re: How Corrupt Is Our Healthcare System?

quote:

---

Name one industry that doesn’t have indirect kickbacks??

There are a lot of ‘scratch my back I will scratch yours’ deals out there in just about every single industry.

---

But the difference is, in healthcare, the kickback and subsequent back scratch often means the patient isn't necessarily getting the best care or product. That can greatly affect the customers health.

quote:

---

Once Obama let the cat out of the bag it all went to shite, premiums up 300-400% as well as deductibles

---

Quite listening to talk radio folks that are just trolling for ratings.

Problems are a bit more complex and a bit more aged than what what those idiots would like to have you believe. It is easy to pass blame to the other guy or make you fear than just biting the bullet and reaching long term solutions that work for all.

After WWII the unwritten deal between government and business was that the government would cover the "widows and orphans" sector and business would cover the workers (and families). To be fair many companies were local and regional with the big national companies covering strategic sectors like steel and bulk components of the manufacturing trades.

Banks are the perfect example when historically they were limited to state and county borders that took local deposits and invested them in local lending and construction. Investment banks are mainly the "sister" banks in NYC like Chemical, Manny Hanny, Chase, and JP Morgan. Under the laws "investment banks" could not own "brick and mortar banks" so risk was separated and goals were separated as well. Now a national bank like JPM takes local deposits and ship them to china where 20 year olds can lose 6 billion on speculations that make Veags look tame. Its may be hard to believe the usury laws capped lending at 6%.

From post WWII to the oils shocks of the 70's the system worked pretty well and we were blessed the the bulk of the folks in America were young and healthy (baby boomers). In the early 80's instead of addressing the with longterm solutions that might have been painful up front, we let big get bigger with the whole "greed is good" mantra of Wall Street. Buy American business with junk bonds then outsource the labor (first to South America then to India and Asia) so without American jobs the associated health benefits cost could be eliminated.

After the 70's insurance companies, investment banks, and retail banks were no longer firewalls from each other and were allowed to merge and no longer separate risk for stability. then along comes the dot.com boom and a whole new way of separating ownership and wealth. Companies stopped paying dividends and long term individual investing was replaced by mutual funds. Wealth transferred from owners and labor to "management" with little skin in the game and eyes on their golden parachutes.

Even with the tax cuts the government has not extracted thing like insurance for employees as the offset in lowering taxes. We, by action of both Democrats and Republicans, have allowed a corporate monarchy to replace true American business of the past 200 years or so. The infighting is just to distract the public so both can pick clean the wallet of the average worker or voter. An insurance company seeing 450% increase in profits over the past few years is obscene and both parties are to Balme for allowing this to happen at the peoples expense.

To be more specific, deductibles have risen, premiums have risen, and services have been cut in the name of corporate profitability while neither side looks out for the actual consumers.

As example, lets say I have to go to the ER and wind up with a 15,000 bill. My PPO of a few years ago has been replaced with an HMO. My 1,000 deductible has risen to 10,000 and my monthly premium has risen from 250 per month to 1,000 per month (all in about 5 year span while my income has been flat). Now here comes the math...

15,000 ER bill (sticker price)

3,000 net bill by contract with insurance company (more like sleight of hand)
Since my deductible is 10,000 the insurance company pays nothing

My premium has gone up 4x yet the insurance pays 0 dollars and pockets my premium as pure profit. would love to have a business where I collect huge piles of money but never have to pay it back out. Vegas slots pay out more than insurance companies do.

The hospital inflates say a 3,000 visit to 15,000 then discounts it back to 3,000 so the insurance company can get out of paying their share. Here is another example if costs and bills were right in the first place.

3,000 = real cost of procedure
2,400 = covered by insurance
600 = covered by insured (with say 1,000 deductible instead of 10,000)




It amazes me that a prescription filled in the USA for 30 dollars a month is 3 dollars a month for the same prescription in Canada.



As for ObamaCare, the Republicans tacked on opiod crisis money onto the bill which adds 33 cents to the dollar. Take that away and ObamaCare premiums drop to 67 cents on the dollar overnight.



