Hahahahahahaha, hahaha, stop it, you’re KILLING me! Literally.
…then you are utterly unqualified to suggest that others should do the same.
Just one sample of the kind of thing I’m talking about (and this from a supposed “populist”, btw):
Just to be clear, I do not support SCHIP, at all, it’s socialized Medicine for kids, plain and simple, let that cheapskate dad get some insurance for his kid.
And again I say, if you have never priced, applied for, and - most importantly - received the results of the application from a private insurer, your opinion on this facet of this issue is worth exactly shit.
And I’m being generous, because even if you’ve done all of the above, you’ve almost certainly never done it for a child with a disabling condition.
And in case my point isn’t clear enough:
In a telephone interview, the Frosts said they had recently been rejected by three private insurance companies because of pre-existing medical conditions.
Even if that wasn’t the case, even if they could find an insurer that would touch them with a ten foot pole, there is no reality in which they would pay ANY of the quoted rates that the right-wing assholes keep throwing out there.
Do you know why we knew that the Freep/Malkin/Riehl arguments about the family probably had no merit? Because despite what they and their acolytes think, everything in the story is exactly in line with what we’ve been saying about the health care system all along.
I can’t track the following down for a cite, but I promise someone did say it on someone’s blog somewhere, and it’s being repeated in different forms all over the place. (These blog wars are so hard to follow.)
Paraphrased, snark hopefully intact:
What a wonderfully rich country we live in when $83,000 [the potential upper cutoff for SCHIP in New Jersey] is considered the working poor!
I’d like to tattoo this on every right-winger’s head: THAT’S THE POINT. THAT’S THE BROKEN SYSTEM. That’s exactly what we’re talking about, you goddamn illiterate reactionary fuckwads. We’re the richest nation in the world, and even our comfortably well-off can’t afford health insurance.
The last time I tried to get a quote for private insurance, I was 28 years old, single, and a non-smoker. I also had mild asthma that didn’t require medication and depression that had been treated with medication and therapy (meaning no hospitalization required).
I was quoted $400 a month. Just for myself, no spouse or kids. And that was 10 years ago when health insurance costs were, believe it or not, lower than they are today.
I worked in individual health insurance for years. It’s the perfect platonic ideal of the “Adverse Selection Death Spiral”, and should be noted as such in every economics text.
If only because you don’t often get to use the phrase “Death Spiral” in economics.
Can we not forget that there is also a measure of state control in this? That the upper limit for Maryland is set far above the upper limit for Wyoming, for instance, and this is set based on a number of different factors by the states (i.e. cost of living, consumer price index, etc.). Seriously when are these nutjobs going to realize that the majority of the middle class is either uninsured or under insured BECAUSE IT COSTS TOO MUCH! It has very little to do with not wanting to get insurance, and very much to do with wanting a place to live and food to eat!
Malkin has tangoed with health insurance problems, and yet she still doesn’t get it.
I spent some time out of work recently, and did in fact price - and pay for - private insurance, and not only was the cost ridiculous (and of course, there was no way in hell my partner’s company would even consider letting him put me on his policy) - but the runaround was incredible, including a damn near three month long process of having to get and give them records from every doctor I had seen in the last ten years, at my own expense — even though I was applying for private insurance from the very same company that had covered me for that entire period and ALREADY had all those records - in the process moving me past the date by which my “pre-existing” conditions like my allergies would have been picked up - so not only did I have to pay the ridiculous premiums and painful deductibles, but also had to pay for all my previously covered meds for a year out-of-pocket. I really didn’t get any medical care paid for in the process (and “oddly”, everything I did get was “inexplicably” billed at a noticeably higher rate than it had when I was employed), but we did have the peace of mind of knowing that if disaster struck we wouldn’t be bankrupt.
Those quoted rates above probably have a huge deductible and don’t cover any medications, either.
But this is what “protecting the children” looks like. Bah.
I still remember the quotes when my husband and I went looking for insurance after a pregnancy scare. Ten year ago we were quoted $835/month for insurance for two people in their twenties with no health problems - and this was not plush insurance at all, but the minimum we felt we could cope with (catastrophic, including pregnancy-related catastrophes).
I can’t even imagine what they would charge us these days when both of us actually have health problems.
You know, it occurs to me that the Wingnuteteria is really proving how utterly looney they are in this disgusting hate-fest. Because the GOP Party line is not, “There are no problems with our health insurance system,” it’s “All the problems with the health insurance system are caused by the Big, Bad Gummint trying to take over.”
Shouldn’t they be crying crocodile tears over the Frosts, and how they could afford insurance if only (a) the evil Liberals weren’t stealing their hard-earned money in order to redistribute it to illegal-immigrant crack-selling goat-porn producers, and (b) we immediately implemented the fabulous Buy Insurance or Go to Prison! plan endorsed by Mitt and Arnie?
I mean, any one of us can write this crap in our sleep. Why are they so off their game?
Seriously. I’m trying to get insurance right now for this odd period between the end of school and employment and the quotes look good at the beginning, but then it takes weeks to go through and they tell you that you can get that coverage for $50 more a month than we quoted you and that we won’t cover your listed conditions for the first 10 months. And those conditions are basically why you want health coverage. Seriously, the COBRA plan I’m currently on costs 1 and a half times my rent. Thank god I have parents who are willing to help me out.
I have too many of these stories to fit here—and I’ve never even had to go without insurance.
A couple years ago, we did COBRA, so preexisting conditions were covered continuously, no problem. But it cost $1,150 a month for a family of three. Given one large doozy and two smaller doozies of preexisting conditions, I rather doubt any insurer would offer me a comparable plan that would cover my medications and my doctor visits. We really don’t have much choice—at least one of us has to have a job with good health benefits. My husband would like to try his hand at consulting, but I’d need to get a full-time job before he could even consider that.
When my sister’s husband was changing jobs, she applied to a zillion insurers. She has ulcerative colitis (really well controlled with medication, fortunately)—I don’t know if a single insurer was willing to sell the family a policy. I don’t think they were even offered an astronomically expensive plan. How can you choose between paying the mortgage and paying insurance premiums when no one will even sell you a policy?
A friend of mine is a poor single mom whose ex has never paid a dime of child support in seven years. She’s an immigrant, and she can’t afford the child care she’d need to have if she worked full-time. (And I don’t know whether she has a green card or not, so maybe full-time work would be hard to come by anyway.) Her son, David, has asthma, for which he needs $200 or $300 a month of medication. Were it not for our state’s KidCare program (an early S-CHIP program), he’d be having asthma attacks and missing school (not to mention risking ER visits and death) rather than thriving in the gifted program.
When people threaten S-CHIP programs, I take that personally. What the hell is wrong with a program that helps children like David to grow and thrive? Nothing—nothing except that there are still children who lack medical coverage.
This summer our health insurance company offered their new rate card; one of the options was something like $10K a year for a family, with a $10K deductible and a $25K out-of-pocket limit. So that’s basically $20K a year before they start paying for anything. I’ve blocked out which of the horribly bad options we took, but it wasn’t that one.
We have friends who have decided to go uncovered for a year or two until they’re eligible for state-subsidized insurance (only a few hundred a month for a family); I hope none of their kids gets sick or breaks a bone, because they’ll be done for.
Anyone who thinks you can just go out and get affordable prsonal coverage really deserves to have to try.
Jesus Forking Christ!
The Health Care System in the States is SO EFFED UP!!!
I thank god, his archangels and bible editors, for the way things are over here in Europe.
It really is UN-believable when think that we are talking about the richest nation in the world.
Auguste, could the “for a a child with a disabling condition” sentence go above the fold?
Because at some level, it’s the point. The public is going to subsidize those kids’ care because we are not uncivilized enough to let them die at the scene. What’s great about CHIP (to see my plaintive whine, click my username) is that it brings the family into a system that controls costs and provides preventative care too.
The sick truth is that the Frosts could so damn easily had for-profit insurance at the time catastrophe struck their family and it wouldn’t have mattered; for all I know, they HAD paid premiums that year.
