Winter has come

DoubleEgger

It's interesting that medical procedures not covered by insurance have gotten cheaper and the price of everything else has skyrocketed. 

HeavyG

theyolksonyou said:

JohnInCarolina said:

theyolksonyou said:

@JohnInCarolina I keep losing all kinds of points on you. 

Haha.  One of these days I really am going to try and cash in all my points on some kind of buffalo trophy. 

I had a shîtload of points on that thread. 13 agrees...dammit all to hell. 

WTF?!?!? You lose your Agree points if a thread is buffaloed?

Man...that's kinda harsh Mr. Buffalo!

JohnInCarolina

DoubleEgger said:

It's interesting that medical procedures not covered by insurance have gotten cheaper and the price of everything else has skyrocketed. 

 Let's just have insurance plans that don't cover anything and then everything will be free!  

SkySaw

There is no such thing as free market efficiencies in health care delivery. US health care per capita is the most expensive in the world, and many other countries are doing much better in terms of life expectancy. Here is a plot of actual health care expenditures by country against life expectancy: look where the US falls. Efficient? no. Effective? no.

paqman

When was the last time that there was protests in the US after an election?  I work in Ottawa and drive by the US embassy every day.  From time to time we see protestants but yesterday there was a major anti-Trump protest.

When was the last time that the stock markets crashed after a US president election?

Interesting discussion about health care insurance.  I was not even aware that there is no universal coverage in British Columbia.

Little Steven

paqman said:

When was the last time that there was protests in the US after an election?  I work in Ottawa and drive by the US embassy every day.  From time to time we see protestants but yesterday there was a major anti-Trump protest.

When was the last time that the stock markets crashed after a US president election?

Interesting discussion about health care insurance.  I was not even aware that there is no universal coverage in British Columbia.

I hate when the protestants get mad.

paqman

Little Steven said:

paqman said:

When was the last time that there was protests in the US after an election?  I work in Ottawa and drive by the US embassy every day.  From time to time we see protestants but yesterday there was a major anti-Trump protest.

When was the last time that the stock markets crashed after a US president election?

Interesting discussion about health care insurance.  I was not even aware that there is no universal coverage in British Columbia.

I hate when the protestants get mad.

I should have said demonstrators...  I'm French, I have an excuse The thread is sinking so nobody will see it ... 

fishlessman

JohnInCarolina said:

bgebrent said:

JohnInCarolina said:

bgebrent said:

ACA sucks for patients and providers.  My opinion from being both.

OK.  How do you fix it while still allowing for pre-existing conditions?

Agree PE needs coverage, and portability.  Let's solve this at BB.  ACA is big Govt fix.  More personal responsibility with no govt inefficiency factor and more pay to play with a safety net.  Folks like me do a couple hundred k for free per year because it's who we are.  Don't ask for more, because it'll drive us away.  It's mostly about efficiencies and regulations.  Things the government fails at horribly.

How do you get private companies to cover PE and make money though?  I just don't see how they manage to get large enough, healthy enough risk pools.  In the end there's only so much grease to be made up for in the way of efficiency.  The main cost drivers don't really change.  

have a small family business thats been around since the ealy 70's, always paid full health care for all employees. its rigged (had to say that   ). what your looking at is a three card monti game with lots of cards, theres that PE card, the risk pools (we get put into pools with thousands of companies, hows that a small pool and yet it is), been doing this the old insurance way, the romney insurance way, the obama insurance way. its taken a few years for the insurance companies to come back on top. watch them move out of areas because theres more money, watch the premiums jump up, watch those companies making the new high premiums start raising them again, watch them move out of state when everyone screams about those high premiums, watch the insurance company that originally moved out move back in with higher rates, its a cycle rigged by insurance companies that know how to play the game. in the old days when you had a problem you took your bills to work and it got straightened out, now its your policy, one pissant against the giants. this can not be fixed by a politician, but i do believe a businessman could make it better, it will never be perfect, insurance companies work extremely hard on this 24/7 to get their profits up. politicians drop the ball once things get signed in when they should be playing hardball

CTMike

My wife has been in the hospital for the last ten days due to a severe asthma flare up. Her previous pulmonologist had to close his successful practice due to changes related to ACA. He couldn't afford to stay in business anymore. 