Real health care reform means.....
Spending for preventative which is cheaper when caught early
Spending on mental and physical health
Including eyes and teeth as part of same body for healthcare
Reigning in costs by tying tax breaks to required care by corporations
Reigning in costs by limiting insurance companies to reasonable returns
Crossing the aisles by both parties for citizen welfare and not corporate welfare

quote:

---

Bill was just over 98k.

---

“My mil died at our house last year on hospice,they were really good people.But the thing that bothered me was when she needed something like zinc oxide for her butt or adult diapers they would order it instead of buying at Walmart.So FedEx would deliver this box with one little tube zinc oxide,box would be big enough to hold probably 1000 tubes,same way with diapers or anything else they ordered.Wondered if hospice company getting kickback from medical supply company.Certainly Medicare was being gouged,the postage on the box would be more than the price of the item at Walmart. “

It’s actually cheaper to ship the products directly to the patient’s home. The hospice is given a pre-determined block of money to take care of the patient. You wouldn’t want to pay the nurse $25-$40 an hour to shop at Walmart. As far as postage/Fed Ex rates if you ship a million packages a month you get pretty good rates. Many medical supply distributors get charged the same rate per box and some buy only a few size boxes. Again cheaper and more efficient. The hospice buys from whoever offers the best price and service. Much like why people are now buying from Amazon rather then going to Walmart.

Let me splain something to you. Human beings are hopelessly corrupt. It is our nature. You, me , everybody. The only question is the extent of the corruption.

quote:

---

As example, lets say I have to go to the ER and wind up with a 15,000 bill. My PPO of a few years ago has been replaced with an HMO. My 1,000 deductible has risen to 10,000 and my monthly premium has risen from 250 per month to 1,000 per month (all in about 5 year span while my income has been flat). Now here comes the math...

15,000 ER bill (sticker price)

3,000 net bill by contract with insurance company (more like sleight of hand)
Since my deductible is 10,000 the insurance company pays nothing

My premium has gone up 4x yet the insurance pays 0 dollars and pockets my premium as pure profit. would love to have a business where I collect huge piles of money but never have to pay it back out. Vegas slots pay out more than insurance companies do.

The hospital inflates say a 3,000 visit to 15,000 then discounts it back to 3,000 so the insurance company can get out of paying their share. Here is another example if costs and bills were right in the first place.

3,000 = real cost of procedure
2,400 = covered by insurance
600 = covered by insured (with say 1,000 deductible instead of 10,000)

---

I had out-patient sinus surgery last year in a hospital surgical setting performed by an ENT that is a direct employee of the hospital/medical system where the surgery occurred and I left about 2 hours post-surgery. He billed the surgery at $71k total cost from all participants to his "employer" who also happens to be my wife's employer that we have insurance through. Long story short, I ended up paying $7k which covered my deductible and co-insurance limits. I gave him shite and still give him shite at every follow up, it is like a game yet not one I find enjoyable when paying ~ $25k for employer sponsored health care and the employer is a large health company. People think this private sector insurance is fun should look at early retiring and see what ACA policies cost bridging to age 65 and medicare and/or be able to find a doctor that will accept you as a patient under those plans. shite needs to change in this country, nothing is "fairly priced" (ie not necessarily cheap AF) in health care. Getting back to our insurance, we pay her employer roughly $6500 in annual premiums, her employer states their additional contributed cost for coverage is around $14k, then we have roughly $7.5k deductible/co-insurance. This is compared to all-in OOP cost of roughly $5k five years ago, including premiums, prior to high deductible plans being implemented. It is just stupid level pricing change.

ETA - her employer is self-insured, the only additional cost is a large national company that administrates the plan.

bullshite

quote:

---

And uh, yeah...I understand how it works with paying for the assets that the hospital acquires

---

Obviously you don't

quote:

---

Multiply that number of patients to tens, twenties, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then get back with me on how the hospital is justified in raping us.

---

This doesn't really matter. Revenue is only one piece of the puzzle

quote:

---

Do you even understand what an asset is?

---

No, please explain it to me.