Michael

I believe my example is much closer to reality than his is. When I was growing up in the 1950s, medical care was much different than what it is today. At that time, doctors actually made house calls. There wasn't much a doctor could do other than prescribe aspirin for pain (morphine if the patient was dieing), penicillin for any infection, a water pill for high blood pressure, insulin for high blood sugar, and setting a broken bone. For just about everything else, you were just left to die in your home. If you reached 65 before you died, you just died of old age.

There wasn't such a thing as open heat surgery, cancer treatments, organ transplants, and there were only a few drugs available. The greatest prevention of diseases were to be inoculated with the vaccinations that were then available.

Today if you have a car accident, a seizure, a heart attack, or a stroke, someone will call an ambulance. By the time you wake up days later in the hospital, a bill could be presented to you in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Since over 75% of all medical bills today are caused by an emergency, cancer treatments, hospital care, or other highly specialized treatments, there is very little opportunity or leverage to negotiate health care costs. Usually only in cases where procedures are elective and common (eg. lasik eye surgery, plastic surgery, etc.) can a person possibly compare or negotiate prices and is commonly done since few if any insurance policies cover such procedures. Occasionally someone with elective heart surgery (but seldom cancer treatments since the procedure takes too long and drug costs are very high) can someone hop on a plane to Thailand or India to get the procedure done cheaper.

Now I do agree that if people had to pay for their own health care costs (no insurance allowed - when insurance is allowed, it produces the problems were have today) and doctors only treated patients that could afford the treatment and discontinued treatment when the patient ran out of funds, health care costs would likely decrease significantly due to decreased demand. However in a developed country, that would likely not be acceptable by the public. Anything short of that will not significantly control costs in a pure capitalistic system. The only thing that would likely help a capitalistic system in a major way to control costs would be open immigration policy to allow unlimited foreign doctors to practice in the country with a medical license from their country (not required to pass US licensing) and/or significantly reduce the educational requirements to practice medicine for most doctors and then eliminate the possibility of suing doctors.

Therefore a system would normally be needed that synthetically controls health care costs (eg. defining maximum end of life procedures, fixing reimbursement prices, defining procedures that are not covered by insurance, government paying a very high share of medical education and living expenses to entice more students into medicine, etc.).

chartreuse

I think I may have lost the will to live...

scrubbedexpat099

I have a feeling my Health Care does not cover it.

chrisfromusa

To everyone who believed in the new reform laws:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/...25228#36725228

Congress left a loophole in the law that STILL allows insurance companies to drop people from their insurance policies when they get really sick. Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann discuss.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36726295...h_care_reform/

"President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law will increase the nation's health care tab instead of bringing costs down, government economic forecasters concluded Thursday in a sobering assessment of the sweeping legislation.

A report by economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department said the health care remake will achieve Obama's aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million Americans to the coverage rolls.

But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president's twin goal of controlling runaway costs. It also warned that Medicare cuts may be unrealistic and unsustainable, driving about 15 percent of hospitals into the red and "possibly jeopardizing access" to care for seniors." Click the URL to read the rest of the article

Michael

Using Michael Moore to get your facts is like using Glenn Beck to get your facts. Neither has any credibility.

Although the health care bill states that an insurer will be limited to a fine $100 per day ($35,000 per year) for dropping a policy holder, it also does state that HHS will define the regulations that insurers must follow to be able to offer health insurance through the health exchange. If an insurer is banned from selling insurance through the exchange, they will not be eligible for subsidies. In the case of Wellpoint, being banned from the exchange would put them out of business since they only provide individual health insurance (no group or business policies).

Until the regulations are in place, we won't know what loopholes are in the bill.

chrisfromusa

You can't see the loophole? Those insurance companies are businesses, and as businesses they have an obligation to turn over a profit or else they are not a business. How else are the for-profit insurance companies gonna turn a profit if they can't drop policies? They have to cut costs somewhere to turn over the most profits as possible for the shareholders.

Michael

When health reform is fully implemented, there will only be group/business plans and the health insurance exchange. Group/business plans are already well controlled not allowing insurance companies to drop employees and any company that wants to sell insurance through the exchange will have to follow the rules of the exchange.

Even if the rules of the exchange are weak such as a 5 star rating system similar to the "Medicare Advantage" program (poor regulations since the Bush administration didn't want to regulate insurance companies), insurance companies that don't follow the rules of the exchange will be given a one star rating and eventually will not be able to sell policies because no one will trust them. If they leave the exchange, they will not be able to compete since their policies will be more expensive then all other health insurers since they will not be getting subsidies (either income or preexisting condition subsidies).

No matter how you look at it, the rules of the exchange will be significantly better than the current system. Insurance companies that don't follow the rules of the exchange may make short term profits but will likely be out of business over the long term even with weak regulations.

Even if an insurance company dropped an individual, the damage to the individual will likely be slight (if any) since the person will be able to immediately go to the exchange and get new insurance (as compared to the current system where they can't get insurance).

Like many of Michael Moores documentaries, he blows things way out of proportion.

cindyabs

It's true-Michael and I are of an age (I think) and when things get wound up on here about US healthcare, I want to say, but, but, it wasn't always like this....... Well there, I said it anyway.

dakota44

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