As the self-employed, no-group suckers in the insurance pyramid, their kids’ injuries would have maxed out their lifetime coverage in about three days.
The reason it’s a crisis is that millions of parents and their kids are affected by that catch-22. Not to mention all the people who aren’t/don’t have kids, but don’t happen to be healthy.
We recently paid $800 per month through my husband’s
pro-lifefamily-friendly(cough cough spit gag) employer for family health insurance.That isn’t even the face price by a long shot - if we could even get insurance for my husband with his prosthetic heart valve and all (my university student plan would not cover him, so I put myself in as an employee). Even the monthly Cobra for a state university was $1200!! That’s a group rate!
Don’t try to even tell me that insurance is affordable - or that it is even AVAILABLE at any price to “high risk” patients with preexisting conditions! I might make you test the limits of YOUR insurance if you say that to my face! (having that liver sewed back in is expensive, you know, and then you won’t be able to get insurance anymore thereafter!)
Phoenix Rising, I see your point, but I disagree. Everyone should be covered, not just the disabled. Putting too much focus on the fact that it’s so much worse for families like the Frosts both narrows focus for the RW’s ire, and minimizes the no-less-real plight of those without such difficult challenges.
I was turned down - FLAT - for insurance because I had been prescribed Prilosec. That’s right, heartburn disqualified me from being insured.
[Followup edit - I see now that you agree (not that I doubted it) that everyone is crunched; I just happen to think that Graeme Frost’s additional challenges are just, for the sake of this argument, fucked-up icing on the insurance-sucks cake.]
$250 a month for the wife and kids with a $5,000 deductible.
She’s 25 and healthy. The kids are 3 and 1 and healthy.
No maternity coverage. No contraception benefits. No prescription drug coverage until we hit deductible either.
And we are the lucky ones.
For your edification, poor huddled masses, here is my situation in Australia (before I left for Japan):
I earnt $60,000 a year (a half-decent wage in Oz) and paid 1.5% of my taxes on health care: that is, $900 a year, or $80 a month. That was it.
For this I got: all medications on a (large) prescribed list at $16 a script; free emergency care; free visits to the doctors; free specialist visits if referred by a doctor; and all other medical care free subject to a waiting list (which varies between 0 and 12 months depending on whether the operation was judged essential or elective).
Dental and physio was excluded unless it was the consequence of a medical problem requiring a hospital visit (e.g. after I broke my arm, when I paid nothing for 6 months of physio).
Because I am a kickboxer, I paid for a $15 a month private care plan which covered voluntary physio and dental, and ambulance costs.
Because the government is trying to force people to take private health care, they threatened to add a 1% levy to my taxes if I didn’t take out a private hospital plan (because I earn over 50k). I took out a singles plan for and extra $100 a month. This means I could jump the queue for all elective surgery, choose my doctor and (with a significant deductible) get a private room. I never ever used this insurance.
So my total health care costs in Australia, for everything to be free except the last 20% of my voluntary sports physio/dental, and the $16 for a pharmacy script, were $195 a month.
I have been to the hospital in Australia for a dislocated kneecap twice, a broken arm once. I went to a specialist for migraines when I was 18, before I had an income, and although I have never had any serious medical problems I have of course been to the doctor many times. I have never ever had any reason to complain about our health care system, I have never seen a bad hospital, and I have never waited for anything I needed except perhaps a few hours in the emergency ward when I broke my arm (but I couldn’t complain - I had already slept on it in the hope it was just sprained).
I really cannot understand why any country would use any other system. And if it weren’t so terribly depressing to watch, I would find it hilarious how citizens of the USA still argue over this as if you need to invent the wheel. I feel very sorry for you…
Where did they get $70/month for an individual? I looked into taking out a cobra on my insurance (HMO, nothing fancy) because I wanted to change to a job without health insurance. It would have cost $500/month for a healthy single woman in her 20’s with no preexisting conditions. That was 15 years ago.
I’ve been pretty lucky with regards to insurance in my life. I never had it, ever, growing up (usually out of work coal miner (and not union when there was work)–my dad’s old job–doesn’t provide health coverage), but we were all pretty healthy and didn’t ever get sick enough to need it. Then when I got married, I got covered by the husband’s insurance. And as a state university employee, he has fairly decent coverage with a not too terribly ridiculous premium. So our son’s ear surgery (in three weeks) is almost completely covered, etc. But even with that, we’ve had some pretty big medical bills (two pregnancies, husband had to have extensive reconstructive surgery on his jaw, etc.) over the years. Nothing we couldn’t handle on a payment plan, but still.
However, when we were in England visiting family last spring, we had to take #2 in for a sever infection in his finger (he had gotten it caught in a door). They did x-rays, bloodwork, etc., and treated us like human beings. And it didn’t cost a penny–even for my obviously not British kid (I have a southern accent to end all accents). When I asked what paperwork I needed to fill out or where to pay (because we did have travel insurance), they all looked at me like I had suddenly gone insane. It was refreshing and I really wish we had that here.
My husband and I were paying $200 a month for only catastrophic insurance - the lowest you can get - through Blue Cross Blue Shield in 2003. Now I’m covered by grad student insurance, but that doesn’t cover family members so he has no insurance.
$3000 a month (family of 4) with a $5000 deductible and copays. This was before they got into existing medical conditions that would have disqualified us anyway.
You know, you’re right. The most accurate way to describe the health care crisis is, We’re all screwed.
However, I should write more about the experience my wife had when she was insured as part of a small group through her employer to emphasize the aspect of the Frosts’ story that can be exploited for political gain:
Having a health crisis on a small- or self-employed plan is as bad as being uninsured. Had the Frosts chosen to take in laundry in order to pay the $1200 a month that was their best bet before the accident–when no one in their family was a child suffering TBI–they would have been triply screwed.
1. Pay the monthly expense with money taken away from the business (limiting potential expansion) only to find that
2. When you rack up a couple of hundred thousand a month in care, it adds up to the policy’s lifetime payout maximum surprisingly quickly, which means that
3. You need Medicaid which in most states requires that the family spend down assets to be eligible.
Presto, instant poorhouse! That’s what we had before CHIP was invented. It was truly dumb because the public was going to pay either way, CHIP or not; all CHIP did was allow this family to stay together under one roof after this tragedy.
And maybe, depending on how Maryland structures their program, saved the public a boatload of money in negotiated provider discounts. Had Medicaid sucked this one up after the fact, they’d have been paying retail.
Biggest fucking rip-off ever. Require coverage and then provide overpriced plans that don’t cover shit.
I’m finally teaching enough classes where I work as adjunct to qualify for benefits, and you have no idea how happy I am. I actually have dental insurance instead of that worthless “discount” card (which didn’t help since I went to the dental school for cheap work anyway). And, now that I’m covered through my employer rather than my educator, I’m paying approximately $500 less per year for better coverage (I had to pay for my physical out of pocket on the student plan).
I’m less worried about things than I have been, in part because I now have so much better coverage. First time in years, though, and who knows a year from now.
The system is broken.
was on cobra through my mom’s work roughly 4 years ago, it cost $500 a month just for me, but it was my only option. after that ran out i stopped having insurance. becos i cant get it. i had a birth defect in my right kidney and since it was corrected ive had 14 more surgeries (on top of the initial one correcting the defect) for really really large kidney stones that dont pass. im three years overdue for a surgery right now and im in pain literally everyday. im in college (non-traditional adult student) but my college (2 year junior college) doesnt actually offer insurance, they just have pamplets for some private insurance company’s student plan, that has nothing to do with the school, and is an individual plan not a group plan, so it wont cover my pre-existing condition.
im hoping i can get medicaid due to being uninsurable, if not i’m eligable for the charity program at the hospital i use. which i think means i would be one of those people the wingnuts tell to go to the ER for care and then complain about how us going to the ER for care is driving up medical costs.
thank god/dess theres a low income clinic and dental clinic in my county, otherwise i would have lost my bottom two front teeth when i had a terrible abcess.
i spend alot of time daydreaming about canada.
my roommate is on cymbalta for what the dr suspects is fibromyalgia, her samples from his office ran out and she went to get her prescription filled, it was a $50 dollar co-pay with insurance for one month of pills. 30 fucking pills.
but y’kno, its ok, cos as americans we all just shit cash, right?
