I just found this alarming article

[Minionman]

Same.  I keep getting into arguments about women being lower paid than men (here in NZ... no idea about the outside situation).  If that was the case then market theory suggests that a company could make excess profits by positively discriminating towards women in their hiring policy (as you illustrate above).  The increase in companies looking to do the same would squeeze out most of the excess profit.
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Usually in the U.S. the question about women making less is more related to the types of jobs women vs. men tend to get into, and how much they get paid compared to each other. "Comparitive worth" is the idea that peopel with similar education levels or similar job types should make the same amount of money, and is how laws get into this issue.

[Guest]

Its a good arguement for federalized health care.

Its fair that a company not want to pay health care costs for risky behavior - but the end result is a nation of drones(as if TV hasnt done that enough all ready.)

[Nystul]

Its a good arguement for federalized health care.

Its fair that a company not want to pay health care costs for risky behavior - but  the end result is a nation of drones(as if TV hasnt done that enough all ready.)
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I always found it odd that we (in the U.S.) as individuals purchare our own car insurance, homeowners insurance and life insurance, but rely directly on our place of employment to determine the quality of our health care insurance. How did that come to be?

[kandrathe]

I always found it odd that we (in the U.S.) as individuals purchare our own car insurance, homeowners insurance and life insurance, but rely directly on our place of employment to determine the quality of our health care insurance.  How did that come to be?
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Back in the time of strong unions and when the majority of employees were in one, they negotiated to have the company supply health care.

The problem with health care now is that we are developing more and more expensive treatments and performing them on people who have very few years remaining in their life span. It's always a hard call, but does a 87 year old need expensive surgery to improve the quality of life for what is remaining.

Personally, I think the solution is to split health care into two types. The first is preventive care, normal predictable health problems and minor ailments, or on the job injuries which can be totally covered inexpensively by your employer. So it would be very similiar to dental insurance. We don't have a dental insurance crisis, because there are not revolutionary and expensive new ways to fix teeth.

The second type of insurance would be elective and cover chronic conditions or catastrophic problems and would be purchased by the individual. There is still an issue of when a person has no insurance and cannot afford to be ill, which is still a welfare problem. The moral question is; Can we afford as a society to try to keep everyone alive that we can keep alive and should we pay for everyone to have everything fixable fixed?

[Guest]

Your solution is bad.

For societies sake it is cost effective to have everyone get preventative basic health care.
But people are most concerned about a catastrophic illness. Everyone needs health care that covers cancer(which is ussually treatable) heart attacks and massive trauma(car wrecks etc). If people dont have this you end up with a great many struggleingfamilies in utter poverty. This problem would never effect wealthy families who can afford the insurance.

It would promote a 2 class system even more than we have today.




We have a serious problem in the US - our floundering healthcare system has reached the point that it is actually proping up large low paying employers(like Walmart) because people with families are forced in their jobs so their family doesnt lose healthcare.

[kandrathe]

For societies sake it is cost effective to have everyone get preventative basic health care.  But people are most concerned about a catastrophic illness.
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Ok, we agree so far.

Everyone needs health care that covers cancer(which is ussually treatable)  heart attacks and massive trauma(car wrecks etc). If people dont have this you end up with a great many struggleingfamilies in utter poverty. This problem would never effect wealthy families who can afford the insurance.

Sorry, unless you want to do away with the capitalist system there will always be rich and poor and wealth "inequity". Now, the most humane that capitalism can be is to be structured to help everyone up into a large middle class. But, your mindset is exactly why health insurance is going through the roof. If you want to have affordable health care then you have to be willing to admit that there are times when the cost of preventing death is too high. I would argue that few cancers are curable (treatable, to extend the lifespan slightly, yes.), and in fact most cancers are a consequence of aging.

It would promote a 2 class system even more than we have today.
We have a serious problem in the US - our floundering healthcare system has reached the point that it is actually proping up large low paying employers(like Walmart) because people with families are forced in their jobs so their family doesnt lose healthcare.

