If we Socialize Medicine, can we get rid of Insurance Companies?

[Truthmatters]

Profit does not belong in prisons or hospitals

 

[healthmyths]

Well, although HMO and health insurance companies would not be needed if we had universal health care, the public would insist that they remain, and contract with the government to provide care, just like they do with Medicare Advantage plans, which is a private alternative to Medicare. This is the reason that my stock in health care companies has almost doubled in value since 2008, and why I have no intention of getting rid of it.

Medicare ADVANTAGE IS NOT a private Alternative to Medicare! STUPID!

Medicare ADVANTAGE (of which there are over 400 around the USA ) bids for Medicare to contract them to provide health services for a FIXED monthly payment by Medicare to the ADVANTAGE PLAN!
And I LOVE my advantage plan and HAPPY as hell they make a profit!
Profits means TAXES! MY advantage plan net before profit was 2%!
The AVERAGE health insurance net before profit is 4.6%
After paying out an average of 80% in claims, 14% in overhead they have 4.6% left over... BIG F...king DEAL because idiots forget these companies PAY TAXES!!!! Can't take it off shore!

Please LOOK at my prior comments regarding WHAT IS LOST if the 1,300 companies go out of business as Obama PREFERS!!!

The problem is not the insurance companies... THEY SIMPLY pay the bills the claims submitted which are 90% made up of
hospitals that "pad and pass" on all due to Medicare 's 1986 EMTALA and hospitals pad and pass to insurance companies!
The other MAJOR cost driver is $850 billion a year in defensive medicine again..experts i.e. doctors say they do that simply
because they fear being sued by the lawyers who made $200 billion a year !

I really can't comprehend the idiocy of people who BLAME The insurance companies other then again you and they are really DUMB!!!

 

[tooAlive]

Profit does not belong in prisons or hospitals

I would disagree, to an extent.

Profit can certainly have a place. What does not belong is exploitation.

 

[Defiant1]

The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.

Fact.

But they aren't free...

 

[Greenbeard]

I mean, why would there even be any? They don't provide any medical service. If anything they would only slow things down. And I'd also assume they'd artificially drive the cost of healthcare up, as they would essentially be making profits without offering any real value. And they do make quite a bit of profit.

Whether there would be any depends on the scenario you're envisioning.

But I'd disagree that they can't add value. They can play an important role in shaping the incentives consumers and providers face, helping the former to make informed decisions and holding the latter accountable for the costs and quality of the services they're providing. That's not to say they've historically been very good at that--or even interested in that--but we're moving into new territory now.

I can't find much to disagree with in this picture of the future evolution of the relationship of consumers and insurers (though I would add that insurers should also be playing a much more active role in using cost-sharing to price the value of health services for consumers):

Health care should be consumer driven for reasons of both efficiency and ethics. When in possession of adequate information and faced with appropriate incentives, consumers make better choices for their own health than does any third party, be that third party motivated by the most praiseworthy of intentions. Moreover, as a matter of ethics, it is the patient and consumer, not the physician or insurer or employer or regulator, who should be vested with the right to make tradeoffs in the emotionally and sometimes spiritually charged domain of health care.

That said, one must acknowledge that consumers often need support if their choices are to promote their well-being and constraint when they are spending other people’s money. Health care is complex at best and not infrequently rife with nontransparent, anticompetitive, and even fraudulent behavior on the part of the many self-interested agents. Individual consumers can benefit from some of the efforts by governmental and employer sponsors, health insurance plans, provider organizations, and medical management programs. Consumers need others to create meaningful products and processes from which they can choose—bundles of products and services that can be measured, priced, purchased, and used not only by the highly educated and motivated individual but by those who are sick and scared, of only modest means and financial sophistication.

The blind spot in the consumer-driven analysis of market performance concerns the importance of coordination in insurance, delivery, and sponsorship. The obdurate insistence on á la carte choice and retail purchasing pushed the theorists of consumerism into positing organizational and market dynamics that have not been observed in the real world. The important issue is not, however, the current status and structure of health care and health insurance but the trend into the future. It seems safe to say that insurance product design will continue to move toward consumer-driven elements and that managed care elements will be recrafted into forms in which consumers choose but are subject to incentives structured by insurers. Enrollees will have more information but also more financial responsibility at the time of receiving care. Products will continue to proliferate and differentiate to accommodate the preferences and purses of potential enrollees. Health plans will specialize in data collection, aggregation, and analysis that can be used not only to support patient choice but also to evaluate provider and product performance through registries, observational studies, and clinical epidemiology.

As it moves further along the consumer pathway, health insurance is likely to strengthen rather than weaken some vestiges of its managed care heritage, especially the development of programs seeking to improve the care of enrollees along the spectrum from full health to dire illness. These include preventive and wellness programs for healthy enrollees, service coordination for patients needing acute care, disease management for enrollees with chronic conditions, and intensive case management for enrollees with severe conditions. These likely will be presented as options rather than mandates, consistent with the consumer-driven ethos, although perhaps with higher cost sharing for those who are eligible but choose not to participate. What is unclear, over the long term, is the extent to which more choice for consumers will prevent health insurers from being able to continue to offer the steep discounts they currently wrest from their provider networks.

