What's in the Senate health care bill?

[lawgator1]

Sigh...



Also... What would happen if they included such things as IRS, Social Security, and Dpt Health Human Svc, which are tax-payer funded, perform administrative duties, yet are not considered in LG's numbers?

The overhead cost of gov't insurance is much higher than private insurance. Period.

You are citing insurance industry analysis, which is demonstrably INTENTIONALLY misleading by them. They are misleading you for a reason.

 

[lawgator1]

Whatever is in it, it has morphed into some sort of effort at a more efficient and presumably less expensive alternative to whatever is currently offered. LG, as one of those right wing people who actually does comport to a lot of the stereotypes personified in the Left's boogeyman I am not very enthusiastic about this. I voted for root and branch removal and now we're getting hosed because a few spineless politicians are more worried about their own re-election than they are about satisfying seven year's worth of campaign promises. One thing I admire about the left is that when they get ahold of the reigns they don't screw around and squander the opportunity.

I hear you, but just taking a step back, a seven year generic campaign promise to "repeal and replace" does not in my view compel the GOP to pass something worse.

I mean, theoretically, you could repeal and replace Obamacare with a bill to detonate all nukes on US soil and kill all of us. Would certainly end the problem.

I use an extreme example only to make the point that the making of that generic campaign promise does not equal abdication of the duty to adopt a plan which is good for the entirety.

 

[Orange_Crush]

You are citing insurance industry analysis, which is demonstrably INTENTIONALLY misleading by them. They are misleading you for a reason.

Attack the man and not the argument. I'm feeling you, counselor. You just keep doing you. :good!:

Did you have any comment on the veracity of the comparison of math... i.e. the difference in age and thus the differences in expenditures per person covered, and the effect that would have on the math when viewing efficiency at a percentage level, as opposed to the cost of overhead per person covered?

No? Just want to throw generalized bricks from afar when your vacuous points were exposed? OK.

 

[McDad]

Ought/is.

It is surprising. Thought you were more of a free market kinda guy.

 

[hog88]

Medicare pays according to DRG code. Look at your paperwork next time. The doc circles or enters a code associated with what service he provided.

So just have a single payor, everyone is in, it's part of your taxes. No more premiums, and the doc submits a bill based on DRG codes.

So who sets the rates? Provider or a government bureaucrat? Is the tax rate level for everyone or based on income?

 

[hog88]

There are 3 examples in the top post, I understand people liking tax cuts, but what is the upside to cutting benefits to the sick, poor, and elderly in nursing homes? Can you expound as to why this is a good thing? Wouldn't these be the people who need insurance help the most?

Maybe you'll answer the question LG won't.

Will this plan hurt the elderly, poor, low and middle class more or less than the collapse of Obamacare?

 

[lawgator1]

Attack the man and not the argument. I'm feeling you, counselor. You just keep doing you. :good!:

Did you have any comment on the veracity of the comparison of math... i.e. the difference in age and thus the differences in expenditures per person covered, and the effect that would have on the math when viewing efficiency at a percentage level, as opposed to the cost of overhead per person covered?

No? Just want to throw generalized bricks from afar when your vacuous points were exposed? OK.

So who sets the rates? Provider or a government bureaucrat? Is the tax rate level for everyone or based on income?

Well, put it this way. We have a system whereby private contractors repair our highways, right? There is a single payor -- the government (ok, a few levels of that but you get my drift) and the government pays to contractors using tax dollars.

We don't buy insurance for our roads. Why pay some third party a premium to get in between the government and the builder, especially where the insurer cannot do it for less?

The roads are a public good. Health care is, effectively and whether you like it or not, a public good. Its just that the system we have right now of disjointed payment coming from mysterious places, subject to impossible to comprehend rules on copays and deductibles, incentivizes BOTH the provider and the consumer to engage in inefficient practices that do nothing but add costs to the system, which we all in turn pay.

 

[hog88]

Well, put it this way. We have a system whereby private contractors repair our highways, right? There is a single payor -- the government (ok, a few levels of that but you get my drift) and the government pays to contractors using tax dollars.

We don't buy insurance for our roads. Why pay some third party a premium to get in between the government and the builder, especially where the insurer cannot do it for less?

The roads are a public good. Health care is, effectively and whether you like it or not, a public good. Its just that the system we have right now of disjointed payment coming from mysterious places, subject to impossible to comprehend rules on copays and deductibles, incentivizes BOTH the provider and the consumer to engage in inefficient practices that do nothing but add costs to the system, which we all in turn pay.

Are you suggesting all healthcare providers provide bids to the government and the government picks the lowest bidders to provide our healthcare?

 

[Orange_Crush]

Well, put it this way. We have a system whereby private contractors repair our highways, right? There is a single payor -- the government (ok, a few levels of that but you get my drift) and the government pays to contractors using tax dollars.

