health care idea

[bobbylien]

I've been thinking a lot about health care recently and I've got an idea. Our health care system is clearly not working but I don't think putting everything in the control of the government will work out well in the long run.
What if the government set had a bid letting of sorts for the right to insure certain groups. Say the government groups up people based on age(or something like that) and asks the insurance companies for a quote to insure them all for a certain amount of time. This way we could use the free market system to keep the prices low and use extensive regulations to get the level of quality we want. Maybe something like this has been proposed before, I think its at least worthy of an investigation.

[lily]

Say the government groups up people based on age(or something like that) and asks the insurance companies for a quote to insure them all for a certain amount of time. This way we could use the free market system

I'm not sure I understand this part, Bobby. Who is going to want to hold the bid contract for the elderly or someone with a pre-existing ailment?

[bobbylien]

They would simply bid higher on it but the government would group the elderly up so that the bid amounts would reflect the cost to insure everybody.

[flaja]

Say the government groups up people based on age(or something like that) and asks the insurance companies for a quote to insure them all for a certain amount of time. This way we could use the free market system

I'm not sure I understand this part, Bobby. Who is going to want to hold the bid contract for the elderly or someone with a pre-existing ailment?


My mother is only 56 so age-wise she is not old enough for Medicare. However, she is disabled with an unusual form of arthritis (she likely has Lupus, but that diagnosis has not been made) and anyone that is disabled according to Social Security automatically has Medicare. Due to her disability she cannot get either health insurance (apart from Medicare supplemental drug coverage) or life insurance. No one can expect private enterprise to sell an insurance policy that means an automatic financial loss.

But, in the same vein no one can legitimately expect society to give medical care to people who engage in behavior that adds to their need for health care (drinking, over-eating, drug abuse). Healthcare in America has easily identified problems, but no easily identified solutions.

[BoogyMan]

Bobby, our healthcare system has some problems, but to say that it isn't working is an egregious falsehood.

[flaja]

They would simply bid higher on it but the government would group the elderly up so that the bid amounts would reflect the cost to insure everybody.


Why should every member of a certain demographic group have to pay more for insurance so the members of that group who cause the largest drain on the healthcare system can have insurance? If I don’t smoke, am not overweight and have never used drugs, why should I pay more for insurance for myself so the premiums that people who do can pay less than the market would otherwise require? In the same vein, why should people who have no family history of cancer have to pay part of the healthcare premiums for people that do?

[Buck Laser]

Bobby, our healthcare system has some problems, but to say that it isn't working is an egregious falsehood.

No, Boog, it isn't an egregious falsehood. It prolly works well for you, and it works well for me because I have medicare and some excellent supplemental insurance. But I'm well aware of the misery and fear around me, and of the incredibly high medical expenses my daughter had while she stayed home for three years with her youngest. Her husband didn't have adequate coverage, and it was touch and go for quite a while there.

If you take even a cursory look at the figures for the uninsured and the underinsured, about all you can say is there but for good fortune go I. I will agree that we have some highly advanced medical centers in the US, but not everyone gets to use those facilities.

Or do you subscribe to the GWBush theory of health care: "just go to the emergency room...they'll take care of you there?

[lily]

No, Boog, it isn't an egregious falsehood. It prolly works well for you, and it works well for me because I have medicare and some excellent supplemental insurance. But I'm well aware of the misery and fear around me, and of the incredibly high medical expenses my daughter had while she stayed home for three years with her youngest. Her husband didn't have adequate coverage, and it was touch and go for quite a while there.

I have found in the discussion I've had about health care, that those that are covered think that there is nothing wrong with the healthcare in America and those that aren't know there is something wrong.

[lily]

My mother is only 56 so age-wise she is not old enough for Medicare. However, she is disabled with an unusual form of arthritis (she likely has Lupus, but that diagnosis has not been made) and anyone that is disabled according to Social Security automatically has Medicare. Due to her disability she cannot get either health insurance (apart from Medicare supplemental drug coverage) or life insurance. No one can expect private enterprise to sell an insurance policy that means an automatic financial loss.

Flaja.........my heart goes out to your mother and the pain she must be in........if it's not too personal of a question, may I ask how far if any debt did she go in, waiting for Medicare?

[BoogyMan]

I have to disagree Buck.

The healthcare system is working quite well. It is the medical insurance system to cover the costs of healthcare and the out of control tort system that facilitates and enables the skyrocketing cost.[hr]


No, Boog, it isn't an egregious falsehood. It prolly works well for you, and it works well for me because I have medicare and some excellent supplemental insurance. But I'm well aware of the misery and fear around me, and of the incredibly high medical expenses my daughter had while she stayed home for three years with her youngest. Her husband didn't have adequate coverage, and it was touch and go for quite a while there.

I have found in the discussion I've had about health care, that those that are covered think that there is nothing wrong with the healthcare in America and those that aren't know there is something wrong.


I didn't say that there was nothing wrong or there were no problems. What I rightly said was to claim that the system is not working is an egregious falsehood, I still stand by that assertion.