The market is no more stuck on first-generation high-deductible insurance products and individually purchased coverage than it was stuck on HMO products and employment-based sponsorship models under managed care. The market continues to pioneer hybrid forms that incorporate elements of both managed care and of health care consumerism. We can name the emerging system “managed consumerism” or “facilitated consumerism,” or we can find some more felicitous phrase.30 The important point is that for choice to be meaningful, it has to be choice among meaningful options, and meaningful options need to be designed, built, and managed.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.

Fact.

Like in Cuba.

Laugh.

 

[rdean]

If we Socialize Medicine, can we get rid of Insurance Companies?

Republicans would never let it happen. I'm pretty sure making a profit on suffering is in their party platform, but I'm not sure.

Cantor to Disaster Victims - The Government Shouldn?t Be Picking UP the Tab

 

[tooAlive]

And I LOVE my advantage plan and HAPPY as hell they make a profit!
Profits means TAXES! MY advantage plan net before profit was 2%!
The AVERAGE health insurance net before profit is 4.6%
After paying out an average of 80% in claims, 14% in overhead they have 4.6% left over... BIG F...king DEAL because idiots forget these companies PAY TAXES!!!! Can't take it off shore!

You've brought up some valid points. But in regards to your comment about the taxes paid by these companies, that would no longer be the case under the taxation plan I'm proposing.
http://www.fairtax.org/

 

[Mr. Shaman]

I was thinking about it this morning.

If the government is in the process of socializing medicine and making it available to everybody, wouldn't that eliminate the need for insurance companies?

Yep!!!!!

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi1acHg3mhw]BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | Single Payer Health Insurance | PBS - YouTube[/ame]


....And, they're working on that....

.....in VERMONT!!

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9-ufbliqp0]Insurers Will Stop at Nothing to Prevent Vermont Single Payer - Wendell Potter Interview - YouTube[/ame]​

 

[rdean]

The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.

Fact.

Like in Cuba.

Laugh.

Health Care in Cuba

The Cuban health care system is respected around the world, and is literally decades more advanced than any system found in Latin America. For this reason, the Cuban system serves as a model for Third World developing nations.

Why is that funny?

 

[Vandalshandle]

Healthmyths,
Please don't start with your personal insults and screaching rhetoric. First of all, you are going to give yourself a coronary. Second, you have zero credentials in health insurance compared to me. My 50 year career was spent in health insurance, including over 25 years in senior managment at the VP level. Go to the library, and read the March 3 issue of Time Magazine, which is dedicated totally to health care costs, then get back to me. It is the first time I have ever seen the whole convaluted system exposed in a way that people can understand.

 

[healthmyths]

Then let the government allow the companies to COMPETE for its single payer payment.

Prices will drop dramatically.

THERE IS NO NEED FOR A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM!!!

A) Be honest and tell me why do you think there are 50 million uninsured when the FACTS counter that?
10 million are illegals, 14 million covered already by Medicaid and 18 million pay their own health expense and don't want coverage!
That leaves 4 million!
B) Force all hospitals to send their uninsured claims to the company that is low bid to manage the 4 million truly uninsured and paid by the below.
Hospitals can not then "pad and pass" the uninsured costs to Medicare/insurance companies that pay them!

C) Lawyers making $200 billion should be taxed as tanning salons are under Obamacare. Use the $20 billion to pay the premium for those
that want but can't afford.. and tie the reduction in the tax rate to the reduction of the $850 billion a year in defensive medicine caused
as doctors attest by duplicate tests all out of fear of lawsuits by lawyers!

These 3 steps will cover all the truly uninsured that want insurance. Reduce the $850 billion in defensive medicine and reduce costs sent by hospitals to Medicare/insurance companies.
These steps will reduce insurance premiums/Medicare by 20 to 50% a year!

 

[Truthmatters]

thanks VH for telling us why they pumps dont work

 

[Truthmatters]

Then let the government allow the companies to COMPETE for its single payer payment.

Prices will drop dramatically.

THERE IS NO NEED FOR A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM!!!

A) Be honest and tell me why do you think there are 50 million uninsured when the FACTS counter that?
10 million are illegals, 14 million covered already by Medicaid and 18 million pay their own health expense and don't want coverage!
That leaves 4 million!
B) Force all hospitals to send their uninsured claims to the company that is low bid to manage the 4 million truly uninsured and paid by the below.
Hospitals can not then "pad and pass" the uninsured costs to Medicare/insurance companies that pay them!

C) Lawyers making $200 billion should be taxed as tanning salons are under Obamacare. Use the $20 billion to pay the premium for those
that want but can't afford.. and tie the reduction in the tax rate to the reduction of the $850 billion a year in defensive medicine caused
as doctors attest by duplicate tests all out of fear of lawsuits by lawyers!

