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[Zenorf]

Does your healthcare plan cover having 3 hands?

[dubajj]

Anyone have a dollar figure on this unaffordable insurance in the USA, like what a typical plan would cost atm?

For a woman in her mid-50's (say, like a lot of our mothers!), I looked up the costs from Kaiser Permanente (a local HMO, cheaper than "regular insurance") and the cheapest plan is $224.00USD per month.
The plan does not cover prescription medicine, and has a $7500USD deductible. Pretty much an emergency-only plan.
The cheapest non-deductible plan starts at $564USD/mo.
*none of these quotes have taken into account pre-existing conditions, etc.

My insurance costs about 240$ a month, covers prescriptions ( i pay $10 for them ), and has a $1000 deductible.  I also have a really minimal co-pay to goto any doctor i want.  I also have major health problems that qualify as pre-existing conditions on most plans!

The point is, it really depends on where you are, who you are and how lucky you are!  I am in NC, where it seems health insurance is very cheap.  I moved from NY where a similar plan would cost around double.

Jasper

[Dacke]

Does your healthcare plan cover having 3 hands?

Indeed it does.
In Sweden, we do have private health insurance. What is it used for?
   - It covers part of the income you lose by being sick.

The actual treatments are automatically covered, including treatment for extra limbs.
(You pay a small amount, to make sure you don't over-use the system).

     

[Zenorf]

To be completely simple, it's like a farmer getting rid of his mule-driven plow to buy a tractor. The costs are in the short run. Productivity goes up in the long run.

Productivity of a society goes up in the long run if people are educated and healthy. And it almost seems as if the republican party lately has been making an effort to keep people as ignorant and sickly as possible, which is strange. And this bill--this was the cheapest, most watered down provision they could come up with. Which is why there are estimates of them getting such bang for their buck, that's where the 132 million dollar cut on the deficit comes from.

I agree with just about everything you said and It's good that your both passionate and well informed. The above statement needs something pointed out in addition though.

A farmer invests for long term. A politician doesn't. He only cares about the next election (and some other self serving stuff like making more money). Generally politicians will do whatever they can to trip up the opposition whether their ideas are good or not. Lie, spread rumours, make false promises and many less legal acts. They generally don't care about 10 years from now or 20 years from now as long as they still have their big home in it's walled compound.

Yes. I do think most politicians are self serving arse holes and anyone that doesn't want to play their game has a very very difficult time doing anything productive.

[Zenorf]

Indeed it does.
In Sweden, we do have private health insurance. What is it used for?
   - It covers part of the income you lose by being sick.

The actual treatments are automatically covered, including treatment for extra limbs.
(You pay a small amount, to make sure you don't over-use the system).

     

Yeah. A lot of European systems are fairly similar and work well. Having said that, most of the developed world look at the American system with disbelief and are even more dumbfounded when many Americans essentially say "We don't want state health care. We like the idea that our entire health care system is 'for profit'"

[SirNiko]

To be completely simple, it's like a farmer getting rid of his mule-driven plow to buy a tractor. The costs are in the short run. Productivity goes up in the long run.

This assumes you do it properly, though. Poorly chosen investments are worse than if you'd just stayed where you are. Not to mention, if you go bankrupt between the investment and the payoff, you didn't accomplish anything even if the investment was perfectly brilliant. That's where the problem lies. We're already running huge deficits from a war and federal funding to try and ease the recession (both the stimulus package and bank bailouts and such). Even assuming those were "Good" investments (And I don't think any of them was) we still have to face the fact we don't have the money to keep investing until we start to see a return on that investment.

-SirNiko

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

@Paul Eres

How are the side effects of drugs affected either positively or negatively by the socialization of the Healthcare industry? Moreover, how does alleged "bribery" by major pharmaceutical companies affect this in any way? Pharmaceutical companies are usually separate from insurance companies. The recently passed Health Care Bill isn't going to be able to dictate much to pharmaceutical companies. They fall under the oversight of the FDA.

