Why do People Want to keep Private Insurance over Govt

Step 1. Lose your job. You work in private industry (unlike me) so yes, it could happen to you. Or not. Health insurance pretty much sucks anyway...

Step 2. You get sick and end up in the hospital. God forbid it is something expensive like Cancer.

Step 3. Medical bills pile up. You can't pay them. You go bankrupt.

Far fetched? Liberal chicken-little hype? Hardly.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/health-care-reform/2009/06/new_study_shows_medical_bills.html

New Study: Bankruptcy Tied To Medical Bills

By Sarah Lovenheim

Sixty-two percent of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were linked to medical expenses, according to a nationwide study released today by the American Journal of Medicine. That's nearly 20 percentage points higher than that pool of respondents reported were connected to medical costs in 2001.

Of those who filed for bankruptcy in 2007, nearly 80 percent had health insurance. Respondents who reported having insurance indicated average expenses of just under $18,000. Respondents who filed and lacked insurance had average medical bills of nearly $27,000.

Since 2007, the number of Americans without insurance has increased and filing for bankruptcy has become more difficult due to more stringent laws, according to the report.

The authors of the study, David Himmelstein, Deborah Thorne, Elizabeth Warren and Steffie Woolhandler, say their findings "reflect the U.S. health care financing system is broken." Middle class families, they conclude, "frequently collapse under the strain of the health care system that treats physical wounds, but inflicts fiscal ones."

 

Typical RM95 style. Bring up a complete different subject/idea to distract from the topic on hand.

What you fail to acknowledge is that those "public servants" in no manner should be competing with each other. The government does have a duty per the constitution and through other laws to protect its citizens. Those listed above in no manner should be privatized. I don't approve of any mercenaries such as blackwater. The government has its place. Its place is not deciding who and who should not be getting treatment.

 

It is not that we should, but that we are forced to. Unless you want to make defense private (which is impossible) or end the defense program.

I have heard from more than a few people to counter argument of how terrible the .gov is at running programs "oh but look how good we are at war" the fact is we waste a ton of money because of the .gov running it and politcal pressure.

 

Medical bills has always been a primary cause for bankruptcy. That is nothing new. I'd rather go bankrupt and be able to take care of my problem now than sit on my death bed because the government refuses to treat me because they have disagreed on how I handled my life.
Second, if you think you can simply walk into a doctor or hospital and pay NOTHING, you are fooled. There will be a copay of some sort, and guess what... you won't be able to bankrupt on it.

 

Step 1: Fill your body with sugar, butter and grease for decades
Step 2: Fill your brain with mindless tv shows and video games
Step 3: Wake up at age 40 and ask why you are fat, unhealthy and poor
Step 4: Complain that the government isn't doing enough to take care of your medical bills
Step 5: Obamacare
Step 6: SOCIALIST HELL

 

Socialist hell wholeheartedly embraced by every developed nation except for the United States, just as an aside.

 

1. My family never really gets sick
2. It's a mess in other countries
3. They can get it themselves
4. Yes, but I don't think the govt publicizing it will fix it. If anything, it would just add more problems
5. Yes
6. My current one is not bad. I'm afraid it will cost more under govt care. If I lived alone, I wouldn't have insurance.

 

Define mess for me.

Because, as it stands...

This defines mess for me.

 

Have you been to a hospital in Europe?

 

The Commonwealth Fund is not a credible source.

 

Neither is the WHO?

 

No.

But I fail to see, even if I had, how any anecdotal evidence could sway anyone with training in the scientific method (short of stories of being shot on the operating table or something like that I guess).

 

They had a decent drummer but once he died they sucked.

 

yeah

well, what can you do about that

 

You see the bias that we do not provide coverage for everyone hurts us right?

We also do not provide shelter for everyone, why isn't the federal government doing something about that? Hint: there is no power or money to be gobbled up with that crusade.

 

Disregarding the faulty assumption behind this entire argument (the assumption that the possession of capital is determined by how hard one works/how smart one is and so the maldistribution of capital is "fair") - there are rather simple facts and figures that point to the need for a drastic change in the healthcare system of the United States:

The cost of administering the current healthcare system makes up 31% of the total spent. The costs of administration are made up of "overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay." While the costs of staying insured for people are rising at double the rate of inflation, the profits for health insurance companies like Aetna are rising significantly.

While most free-marketeers cite their fear of the inefficiency of government bureaucracy as a major factor in their opposition to socialized healthcare, they don't seem to realize that a massive bureaucracy exists in the private health insurance industry. A major part of this private bureaucracy is the "denial-management industry" which costs healthcare providers $10 billion dollars every year by using specialized computer programs to deny and/or reduce as many claims as they possibly can - these claims then have to be clarified, resubmitted, and so on. This results in a delay in treatment, and sometimes a outright refusal of treatment, for many non-terminal illnesses and injuries simply because the patient cannot establish their ability to pay when the massive insurance bureaucracy has an entire wing of their system devoted to denying benefits.

And, as pointed out earlier in this thread, the United States does not have the best healthcare system in the world. We are paying much much more for much less. Last year, the United States spent 17% of it's GDP on healthcare - in a system where 50 million people are uninsured and "25 million Americans are “underinsured,” a 60 percent increase over 2003. This means a staggering 42% of people in the US under the age of 65 have no insurance or inadequate coverage." It should be no surprise then that, as stated earlier, 60% of bankruptcies in the U.S. result from massive hospital bills - and, of this 60%, 75% of them had insurance(these figures are more recent than the percentages listed below).

Some documented facts:

Anyone who isn't a blindly-devoted free-marketeer should be able to see that the so-called "free" market created all of these problems and cannot be trusted to solve them. The system is this way because, ultimately, of the greed of the bureacrats and CEOs who run healthcare for profit. Just like the crisis with housing, greed is driving this entire machine - and it's heading for a collapse, just as the housing market was.

We can no longer depend on the so-called "free" market to solve social issues. All that the current system offers is another model of socializing the costs of an institution while privatizing the profits.

We can no longer afford to let the profit-motive of powerful lobbies be the driving force that shapes our healthcare system.

 

Well, if we're talking purely Machiavellian motives here, one should point out that gouvernment has a stronger vested interest in keeping you alive and whole then individual corporations, because the more you live, the more they can manage to gouge out of you.

 

Or they just don't give a crap and are trying to get control of all the industry they can to have control of more money.

 

So let's take the evils of profits out of all of our industries and socialize everything! Because centralized economies have been so successful over the years... Oh. Wait. Sorry, but you just don't understand economics.

We understand that the healthcare system isn't working for everyone. No schit. But that doesn't mean that the government taking it over is going to fix a darn thing. It will only make it WORSE. And it will increase the budget deficit in a huge way, while decreasing the quality of medical care across the board. No thanks.

 

Anyone here really feel like paying for thousands in acne medication or removal of harmless lipomas for everyone?

What about toenail fungus or weightloss drugs for teens trying to lose 20 pounds.

Will the .gov deem it OK to give millions of kids adderall that could previously not get any but want it now that the cost of going to the Dr. is so reduced?