Coronavirus - are we all doomed?

I would think the NYC police union would have top-tier health insurance. Usually, union-style healthcare plans include spouses and underage children. It seems like the secondary insurance would cover what the primary didn't.

Agreed.

I've honestly always been pretty happy with my insurance, long before obamacare, and I worked for quite a laundry list of industries.
My wife, even part time jobs at schools had the best insurance you could have.

regardless of what they said, I think the main reason for obamacare was people who weren't working, or were working very little, not qualifying for benefits.
 
Both my wife and I worked for school districts and had top notch insurance until we turned 65 then went on Medicare.
 
It is definitely true that when insurance is paying, 1) customers don't know or care the price and that's harmful to the system.

We need a huge team of people who understand every facet of why hospitals and facilities, especially, are charging so much
I personally think it should be REQUIRED that those people, the people who attempt to solve this problem, have experience in multiple other countries to see how they are doing it. I think regulation and litigation will come up as major factors.

Just like troubleshooting code. Start with the end result and work backwards, slowly, asking questions along each step.

"Why are you charging $5,000 for the MRI machine?"
- Well, we have to hire a special MRI tech for $70,000/year who does nothing but run the machine once every 3 hours and stands there on their phone the rest of the time
"Why would you do that? Why not train the nurse to use it?
- Because the nurse is doing nothing but meds admin and the MRI tech is needed because if we make one mistake with the machine, a single lawsuit shuts down the whole hospital.
"What do you mean?"
- and so on and so forth.

Yes hospitals and corporations are greedy, but I believe at the end of the day there are reasons why they charge so much and I believe it comes down to regulation and litigation in large part.
You will find in other countries that both of those aspects are a tiny fraction of what they are in the USA.
In the long run it leads to hospitals having to hire people at a ridiculous level of specialization and niche tasks, which is extremely expensive.
 
Interesting video on the subject of "healthcare"...
I can only speak to my own experiences regarding health insurance. When I was diagnosed with cancer 6 years ago I was able to get MRI's without delays locally. Once the diagnoses was made I rejected my primary doctors suggestion and made appointment with UCLA cancer center. Another MRI was done along with other scans. They scheduled me immediately for the DaVinci robotic surgery. UCLA invented this technology. My surgeon has performed thousands of these surgeries.
My surgery was covered by insurance but even if it wasn't I'd rather be bankrupt than dead waiting for services. People are responsible for decisions they make regarding work insurance and a whole host of other things, sometimes we make poor decisions like paying more for cable TV than health insurance.
 
Wow ... thanks for telling the story, AB. Really glad you were able to get that done.
I agree, insurance (of all types) is one of those things ... Painful but necessary. And like you said, there IS some mercy for the neglectful, we have Chapter 7.

My wife, who is Mexican, is usually on the side of the conversation encouraging me to get less because, of course, (I'm thinking of CAR insurance here) is INSANELY expensive with 2 young adult drivers. I resist, telling her, I know it hurts bad - but insurance is one of those painful decisions that simply has to be made. Their economy just doesn't have a big emphasis on insurance, or credit. Until recently maybe.

Of course, I could say 1000 positive things about her culture's influence on me too, though. She's the one pushing me towards a healthier social connections with people. And it shows. Her family/group had barely even heard of "depression" and "anxiety" until they met my people. It pays.
 
It seems to me, as a foreigner that the American prescription service and the hospital system seem to be excessively complicated by insurance companies and needs to be simplified somewhat. It would appear that you need a masters degree to understand it. I've heard that the first question any American doctor asks is 'are you insured?' If no, then you don't get treatment other than a basic check to make sure you're not dying, then you're chucked out on the street.