I read that article you linked to. Most of the activities it labels as "bribery" are just standard industry practices. A lot of that consultant and research work by MDs is required in order for pharmaceutical companies to get FDA approval. None of that is illegal. And don't even bother bringing nice meals at fancy restaurants up. That's one of the oldest tricks in the book for any sales representative in any industry. You can call that underhanded if you like, but there's no point in singling out the pharmaceutical industry for that.

the fda is what created the pharmaceutical industry, by creating an artificial monopoly: only if you have billions are you allowed to create a drug to treat people with. the existence of the fda is the primary socialization of the healthcare industry. i'd rather have universal healthcare and no fda than an fda and have the rest of the medical industry be private.

i didn't say the bribery was illegal or underhanded. just that it happens. the same thing happens with game reviews: big publishers buy fancy meals for game reviewers, and game reviewers give their games better scores. that's bribery too.

@ Eres

I'm a little bit confused by Private Charities.  I'm really hoping this is not a euphemism for the US's previous/current mess.  Otherwise, do you really think a multibillion dollar charity would work?  Who's giving thousands of dollars a month to this charity?  What happens when they start running dry?  You are not helping impoverished children for pennies a day with health care, you are buying millions of people operations with exorbitant costs (especially in the US).

I generally think their solution seems somewhat ineffective(reduce costs to individuals, by giving insurance companies an even stronger grip).  But I also think that with the 'Tea Partiers' and people who seemed to oppose anything that benefits someone who is not either rich or them, they did one of the better options they had available.

the exorbitant costs are a consequence of gov intervention in the market, though. it's not like surgeries would still cost millions of dollars if there were no fda, no ama, no huge health insurance companies, no huge pharmaceutical companies, etc.

and i oppose anything that benefits me as well. i have no health insurance, i'd likely get health insurance with this bill after it goes into effect. i'm still against it, though, even though it'd benefit me.

Anyone have a dollar figure on this unaffordable insurance in the USA, like what a typical plan would cost atm?

currently the lowest price you can get non-watered down health care for if you're an individual paying for it yourself and not a company buying it for employees is about 15,000$ a year. which is out of the range of the poor, many of which don't even make that much, or only make twice that in the case of families. the poverty line in the US is 30k$ a year for families and 18$k a year for individuals or something like that. it'd be a huge chunk out of that. it's a huge chunk out of even the average salary in the US -- i believe the average salary in the US is about $40,000 or so now, so the average health insurance plan is more than one third of the average income in the US.

because many people don't get sick every year (at least not to the degree that requires modern medicine), it's often ridiculous to pay a third of your income just in case you might get sick this year. for instance, not counting mandatory vaccinations, i've been to the doctor / hospital exactly twice in my lifetime of 31 years. and one of those was when i was born. was that really worth 31x15,000$ to insure (nearly half a million dollars)? not for me. i might require health insurance more as i get older, of course, but so far i haven't really required it. so i believe people should have the option to elect not to have health care. because sometimes it's really the most rational decision.

a lot has been made about the right to health care. but even if you believe that's a right: don't you also have the right to refuse health care? the right not to be forced to buy health insurance? is that any less of a right?

[drChengele]

a lot has been made about the right to health care. but even if you believe that's a right: don't you also have the right to refuse health care? the right not to be forced to buy health insurance? is that any less of a right?

Certainly. Universal healthcare should be optional, even if it was free the choice should be yours. This is why FORCING someone to BUY healthcare, at any terms, is completely idiotic. I heard that the US bill will penalize people who do not opt for healthcare which is a completely wrong way to go about this. I suppose they are afraid that not enough people would willingly switch to state healthcare otherwise.

[Zaphos]

a lot has been made about the right to health care. but even if you believe that's a right: don't you also have the right to refuse health care? the right not to be forced to buy health insurance? is that any less of a right?

Certainly. Universal healthcare should be optional, even if it was free the choice should be yours. This is why FORCING someone to BUY healthcare, at any terms, is completely idiotic. I heard that the US bill will penalize people who do not opt for healthcare which is a completely wrong way to go about this. I suppose they are afraid that not enough people would willingly switch to state healthcare otherwise.

It's not idiotic ... if you want health insurance to accept people regardless of pre-existing conditions, then you need some new way to make sure healthy people still get health insurance to average out the costs for the sick people.  Otherwise people could just wait until they're sick to get insurance, which would defeat the cost-averaging benefits of an insurance system.

[Kinten]

A bit OT:
What's funny to me is that the debate is the direct opposite here in Sweden.
We're going towards more privatization of our healthcare system and people are outraged.
Also, the largest party here has previously promised an increase in taxes if they get elected this year (yes, the largest party is not in government at the moment, because there's seven in total).