These 3 steps will cover all the truly uninsured that want insurance. Reduce the $850 billion in defensive medicine and reduce costs sent by hospitals to Medicare/insurance companies.
These steps will reduce insurance premiums/Medicare by 20 to 50% a year!

tell Carl Rove he needs to rewrite you script

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.

Fact.

But they aren't free...

“Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.”

 

[Vandalshandle]

The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.

Fact.

But they aren't free...

“Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.”

You are going to have to shorten that to bumper sticker length in order to sell it to conservatives.

 

[tooAlive]

The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.

Fact.

Like in Cuba.

Laugh.

Health Care in Cuba

The Cuban health care system is respected around the world, and is literally decades more advanced than any system found in Latin America. For this reason, the Cuban system serves as a model for Third World developing nations.

Why is that funny?

With all due respect,

That's nothing but pure propaganda. The Cuban healthcare system, along with any other government-run program in Cuba are all complete disasters.

Praising the Cuban healthcare system is a joke. If you don't believe me, take a vacation to Cuba and visit the hospitals the locals use.

 

[healthmyths]

Healthmyths,
Please don't start with your personal insults and screaching rhetoric. First of all, you are going to give yourself a coronary. Second, you have zero credentials in health insurance compared to me. My 50 year career was spent in health insurance, including over 25 years in senior managment at the VP level. Go to the library, and read the March 3 issue of Time Magazine, which is dedicated totally to health care costs, then get back to me. It is the first time I have ever seen the whole convaluted system exposed in a way that people can understand.

Right... And I started a company (NOT work for..STARTED!!) that every day 24 hours thousands of requests to advise medicare providers whether they will be paid!
So I have better obviously credentials then YOU!

And more importantly REFUTE with your credentials the FACT THERE NEVER were 46 million truly uninsured that want insurance??

10 million of the 46 per the CENSUS are illegal citizens i.e. NOT ELIGIBLE!
14 million counted as uninsured because they said so don't know THEY are eligible all they need to do is ENROLL in Medicaid!
18 million people who can afford at $50k a year and don't want because under age 34 they pay all their health services out of their pocket are counted.. falsely!
And for those 42 million reasons there are less then 4 million truly need and there is NO need to destroy health care system that is the best in the world!

NOW are you telling me with all your 25 years experience that the entire problem is the insurance companies fault.. even an idiot knows the companies and
Medicare SIMPLY pay the claims submitted!!

And among those claims are $850 billion a year in defensive medicine... PLEASE WITH YOUR VAST knowledge refute this:
NOW if you want to solve the problem of these 4 million "uninsured"
TAX lawyers 10% like Obamacare did tanning salons!
After all the experts i.e. doctors all contend they spend 34% of the national $2.5 trillion in duplicate tests,specialists. ALL out of fear of lawsuits!
That's $850 billion!
Findings from this survey include the following:

• Physicians estimate the cost of defensive medicine in US at $650 to $850 billion per year. This is 26 to 34% of all US healthcare costs.
• Up to 92% of US physicians practice defensive medicine.
• 76% of physicians report that defensive medicine decreases patient access to healthcare.
• 53% of physicians report delaying new techniques, procedures, and treatments due to fear of lawsuits.
• Patients most affected by defensive medicine include those visiting emergency rooms and those requiring surgery.
• Women are most affected by defensive medicine.
• Emergency medicine, primary care, and OB/GYN physicians are most likely to practice defensive medicine.
• 79 to 83% of surgeons and OB/GYNs have been named in lawsuits.
• Physicians contracted by the federal government practice significantly less defensive medicine as they are protected against lawsuits by the Federal Tort Claims Act. Only 48% practice defensive medicine compared to 92% of non-government physicians.
• Physicians in New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Sweden (much lower risk of lawsuits) claim to order no tests, treatments, or consultations in an effort to prevent a lawsuit.
• 89% of physicians support a patient’s right to be compensated fairly for true negligence.

Source:Health News Observer ? Physicians Estimate The Cost Of Defensive Medicine In Us At 650 To 850 Bill Articles

I will insult ignorance regardless of credentials all day because YOU provided NO facts countering the facts I've supplied!
Counter them and I'll apologize!

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

The folks in countries with socialized health care live longer, more healthily, for less cost.

Fact.

Like in Cuba.

Laugh.

Health Care in Cuba

The Cuban health care system is respected around the world, and is literally decades more advanced than any system found in Latin America. For this reason, the Cuban system serves as a model for Third World developing nations.

Why is that funny?

The Cuban health care system is respected around the world

I'm sure the rich foreigners who actually get to use it think it's okay. The regular Cubans who are excluded don't like it so much.

Why is that funny?

Idiots who think socialism works always make me laugh.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

If we Socialize Medicine, can we get rid of Insurance Companies?

Republicans would never let it happen. I'm pretty sure making a profit on suffering is in their party platform, but I'm not sure.

Cantor to Disaster Victims - The Government Shouldn?t Be Picking UP the Tab

let's make a deal....

no more socialized government healthcare for no more insurance company (& employer-dictated, lawsuit-sabatoged) healthcare....

let individuals pay their own way in a free market....