pie for you. You don't have to do jack, because there's an app for that. Kids stay inside, eat chicken nuggets and play video games, surf the net, social media. Adults are doing the same thing.

    The HC industry/Big Pharma is drooling at the potential future customers.

    So the equation goes like this...

    You have a HC system, with no competition, that profits greatly from the sick

    + you have a food industry feeding mass amounts of people foods they know will make you sick.

    + a government that allows it on all sides, collecting lobbyists cash.

    Far bigger problem than trying to figure out who pays for HC premiums. Just my .02
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  • steveinaz
    steveinaz Posts: 19,521
    I think there's a lot of regulation that keeps health insurance from being as competitive as car/home insurance policies. If the "model" could be similar, health insurance would no longer need to be tied to employment, and far cheaper ala "competition." The free market works, when you can get the incompetent government out of the way.
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  • rooftop59
    rooftop59 Posts: 7,952
    you actually think car/home insurance works well Steve??? Ask people in Florida and Cali how its working out for them. And bracketing off catastrophic stuff, many insurance companies do everything they can to deny your claim. I'm reminded of this clip, fictional of course, but it cuts to close:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwXDDW25-uw
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