“ If Republicans kill ACA subsidies, a couple making $85K will pay $25,000 a year for healthcare.
That’s 30% of their income—just to stay alive.
This isn’t “fiscal conservatism.” It’s economic violence against the middle class.”
- Brian Allen @allenanalysis
Health insurance doesn’t keep 90+ % of the population paying for it alive.
Most people in a given year don’t spend anywhere near the amount they pay in insurance premiums.
We joke about men not seeing their doctors. Women may see their doctors 3-4 times a year. If you’ve got children they’re seeing doctors more frequently, but even so an average normal family probably isn’t spending as much as their yearly or even monthly premium.
The question to ask is what does it really cost for a 20 minute visit with a doctor? What do medications actually cost to manufacture? Why can I self pay for a medication and pay $50 for 90 days, but if I put it through insurance suddenly that same medication is $400? Why can I “Self Pay” for my once a year doctor visit, have a physical + tests & have it cost $800 cash, but my monthly insurance premium per month is $1400?
Yes, insurance costs are out of hand. Yes, insurance companies are making breath-taking profits not on illness but by selling fear. The fear they’re selling is rising medical costs but they have a hand in driving those costs up by making those actually practicing medicine have to add staff just to deal with insurance billing and coding. Who are insurance bureaucrats to deny a doctor’s diagnosis?
The medical / insurance / pharmaceutical industry is a snake eating its own tail. That snake gets fatter each cycle but eventually it will eat itself to death.
This issue isn’t partisan. The issue is continuing to throw money at a system that is fundamentally broken and expecting the brokenness to get fixed without looking at or demanding to know why / how it’s broken and taking appropriate action to fix it.
ACA was presented as an attempt to address the problem. It didn’t work, the math never worked. Congress knew that going in. That’s why they attempted to mandate everyone pay into the system and why they were going to fine people who didn’t.
It failed In part because it didn’t account for economic conditions, and in part because it didn’t account for adherence to ACA rules adding cost and complexity to the practice of medicine.
The ACA pretty much drove small medical practices out of business. They had no choice but to merge with larger medical groups or hospitals meaning that a doctor hanging out a shingle and seeing patients on his or her own all but disappeared.
The quality of care decreased because now you may see one of four or more doctors none of whom know your name. None of them interact with you as a person and all of them are diagnosing / prescribing based on data in your chart, not actually knowing you as a living breathing human being.
Half the time they’re not listening and in some cases it’s questionable if they fully understand what you’re saying due to language barriers. You’re just one of a thousand bodies parading through an office in a given week.
Fixing this system isn’t about supplementing it with taxpayer’s dollars. Fixing this system is about bringing it to heel.
One way to start that might be for everyone that can, to stop buying the insurance companies fear. Switch to self pay and then negotiate fair pricing from medical practitioners.
Another possibility is to demand upfront pricing so that a patient knows it will cost X dollars for a procedure. If you see an MD it’s $100 /hr (And you get their FULL attention, no more playing with their computers). Blood work costs X dollars for a comprehensive panel. X-rays? What does it cost for materials+the hourly rate for the technician+the hourly rate for a doctor to look at the X-ray. There was a time when a film X-ray cost $50 flat. Why does where you have any testing done affect the bottom line cost? Just crossing county lines can have a 30% differential.
Why is it that we all have blood work done, but if you ask them to tell you what your blood type is, they want to charge you another fee? They’re already there, they’ve got the lab, the samples, and the typing cards. Shouldn’t we all know our blood type as a matter of safety?
These are the kinds of questions that should be asked.
You want the government to do something about healthcare? Then have them run audits and accounting to determine the real costs of care. Then move forward to make changes beneficial to the American people, not the insurance companies.
You wouldn’t continue to pump gas into your car from a leaky gas pump, why do people think it’s okay to keep pumping tax dollars into a system that is leaking money like a sieve and providing poor services?
Well, the power is still on, the water is still coming from the tap. It looks like the internet is still up.
Saw that coming!