Doctors going bare - Affordable Health Care

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Lot's of talk occurs about how to help the maximum number keep affordable health care. Obviously liability insurance is one of the issues that help drive up the cost. There is also talk of greedy drug companies, patent abuse, Medicare treatment costs being based on, etc. I interested in hearing what combination of factors do you think is driving up medical costs.



Doctors running bare



Also, on a secondary note, if you don't mind, share in general terms what you spend on your health insurance or if you are given it via your employer, what do you believe the value of that benefit to be. If you don't have medical insurance and have investigated the cost of acquiring it, you can share that without mentioning whether or not you have it. (If you feel it might be embarassing)



My father owns a business. He has found it harder and harder to keep good employees because he offers no medical. He has looked into providing it and the average cost has been about $400-600 per month, per employee for basically an HMO type plan. That plan offers NO family coverage. To add spouses, children, etc. could drive the plan up to $1000 per month, per employee.



My own health coverage for myself and my family is partially paid for by my employer. They provide a stipend and I have to pay what it does not cover. The cost of medical coverage for my family of four has been about $8000 this year.



What's your two cents?



Nick
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 23
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    I don't know why, but I'm all in favor of Doctors 'going bare' to avoid lawsuits. If a doctor really fucks up, and kills someone out of true negligence, put 'em in jail if they have no money.
  • Reply 2 of 23
    trick falltrick fall Posts: 1,271member
    Healthcare is very expensive. The rates at my job are roughly 400.00 per individual, 800.00 for a couple and 1100.00 for a family. We have a 20.00 co-pay per doctor's visit and our prescription coverage has a sliding scale up to about 35.00 for name brand drugs.



    Some random thoughts on why healthcare is so expensive:



    1. Treating sick people costs a lot of money because it is labor, R&D and infrastructure intensive.



    2. There's a lot of workfare type jobs in the healthcare industry.



    3. Paperwork, Every time I go to my doctor I have to fill out a forms that have the same exact info on them when really there's no reason the info couldn't be imbedded in my Oxford card and swiped by a credit card reader.



    4. Malpractice insurance.



    5. Lack of good primary care that leads to expensive hospital visits.
  • Reply 3 of 23
    roffroff Posts: 58member
    Health care costs? Check this out.http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/349/8/768



    Here in Saskatchewan, the health care is paid for by a Provincial sales tax (7%) and money from our Federal Government. There are no payments from persons or employers. You can purchase private insurance to cover extras such as ambulance, private rooms and some drugs.



    I am diabetic. Today I purchased 300 tablets of Glycon 500 mg (Metformin HCI 500mg) for $31.73 Canadian.

    Hope this helps.
  • Reply 4 of 23
    shawnjshawnj Posts: 6,656member
    Great link, ROFF.
  • Reply 5 of 23
    existenceexistence Posts: 991member
    This is why John Edwards should NOT be veep. I know several doctor friends who will not vote Democratic if Edwards is VP. That slimy bastard has never done any pro-bono work and is part of the problem driving doctors away from specialty fields.
  • Reply 6 of 23
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Anyone that wants to learn how lawyers are ruining the country just read here





    http://www.overlawyered.com/
  • Reply 7 of 23
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Health insurance costs have gotten completely out of hand. I'm paying about $250 a month for very good coverage (and currently getting every penny out of the dental coverage). My brother would have had to pay over $500 a month to cover his wife, and that's on a high school teacher's salary.



    As far as malpractice goes, a physician widely considered the best general practitioner in the state can't afford to practice, because she was sued for failing to divine that a sore knee meant a metastatic cancer elsewhere in the body and lost, and her malpractice insurance rates now are prohibitive. For those lucky enough to still be able to practice without being perfect, the threat of malpractice suits and the insurance jack up health care costs, while the legal environment fosters this idea that medical personnel are Godlike miracle workers rather than mere mortals trying to fix the phenomenally complex, wildly variable, and poorly understood biological system that is humankind with the substantial but imperfect means available to them. And the result of allowing "victims" (and actual victims, since actual malpractice does happen) to win huge sums is that a new class of victims are created - people who can't afford health care - and they can't sue anyone for the strait they're in.



