Real World Affect of Healthcare Bill on Unemployement

Well, of course it would. If people had to pay $100,000 for a heart surgery, the demand for heart surgery would go down. Supply & demand tells us that the price then would go down.

Of course, if you're not wealthy, you'd just be dead but that's just a small side effect.

 

If you can’t afford a $100,000 heart surgery you are obviously a government bloodsucking drain on society and deserve to die anyway.

 

It sounds like you don't understand how insurance works. You're not paying the insurance company to hold on to your money and only pay out exactly what you've put in. The insurance company takes $200 a month from you because they have calculated that there is a small chance that you will require more than that much in treatment. If they then decide to screw you over because you had the nerve to actually have to collect more than you put in, that does make them an evil company.

 

Sure - it would cost less. Let's say it was 50% lower. So, if you don't have $50,000, you just die. Is that better?

This doesn't make any sense. Aggregate health care spending isn't just accumulated - it's paid out annually. Yes, one healthy person might come out ahead by keeping his money. And another who has the heart attack this year instead of 20 years from now will die. That's why it's called insurance.

Again, true. If you reduce the total amount of health care in the country, kill off everyone who can't afford lifesaving procedures each year, and have a much less healthy populace of older and poor people, you probably won't bankrupt the country. You'll run it into the ground, but it won't be bankrupt.

 

I was going to post a short primer on 'Shared Risk' economics as the the basis of the insurance industry when I ran across this post:

Shared Risk in Health Insurance

It actually gave me pause in my thinking with this:

For shared risk to work, the premium amount cannot be an arbitrary number. If the insurer charges too little, it will not be able to pay its claims. If it charges too much, it will not be able to compete in the marketplace. Premiums are based on actuarial science, balancing expected losses against expected earnings.....

Health care is not one of those industries that benefits from economies of scale. That’s because health care service is delivered one-to-one, from a physician or nurse to a patient. Dumping 20 to 40 million new patients into the healthcare system will not make it more efficient. On the contrary, the sudden influx of the newly insured will create a logistical nightmare....

Supporters of the public option foresee an insurance bonanza as millions of Americans are forced onto the health insurance rolls. As I have written before, this will not occur because the newly insured will be determined to “get their money’s worth” out of the program by visiting the doctor more often....

Eventually, inevitably, the public option health program will face an actuarial crisis, just as Medicare does today. As the rolls of the public option swell, so, too, will the costs. Because the risk is not shared proportionately, the system will face deficits, becoming another unfunded entitlement. The funds require to keep this bloated program afloat will cost the taxpayer even more than private health insurance. By then, however, private health insurance companies will be out of business. There will be nowhere else to turn.

 

LOLOLOL - I was going to post a short primer on ACTUALLY OWNING AND RUNNING A BUSINESS.

Primer step 1: Stop looking up insurance industry blogs on the internet and OWN AND RUN A BUSINESS.

You're welcome for the advice, friend.

 

OK, I will grant you that we could not give a heart, lung and kidney transplant to everyone in the US approaching their death. The'public' option will have to be managed for income/cost and yes you can label that "Death Panel's".

But is it more moral to deny basic health care to the poor, is it not more efficient to have a system outside of taxpayer supported emergency room's as the health services provider of last resort?

Death Panels or Healthcare for the moneyed only...find me a compromise.

 

No, thank you for your friendly advice though. I think I will continue to be a suckling on the teat of the workingman.

You know I'm a crazy socialist, but I'm a pragmatic socialist. I want to do a public option but I readily recognize the limits of the supply compared with the demands of life or death.

I'm gonna want my heart/lung/kidney.

 

Of course not. That doesn't mean the answer is to eliminate insurance and kill off the poor.

Another basis for growth of an economy is a healthy population, as opposed to a sickly or dead one. Can you name a single economy in world history that grew or improved while the quality of health of its population declined?

 

The fundamental problem with his analysis is that the uninsured already get health care in the current system. They just get more expensive emergency care and generally let everyone else pay for it.

 

Not really because in many cases they will just go without.

Case in point: my yard guy has a wicked hernia but the public waiting list is 3 years long so he just drags his leg around. It sucks for him but it's not costing the public taxpayer.

#2 last year I had to have another sinus surgery so I hit my $2500 deductible.
On December 29th I went ahead and had my bunion and toe fixed because the insurance would pay the whole thing so it was free to me.

 

The only reasonable, and practical, solution is to have a single-payer system with strong controls on prices.

 

DEATH PANELS!!!!




actually you said prices but that by inference means demand and that means limiting services. I am all for death panels.

 

100,000????

adjust WAY up

I just opened a bill from Memorial Hermann today for the 303,000 I owe them from two weeks in their hospital after heart surgery.

but, since Im jsut wasting all my money on frivolous trinkets, I guess I deserve the almost 500,000 in medical bills I currently face.

but hey...as long as all these companies are making money, who gives a crap about people like me.

 

Sure - but for every case like this, you have someone else who goes to the ER for their child's cold. Or who doesn't get something looked at until it becomes much more serious and needs a much more expensive solution.

 

Sam, are you a rugged risk taking business owner like me? I hadn't seen you mention it before. The legal biz?

I am currently at 4 f/t employees. It is good to be the boss-- especially if you tend to be rebellious.