My proposed solution wouldn't fix the "inequity" of wealth in our society, just provide an affordable system of basic and normal healthcare for all citizens. If you smoke cigarettes, eat exclusively at McD, and expose your unprotected skin to UV rays all day, then the bad choices are yours and you should pay for them. If you want to insure that you will survive your quintuple bypass, skin and lung cancer, then you should plan for your future. That might be that you use prevention, or you might sock away half a million to pay for your treatments, or you might want to pay a large price for your catastrophic healthcare insurance, or you might just accept that you will not survive.

[Minionman]

For societies sake it is cost effective to have everyone get preventative basic health care.
But people are most concerned about a catastrophic illness.  Everyone needs health care that covers cancer(which is ussually treatable)  heart attacks and massive trauma(car wrecks etc). If people dont have this you end up with a great many struggleingfamilies in utter poverty. This problem would never effect wealthy families who can afford the insurance.
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Huge illnesses and car accidents don't haooen nearly as much as things like the flu or food poisoning, which although may not kill a big percantage of people who get them, do cause problems with work and can cost a good amount of money, so taking care of those kinds of healthcare helps people deal with the bigger things. And as you said, preventive health care costs less money and cuts down on the chance of having a bigger disease that needs far more money to treat.

Maybe the system kandrathe suggested doesn't work as well as a system possible could, but it does seem to work better than some systems now at getting good healthcare for a certain amount of money, considering there are some peopel who may not be able to afford basic healthcare.

[Guest]

Well your system screws the average guy(average by population numbers not by income).

Fortunetly our voting system pays more heed to the average guy than you. And for your information their are a large number of treatable(curaable by many definitions) cancers that are fairly expsense to treat. Breast cancer comes to mind.


I suspect most Americans are far more in favor of federalized health rather than your systen that would take away most the health care they all ready have.



Im really biting my tongue to not share my personal opinion of you.

[Guest]

A system that most people would never agree to isnt worth wasting time considering.



Now we may well at somepoint agree that some specific problems arent worth treating.(such as ressucitating terminal cancer patients, or doing a heart operation on a late stage Alzhiemers patient). But a simplistic system like was described is aburd because people wouldnt agree to it.

[Minionman]

A system that most people would never agree to isnt worth wasting time considering.
Now we may well at somepoint agree that some specific problems arent worth treating.(such as ressucitating terminal cancer patients, or doing a heart operation on a late stage Alzhiemers patient). But a simplistic system like was described is aburd because people wouldnt agree to it.
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What system are you suggesting that would work better? Besides people not agreeing to it, are there any other problems with it that you see and are arguing against?

My guess on this is that "basic health care" would have in it some basic cancer checks, and possible more complex cancers/heart diseases/etc. that are far cheaper to treat with prevention than with waiting, and/or certain groups of people have more risks of, and accidents. The more complex health care is everything else. Maybe accidents would get split into a third group if somethign liek this system were actually used.

[DeeBye]

I always found it odd that we (in the U.S.) as individuals purchare our own car insurance, homeowners insurance and life insurance, but rely directly on our place of employment to determine the quality of our health care insurance.  How did that come to be?
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Canadians get free basic healthcare, but for the "perks" like dental and prescription drugs we also rely on our places of employment. Life insurance is also something generally offered through work.

You raise a valid question though. You would think that out of all the possible insurances you must buy, basic health insurance would be the one you would most want to control.

I have a question about US healthcare. What happens when an uninsured US citizen gets diagnosed with a life-threatening, yet treatable, disease? If the person cannot afford treatment, is treatment withheld? What about non-life-threatening things, like broken bones and such?

[kandrathe]

Well your system screws the average guy(average by population numbers not by income).

Fortunetly our voting system pays more heed to the average guy than you. And for your information their are a large number of treatable(curaable by many definitions) cancers that are fairly expsense to treat. Breast cancer comes to mind.
I suspect most Americans are far more in favor of federalized health rather than your systen that would take away most the health care they all ready have.
Im really biting my tongue to not share my personal opinion of you.
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Sorry, however unfair, capitalism is the cause. We live in a system where individuals must compete against one another, in a societal survival of the fitest. If it makes you feel better to blame me for the system, well ok. Those who are wealthy will have access to alot of things the average guy would want, like a new heart or lungs for instance.

"Fortunetly our voting system pays more heed to the average guy than you." I don't want to burst your bubble on democracy, but our congressmen in DC are not the average people. They are more likely in the pocket of some HMO, or drug company.