All I can say is, in politics the only time you can be absolutely 100% right about something is in retrospect, so America, you'll just have to wait and see.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

It's not idiotic ... if you want health insurance to accept people regardless of pre-existing conditions, then you need some new way to make sure healthy people still get health insurance to average out the costs for the sick people.  Otherwise people could just wait until they're sick to get insurance, which would defeat the cost-averaging benefits of an insurance system.

it's not idiotic in that there's a reasoning (that you just gave) for it, but it's idiotic considering that it isn't necessary: the US gov spends far more money on health care for its people than any other nation and doesn't even have universal health care. it'd be cheaper just to make health care free for everyone, rather than forcing everyone to buy very expensive health care insurance from corporations who only actually pay back 22 cents on the dollar to people (this is a true fact -- literally only 22% of the money people pay to health insurance companies go back into paying for health care for people, the rest is eaten up in overhead and profits). but exactly because those corporations are so rich, they can pay government to force people to buy health insurance from them, and have government pay them for the people who can't afford it, instead of a more sensible solution. not to mention that prevention programs would cut down on the costs of health care tremendously, yet almost nothing is spent by the gov on prevention.

[Dacke]

It's not idiotic in that there's a reasoning (that you just gave) for it, but it's idiotic considering that it isn't necessary: the US gov spends far more money on health care for its people than any other nation and doesn't even have universal health care. It'd be cheaper just to make health care free for everyone, rather than forcing everyone to buy very expensive health care insurance from corporations who only actually pay back 22 cents on the dollar to people (this is a true fact -- literally only 22% of the money people pay to health insurance companies go back into paying for health care for people, the rest is eaten up in overhead and profits). But exactly because those corporations are so rich, they can pay government to force people to buy health insurance from them instead of a more sensible solution.

If true, that's insane. I mean, 22%? Do you have any sources to back that up?

[drChengele]

It's not idiotic ... if you want health insurance to accept people regardless of pre-existing conditions, then you need some new way to make sure healthy people still get health insurance to average out the costs for the sick people. Otherwise people could just wait until they're sick to get insurance, which would defeat the cost-averaging benefits of an insurance system.

I'm sorry, it's probably my European mentality again which most likely doesn't apply to the situation at hand.

I admit the thought of "gaming the system" by not getting insurance didn't cross my mind, but the benefits of having healthcare are multiple, they enable you regular checkups, everyone needs a trip to the dentist once in a while, etc. If the concern about playing the system is so large you can just make it so that you can't get coverage for the first three months after your first payment. If you are given a choice between a) paying a small (or no) amount of money for healthcare, or b) not paying anything and risking you drive your family bankrupt if you get hit by a car or contract a disease, every sane person will go with option a). Or I suppose this doesn't apply to the US because the private insurance sector is already very powerful and developed and can provide alternatives to the universal healthcare system unless it is enforced?

[Craig Stern]

Or I suppose this doesn't apply to the US because the private insurance sector is already very powerful and developed and can provide alternatives to the universal healthcare system unless it is enforced?

You don't get fined if you have private insurance. In fact, private insurance is the only option right now because Congress didn't include the public option in the bill.

[PaleFox]

Indeed, as I said before, the bill lacks any kind of public option. All it does is require everyone to get health care -- and forces the insurance companies to allow them to do so. I believe there are also expansions of medicare and such included, but it's a terrible plan to be honest. I am deeply disappointed that the "great reform" has been so watered down as to be the exact opposite of what it once was.

Ted Kennedy would be ashamed.

[Smithy]

It's not idiotic ... if you want health insurance to accept people regardless of pre-existing conditions, then you need some new way to make sure healthy people still get health insurance to average out the costs for the sick people.  Otherwise people could just wait until they're sick to get insurance, which would defeat the cost-averaging benefits of an insurance system.

it's not idiotic in that there's a reasoning (that you just gave) for it, but it's idiotic considering that it isn't necessary: the US gov spends far more money on health care for its people than any other nation and doesn't even have universal health care. it'd be cheaper just to make health care free for everyone, rather than forcing everyone to buy very expensive health care insurance from corporations who only actually pay back 22 cents on the dollar to people (this is a true fact -- literally only 22% of the money people pay to health insurance companies go back into paying for health care for people, the rest is eaten up in overhead and profits). but exactly because those corporations are so rich, they can pay government to force people to buy health insurance from them, and have government pay them for the people who can't afford it, instead of a more sensible solution. not to mention that prevention programs would cut down on the costs of health care tremendously, yet almost nothing is spent by the gov on prevention.