    I think health care does really need to be thought through. As it stands, I've looked at most options, and I'm not really impressed yet. The one great advantage of the US system is that it pays for bleeding-edge research that other health care systems pick up once it's affordable - but somebody has to pay for that, or health care all over the world suffers. I'm not going to pretend that I have answers. But I'd like to see more of a conversation.



    I'm also thinking that the old regulations that insurance companies used to have to operate under — or some analogous set of laws — look better every day. Sure, they locked those companies out of all kinds of profit-making opportunities, but that's just another way of saying that they didn't have nearly as many ways to soak people.



    Good thread.
  • Reply 8 of 23
    willoughbywilloughby Posts: 1,457member
    We recently had our plan at work changed for the worse. I'm paying around $225 a month (I know, relatively speaking it isn't a lot) for my wife and I. However we're on the "family" plan.



    My company only offers family and individual. So even though we don't have kids, we have to pay like we do.



    The company I work for has around 150 employees so the rates given to them aren't that great. In fact, my deductible is $2000! But the company is willing to pay back $1000 of that. So if my wife needed an x-ray and it cost $500, I'd have to pay for it out of my pocket and submit a claim to my company, not the insurance provider and then they'll pay me back. It is a strange way to do it, but I guess it works.



    Previous to this new plan, my company had also covered dental in full. They had to take that away. The new dental plan was so ridiculous that I didn't even sign up for it. It would have cost over $400 a year and would have basically covered only cleanings.



    My wife and I recently had all of our dental x-rays updated before they switched plans and the doc said we're in great shape. So now I'll just be paying for 2 cleanings a year out of my pocket which will end up being cheaper then if I had enrolled in the insurance.



    It really stinks....but my only other choice is to go work for a bigger company that can get good rates. But then I'm worried that my job would get farmed off to India (I'm a programmer). Working for a smaller, family owned company means they like to keep their IT staff where they can see them. \
  • Reply 9 of 23
    andersanders Posts: 6,523member
    My medicare costs are part of the taxes I pay. I make $60000 a year right now, pay $24000 in tax and all health services and parts of medicine is covered.



    When I was 18 years old I was diagnosed with cancer which was surgerly removed. I had a lot of ultra sound, PET, CT and other scans before and after the removal and I still attend check ups every six month. I haven´t paid one bit for this (besides the camembere frites in the hospital cafeteria). Among many other things the taxes also pay for my graduate studies in sociology.
  • Reply 10 of 23
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Insurance companines are the real problem here. The malpractice insurance companies and the health insurance companies all make more money than we can count but their rates continue go up.



    I've never heard of any regulations on insurance premiums but evidently there needs to be some.
  • Reply 11 of 23
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Anders

    My medicare costs are part of the taxes I pay. I make $60000 a year right now, pay $24000 in tax and all health services and parts of medicine is covered.



    40% ain't all that different than 33%.
  • Reply 12 of 23
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    Great thread Trumptman. The cost of insurance is really a great problem, and like Amorph pointed it out, lead to the paradox, of not allowing more and more people to acess medical care.



    Doctors going bare are certainly a bad thing, but when insurrances reach a certain amount there is only three choices :

    - change of state or countrie

    - going bare, and play the outlaw card.

    - increase your fees (but the process is limited in practice)



    We met the same problems in France, with practice insurances going crazy : from 15 000 to 25 000 $ for a surgeon an obstetrician or an anesthesiologist. Note that the fees are much slower in France than in US : for expample a cure of appendicitis give a great 150 $ of fees to the surgeon who practice it.

    Luckily most of the surgeons has the right to ask more than this , but some surgeons do not have this right, and earn less and less money years after years.



    Trials and high practice insurances are starting to kill the job, and it's not at the best profit of the majority of the population. Politicians claim to do something to fix this, but nothing is coming.
  • Reply 13 of 23
    gilschgilsch Posts: 1,995member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    Anyone that wants to learn how lawyers are ruining the country just read here





    http://www.overlawyered.com/




    As much as I'd like to blame the lawyers for this....I think we need to blame the ridiculous lawsuit-happy society we live in.