[Buck Laser]

I think the tort system is just a handy whipping boy for the insurance companies. Insurance is one of the most obscenely profitable businesses in the world. The reason we have the most expensive medical care in the world is because the fuckin' insurance companies have so much overhead and so much profit and so many ties to the big healthcare firms and pharmaceuticals that it's a crying shame.

And for you to call someone else's assessment of our heallthcare system an egregious falsehood seems to me to be an arrogant and judgmental excess on your part. Unless and until the overweening influence of big insurance, big pharma, and big healthcare like HealthSouth and others, our health care quality will decline while prices continue to rise. It isn't about "socialism." It's about REFORM.

[BoogyMan]

I think the tort system is just a handy whipping boy for the insurance companies. Insurance is one of the most obscenely profitable businesses in the world. The reason we have the most expensive medical care in the world is because the fuckin' insurance companies have so much overhead and so much profit and so many ties to the big healthcare firms and pharmaceuticals that it's a crying shame.

And for you to call someone else's assessment of our heallthcare system an egregious falsehood seems to me to be an arrogant and judgmental excess on your part. Unless and until the overweening influence of big insurance, big pharma, and big healthcare like HealthSouth and others, our health care quality will decline while prices continue to rise. It isn't about "socialism." It's about REFORM.


You have just as much of a right to have and opionion as do I Buck, but I do get a bit of a giggle out of you calling someone else arrogant. :) I do find it troubling that you wish to tar the healthcare system as a whole for a problem that is largely caused by the lack of sanity in the tort system and an out of control insurance industry.

If we are going to point the finger, it would be good to actually point it in the right direction, don't you think?

[flaja]

My mother is only 56 so age-wise she is not old enough for Medicare. However, she is disabled with an unusual form of arthritis (she likely has Lupus, but that diagnosis has not been made) and anyone that is disabled according to Social Security automatically has Medicare. Due to her disability she cannot get either health insurance (apart from Medicare supplemental drug coverage) or life insurance. No one can expect private enterprise to sell an insurance policy that means an automatic financial loss.

Flaja.........my heart goes out to your mother and the pain she must be in........if it's not too personal of a question, may I ask how far if any debt did she go in, waiting for Medicare?


Debilitating arthritis runs in my family. My mother’s grandmother had to have 2 artificial hips by the time she died at 104 (after a lifetime of farming in NC with only her youngest son to help since my great-grandfather died in 1953 when he was just 13). Her daughter (my mother’s mother) had arthritis so bad that by the time she died you couldn’t see her lungs on a chest x-ray because her lungs were so inflamed.

My mother’s father had to take SSI in his early 50s and my mother’s arthritis first showed up when she was in her early 40s; I thought that I was going to have a problem by the time I was 30 and knew that I had a problem by the time I was 35. My mother left work just before she turned 50 and a year later her doctor told her to apply for SSI. It took 2 applications and a court fight to get her benefits. Beginning in her mid-40s she started doubling up on the house and car payments and didn’t have any debt and had substantial savings when she left work, but by the time Social Security agreed that she is disabled and she got her back benefits she had less than $100 in the bank and we were collecting dividends from a life insurance policy that she took out on me about 25 years earlier (and which had been paying its own premium since I turned 25).[hr]
I didn't say that there was nothing wrong or there were no problems. What I rightly said was to claim that the system is not working is an egregious falsehood, I still stand by that assertion.


There is a difference between working and being effective. The biggest healthcare problem this country has is its self-destructive behavior. Americans smoke and drink. They over-eat and don’t exercise.

[Buck Laser]

You have just as much of a right to have and opionion as do I Buck, but I do get a bit of a giggle out of you calling someone else arrogant. :) I do find it troubling that you wish to tar the healthcare system as a whole for a problem that is largely caused by the lack of sanity in the tort system and an out of control insurance industry.

If we are going to point the finger, it would be good to actually point it in the right direction, don't you think?

I wish I could count the number of times you've called ME arrogant, Boog. Secondly, I know you think the tort system is entirely to blame, but that's just the propaganda the insurance boys love to propagate. I don't deny that there is some problem, but it's not nearly the disaster you'd like to imagine. If you think it is, how about some hard evidence? You can say what you want to 'til kingdom come, but until you have some real evidence, I'll call it for what I think it is--bullshit.

[lily]

Thank you flaja for your honest reply. I take it then you mother knowing the background and what she was in store for, made her do the advanced saving? If so, she is one smart woman!

Waiting to get on Medicare can wipe people out, both financially and physically. Once you get it, it does have decent coverage.

My two cents on this whole healthcare issue.......have the entire governing body live through an entire year on the medical coverage most people get, instead of the gold standard that they have and they would have healthcare fixed faster than a speeding bullet.

[Marley]

What's all this noise about "coverage?"

A contract to give cash to a financial insitution in exchange to pay for medical expenses incurred is NOT "health care," it's insurance.

No one here on this thread is debating CARE or medical SERVICES, at all.

All of you are debating a financial matter, period.

And the fact is, no one in the USA is going without CARE or medical SERVICES.

Moreover, immigrants are flooding into the USA in part to receive this CARE and medical SERVICES that do indeed function as they are.

Please people, be honest, if you all are greedy and unwilling to part with your cash for medical services and care, just say so.