Well, while this is not definitive, it is indicative of the new case/mortality of various kinds of cancer. Breast cancer is one of the easier to detect early types, and so it can often be caught before metastatis. It is not the death sentence it was 30 years ago, and I'm hopeful that most cancers will be curable in my lifetime.

Most Americans want full health care coverage for anything, and don't want to pay anything for it. Hence, the problem.

Here is another take on the problem;

Patients overuse medical resources since those resources appear to be free or almost free. Producers of medical equipment create new and more expensive devices, even if they are of only marginal benefit, since third-party payers create a guaranteed market. Attempts to rein in those costs have led to a blizzard of paperwork but proven ineffective in controlling costs.

The cure for the present problems is straightforward: the patient must once again be made the central actor in the medical marketplace. Patients need to be given the same motivations to economize on medical care that they have to economize in other markets. Tax laws need to be rewritten. The use of medical savings accounts needs to be promoted. High-deductible health insurance should be encouraged.

Returning the patient, and normal market principles, to center stage is all that is necessary to bring the costs of health care under control.
Stan Liebowitz is a professor of managerial economics in the Management School of the University of Texas at Dallas.

All I'm saying is that there should be a very simple predictable one size fits all plan for everyone that is affordable, which should address at a minimum, preventive care. After that, it should be up to the consumer.

The average worker pays about $13,000 per year for a family health plan. I think that is too high, especially when I'm one of those responsible people who only go to the doctor once per year for a physical. Inevitably, there will come a time in my life when I'm not healthy as an ox, and will acquire some health problems. I may have been better off by socking away the money in an IRA, then pay for my health problems when they arise. If my medical bills are way higher than what I can afford, then it is a welfare problem.

[Roland]

I have a question about US healthcare.  What happens when an uninsured US citizen gets diagnosed with a life-threatening, yet treatable, disease?  If the person cannot afford treatment, is treatment withheld?  What about non-life-threatening things, like broken bones and such?
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Interesting question. I have mild experience with this (I haven't had any form of "health" insurance for YEARS, but then I've needed hospitalization all of twice in my life, and only once was I not covered by insurance), and can say from experience that I was not turned away due to not having insurance. I didn't mention that paying for such a procedure as mine was going to be problematic, but they never asked.

Some background, before I go any further. At one point, I impaled my hand on a sword I own. It was some freak accident that occurred late at night. I found myself with no bandages of any kind, so I took a trip to the local pharmacy, where I was ordered to go to the hospital (after about 15 minutes of arguing). I was seen, treated (if that's what you can call it; I wish I knew then what I know now about that hospital, but so be it), and released within two hours, I'd say. The bill came several months later, to the tune of about two thousand dollars, IIRC. Two separate bills, actually, IIRC, each about a grand - one for the hospital services, and one for the doctor's services, if you can believe that. What did I have done? Some local anaesthesia, injected into the wound through a needle (not even injected; just squirted into it :P), a bit of movement testing to make sure I still had my motor skills, and about 4 badly placed stitches. Then they wrapped my hand, and then I was off. And they had the gall to charge me about two thousand dollars for that, merely because I had no insurance.

Never was there a point where I was refused service, although mine was minimal. I just asked my g/f, since she's had more direct experience with hospitals than I, and she believes, to the best of her knowledge, that so long as the hospital is government-funded a patient cannot be turned away. I happen to know for a fact that, if the treatment is necessary to keep the person alive in the immediate present, said patient cannot be turned away, financial stability or no. However, if one was diagnosed with, say, cancer, and their life expectancy without treatment was 6 months (just as an example), I DO believe that a hospital can turn away a patient. A government-funded facility may not be able to, but a privately owned hospital surely could. However, as I said already, someone in need of immediate emergency care cannot be turned away, regardless of what kind of hospital it is. That does not stop people from going to the hospital when they can't afford it, life-threatening or no, however.

Sooner or later, the bill has to be payed, and if the patient can't pay, the hospital will find someone connected to the patient who can, including family. It's also like that with automobile accidents, lawsuits, etc. - if the person being sued, etc. cannot afford the costs leveled against them, family members will be held responsible to make up the rest. But that's a different issue entirely.