Sweet zombie Jesus! I had no idea what Americans put up with. Thank dog I live in Soviet Canuckistan.
Without a group plan, my husband and I are apparently uninsurable. Blue Shield turned us down flat. Once he was a realtor, there was a local group plan, but we have to pay every penny of it ourselves. Over 600 a month for just 2 people.
Just to add to the “insurance fucking sucks” pile-on:
When I was in my early-20s, I dropped from full-time work to part-time to complete my BA and was offered COBRA insurance for $360 (in 1999). That was more than one-third of my take-home pay working full-time at $2 more than minimum wage in my state.
Before I got pregnant, we looked into health insurance. At 29, a non-smoker, with no pre-existing conditions, the best insurance I could find was around $200/month with a $5,000 deductible and did not cover maternity. If I wanted a plan that did (and few single-payer plans even offer maternity), it would cost me between $600-$900/month, with a $5,000 deductible AND the benefits could not be used for 12 MONTHS. We had our baby without the benefit of insurance and ended up paying less than if we had had insurance. Of course, it’s been over a year and we are still paying off those bills.
After my son was born we decided to look into getting insurance coverage just for him. The best we have found is $115/month, with a $2000 deductible. We’re probably going to have to jump on it because a $1000 emergency room bill when he had a stomach virus has put us into the red for the last six months and will continue to do so for awhile.
Whenever people use the “but what about the wait times” as their excuse to oppose universal health care, I want to kick their face in.
what about the wait times my sweet fat fanny. it took one of the largest, best-funded hospitals in the nation NINE HOURS to transfer my brother, desperately ill with acute leukemia, to an actual oncology ward.
and the whole damn business still cost nearly $400,000.
“What about the wait times” indeed. When I needed urgent medical care for an abscess during my study abroad in England, I called the local clinic - not even the emergency ward - and was worked in within 45 minutes. I was treated kindly, respectfully, thoughtfully, like a human being; they didn’t charge me a thing; and my antibiotics afterward were a mere six pounds.
I would be lucky to have such a horrible experience here in the US, and that’s working at a major health system and having great insurance.
I posted my story of health insurance in Australia (where we have universal health care) at comment 16, but it got lost in moderation.
It makes an excellent comparison with the horror stories of the Americans posting here.
Based on personal experience, a individual making $35,000 keeps more of their paycheque after taxes in Canada than a person making the same amount of money in the United States, once healthcare costs are factored in. The Canadian Healthcare system also means no HMO network restrictions on choosing your doctor, no deductibles, and no limits. Even without supplemental insurance, prescription drugs are also cheaper (although still the biggest cost on the group plan supplemental insurance)
Those savings only go up for families and those with any sort of pre-existing conditions.
The fact is that the healthcare portion of the US economy is larger than the GDP of the U.K.
If we want to have our costs be like those in Europe, Canada, Mexico and Australia then two things must happen:
1) Our doctors will be paid the salary those in the UK and Australia are paid.
2) The Malpractice Industry needs to be curtailed to the point of shutdown.
Unforturnately these are two of the wealthiest lobby groups in the US.
Try telling a surgeon who earns $800,000 a year that he needs to now earn $80,000 “Because it is what’s best for the country”.
Try someone telling you to earn 1/10th what you earn now.
It isn’t going to happen.
…so, am I getting this right:
There are children in the USA who have no health insurance. This exposes them to a risk of, umh, like, death.
The people responsible for this — or defending this — are the Conservatives.
The Conservatives are the ones who stand for Family Values.
This must be the most original system of “Family Values” I’ve ever encountered.
Good grief.
I knew it was bad in the States but I had no idea how bad.
Here’s an idea. Everyone, that’s right, all 303,097,000 of you, pack your stuff, buy a plane ticket and come over here to to Europe. Don’t care which country. I’ve lived in two of them and the health care has been OK, and I’ve friends from all over Europe and I’ve never heard stories like yours. And if you don’t want to fly then drive, or hitch, or take a bus north to Canada. Call yourselves health-care refugees. Claim asylum. Maybe that would make the point to your leaders.
schrödinger’s cat, uh huh.
Von, an outspoken pro-lifer over at Obsidian Wings, just posted about the Graeme Frost issue. He’s (being basically a decent person, despite being a pro-lifer) appalled by the conservative attacks on the Frost family. But, he says he has “mixed feelings” about S-CHIP because it is a “creeping entitlement”.
And I looked at those “mixed feelings” of Von - let this kind of thing go on, and OMG NOES everyone might think they deserved health care! Even… ooh, this would be TERRIBLE… pregnant women, who are not covered by S-CHIP. This is coming from a guy who once posted pics of cute lil fetuses in the womb to explain why he’d always be a pro-lifer? Not that he actually wants those cute lil fetuses to have health care if the woman who’s pregnant is too poor to pay for health insurance, that would be a “creeping entitlement”.
The ugliest side of this attitude is the Malkins of this world who viciously attack: but the cutsy-pie attitude of the Vons of this world, who feel terribly tender about those cute, fubsy fetuses and therefore oppose women having the legal right to terminate… but who have, at best, “mixed feelings” about getting pregnant women - and therefore cute lil fetuses - affordable healthcare - is just as damaging because less openly repugnant.
Overpriced? I have grad student insurance (South Carolina). It’s not great, but it’s better than anything I can find for the same price in the private market.
Schrödinger’s cat: This must be the most original system of “Family Values” I’ve ever encountered.
Reminds me on a data bit I picked up somewhere on the internet about Victorian England, when there was a law that no minor’s life could be insured for more than the costs of the funeral. Good old family values at work…
I pay about 300 Euro a month (and my employer matches that) and rarely have anything more serious than a cold. Paying so much for so little would annoy me if I felt that the health insurance executives were pocketing the money, but as most of it goes to people who are less lucky than I am, I feel I get my money’s worth.
Plus, no paperwork. I spent three months in the US with a toothache because I didn’t feel up to coping with the insurance paperwork… and I had (assuming I managed the paperwork) full coverage, no deductible. Back home (Germany), it was off to the dentist ASAP, pay 10 Euro, get it fixed right then, no paperwork attached.
OK, so now I have to wait three weeks for some elective dental surgery. Which is fine with me, since I need to gather my courage, have blood tests done, arrange for a day off work, and get the money, as that type of thing is not covered - probably under the assumption that while no one should have to suffer a toothache, actually having teeth is a luxury.
What really worries me is that some of the politicians who always wanted to be CEOs when they grew up are fanboying the US model of health insurance…
There’s a simple choice.
Single-payer or the American economy/society dies. Simple as that. The current mid-way plans are may hold off the reckoning, but that’s only a temporary stay of execution I think.
I just recoil at the idea that children’s parents should be left sole-ly responsible for them. What about the thousands of kids growing up (as I did) in abusive homes? Should we double-penalise kids for having parents who for whatever reason choose to neglect them? In the UK we seem to blame the schools for anything that goes wrong with children’s lives. The parents are assumed to have their kids best interests at heart.
Dude, my grad school’s health insurance would be to expensive for me, unless I took out (more) student loans to cover it. And that was only going to cost me about $2500 a year, I think. But I only am going to make $16-17 K this year, so that’s a lot. Good thing I live in Massachusetts…. oh wait, they’re making it incredibly hard for me to get insurance too, though when I do finally get through all the hops, it’ll be affordable. (My problem is that I work as an independent contractor, so I don’t have pay stubs to show them as proof of income. Nor can I send them last years tax stuff, cause I started doing this just in January, and last years taxes have so much nothing to do with my income this year. And I can’t get anyone on their side to fucking understand this!)
Lee: You are ignoring the not so invisible hand of the for profit health insurance companies, who themselves are not part of giving health care- just profiting off it. An interesting oversight considering Auguste just wrote the entire post about it.