During her stay, she has seen one of the two remaining pulmo's exactly once, for all of about 5 minutes. The remainder of her care has been coordinated by a hospitalist who is juggling many patients throughout the entire hospital. Sad commentary on the state of healthcare in this country. 

I remember having a conversation with my ultra liberal father (he made JIC look right of center) about Obamacare when it was being proposed/enacted. I told him that the federal government loses billions of dollars per year via Medicare/Medicaid fraud. How would they effectively manage a program that would be 5 times larger? His reply was "I would rather get farked by the government than a company that is out for a profit." 

We have to find some reasonable middle ground between what we had before and what's we have now. PE conditions need to be covered, but insurance needs to be affordable for all. Ask all those people on ACA how they are doing with the announced premium increases for next year. All of the current providers pulling out of the marketplace is only going to make things worse. 

This is may be the closet conspiracy theorist is me coming out, but I wouldn't be surprised if ACA was designed to fail from the start to force the country to a single payer system. 

Skiddymarker

@CTMike - isn't the single payer route the only one that will work? Maybe because that's all we have here in Canuckistan, it is what I am familiar with. What little I do know about the ACA and the insurance companies that wrote it, hard to expect any other result than the one you folks are seeing. 

HeavyG

CTMike said:

My wife has been in the hospital for the last ten days due to a severe asthma flare up. Her previous pulmonologist had to close his successful practice due to changes related to ACA. He couldn't afford to stay in business anymore...

We hear lots of claims that doctors everywhere are closing practices because of the ACA. Maybe that really does happen. Maybe there are other reasons some practices close or merge.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/06/02/why-doctors-really-quit/#4d3d5cc628f7

CTMike

HeavyG said:

CTMike said:

My wife has been in the hospital for the last ten days due to a severe asthma flare up. Her previous pulmonologist had to close his successful practice due to changes related to ACA. He couldn't afford to stay in business anymore...

We hear lots of claims that doctors everywhere are closing practices because of the ACA. Maybe that really does happen. Maybe there are other reasons some practices close or merge.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/06/02/why-doctors-really-quit/#4d3d5cc628f7

He closed his private practice and went to work in the ICU. Came to visit my wife because during her stay to check up on her. He told us straight up that ACA put him out of business. 

HeavyG

Oh boy, The Donald just can't help himself:



The next few years are going to be "fun".

Also, we learn today that Megyn Kelly knew  that some Fox executive(s) had given Trump some of the questions she asked before the debate but didn't say anything until after the election. That's some journalistic integrity right there.

CTMike

HeavyG said:

Oh boy, The Donald just can't help himself:



The next few years are going to be "fun".

Also, we learn today that Megyn Kelly knew  that some Fox executive(s) had given Trump some of the questions she asked before the debate but didn't say anything until after the election. That's some journalistic integrity right there.

It's not like CNN came forward with the news of Brazile's transgressions. We never would have heard about it except for Wikileaks. So your journalistic integrity brush paints both ways. 

On another note, they need to take away this guys Twitter access. Just making himself look foolish. 

paqman

CTMike said

On another note, they need to take away this guys Twitter access. Just making himself look foolish. 

@CTMike That would be a good start.  They should also avoid giving him the nuclear codes...

HeavyG

CTMike said:

HeavyG said:

Oh boy, The Donald just can't help himself:



The next few years are going to be "fun".

Also, we learn today that Megyn Kelly knew  that some Fox executive(s) had given Trump some of the questions she asked before the debate but didn't say anything until after the election. That's some journalistic integrity right there.

It's not like CNN came forward with the news of Brazile's transgressions. We never would have heard about it except for Wikileaks. So your journalistic integrity brush paints both ways. 

On another note, they need to take away this guys Twitter access. Just making himself look foolish. 

When CNN learned from more compelling evidence via Wikileaks that perhaps Brazile did obtain and shared some debate info they fired her BEFORE the election.

Brazile was not a moderator of a debate, Kelly was. Kelly knew that some of her questions had been shared with Team Trump before the debate. Kelly professes to be a journalist, Brazile does not.

That said, all the networks have so many conflicts of interest in who they hire as commentators/analysts during these elections that I always assume that both camps have some stuff leaked to them.