This is my criticism of the bill. The health insurance industry is corrupt and needs to be done away with or completely reworked, not rewarded, and this is why I feel the removal of a public option is vile. It is skewed to be too weak, from my perspective. The hundred dollar per day fine is bullshit on companies that refuse coverage is too small. Giving an industry with such a high markup four years to do away with pre-existing conditions on adults is too much time. The bill is weakened--so weakened that it's hard to see where all the passion against it is coming from--but at least it's a step--better than nothing from a realistic standpoint, and like someone said way earlier, hopefully our system can improve in increments from here.

I just can't stand the arguments that it's socialist and all the bullshit that people are getting fired up about, about repealing what little progress has actually been made. Children born with pre-existing conditions can be covered. Tax credits help those in need to afford health insurance, as well as the businesses that need to cover employees. Companies can no longer simply drop you when you finally get sick. There is a wealth of details in the bill that people aren't paying attention to. They just want it repealed for the sake of their freedom not to pay for health care, and for the sake of the companies freedom to utterly skullfuck them in the end.

Edit: Also, someone posted this earlier, but regarding the argument that no attention is paid to preventative care: "7. New plans must cover checkups and other preventative care without co-pays. All plans will be affected by 2018."

It's a step.

[george]

If true, that's insane. I mean, 22%? Do you have any sources to back that up?

He doesn't, because that number is so far from reality it's hard to understand where he got it from.

Current estimates put U.S. health care spending at approximately 16% of GDP, second highest to East Timor (Timor-Leste) among all United Nations member nations.[7] The Health and Human Services Department expects that the health share of GDP will continue its historical upward trend, reaching 19.5 percent of GDP by 2017.[33][34] Of each dollar spent on health care in the United States 31% goes to hospital care, 21% goes to physician services, 10% to pharmaceuticals, 8% to nursing homes, 7% to administrative costs, and 23% to all other categories (diagnostic laboratory services, pharmacies, medical device manufacturers, etc.[28]

Furthermore the figure of 15,000 is somewhat ridiculous, unless that's meant to be for a family of four. Individual costs would be more like $2500-4000 for an average adult (i.e. not a 50 or 60 year old or whatever).

However the poverty level figure is too high -- I believe it's more like $22000 for a family of four in the USA.

edit:

The health care system in the U.S. has a vast number of players. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of insurance companies in the U.S.[69][140] This system has considerable administrative overhead, far greater than in nationalized, single-payer systems, such as Canada's. An oft-cited study by Harvard Medical School and the Canadian Institute for Health Information determined that some 31% of U.S. health care dollars, or more than $1,000 per person per year, went to health care administrative costs, nearly double the administrative overhead in Canada, on a percentage basis.[141]

[gunmaggot]

@ Paul re: the FDA:
You are sorta living in libertarian fantasy land here - every evil in the world stemming from government intereference (corporations aren't bad ... the government MAKES them bad!).  Not that simple.  All of your crits of the FDA could be better answered by more (or at least better) regulation, not less - if anything, the apparently-endemic-to-the-US aversion to regulation has watered down the organisation and made it more open to corruption from lobbyists/BIG PHARMA.  Similar institutions exist in every developed country but don't have anywhere near the same baggage as the FDA (though they do tend to have their own problems like wasting tax money on hocus pocus bullshit like homeopathy, dodgy dietary supplements etc.).  It's also absurd and unfounded to suggest that the FDA is what created the pharmaceutical industry - that is just ... wow.

[Curseman]

What?
No, people don't say an insurance company has a magical pool of money and that's why it should pay for sick customers...

They say an insurance company should pay for a sick customer because that's their job, and that's the expensive, expensive service that they've been selling.

And they should give that service to those who have paid for it.  Like I said before.  That's one of the few things they did right in this bill.  It ought to have been passed by itself a long time ago.

But there's no reason why insurance companies should be required to pay when some shmoe they've never done business with before shows up at their door with a serious illness and demands that they cover him.

economics

I just want to be clear here.  Did you just claim that when a business decides whether or not to hire people, they do not take the costs of hiring new employees into account?  I 'd think that even the most adamant communist wouldn't be so ignorant as to make that claim, but I can't think of any way to interpret what you said, assuming you understood what I said.

I don't think that's what you really meant, so I will restate my position in a set of basic statements, and I would like to know which of them you take issue with.