When I got laid off I insisted that we do COBRA to the tune of $1,000 a month for a family of 3. No way would I allow a gap in coverage. My unemployment benefits for a month were $1,340.
snark
Good thing I could pay the whole mortgage, electric, phone and food bills on a measly $340 a month.
/snark
I got to hear Mohammed Yunus of the Grameen Bank speak at a health care conference a while ago - the microloan guy who won the Nobel Peace Prize. More than half of the defaults on his microloans were health care related, so he started a health insurance program.
Most middle class American families are one catastrophic medical event away from bankruptcy.
Lee, OECD stats do not suggest the problem lies with staff wages so much as overstaffing and price gouging. You can rest assured Australian specialists aren’t exactly underpaid… and the majority of health care is not about these people in any case. The issues of malpractice and specialist costs are right wing furphies
Doctors in the UK do not earn $80,000. The average is closer to $200,000 (although differences in the cost of living make the comparison almost useless anyway).
Completely healthy, no pre-existing conditions, nonsmoker, only go to the doctor once a year for my Pap smear. $400 dollars a month with a $2000 deductible and I pay 80% of $2500 after that. After that, well, I was just screwed. So you know what? I went without health insurance for three, four years. Until I became destitute upon returning to school (not college, so no health coverage offered). Now, I’m on Medicaid, and I feel like a European. No copays! No problem seeing a doctor! Everything is covered, including prescriptions (I only pay up to $2 out of pocket)!
I really don’t care if a family is making hundreds of thousands of dollars. If their kid can’t get coverage on their work health plan, that kid should be under SCHIP regardless. The GOP is full of shit on this one.
And you know what? With all these horror stories, is the idea of some kind of government-run system really that much worse? I think not, since I’m having such a blast on Medicaid.
Every time my American friends blog about their health concerns, I thank my lucky stars I was born under the Ole Maple Leaf. And then I read posts like this, and I become completely bewildered: how can this system exist, in the wealthiest country in the world?
Jill at Feministe linked to a really great article in the Washington Post a few days ago: Five Myths About Old Sick Europe. The point really gets driven home on page 2:
Mostly, I think the level of discourse on this sort of thing really needs to rise above “I GOTZ MINE SUCKAS.”
One interesting side-effect of the health-care mess is the way it contributes to America’s poor social mobility. I know plenty of people who would like to quit working for someone else and go into business for themselves, but find that their inability to pay (or even get) health insurance prevents that.
One interesting side-effect of the health-care mess is the way it contributes to America’s poor social mobility. I know plenty of people who would like to quit working for someone else and go into business for themselves, but find that their inability to pay (or even get) health insurance prevents that.
For the last 1.5 years, my husband and I have not had health insurance. At one place of employment he had the option for insurance. Their offer? $250/month, after taxes, for he and a spouse, with a $3000 deductible and no prenatal/birth coverage (good thing we wern’t planning for kids yet). I have been working as a temporary/contract employee for 18 months (that’s another issue), and the only insurance I could get for us is similar.
Call me crazy, but if I’m going to have to pay the full cost of a doctor’s visit up to $3000, then I don’t see the point in giving the insurance company another 3k/yr “just in case”. I’m scared shitless that we will have a major illness or accident, but we are trying to make ends meet and put a little money in the bank for our future.
Just to illustrate how much this sucks (not that I need to tell all of you), but my husband woke one night having chest pains, and we seriously sat and talked about whether he needed an ambulance or could wait until the morning. He waited, and we spent a few anxious hours in which a cat scan was ordered and the words “heart surgery” were said. He was/is okay, just some minor inflamation, but the total expense was around $2000. It’s a lot, but still wouldn’t have been covered by the insurance we could afford because it didn’t reach the deductible amount. How messed up is that?
Hell, my husband and I are young, healthy adults and we had a hard time finding private insurance we can afford.
I was in a terrible accident a few years ago, and my total bills came to nearly $30K. The insurance company (through my husband’s work) did some back-and-forthing, but in the end, covered almost everything, save a few thousand. I basically cried when I found out they’d cover it.
But in a way I was thankful it was *me* - because I had the best insurance of any of the people there that day. It would have completely bankrupted any of them.
I understand wanting affordable health insurance. I don’t understand thinking it’s this end-all, be-all creation bestowed upon American-kind. For the insured, how many claims of yours have been denied or partially paid? I work for an insurance company and I get health insurance benefits. I get blood work done to check for crazy things like cholesterol and diabetes…minor stuff. (sarcasm) Then, I get a bill for $87 as they only paid part of my minor claim that would seem to me to be viewed as preventative.
Screw medical insurance.
Give us something akin to the U.K.’s National Health or STFU.
Three more data points:
I am fortunate enough a very generous employer who pays 2/3 of the health insurance premiums and offers four different plans, from one of the top-three “patient oriented” companies. My part is about $300/month for myself, my husband, and my spouse. I happen to know my employer pays close to twice that for their part. In addition, we sink another $100 a month into a FSA, which doesn’t quite cover our copays for perscriptions.
This is the best case scenario: We have a low deductible, choice of doctor, access to specialists and emergency rooms without pre-approval, 80% coverage for out-of-network providers, good perscription coverage, and low co-pays.
My friend pays $850/month into her company’s plan for herself, her husband, and her son: she has a medium-high deductible, no specialist coverage, poor perscription coverage, and no out of network coverage. They spend a minimum of $300/month out of pocket, but they can’t “shop around” for a different plan because she’s diabetic.
Another couple I know are successful, self-employed real estate agents. The best quote they had for insurance for just the two of them was $1200/month for no perscription coverage and a high deductible–and that was 5 years ago, so I cringe to think what they would be paying now.
So there’s the spread, best to worst, in one of the lowest cost-of-states in the US. It’s clear that cost =/= coverage in any way, shape or form. Interesting bit of info: of the three of us, I am the only one who pays less in taxes than in health insurance premiums.
Lee said: “Try telling a surgeon who earns $800,000 a year that he needs to now earn $80,000 “Because it is what’s best for the country”.”
In 2004, dentists averaged $185,000 a year in earnings, and primary care physicians were in the range of $140,000 to $160,000 a year.
The doctors aren’t making the money. It’s the farking hospitals, insurance and drug companies.
I was without insurance for about 10 years after leaving the Navy. Then I went to work for a company that didn’t subsidize family, so I could get insurance — for $700-800 / month; “subsidized” state insurance was even more. We wound up using “temporary” 6 month policies for about $200 / month, with a $2000+ deductible and no preexisting conditions or prior claims (to any insurance company, ever.) How much should I just pay myself rather than make that one claim and lose all coverage forever…?
My new company is covering 100% (for 2007 at least): if they cut back we’ll go to the cheapest plan, for emergencies and so we can possibly get private insurance in future. Fortunately we’re all healthy: I’ve just had my first physical and dental exams since 1991.
I’m ready now to agree to universal health care, with 2 conditions to prevent economic collapse:
- large deductibles: I know people with employer insurance whose kids are at the doctor every other week: forcing people to pay the first $1000 themselves will make the program viable. (Not to say we can’t all get a free checkup every year or two, prenatal care, etc, which do make economic sense.)
- the government must contract with existing insurance companies, like employers. Running the program itself or trying to self insure is the most likely cause I see for the whole program failing.
Practical advice for those who live in California and are uninsurable due to preexisting condition.
Look for high risk insurance pool provided by the state:
www.mrmib.ca.gov/
I’ve never used them, but on surface of it they might be able to help (and it seems that noone is aware of their existence)
Other states might have similar programs.
My wife and I are in our mid-(ok, upper) 30’s with 4 kids. I’m self-employed (IT contract labor) and just switched to a HDHP this summer. I’m paying under $400/month for health and dental for my entire family. By the way…that’s the TOTAL amount since I’m the employer as well as the employee. I have a Health Savings Account which I can contribute over $5000 each year (pre-tax). The HSA earns a little under 4% interest and rolls over every year.
Sure…I pay for most things out of pocket (with a lower negotiated insurance rate), but I pay for them with pre-tax dollars and am covered 100% once I meet my (high) deductible.