    Lawyers don't always happen to "materialize" like magic at the right place at the right time(although it may seem that way sometimes).



    Someone hires them.
  • Reply 14 of 23
    anandanand Posts: 285member
    Blaming one group for the US healthcare system is silly. The whole system has problems. The Doctors, the Lawyers, the Insurance companies, the hospitals and the Medical schools are all making big bucks - at the peoples expense. And now they are infighting - at our expense.



    And who pays for most health care anyway? Who get sick and goes into a hospital? Who is paying for them?



    We the people are getting ripped off and it is time for us to do something about it!





    ps. I don't know what to do.
  • Reply 15 of 23
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gilsch

    As much as I'd like to blame the lawyers for this....I think we need to blame the ridiculous lawsuit-happy society we live in.



    Lawyers don't always happen to "materialize" like magic at the right place at the right time(although it may seem that way sometimes).



    Someone hires them.




    You obviously haven't read that site.



    Here's just one item that they linked too.



    Ambulance chasing reaches a new low - Per Dr. Davidson's new medical blog, "EMedConcepts" there comes this very disturbing photo of a mobile service van from the law office of John C. Dearie apparently illegally parked outside the ER of a New York City hospital (notice the lower part of the sign that says, "Doctors Vehicles Only"). According to Dr. Davidson the van was "chased away" by hospital security but only moved across the street.



    LawyerMobile



    But Bunge is right. It's all the insurance companies faulty. BIG BUSINESS! That's who to blame.



    Ask yourself this. Who writes the laws? Who profits from the laws?



    [edit by Amorph: Changed overwide image to a link to restore board formatting]

  • Reply 16 of 23
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    But Bunge is right. It's all the insurance companies faulty. BIG BUSINESS! That's who to blame.



    Well I'm not against insurance companies making money, but extortion is extortion.
  • Reply 17 of 23
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Powerdoc

    Trials and high practice insurances are starting to kill the job, and it's not at the best profit of the majority of the population. Politicians claim to do something to fix this, but nothing is coming.



    This is a real problem, generally. The system is broken, but nobody wants to touch it partly because of all the money involved, and partly out of a perfectly understandable fear that it would become worse. So it limps along, the way the US agricultural system does, on a system of patches and bailouts and crossed fingers. The difference is that agriculture has stabilized into a fairly predictable brokenness, while health care is spiraling out of control.



    I just hope Congress has the courage to act before the situation becomes a full-blown crisis, even if the insurance companies and HMOs do their level best to make reform a political suicide. There's no shortage of data on what works and what's broken, someone just needs to crunch that data, propose a fix, and pass it into law - not as an unfunded mandate, either.



    What's worse is that health care costs aren't the only thing going up. In the US at least, mortgages and rent have gotten much more expensive since the 1950s as well, relative to income, and the result is a squeeze from multiple angles. It's not just the insurance, it's the mortage and the college loans and whatever else. A financial perfect storm, if you will.



    And I just got a mortgage, so I'm heading right into it.
  • Reply 18 of 23
    gilschgilsch Posts: 1,995member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    You obviously haven't read that site.



    Don't really have to. I know how bad the problem is. The laws, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, insurance companies, drug companies and the moronic lawsuit-happy society that both you and I are a part of.

    To exempt our society from any blame is pretty silly IMO.
  • Reply 19 of 23
    sammi josammi jo Posts: 4,634member
    Nobody (apart from the unfortunate souls who were ripped off with their life savings and more) complained much about Enron....or other big business scams where ordinary people get the shaft?



    The health care debacle/scam is capitalism in action, the icon we Americans have been worshipping without question for decades.



    Why all the bleating and complaining now?
  • Reply 20 of 23
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    Ask yourself this. Who writes the laws? Who profits from the laws?

    [/B]



    who spends the money to lobby congress and hire the lawyers to write the laws that benefit big business such as the insurance companies? me wonders.
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