I hope that clears things up, and I hope I didn't get anything wrong in my statements. I'm sure one of the other U.S. residents here will correct me if I am wrong.

[Guest]

I dont think you understand the nature of "insurance".

[Guest]

What I would suggest is irrellevent in this case.

You guys are putting forth a suggestion that is not in most Americans best interest. You may be right that its more effiecient(in terms of dollars to health gain) and maybe more fair from your perspective, but its not in most peoples best interest - so its not going to happens.



Myself(as a person who pays for his own insurance) I would love to see alll bussiness health care plans removed to health care providers would have to deal with everyone equally - but its not going to happen so I dont waste time suggesting it.

[Guest]

You lose everything you own then the state takes over ussually. But you wont get much beyond immediate attention. If you have cancer you might be able to get some basic care depending on your state, more likely youll end up getting some spotty care funded by charity and through hospital outreach programs etc.

[Guest]

Not quite true.

"Sooner or later, the bill has to be payed, and if the patient can't pay, the hospital will find someone connected to the patient who can, including family. It's also like that with automobile accidents, lawsuits, etc. - if the person being sued, etc. cannot afford the costs leveled against them, family members will be held responsible to make up the rest. But that's a different issue entirely."

In the US your debts are not transferable to your family(unless you mean your spouse and parents of a minor). Often families do help people cover costs so patients dont lose homes etc.

I think you need find a bit more out about the law.

[Minionman]

What I would suggest is irrellevent in this case.

You guys are putting forth a suggestion that is not in most Americans best interest. You may be right that its more effiecient(in terms of dollars to health gain) and maybe more fair from your perspective, but its not in most peoples best interest - so its not going to happens.
Myself(as a person who pays for his own insurance) I would love to see alll bussiness health care plans removed to health care providers would have to deal with everyone equally - but its not going to happen so I dont waste time suggesting it.
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So to you the main problem is that the system doesn't deal with diseases that are important to people. Kandrathe argues that it does, I argue that it may or may ot depending on how everything else in the system works.

And I ask about what you suggest since you did make the first complaint about the sytems people have now, so if you are complaining, either you you have an idea for how to make it better, in which you should go ahead and suggest changes, or you just brought it up to have something to complain about, in which case you really have nothing to say. All systems that people think up will have problems, but some may work better than others, and some will be mixtures of different systems put together. I like some parts of what different people have suggested, but not others and would probably mix them together.

[kandrathe]

I dont think you understand the nature of "insurance".
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Right. <_<

You may not know this, but there is a lifetime cap of outlay for most health insurance plans. Mine is currently is $250,000. So, even if I get some life threatening disease I'm screwed at some point in the illness. I've been paying for health insurance for 25 years, with very little use of it. I would have been better off with a medical savings account.

If the sum of insurance premiums are more than your probable outlay then it's a bad deal. But, the insurance companies prey on your fear of the unknown. I own only the insurance I am required, and then only with the highest possible deductibles and the lowest possible rates.

IMO, it's a shake down racket made legal.

[kandrathe]

Not quite true.

"Sooner or later, the bill has to be payed, and if the patient can't pay, the hospital will find someone connected to the patient who can, including family. It's also like that with automobile accidents, lawsuits, etc. - if the person being sued, etc. cannot afford the costs leveled against them, family members will be held responsible to make up the rest. But that's a different issue entirely."

In the US your debts are not transferable to your family(unless you mean your spouse and parents of a minor). Often families do help people cover costs so patients dont lose homes etc.

I think you need find a bit more out about the law.
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I actually have more experience with this than Roland. When I was 18 years old, I was in a catastrophic car crash without any insurance, and my 2 week stay in the hospital and subsequent therapy resulted in over $300K in medical bills. The only way that I was able to get out from under the debt was to file for bankruptcy protection and then using my lawyer, negotiate down my bill to cover only the hospitals costs, and then make payments over the next 10 years. Some people use bankruptcy to discharge all their debts entirely, but I wasn't raised that way.

If the patient does not pay the bill, then depending on the ownership of the hospital, it will be covered by the county welfare taxes, turned over to bill collectors, or eventually written off.