So, basically, I pay for my standard checkups and all but if I get diagnosed with colon cancer (my dad passed away from this), then my family won’t be bankrupted for my chemo.
I highly recommend that everyone looks into HSA’s. If you are employed, get your HR department to look into them. It can REALLY save you a lot of money over the year and still keep you covered in catastrophic cases.
I would just like to say that I am a college graduate, planning to get married soon and start a family. Oh wait, I can’t. Why? Because I have epilepsy, and that makes me totally uninsurable. Oh sure, I can pay well over $1000/month for COBRA, and drive to another state to see a quack neurologist. But for right now, I have to stay on my parent’s insurance. Or I can just hope for the best and have unmedicated and unmanaged epilepsy, which kind of puts a damper on the whole independence/quality of life thing. When I reach the age limit for group insurance, what will I do? And who cares? =(
Right-winger here.
I have paid my 800/month private healthcare premiums. (15 yrs ago.) I went into the military for that precise reason. I have also lived in Europe and seen how the rest of the world does it. So I give myself permission to post here.
I say, “It’s the government’s fault.” PRECISELY because they pay for medical care. The more ways and situations the government pays for, the worse things will get. Allow me to illustrate:
How much does a mammogram cost? I read recently that someone called around and checked it out: as little as $250, as high as $850. Same procedure. Same result. Pretty different prices. Why? Because most people don’t KNOW or CARE how much it costs. They just pay their copay or whatever. The charge for a mammogram or whatever is based, in a very roundabout way, on what the gov. (read Medicare/Medicaid) will pay. Would you buy tires that way? Or appliances? Or a house? “The cost means absolutely nothing to me. I’ll just take the first/most convenient one I come across.” Of course not! But what would tires/appliances/homes cost if the gov. paid for them? Remember the $5000 military hammers and toilet seats? Do you want tires to cost $5000 per set and be hard to find? Put the gov. in charge of procuring/paying for them.
In Europe, basic medical care is cheap. After a really long wait. Advanced medical care costs….nothing. It cannot be purchased at any price. If you have the money, you go to the US for it. If not, you die. And no one cares and no one reports it…..
If that’s what we want here in the states, all we have to do is put the gov. in charge of all our medical care, and wait for the inevitable result. There’s very little downward pressure on med costs now. Expand gov. medicine, and our costs will go from bad to worse. That’s why I oppose SCHIP expansion.
I am not heartless. I love the poor. I started as lower middle class, and I still easily fit under the 83K/yr “working poor” definition. But I also prefer logic to emotion in solving problems.
I’ve lived in both Canada and the US, and for the short time I even was insured in the US, they charged me four times what I would have paid back home. Luckily, my employer paid for half of that, and I was able to get a pap smear done that otherwise I couldn’t have afforded. I still had to pay $30/visit to see the doctor, and my dad (who was on the same plan) has stories to tell about trying to get meds for his blood pressure. Right now I’m uninsured and absolutely thrilled that there’s a free county clinic here–although it only has nurses and not doctors, which means if there’s anything complicated I’m probably out of luck. At least my youngest siblings qualify for the state version of Medicare, so if they break a bone my parents don’t go broke.
As soon as I earn the money for a bus fare, I want to go home to Canada.
I went without for a few years, but my parents bought me some a few months ago. $2500 deductible, high copays after that, no prescriptions, no vision, no dental, for a healthy 23 yr old with absolutely no pre-existing conditions is $180 a month. There’s no way I could pay for that while I’m in school, and still eat and have a place to live and pay car insurance! I couldn’t pay the deductible either, so I’m lucky that I have parents who would be able to cover that for me.
Otherwise, I’d just have to hope I never got sick.
Oh, I should add that as a graduate assistant my uni “gave” us $1000 toward our student health insurance. But it came with two kickers: 1) we had to pay all the medical costs up front and then submit our claims to the insurance company for reimbursement (and from what I understand, IF they paid the claim it was months later); 2) the uni taxed the $1000 as income– whether we used it or not (I never used it).
I feel lucky that I was able to find an individual plan for my son and I, but my wife is uninsured after leaving school.
My son has asthma and had bad eczema, both of which are now under control thanks to medication, as well as anaphylactic food allergies. When I applied for the plan I have now, I was told flat out that they were offering only a rate for the two of us. If I had applied for my son only, they would have turned him down. So my good health is balancing his health problems enough that they can make money off of us.
We have a $1000 deductible each, as well as a $500 Rx deductible each before the plan covers anything. But I feel that most of the benefit we receive is in the discounts that the plan has arrainged with the providers. So that even before the plan actually pays out any money, we are still paying less for a doctors visit than we would pay retail.
Not to mention, the uninsured SUBSIDIZE the insured. Case in point:
My GF just had her gall bladder removed. When we received the statement from the insurance company, I noticed the surgery cost $7500.00. The insurance company was asked to pay $3500.00, the hospital drops the rest of the charges.
Now if we DIDN’T have insurance, would we get to pay $3500? No way in hell.
Funny ACG!
When I call my insurance mandated primary physician to get a check up because there’s something wrong, the first available is a month out.
I bought COBRA health insurance 2 years ago with no questions asked. I paid about $600 for 6 months of coverage.
I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I am unaffected by this as I have a job with health insurance. Now if I could just get my health insurance company to pay my emergency visit costs for a kidney stone when they say I should have gone to an urgent care center. They explicitly state that for “severe abdominal pain” you should go to the ER. I don’t know how much more severe abdominal pain needs to be than a kidney stone. Now they have to pay someone to review my case… such bureaucracy.
Kaiser Permanente, $159/month, includes prescriptions.
Any pre-existing conditions disqualify.
DDay, we’re lucky we have family who can help us out (the trade-off for me being that my father works for Fox News, albeit as the loyal opposition).
I have priced and am currently on private health insurance from Blue Shield. For $42 a month they cover 2 doctors visits a year, $10 co-pay on medicine, with a $2400 yearly deductible. It was a simple online application process and for less than a cell phone payment I’m covered for anything I wouldn’t be able to pay with my credit card. Not that difficult or expensive. It isn’t the best plan, of course, but with this ease and price there is NO reason why a family making >$50000 (my family’s been lower) wouldn’t be able to put aside about $200 a month to (minimally) insure their whole family. While national health care very likely would be a better system, lets cut with the rhetoric and speak only facts. Otherwise we are no better than the Republicans.
“Sweet zombie Jesus! I had no idea what Americans put up with.”
Each story is worse than the last:
After being union activists and organizers for many years, accustomed to really good insurance, my husband and I went out on our own in 1997. We joined the Chamber of Commerce to qualify for their cheap small business insurance, about $400/mo. for two healthy adults. Within three years, it had skyrocketed, eventually reaching $14,000/year.
The Chamber tried to shed all the small policy holders, telling us belatedly that we were NOT part of a samll business group plan, but rather that each business was its own group and the Chamber was no longer open to two-person businesses. The only way we were able to hang on to the health insurance was because we also had about $15/mo. worth of LIFE insurance through the same company, and the law prevented them from ditching anyone who held a life insurance policy. After six years of that, my husband went back into a staff job specifically for the insurance.
When that job disappeared, we went on COBRA, where we’re now paying $1,200/mo. for two people because the employer structured the plan to charge the same for a couple without kids as for a couple with twelve kids. And now that we’re locked into that premium, the (former) employer, having dumped almost all employees over 40, has decided to switch to a “catastophic” coverage plan with a $5K deductible —
for the same premium. And even COBRA doesn’t go on forever — we have only a few months left to find the near-extinct job that will hire someone our age AND provide insurance.
So we are now job hunting, at age 59, for the sake of employer-paid insurance, and do not expect to EVER be able to stop working.
To say we are healthy would be an understatement: we hiked the Grand Canyon for the ninth time recently. But that requires maintenance meds for asthma and other conditions, and the cost of prescriptions is staggering — I just costed out our regular meds and discovered that ONE of my husband’s eight regular prescriptions will jump from $30/mo. with co-pay to $231/mo without…altogether, our meds now cost, with co-pay, $150/mo…when the no co-pay, catastrophic policy kicks in, the total will be more than our rent.