In the UK, hospital and medical treatment is free, you pay a percentage of your salary or wages to pay for it. In Scotland all residents get free prescription drugs, in England you pay a flat rate for each item prescribed (unless you are exempt) then when you reach retirement age, all prescriptions are free. Dental care is not free.
Col
 
Yes, healthcare billing situation in the USA needs the same thing the tax laws need - drastic simplification.
But to simplify it, the complicating factors need to be agreed-upon and partially removed. Regulation, Litigation. The problem is people don't agree on that. We have one party (Democrats) who just want to increase taxes and throw Money at all problems. Money on top of more money. The other party generally used to stand for more fiscal common sense, but these days they aren't doing much of anything because the last decade has been just standing up to push back against radicalism to the point where there is no time left to do anything else.

We could easily pay for the things we needed to if we just enforced the tax code and simplified it.
Everyone pays 10%, or something - but it would have to be EVERYONE. Not just the rich, as that just discourages everyone from being rich and is morally unfair.
 
Why not? Everything else is covered.

By the way "free" is a misnomer everyone pays in one form or another.
1) God knows, it probably dates back to Roman times, and someone has to pay for the dentists' Mercedes-Benz. Although if you are an NHS patient, your charged is capped as opposed to a private patient.

2) you're right of course, but it's the way the British describe it.
Col
 
I was pondering all this and I suddenly realized something about my own opinions that somewhat surprised me.

If - IF - I could just push a button and magically make "free" healthcare be one of FEW things that our government actually provided for us, "few things" meaning the list of junk the government churns out to people would be cut by about 50% or more - meaning we would go back to the 1960's where a man grew up knowing he was responsible for himself by working and earning paychecks like normal life has been for 1000's of years - AND if the tax code was made fair, meaning, every single person and business paid a little bit in taxes - meaning we would eliminate the loopholes for those who can afford to hire accountants/lawyers, but we would equally eliminate the loopholes by which half the country is considered "too poor" to pay taxes, but rather, everyone would pay 10-15%........ Then, and in that case, I, even as a conservative Republican, would be perfectly happy to say "Ok. Let's provide free healthcare and take it from our taxes. Boom.

I honestly believe a lot of conservatives, even the ones who were staunchly opposed to Obamacare for many good reasons, might agree with me.

If only.

The problem is we can't seem to cut out the 50% or more of the government spending that's just purely ridiculous.

IF only we could, we might find we all here in America COULD in fact, agree on providing free healthcare.

Every politician who sponsors a law is full of questions like "how can you be against THIS?" but of course the question really isn't that simple.
It's never just "this". It's "all that plus now this".

Dear citizens of the United States, who would rather have free, imperfect but reasonably ok, healthcare, instead of these:

  • Taxpayers are rolling the dice on a high-stakes study that aims to untangle the psychology of gambling addiction – by building a casino for pigeons. The National Institute of Health has sent nearly half a million dollars to uber-liberal Reed College in Portland, Ore., where researchers are taking three years to create a “self-contained miniature economy” for the school’s flock of birds. The pigeons receive currency-like tokens that they can “earn, accumulate, spend, or gamble” on slot machines, Dr. Timothy Hackenberg explained in the project’s abstract. But even he admits the “practical applications” of his work are few.
  • Transgendered Monkeys, Cost: $477,121
    A Florida lab is dosing male rhesus macaques with feminizing hormones – intent on turning them trans. The experiment, funded by Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, aims to figure out why male-to-female transgender humans suffer high levels of HIV infection. “HIV/AIDS thrives in the margins of society,” reads the uber-woke project description. “No population is more affected by these social injustices than transgender persons.” The scientists suspect estradiol, the hormone commonly given to transgender women, may weaken the immune system
  • “Zombie” Russian Cats Cost: $549,331
    Grisly experiments in a Russian lab turned cute kitties into electrically-controlled zombies – with the help of the US government. Researchers at the Pavlov Institute of Physiology in St. Petersburg, Russia were paid by the US National Institutes of Health to “decerebrate” 18 healthy cats, severing their brain stems to prevent movement while keeping them alive. The ghoulish scientists then used electrical charges to make the cats walk on treadmills, transforming them into the walking kitty dead.
 

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