We don't buy insurance for our roads. Why pay some third party a premium to get in between the government and the builder, especially where the insurer cannot do it for less?

The roads are a public good. Health care is, effectively and whether you like it or not, a public good. Its just that the system we have right now of disjointed payment coming from mysterious places, subject to impossible to comprehend rules on copays and deductibles, incentivizes BOTH the provider and the consumer to engage in inefficient practices that do nothing but add costs to the system, which we all in turn pay.

Not one mention of the math you hinged your ridiculous assertion on, not the math you tried to divert from by claiming it was supplied by insurance folks. In other words, you threw out a misdirection and then moved on to another misdirection.

 

[AM64]

Maybe you'll answer the question LG won't.

Will this plan hurt the elderly, poor, low and middle class more or less than the collapse of Obamacare?

The collapse of ObamaCare is a bigger problem because it changed the insurance landscape even for those who had insurance to begin with. But that was very probably part of the intent - make dissolution so onerous there is no choice but to muddle on. Collapse goes far further than just uncovering that small part of the population the Dims were using to justify the whole steaming pile.

 

[McDad]

Are you suggesting all healthcare providers provide bids to the government and the government picks the lowest bidders to provide our healthcare?

Will highway healthcare need a crew to stand around while problems are tended to by 1 person?
Will the work need to be totally redone every 10 years?

 

[orangeluvr]

Maybe you'll answer the question LG won't.

Will this plan hurt the elderly, poor, low and middle class more or less than the collapse of Obamacare?

Without question it will. The AHCA is nothing more than "trickle up" economics like trump's budget proposal. Robin Hood in reverse. Most on here must be rich, so it doesn't matter one whit.

 

[armchair]

What's next car insurance - homeowner's insurance. We just decide that everybody is a walking calamity and finish trashing what remains of personal responsibility in this country? Are you gonna cover the "necessary" changes for people who are incapable of looking in their own pants and understanding what sex they are?

before conservatives drift toward what really jacks them up--which is the idea that they might have to pay taxes to provide help to some poor black person or transgender person or whatever. Bums! Deviants! Just in two pages of this thread the words "personal responsibility" have popped up several times.

One way to promote personal responsibility is for governments (federal, state, local) to be more proactive in promoting healthy lifestyle,so that fewer people are getting sick relatively early in life due to poor or destructive habits. There is a new Brookings report that note that the United States spends far less on proactive community health that most other advanced nations. We are all about repairing people after they get sick--and of course conservatives always ***** and moan when there are effort to promote good health: they don't want to interfere with the private sector's efforts to sell us junk food, always giving us the silly "freedom" argument. I want to be free to smoke and drink Dr. Pepper all day and then get diabetes and then have the system--and taxpayers--save me from myself.

RE DRG codes, I haven't really seen any reports on this, but my sense is that there is a ton of private doctor/private practice corruption when it comes to codes that are submitted to insurance companies for payments. The patient doesn't know what the codes mean, and is not told, so the doctors can put down anything they want. There is a massive amount of fraud of one kind or another in our system. There is also an excessive amount of testing--not all of it necessary---and of course lots of corruption when it comes to prescribing medicine. Drug companies incentivize doctors to push meds on people--bribe them.

 

[McDad]

Hey..., I agree with armchair on a few things.

There's hope for him, yet.

 

[theFallGuy]

before conservatives drift toward what really jacks them up--which is the idea that they might have to pay taxes to provide help to some poor black person or transgender person or whatever. Bums! Deviants! Just in two pages of this thread the words "personal responsibility" have popped up several times.

People who live in deeply religious regions of the country — the solid-red states of the Bible Belt and Utah — give more of their income to charity than those who don’t

fail again

 

[hog88]

Without question it will. The AHCA is nothing more than "trickle up" economics like trump's budget proposal. Robin Hood in reverse. Most on here must be rich, so it doesn't matter one whit.

How?

 

[lawgator1]

Are you suggesting all healthcare providers provide bids to the government and the government picks the lowest bidders to provide our healthcare?

No, I was just giving an example of the government in a single payer situation. Obviously, medical services are too scattered at the delivery point to be provided by one provider.

 

[AM64]

before conservatives drift toward what really jacks them up--which is the idea that they might have to pay taxes to provide help to some poor black person or transgender person or whatever. Bums! Deviants! Just in two pages of this thread the words "personal responsibility" have popped up several times.

One way to promote personal responsibility is for governments (federal, state, local) to be more proactive in promoting healthy lifestyle,so that fewer people are getting sick relatively early in life due to poor or destructive habits. There is a new Brookings report that note that the United States spends far less on proactive community health that most other advanced nations. We are all about repairing people after they get sick--and of course conservatives always ***** and moan when there are effort to promote good health: they don't want to interfere with the private sector's efforts to sell us junk food, always giving us the silly "freedom" argument. I want to be free to smoke and drink Dr. Pepper all day and then get diabetes and then have the system--and taxpayers--save me from myself.