Any thought of going without vanished as I was wheeled into an emergency room screaming from an blocked gallbladder earlier this year — that episode cost over $60K, and even the top level insurance didn’t begin to cover it.
I have said for years that there is a special ring in hell for benefits managers — looks like they’ll have lots of company from pols and pundits. Meanwhile, it’s going to take nothing less than a revolution to fix this system. I wish I thought we were going to live long enough to see it.
I read recently that someone called around and checked it out: as little as $250, as high as $850. Same procedure. Same result. Pretty different prices. Why? Because most people don’t KNOW or CARE how much it costs. They just pay their copay or whatever.
I’m 38 years old and at high risk for breast cancer because my mother got it at 30 and died of it around the same age I am now.
The last mammogram I had, they called me back the next day because they saw a weird shadow on it and they wanted to do some further investigation and could I come back the very next day to be scanned again?
Fortunately, the second mammogram from a different angle showed that it was a piece of muscle that grows a little oddly, not a tumor.
But, hey, I guess I should have told the hospital, “Oh, I’m sure a potential breast tumor in a woman under 40 can’t be that aggressive. Let me shop around for a better price before I find out whether or not I have a fatal cancer.” Because by immediately going in to find out, I was a Bad Consumer. And better to be a dead cancer patient than a Bad Consumer, right?
namesbc - What is your maximum lifetime benefit? How long would it last if you had a head injury and needed the care of neurologists and neurosurgeons?
It is not only the cost of medical care that is a major problem. The high cost of medication is also a problem. Many medications do not have a generic available and are astronomically priced, thanks to government protection of Pharmaceutical company profits. One medication that my friend has to take costs $600 per month self-pay, as she has no insurance. Her family has been rejected by insurance companies multiple times, so her only option is to get it from overseas. Most of us are used to seeing the price of our pharmacy copays rather than what the pharmacies charge people without insurance. Many medications cost upward of $100 for a one month supply self-pay.
Last month, my husband’s company started shopping around for a different group insurance plan, as the rates for the current plan had increased approx 30% in one year. All plans offered except for the high deductible ppo had shot up between 25-40%. Now that they have decided to keep what they have for until the new year, the company has requested the return of the sheets detailing the insurance plan options and their respective costs as those plans and prices will not be valid in 3 months.
To our government, as well as the insurance companies, Americans are simply disposable sources of income. Individuals are too insignificant to matter.
Bob: In Europe, basic medical care is cheap. After a really long wait. Advanced medical care costs….nothing. It cannot be purchased at any price. If you have the money, you go to the US for it. If not, you die. And no one cares and no one reports it
Can you give an example for what you’d consider advanced medical care? (And, if possible, your experiences regarding them?) I have a vaguely professional interest in the matter.
I live in Canada after recently returning from the US after 8 years there, and this is tripe:
I work with doctors who make in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, not 80K. One of them makes about 750K.
The Canadian system is less costly per capita than the U.S. system. This is despite our much smaller, more widely dispersed population, and thus the lost ‘economies of scale.’ because we’ve largely taken the corporate profit motive out of the equation. Clearly the docs still want to make money, and so does everyone else in the system, but the big corporations cannot.
I pay $105 per month for my family of four, no concerns about pre-existing conditions or pregnancy (well, I’m concerned about it). Dental is not covered, some drugs are.
The Canadian system is not perfect; a big part of the problem is the U.S., frankly. Every year we lose many doctors who move to the U.S. to make more money. Recently, however, the drain has reversed.
The corporate profit motive has no place in health care, and anyone who can’t understand that just doesn’t understand how corporations work - and hasn’t been paying attention - or is blinded by ideology.
And, when you consider recent findings that many diseases are the result of industrial pollution, you realise that it is well past time for corporations to be regulated differently…..
I have priced and am currently on private health insurance from Blue Shield. For $42 a month they cover 2 doctors visits a year, $10 co-pay on medicine, with a $2400 yearly deductible. It was a simple online application process and for less than a cell phone payment I’m covered for anything I wouldn’t be able to pay with my credit card.
And your pre-existing conditions are … Because those of us with things like, say, rosacea or exercise-induced asthma have to pay higher rates for our pre-existing conditions. The only way to avoid it is to go directly from employer-paid plan to employer-paid plan (thank you, HIPPA … sort of.)
Oh, and I’m glad you have a credit card with a limit of at least $2,400 open at all times. You do realize that the “deductible” means that you have to pay $2,400 out of your pocket if you do get seriously ill, yes? Use up your two $10 doctor visits and now you have to pay $100 a visit until you’ve spent $2,400.
Try not to get too sick, by the way. Blue Cross/Blue Shield here in California just got fined by the Department of Insurance for making up “pre-existing conditions” that would allow them to drop the person and not pay a dime if the person got seriously ill.
Ok i’m 23 so I get a price cut. BUT I pay $50 a month. The reason your premiums are so high is that you are trying to get the Ultra Premium Super coverage. OK so you’re like whats the point. Basically I have $60000000 dollars of coverage with at $4000 dedutible. Health insurence is for when something is wrong with you, not made for you to go hang out at the hospital. To the people who get turened down… ok is sucks for you… but what happened to the coverage you had?? Do you really expect to find out that you have some thing that cost hundreds of thousands to treat and then just walk up to an insurance company and be like “here is $300 a month now pay out a million bucks”. It’s like getting auto insurance after you got in a collision and asking them to cover you. More exactly it’s like while you are skidding into a colision and useing your cell phone to get a quote…
Fuck off. No, seriously. Fuck right the hell off. People are sharing their personal experiences, which are factual, and you think it’s just polemic. If you think all that icky personal stuff– y’know the actual consequences of enacted policies– shouldn’t be part of the discussion you already are no better than the Republicans.
Trevor, your clue train left the station long ago.
You pay low rates because you are young and still healthy. My husband would not have paid that amount when he was 23, and that was 22 years ago and 8 years before he was denied life insurance and later had open heart surgery for a congenital defect.
Your luck and youth IS NOT THE SAME as other people’s more complicated situations and need to insure kids. Got it?
If not, you will!
Trevor:
You’re a lying SoS. And you seem to have reading comprehension problems. Did you not notice how many people on this post have written about the difficulty in finding basic, just basic coverage?
To the self-proclaimed “right-winger”:
I just broke my leg. I’m not going to “shop around” until I find the right price, I’m going to go to the first damn hospital.
My kid just stopped breathing, my dad just had a heart-attack….you can see where this is going. You don’t shop around when you have stuff that must be taken care of right now.
I am a licensed insurance agent in the state of Georgia. We deal with individual insurance and small group insurance. You are being ripped off. Agents get at least 6% on the commissions alone usually. There are also kick backs involved depending on how much business you do with a certain carrier. Your agent might be going for Platinum status with United Healthcare to receive those special cruises and week long vacations they give away. He will push you towards United Healthcare instead of a company that could be better in your area or save you some money. Insurance carriers almost never write a policy for a sick person, only the healthy people. How screwed up is it that a person that doesn’t need insurance can get it, but those that do need it can’t. This Industry is very crooked and it is largely a ‘men’s club’ in certain area. Buddy’s do business only with other buddy’s and they want to take as much money as they can. I have to break the bad news to another small business every day that their medical premium has went 15%-20%. Most of the time they never saw a doctor the entire year, yet the premium still goes up 15%. A lot of people can’t afford it and eventually after cutting the benefits so much, they have to drop the plan. Think about all those family’s that are losing insurance because the company can’t keep paying 20% extra every year. Children are dying every day because they cannot get the care they need, please show some compassion to another human being. The poor kid can’t help if his single mom can’t/won’t find a job, he shouldn’t be the one getting punished. If they will not go to socialized care then put regulations in place so everyone can be covered at an affordable rate. It is the right thing to do.
Any Europeans want to comment on this opinion?
