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Thread: Better Health Care Is What We All Want

  1. #1
    We all want better health care. I favor the best cradle to the grave coverage possible. I just don't know how to pay for it?

    Can someone please enlighten me?

    Thanks.

  2. #2
    Better stuff usually costs more correct? Saying you want better health care is like saying your doctors are bad. Solution, find a better doctor.

  3. #3
    Get control of the costs for hospitals, procedures, drugs, etc.

    In the 80's I had surgery 7 times over the course of 2 years. My insurance had a clause whereby if I reviewed the bills and found improprieties, I got a commission on each item that they got removed from the bill. Since I was laid up for quite a while, I decided to go item by item thru the bills. The amount of double billings, erroneous charges, and inflated charges (like $20 for a box of Kleenex every day) was astounding. I actually received a commission of just under 5 figures.

    Hey---I'm an AP!!

    Now I don't even look at the charges because it just gets me up to the high deductible anyway. Only if I reach the deductible do I look at anything, and luckily I haven't had too recently.

  4. #4
    Originally Posted by regnis View Post
    Get control of the costs for hospitals, procedures, drugs, etc.

    In the 80's I had surgery 7 times over the course of 2 years. My insurance had a clause whereby if I reviewed the bills and found improprieties, I got a commission on each item that they got removed from the bill. Since I was laid up for quite a while, I decided to go item by item thru the bills. The amount of double billings, erroneous charges, and inflated charges (like $20 for a box of Kleenex every day) was astounding. I actually received a commission of just under 5 figures.

    Hey---I'm an AP!!

    Now I don't even look at the charges because it just gets me up to the high deductible anyway. Only if I reach the deductible do I look at anything, and luckily I haven't had too recently.
    I'm a socialist, but I was no fan of Obamacare. I want everyone to have Medicare, basically, like Australia. Cut out the middlemen -- the insurance companies.

    I think everyone should have access to care, although personally if I were designing policy, I would be draconian when it came to lifestyle limitations. If you get your health tab picked up, you would eat what the feds told you to eat and exercise the way the feds told you to exercise. If you want to do something differently, fine, but you pay the health bill. You want to smoke? Fine, you pick up the tab. Same with having children. You want your childbirth costs picked up, great -- for two children. Thereafter, you pick up the tab. Something like China.

    So I am a hard-ass, pragmatic socialist, I guess.

  5. #5
    The cost if healthcare always shocks me. We took our young son for his one year checkup. Just the usual: wellness check and immunizations.

    What would you reckon that would cost? $200? Maybe $300 tops?
    No, the bill was $988! I have good insurance, but WTF! Each shot was a couple hundred dollars plus a $37 nurses fee each and $125 for the office visit.

  6. #6
    Ddb1 were those the charges because you have insurance?

  7. #7
    I paid $0.

    The $988 was the amount submitted to insurance.

  8. #8
    I wonder how much you would have been charged if you didn't have insurance?

    I have often wondered if doctors charge more when a patient has insurance?

    When I go to my doctor there is a big stamp on the cover of my file that says PPO. I think that gives the doctor the signal to charge more and to order more tests, etc.

  9. #9
    I've always assumed that uninsured people get billed the whole amount the provider charges.
    Usually with our insurance the insurance has an amount for each service that they think it should cost (usually way less), their payment to the provider is based on that, and we only get billed for whatever percent, if any, is the difference between the insurance amount and insurance payment, and the rest goes away as an amount the provider has agreed not to bill us as a participant in the insurance plan.
    The few times where we have had medical or dental procedures that weren't covered at all, its always been a quick conversation to get those bills reduced. I assume that the non insured have those conversations frequently.

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