The billion dollar web site we all paid for

[Rohirrim]

As someone who has spent many years working in a hospital in the insurance field let me paint a picture for you. I'll mix a few patients so that nobody can be identified, but this was a very common scenario. Guy gets in an accident and is made a paraplegic by his injuries. He had his own construction company and was bringing home about $6,000 per month. Has a wife and three kids, fat mortgage, not to mention business expenses. So, once reality sets in, the patient and his wife tell me, "There's no way out. Our insurance has paid all it's going to pay. He's going to have to file for Social Security and find another way to deal with all the medical bills."

Turns out, these people had the best medical insurance money could buy. Top of the line company. The CEO is building himself an enormous mansion, as a matter of fact, so you know the profit is rolling in. And yes, the insurance company paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, the bill for weeks in the hospital comes to $2.5 mil. And then, I have to break it to them that SS is going to come to, at max, about $1700 per month, if they're lucky. At the same time both of them say, "We can't live on that!"

And I nod and say, "Yes. I know." I've had to tell this to so many people I've lost count.

Of course, people like Paul Ryan think that's too much. In fact, they don't think government should be involved in this scenario at all. It should be private companies making these decisions. These people should be dependent on the private marketplace, not government. Corporations would do a better job at this than government. I wonder how long you would have to go through some corporation's phone answering machine before it got to the option, "Are you paralyzed?" Here's a really weird thing - When you call SSA, you actually get a person.
Such are the ways of Wonderland.

[Guess Who]

On average, the elderly are better off than the rest of us. They have less debt and more savings.

That is because of Medicare and social Security and they have worked their whole life. I know MANY elderly that only live on their $700 Social Security check.... and people want to take that away from them? Shame on them.

[Arkie]

Raise people's taxes and lets support our elderly.

On average, the elderly are better off than the rest of us. They have less debt and more savings.

[Taco John]

See US healthcare spending skyrocket once Medicare was instituted in 1966:

That was only part of it. The other part was Nixon's HMO act, which as you can see from the chart, sent prices past the moon almost the day it was passed...

[barryr]

Glad there is proof of government waste.

[alkemical]

What waz really built with that web page? What infrastructure was built?

[Guess Who]

Keep Socialist Democrats as far away from healthcare as possible. Single payer is collapsing in Europe.

In response the British government has enlisted private care for help, including most recently through the Health and Social Care Act 2012."[/I]




See US healthcare spending skyrocket once Medicare was instituted in 1966:

Medicare is expensive, no doubt about it, but it is worth it.

Here is a graph for you. Elderly poverty rates since Medicare was enacted.



Medicare and social security keep people from living in poverty. Raise people's taxes and lets support our elderly.

[Rohirrim]

Oh, and last year?

1.5 millions US citizens will declare bankruptcy, and a new study suggests that over 60 percent of those individuals will be brought under due to medical bills. Medical bill bankruptcies increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 on up to 62 percent in 2007. Most filers hailed from the middle class, and were “well-educated homeowners,” according to a report that will be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine, according to CNN. And, what’s more insane, three-quarters of the people with a medically-related bankruptcy had health insurance.
“Unless you’re a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you’re one illness away from financial ruin in this country,” according to lead author Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., from Harvard. “If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that’s the major finding in our study.”

Number of Europeans in countries with single payer who lost their homes due to medical costs? Zero.

[Rohirrim]

Meanwhile, in the United States, country with the highest health care costs in the world and some of the worst health outcomes:

Medical problems caused 62% of all personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. in 2007, according to a study by Harvard researchers. And in a finding that surprised even the researchers, 78% of those filers had medical insurance at the start of their illness, including 60.3% who had private coverage, not Medicare or Medicaid.

Medically related bankruptcies have been rising steadily for decades. In 1981, only 8% of families filing for bankruptcy cited a serious medical problem as the reason, while a 2001 study of bankruptcies in five states by the same researchers found that illness or medical bills contributed to 50% of all filings. This newest, nationwide study, conducted before the start of the current recession by Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School, Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School, and Deborah Thorne, a sociology professor at Ohio University, found that the filers were for the most part solidly middle class before medical disaster hit. Two-thirds owned their home and three-fifths had gone to college.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/...064_666715.htm

But that's okay. We'll allow the health care industry in the U.S. to continue to ream us. Why? Ideology.

[Rohirrim]

That's funny. The Wall Street Journal doesn't like universal health care. Who would have thought? I wonder what they think of our own health care system, which is doing so spectacularly? Oops! Dead last: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro...her-countries/ Hmm. The UK's was number one.

And Medicare was the only factor that caused health care costs to skyrocket in the 70s? I thought it was one part Medicare and five parts rapid inflation in the economy, expansion of hospital expenses and profits, changes in medical care including greater use of technology and the costs of medication, not to mention the launching of HMOs, which even Nixon knew was a ripoff right out of the gate? Of course, if you say it was ONLY Medicare, why wouldn't anybody believe that?

[pricejj]

Keep Socialist Democrats as far away from healthcare as possible. Single payer is collapsing in Europe.

"Yet even as the single-payer system remains the ideal for many on the left, it's worth examining how Britain's NHS, established in 1948, is faring. The answer: badly. NHS England—a government body that receives about £100 billion a year from the Department of Health to run England's health-care system—reported this month that its hospital waiting lists soared to their highest point since 2006, with 3.2 million patients waiting for treatment after diagnosis. NHS England figures for July 2013 show that 508,555 people in London alone were waiting for operations or other treatments—the highest total for at least five years.

Even cancer patients have to wait: According to a June report by NHS England, more than 15% of patients referred by their general practitioner for "urgent" treatment after being diagnosed with suspected cancer waited more than 62 days—two full months—to begin their first definitive treatment.

In response the British government has enlisted private care for help, including most recently through the Health and Social Care Act 2012."




See US healthcare spending skyrocket once Medicare was instituted in 1966:

[Rohirrim]

Or, we could have just removed the age restrictions on Medicare. Problem solved.

[Bronco Yoda]

.