Trying to get private health insurance is BULL SHIT. I am a 26 year old single, white female, non smoking and I got denied from 3 separate companies. I do take prescription anxiety medication however….and thanks to not being able to afford insurance, I got even more anxiety. How the hell does that work? The system is jacked. Thankfully I found a job with full benefits.
I too have the privelage
of living in a country with “socialist” medicine. I am a single mom, living on about $1100/mo with two kids. I am covered, as a low income person, through the “Adult Health Benefits” and my children are covered through the “Child Health Benefits” plan. I pay nothing for this and though the coverage is paid on a % basis, I still only pay peanuts for what isn’t fully covered. eg. Eye glasses, the entire lens is paid for and $60 toward frames is paid for.
Here is the clincher, when my boyfriend changed jobs, he went to a job with no medical benefits, having 2 separate health conditions, including High Blood Pressure, didn’t seem like it would be an issue…we live in Canada right?
Nuh uh. We were unable to find any non group insurance providers to cover his medical expenses (keep in mind that doctor and hospital visits are covered by the provincial health care plans, premiums which are about $88/mo)…because he has pre existing conditions.
WHAT?
When did we turn into the USA?
I have the letters from three separate companies stating that they will not provide coverage for pre exisiting conditions.
More and more politicians here are trying to ditch the public health care model; problem is, we have The Canada Health Act, which guarentees every canadian access to “socialized healthcare”. So it sneeks in the back way, providing insurance that will allow patients to “jump the que”, failing to provide prescription and other services coverage for pre exisiting conditions, and ending coverage for a variety of services.
It’s getting scary out there.
——————————————————————————–
Any Europeans want to comment on this opinion?
This might help.
Trevor: Health insurence is for when something is wrong with you, not made for you to go hang out at the hospital.
Don’t know about you, but hanging out at a hospital is so not fun that it’s hard to tolerate when you’re too sick to move. The miniscule number of desperate and masochistic who’d actually stay there for fun can hardly make much of a cost difference.
And health insurance is so that everyone who is sick can get well as quickly and efficiently as possible, That means you go to the doctor on day one (or two). You do not spend days or weeks or months in pain and hope you get well on your own, while your condition becomes chronic, your bones heal wrong and leave you crippled, your undiagnosed or undertreated diabetis blinds you or that cough turns out to be TB and now half the neighborhood has it.
With deductibles, every person’s rational decision is to wait and hope they get better on their own. After all, often enough they will, more or less. It’s a bet, and the less one can afford to pay, the higher the risks one needs to take in health, until there is no choice at all. The sum of bets lost is a drain on society’s resources. The rational response is to make the bet not worth winning, by making the cost of going to the doctor negligible for the individual.
I had private insurance for years, with a negative deductible (you get money back when you do not go to the doctor), and I have played those games too much already.
Now, of course putting the well-being of society above your own is a classical conservative value, so it’s little wonder that people are arguing for it. But it makes no sense in this case, because if it’s your duty to society to stay healthy and productive, you have to take your meds and keep food on the table and a roof over your head.
Auguste: Any Europeans want to comment on this opinion?
I’m still waiting for Bob to tell what he considers “advanced medical care”.
Lee said:
If we want to have our costs be like those in Europe, Canada, Mexico and Australia then two things must happen:
1) Our doctors will be paid the salary those in the UK and Australia are paid.
2) The Malpractice Industry needs to be curtailed to the point of shutdown.
Bullshit, Lee. The biggest source of the cost disparity between the US and the other western nations is the gigantic middleman between the doctors and the patients. The insurance industry itself generates more than 50% of our costs. Bureaucracy is some of that, but a lot of it is deliberate, bad-faith litigation. Insurance companies fight legitimate claims because it’s cheaper, in gross, than paying out. And we wouldn’t have so many malpractice claims in the first place if the states (and the AMA) would simply regulate those doctors who are the source of most of the claims in the first place. A doctor can just relocated after fucking up and then fuck up again. Some states don’t even warn others about these guys.
Way to distract from the main issue.
Private insurers are parasites. They make money by not providing a service. They will have to be dissolved. Private insurer lobbyists are responsible for general support of the Repubs as well, so tossing them out will be good for other reasons.
How much does a mammogram cost? I read recently that someone called around and checked it out: as little as $250, as high as $850. Same procedure. Same result. Pretty different prices. Why? Because most people don’t KNOW or CARE how much it costs.
Bullshit, Bob. You jumped straight from an observation — mammograms costs vary — to an assumption based on jack and shit where jack was out sick. Geography, applicability of private insurers to a given hospital/doctor’s office, and sundry issues can affect those prices — just like they can affect prices for every other product in existance. So sell us another.
In Europe, basic medical care is cheap. After a really long wait.
Bullshit, Bob. Their wait times, per country, are equal to or less than ours.
[Advanced medical care] cannot be purchased at any price. If you have the money, you go to the US for it.
Bullshit, Bob. We, here, can’t afford “advanced medical care.” And there’s nothing to suggest that Europeans come exclusively here for treatments unavailable locally. Several other countries — many European countries — are surpassing us. And, frankly, most medical conditions don’t require anything exotic. Even if the U.S. had better access to exotic treatments than other countries, that would mean nothing for this discussion. Saddam’s paace had great bathrooms, but that doesn’t mean the sanitary conditions in Bagdad are good.
I also prefer logic to emotion in solving problems.
No logic was evident. Perhaps you confused that with ideological conviction.
Auguste:
A heart transplantation is probably up there in the “advanced” region I would assume? A friend of mine had a transplantation 3 weeks ago and she paid nothing. If the medication I get doesn’t work as well as it should, I will get a heart transplantation. It will cost me nothing.
I spent 4 weeks in the hospital recently. I took a blood test once or twice every day. I took a biopsy, angiography, some x rays, 2 ultrasound of my heart, 3 or 4 of those magnetic monsters scanning my entire breast region (I just can’t remember the name. The clock is currently 2AM), physiotherapist appointments etc. etc. etc. When they was sure they properly had diagnosed me and operated in an ICD to keep my hearth rythm, a friend of mine visited me and we packed up my stuff and walked out of the hospital. I paid nothing.
I take medication every day and the max amount I have to pay for medication every year is 277$ (NOK 1660, I assumed a dollar is NOK 6).
As far as I know, the only waiting period for a heart transplantation is that a heart matching your profile has to be available. Norway is an inaccessible country with a low population density, so money would probably do nothing to improve the waiting time for a new heart.
I was rushed to a hospital because I couldn’t feel the right side of my face, cold sweating, unable to stand on my own legs and was puking (for 16 hours). I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have shopped around in that condition. I was more concerned with, uh, surviving.
As an Australian/English man with parents and grandparents currently living in England, I can assure you all that Bob is talking shit. Everything essential is covered immediately.
In Australia and England there are elective surgery lists for things like knee reconstruction. You can choose to wait the 0-12 months required, or you can get private health insurance. Because private insurance doesn’t have to cover chronic conditions, emergencies or childbirth, it is dirt cheap.
In Australia my contribution for the govt. insurance was $80 a month, and I got private for $115 a month (not by choice - our conservative govt is forcing people above a certain income to take private). This private insurance enabled me to jump any queues for non-essential surgery.
So for $200 a month I got EVERYTHING. For $80 a month I got everything essential, and had to wait for some things.
And, Australians (who are as fat, smoke and drink as much as Americans) live longer. So I would presume that means we are getting better quality “advanced care”, eh?
Auguste:
A heart transplantation is probably up there in the “advanced” region I would assume? A friend of mine had a transplantation 3 weeks ago and she paid nothing. If the medication I get doesn’t work as well as it should, I will get a heart transplantation. It will cost me nothing.
I spent 4 weeks in the hospital recently. I took a blood test once or twice every day. I took a biopsy, angiography, some x rays, 2 ultrasound of my heart, 3 or 4 of those magnetic monsters scanning my entire breast region (I just can’t remember the name. The clock is currently 2AM), physiotherapist appointments etc. etc. etc. When they was sure they properly had diagnosed me and operated in an ICD to keep my hearth rythm, a friend of mine visited me and we packed up my stuff and walked out of the hospital. I paid nothing.