RE DRG codes, I haven't really seen any reports on this, but my sense is that there is a ton of private doctor/private practice corruption when it comes to codes that are submitted to insurance companies for payments. The patient doesn't know what the codes mean, and is not told, so the doctors can put down anything they want. There is a massive amount of fraud of one kind or another in our system. There is also an excessive amount of testing--not all of it necessary---and of course lots of corruption when it comes to prescribing medicine. Drug companies incentivize doctors to push meds on people--bribe them.

DRGs make a lot of sense, but did you know that a provider assigns diagnostic and treatment codes and that they are ranked according to relevance to the problem - and what's commonly known as the "grouper" (originally 3M software) cranks out the appropriate DRG from those codes - both the code and the order - particularly the primary code. Now did you know that if a contracted Medicare or Medicaid service reorders the CPT codes and reruns the code that the result can be a lower paying DRG? But that can't happen when it's part of a government run program ... right? There's that extra layer of government bureaucracy to make sure everything works right - just like the VA provides vets the best of care. Incentives, bonuses, etc would never entice someone to bend rules.

Of course, the pill and other medical device and supply manufacturers are driving costs. But they have the bestest of lobbyists - the bribes they pay providers are nothing to what they do for legislators. You see we also have laws relating to anti-competitive behavior market, but how many drug companies have been allowed to merge thereby reducing the competition - drug company names are beginning to sound like what you'd see above a legal firm. And where do recycled legislators go?

You've got liberalitis really bad, but who knows some day your head might pop out, and in the methane free air you could realize that government is the problem not the panacea. Well, it could happen.

 

[Mick]

People who live in deeply religious regions of the country — the solid-red states of the Bible Belt and Utah — give more of their income to charity than those who don’t

fail again

Read just a little further. "Charitable causes include churches, and Salt Lake City is the nation’s most generous city. Its residents donate an average of nine percent of their discretionary income to charity; the Mormon church asks its members for one-tenth of their income as tithing. When you remove religion from the picture and look only at secular charities, the map shifts dramatically towards the Northeast."

 

[PKT_VOL]

It is surprising. Thought you were more of a free market kinda guy.

I am in the ought side of things. However, there is a difference is/ought. LG's point was more a matter of is.

In other words, it would be better to have a direct payment system with catastrophic insurance (similar to the veterinarian system). However, we are long past that point. That debate was lost long ago.

We are on our way to a single payer system via healthcare as a human right. Thus, it is foolish to continue this poltical charade of some sort of private, free market healthcare. We end up getting the worst of both worlds. It would be better to focus our time, effort, and energy in setting up a single payer system, which is going to happen either way, that will be somewhat sustainable. Not all single payer systems are created equal. At least we can reap some of the benefits of single payer verse getting the worst of both systems we currently have.

 

[AM64]

I am in the ought side of things. However, there is a difference is/ought. LG's point was more a matter of is.

In other words, it would be better to have a direct payment system with catastrophic insurance (similar to the veterinarian system). However, we are long past that point. That debate was lost long ago.

We are on our way to a single payer system via healthcare as a human right. Thus, it is foolish to continue this poltical charade of some sort of private, free market healthcare. We end up getting the worst of both worlds. It would be better to focus our time, effort, and energy in setting up a single payer system, which is going to happen either way, that will be somewhat sustainable. Not all single payer systems are created equal. At least we can reap some of the benefits of single payer verse getting the worst of both systems we currently have.

In other words, the first of the file went over the cliff, so only makes sense for the rest to join them?

 

[PKT_VOL]

In other words, the first of the file went over the cliff, so only makes sense for the rest to join them?

If you don't think the rest are going full steam over the cliff, I have some ocean front property to sell you here in Atlanta.

I'd rather start planning and building a parachute to break the fall, than get carried away with the herd, unwisely feeling justified that I was shouting "this is the wrong way!".

 

[hog88]

No, I was just giving an example of the government in a single payer situation. Obviously, medical services are too scattered at the delivery point to be provided by one provider.

Then who's going to set the rates for services?

Under single payer would a private system be allowed? If so there will most certainly be a two tier level of healthcare, one with the best providers serving the wealthy and one full of UF Med school graduates serving the unwashed masses.

 

[McDad]

Then who's going to set the rates for services?

Under single payer would a private system be allowed? If so there will most certainly be a two tier level of healthcare, one with the best providers serving the wealthy and one full of UF Med school graduates serving the unwashed masses.

This is developing now. The rate of private pay general physicians is climbing.

 

[Grand Vol]

If you don't think the rest are going full steam over the cliff, I have some ocean front property to sell you here in Atlanta.

You haven't been in the global warming thread have you. Because without the Paris Treaty, Atlanta is going to be under water soon according to some.

Sell while you can.