1. A business primarily exists to make a profit.
2. Businesses hire employees as a means of bringing in greater profits.
3. There are costs associated with hiring employees.
4. If the cost of hiring an employee exceeds the profit that employee will make for them, it is unlikely that a business will be interested in hiring.

From these things I draw the following conclusion:

5. Increasing the cost of hiring employees (as the health care bill does) may make the costs of some potential employees greater than the profit they will bring in and will lower the overall revenue gained from the others, thus decreasing the likelihood that a business will hire them.

I am not claiming when a rich man gains further riches it will help poor people 100% of the time with no exceptions.

This is a slippery slope if ever I saw one.

Actually it's the statement of an incredibly obvious fact.  Any extrapolations you made from it are entirely your own.

sounds like you're a privileged kid (...) You're so disconnected! I mean, it sounds like you're theorizing what 'those poor, poor people's' lives are like from your gold plated toilet seat.

Nice set of ad hominem arguments there.  Do you make value judgments about others every time they disagree with one of your opinions?

Is it inconceivable that one could place a higher value on the freedom to own property than the security of having someone else cover one's expenses against their will unless that person lives a life of total privilege?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

@gunmaggot: no, it's definitely corporations that make government bad just as much as vice versa. if the government listened to the people it wouldn't be as bad as it is now.

i also didn't say the fda created drug companies ex nihilo, just that they didn't dominate modern medicine until the fda existed. to someone in 1800, the idea that a drug company could exceed the power and size of, say, a railroad company or a steel company would have seemed absurd. they knew about drug companies, they existed even back then, but they didn't dominate medicine back then.


@george: you have to distinguish between % of gdp spent on health care and the % of health insurance dollars paid to health insurance companies that goes toward healthcare. not all of the money spent on health care goes through health insurance; a lot of it goes through medicare and medicaid instead. there's also a difference between profits as a percent of revenue/assets (which tends to be between 5% and 15% for health insurance companies) and the percent of their revenues those insurance companies on health services. health insurance companies have been known to spend a lot of money on operations: advertisement, lawyers and court costs, and so on. so you can't just subtract profits from revenue and say the rest went towards health services. estimates have to take that all into account.

about costs, see this: http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/hiddencosts/index.html

"In 2008, the average premium for a family plan purchased through an employer was $12,680, nearly the annual earnings of a full-time minimum wage job."

in 2009, that rose 20-30%, a very large single-year increase, so it's even more now:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20100224/stupak.statement.02.24.2010.pdf

this bill will doubtless raise it even more; saying it's only $2500-$4000 is somewhat ridiculous, i've never seen anyone pay that little in the last few years.

edit: wait, i didn't catch that it was referring to families rather than individuals; i'll try to find the average cost to individuals.

edit 2: okay, i found this: http://healthinsurance.about.com/od/healthinsurancebasics/a/cost_of_health_insurance.htm

"The annual premium was very different from state to state. For example, the premium for a family health plan in New York was $13,296, while a similar plan in Iowa was $5609."

that may have been the reason i was confused about it. i'm in nj, which is a fairly expensive state to buy health insurance in. but it does seem that you're right, and that health insurance can be fairly low in some states / some cases. of course, what i said above wouldn't change even if the average price of health care were only $2000 a year -- it would still be cheaper in some cases not to buy insurance at all if you're a healthy person who seldom / never needs health care. it's definitely riskier, but it could sometimes be the better choice.


@dacke & others asking for the source of that number: apparently estimates vary (on further research i had thought it was more known than it is). one of the interesting things about this bill is that it forces insurance companies to reveal what percent goes towards health care (they currently do not, which is why people estimate). so the source would only be the source of that particular estimate, and you can find all kinds of estimates.

the reason i do trust the 22% estimate however is that it just feels right considering a) the amount of profits as percent of revenue of most health insurance companies is about 10%, b) i've heard that almost as much is spent by health insurance companies on advertising as on health services, and c) most health insurance companies have a policy of cutting off people it's too expensive to pay for by using detectives to track down some pre-existing condition that wasn't mentioned on their form and then suing them, often preferring to spend the money on lawyers and detectives to do that than on health services, and d) the ~half-billion-a-year bonuses their ceos get. in any case, we don't know, but we'll find out eventually now that they will be forced to reveal it (effective in 2014 or 2018 or whatever -- why do these bills take forever to go into effect?).