I take medication every day and the max amount I have to pay for medication every year is 277$ (NOK 1660, I assumed a dollar is NOK 6).
As far as I know, the only waiting period for a heart transplantation is that a heart matching your profile has to be available. Norway is an inaccessible country with a low population density, so money would probably do nothing to improve the waiting time for a new heart.
I was rushed to a hospital because I couldn’t feel the right side of my face, cold sweating, unable to stand on my own legs and was puking (for 16 hours). I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have shopped around in that condition. I was more concerned with, uh, surviving.
Not that Bob needs my help in discrediting himself, but I’ll just point out because it’s interesting: his mammogram example illustrates exactly the reverse of what he intended.
That is: when you see a huge variation in prices for some medical service - assuming the service really is equivalent - the high-end prices are what you get if you don’t have coverage through a large group. Large payers are able to negotiate for decent prices, because no hospital or clinic wants to price itself out of the market for Blue Cross patients. It has nothing to do with whether the patients “don’t know or care how much it costs”; the insurers certainly care, and since they are representing thousands of patients, they have the muscle to do something about it. This is just as true for Medicare as it is for Blue Cross. So, in many cases, the service providers look for extra money where they can get it: from insurers that are too small to have bargaining power, and from the uninsured. Walk into a hospital without insurance, and the bill you’ll get is likely to be many, many times the amount the insurer would be billed if you had one; in neither case is it just a matter of “what it costs”.
Of course it’s easy to point to Pentagon spending as a reason to be skeptical of all government efforts, but in this area it requires a special indifference to demonstrable facts. For instance: Bob’s theory would imply that Medicare - since it is a large government bureaucracy, and since its beneficiaries don’t know the details of service costs - must be paying extremely generous rates to doctors and hospitals. Now, you can either look up those rates, since they’re a matter of public record, or you can just go ask any ten doctors whether they think Medicare reimbursements are high compared to private insurers. You may have to wait until they finish laughing.
I have to call bullshit on the $50 and less quotes. I had to search out private insurance for me and my kids 5 years ago. Very healthy, good weights, no pre-existing conditions. No medications. Not around anyone who smoked. Never had any kind of serious illness. Never been on any kind of “long term medication”. We were an insurers dream. They were 2 and 4, I was 29.
My best quote was from BC/BS (of Oklahoma). Their coverage, which was pretty much what was quoted above - $3000 deductible per person or $7,000 per family (yeah, we got a $2,000 deduction for the third person) but only if at least one person had ACTUALLY met their deductible (so it couldn’t be $2500 for each person), except we did “only” have a $50 copay for office visits (copays, however, did not count toward our deductible), no prescription coverage, no maternity coverage, with a lifetime benefit of $1mil per person. The cost? $64 for each child and $256 for me (I’ll never know why I was 4 times the cost of the kids but that was the best quote I could get so I took it). $384/month. Added together with what we had to pay for Mr. Gaia through his employer and it was a little more than 1/4 our take home pay.
And since we were shelling out that much, we couldn’t afford to pay $50 to go to the doctor, much less pay for prescriptions. I got the worst sinus infection that I couldn’t afford to treat. The right side of my face swelled up noticeably (strangers were asking me what was wrong with me and I actually have a permanent deformation from it). I finally managed to scrape together the copay to see the doc. I got my script and started calling around for price quotes for my meds. Over $150. I just started crying. We couldn’t afford it.
That was the only time I was suicidal, I honestly felt it would be better for my family if I just died - they’d have my life insurance and my social security benefits.
That sinus infection required 3 rounds of antibiotics to finally kill and the last antibiotic was something really old and, therefore, really inexpensive. I sat there and cried like a baby when the pharmacy tech told me my meds were $5.15 (I’ll never forget that figure).
Trevor - what happened to the coverage they had? I refer you to my maximum lifetime benefits. Once you’ve passed that amount what do you think happens? Yeah, you lose your coverage. It doesn’t take long to blow through $1mil.
gaia, in Australia the only person who would pay $384 per month for their family (all their family) to be insured would be earning over $300,000. For that they would get zero copays, $16 medicines, maternity coverage, no lifetime benefit limit, and free screening (pap smears, mammograms etc.)
If you said “lifetime benefit” in Australia, people would assume you meant “covered for life, no matter what”. Which we are.
Y’know, I might could live in Australia. How cold does it get there? I’ve got thin, thin blood. I get cold when the temp drops down to 60 (which makes Canada a non-starter for me).
Once we had to add Mr. Gaia, our payments went up by another $128/month and cost more than our mortgage.
Gaia: it doesn’t get cold. Brisbane’s average winter temperature is just over 60 degrees; Sydney daytime temps in the winter would be 50 degrees at the minimum, Adelaide too. Adelaide summer temperatures are routinely over 100 and it’s a dry heat. There is no big city in Australia where snow falls. And we have the best beaches in the world (apparently - I am not a beach-going kind of person).
I don’t know what the visa rules are for Americans though - we might want to keep you and your strange ideas on health insurance out of the country…
I don’t know if you can get a mortgage in Australia for $600 US a month either, unless you had a lot of money to start with …
The only plans in my state that are less than $100/person are the state-provided benefits (you know, like S-CHIP) for those who make too much money to qualify for Medicare but too little to afford private insurance.
But because two young, healthy adults without spouses/children/pre-existing conditions found cheap insurance we’re all supposed to say, “By golly, you’re right, the system really isn’t all that fucked up when a minority of people can manage to find affordable healthcare (assuming they never have a reasonably severe accident/illness). What were we thinking?”
I was paying $450/month for private insurance in NJ, 6 years ago… And that was just for me!
I really don’t know how these low income families could do without government help.
But, if you listen to these selfish conservatives, it’s almost “I won’t give a dime for this kid! Just get rid of him, he is useless and it’s cheaper…”
As human being, we should be helping each other.
Healthcare should not be a business.
Businesses only care for maximum profits.
If you are unlucky and are born with an health problem… they will tell you you’re not a good investment!
That’s pathetic.
If that’s the way this society is going to, we are doomed…
Ooo, here’s another good one. I got an email from my alumnae association yesterday, which reminded me that they offer not-terribly-expensive short term health insurance. So I went to the website for a quote, and what do you know, there are a handful of states in which the insurance is not available. One of those states is the one where I now live. Also, it is the state the college itself is in. Doh.
Bob In Europe, basic medical care is cheap. After a really long wait. Advanced medical care costs….nothing. It cannot be purchased at any price. If you have the money, you go to the US for it. If not, you die. And no one cares and no one reports it…..
…is lying. Not merely about there being “no advanced medical care” available in Europe - that is right-wing flummery. I mean that he is lying about ever having lived in Europe. Someone who had lived in Europe could make up much more effective, because much more realistic, lies.
Bob also seems to be a drive-by.
Advanced medical care? I’ve seen, in the publically founded health care system in Sweden, routine emergency PTCAs on heart attack patients, neonatal intensive care units where babies weighing under a pound at birth regularly survive, treatments for colon cancer, where even a few liver metastases can be removed for a cure (and they use totally cool ultrasound with contrast on the bare liver during the operation!), surgery for birth defects at specialised centers (so babies are flown across the country to get the best possible care)… I could go on, if I knew what the drive by troll meant with “advanced” medical care.
But what’s most impressive is that our preventive care system (pre-natal and well-baby) has practically eliminated eclampsia and amblyopia.
(I’m sorry if this shows up twice, I’m having captcha problems.)
Advanced medical care? I’ve seen, in the publically founded health care system in Sweden, routine emergency PTCAs on heart attack patients, neonatal intensive care units where babies weighing under a pound at birth regularly survive, treatments for colon cancer, where even a few liver metastases can be removed for a cure (and they use totally cool ultrasound with contrast on the bare liver during the operation!), surgery for birth defects at specialised centers (so babies are flown across the country to get the best possible care)… I could go on, if I knew what the drive by