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The $23,000 bug bite

Not one person with this retarded stance has ever been able to explain in anything resempling REALITY why having some form of UHC is communist. Why is spending on roads, police, fire, parks not communist?
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I don't understand that, either.

We'll provide a patch of grass under a shade tree for a man to die under. We'll provide an ambulance to haul him to the hospital AFTER the fact. We'll provide a burial, if we absolutely must (although first we'll hammer the family 'till they're bleeding), and then we'll provide police to prevent the grave being desecrated.

But...we won't provide care to treat the illness that killed him. :boggled:
 
AvalonXQ said:
You will?

Last I checked, I was going to have to pay thousands of dollars for mine.
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I was talking about public parks. When I lived in SLC someone told me they were finding a homeless person dead in the park every single day in the winter.

There's a new reason to provide health care: so our fragile children -who can't see a breast in public or a penis anywhere- can be spared the horrific realities of a man turning black and covered with flies.
 
DragonLady said:
There's a new reason to provide health care: so our fragile children -who can't see a breast in public or a penis anywhere- can be spared the horrific realities of a man turning black and covered with flies.
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There's no need. All kids today have plenty of TV so they never have to visit public parks. See? All nice and protected. :D
 
DragonLady said:
I was talking about public parks. When I lived in SLC someone told me they were finding a homeless person dead in the park every single day in the winter.

There's a new reason to provide health care: so our fragile children -who can't see a breast in public or a penis anywhere- can be spared the horrific realities of a man turning black and covered with flies.
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You have homeless drug addicts dying in the streets in countries with UHC too.
 
not necessarily, especially when, in one case, all that was offered is assertion. Also, correlation does not imply causation, so there's that.
 
Well, I've noticed that even in countries with fully-implemented UHC, people are still mortal and subject to eventual death. This demonstrates to my satisfaction that UHC isn't worth the effort and we should accept whatever we've got instead.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Well, I've noticed that even in countries with fully-implemented UHC, people are still mortal and subject to eventual death. This demonstrates to my satisfaction that UHC isn't worth the effort and we should accept whatever we've got instead.
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I think that's what Avalon and WildCat were advocating.
 
wollery said:
Except that a lot of these cases wouldn't exist under UHC because such operators wouldn't be able to bill the state in the way they can under Medicare.
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Why not?

wollery said:
You seem to be operating under the false assumption that UHC systems work the same way Medicare and Medicaid. They don't.
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There's no way that the US government is going to purchase every single hospital, clinic, pharmaceutical company, medical equipment manufacturer, etc etc under any UHC system we end up with.

wollery said:
Medicare and Medicaid are essentially government funded insurance, and pay out in the same way. UHC operates in a different way, and although fraud is possible, fraud of the type and scale shown in those stories is next to impossible under a proper UHC system.
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Right, that's why it's next to impossible to bilk the government in military contracts. Unheard of! :boggled:
 
TragicMonkey said:
Well, you're unlikely to find "paracetamol" listed in a US fee schedule. But you won't find such a list easily- they are confidentual business. A provider doesn't want one insurer to know another insurer is paying less, and vice versa. Amy Hospital and Bob Insurance agree that a Kidney Gruzzling costs $500. Bob will pay Amy $300 for each one, Amy can bill the patient for another $100, and the other hundred is sacrificed- which Amy is okay with, because Bob's sending her lots of patients, and Kidney Gruzzlings aren't very common.

But Amy has a deal with Charles Insurance as well. Charles is smaller, will send Amy less business, and Amy knows this when she negotiates the contract. So for Charles, a Kidney Gruzzling will be charged at $600. Charles will pay $400, Amy will bill the patient for $150, and the other $50 is written off.

Amy doesn't want Bob and Charles to know what the other one is paying, or they'll team up. Bob and Charles don't want Amy to know what they're paying Debbie Hospital, or Amy will realize she's a chump and getting less than half what they're paying Debbie for Kidney Gruzzling. Amy doesn't want Debbie to know what Amy's deals with Bob and Charles are because then Debbie could undercut Amy's prices and steal her business. And Bob and Charles have the same issue with each other, that each could undercut the others prices and get Amy's business.

Fee schedules are secret because neither provider nor insurer wants any other providers or insurers to know what they're charging and paying.
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If only it were that easy to negotiate insurance contracts (as a doctor . . .). Doctors have no say in how much government entities will pay them for services; you get what they give you. Insurances say they will negotiate, but solo/small group docs really have no leverage. Large groups and hospitals have more, but even then, reimbursement is largely the same across docs and hospitals. Bob Insurance will only pay so much for a Kidney Gruzzling after all. So docs make sure to charge enough so that the charge is more than the highest paying insurance will pay. Of course, they charge their self-pay patients on a different fee schedule entirely. We are only too happy to share our self-pay prices with anyone who asks.

Of course, this is all moot for us because in a month, my wife will be transferring to a nice cushy hospital job and leaving behind the crazy private practice world.
 
xjx388 said:
We are only too happy to share our self-pay prices with anyone who asks.
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No one should have to ask, it should be required by law to publish them for all to see, preferably on the internet.

And no tiered pricing, everyone pays the same.

A little market pressure isn't a bad thing.
 
DragonLady said:
I don't understand that, either.

We'll provide a patch of grass under a shade tree for a man to die under. We'll provide an ambulance to haul him to the hospital AFTER the fact. We'll provide a burial, if we absolutely must (although first we'll hammer the family 'till they're bleeding), and then we'll provide police to prevent the grave being desecrated.

But...we won't provide care to treat the illness that killed him. :boggled:
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DragonLady said:
I was talking about public parks. When I lived in SLC someone told me they were finding a homeless person dead in the park every single day in the winter.

There's a new reason to provide health care: so our fragile children -who can't see a breast in public or a penis anywhere- can be spared the horrific realities of a man turning black and covered with flies.
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WildCat said:
You have homeless drug addicts dying in the streets in countries with UHC too.
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Well, you totally missed DL's point there.
 
TheRedWorm said:
I think that's what Avalon and WildCat were advocating.
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If someone was attacking US health care with the fact that Americans are mortal, it would certainly be relevant that Canadians and Brits are still mortal as well.
 
xjx388 said:
If only it were that easy to negotiate insurance contracts (as a doctor . . .). Doctors have no say in how much government entities will pay them for services; you get what they give you. Insurances say they will negotiate, but solo/small group docs really have no leverage. Large groups and hospitals have more, but even then, reimbursement is largely the same across docs and hospitals. Bob Insurance will only pay so much for a Kidney Gruzzling after all. So docs make sure to charge enough so that the charge is more than the highest paying insurance will pay. Of course, they charge their self-pay patients on a different fee schedule entirely. We are only too happy to share our self-pay prices with anyone who asks.
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My current employer is glad to trade the potential increased profit margins from individual negotiations for the security of a steady supply of patients whose bills will definitely be paid. In fact, on the strength of the current legislation, they gave us all raises!
 
AvalonXQ said:
If someone was attacking US health care with the fact that Americans are mortal, it would certainly be relevant that Canadians and Brits are still mortal as well.
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Canadians aren't. When a Canadian dies, it wakes up aboard a resurrection ship, in a vat of maple syrup, with all its memories downloaded to an identical body.
 
TragicMonkey said:
When a Canadian dies, it wakes up aboard a resurrection ship, in a vat of maple syrup, with all its memories downloaded to an identical body.
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^ Answer.

Question:
"Explain the continued existence of William Shatner in one sentence."
 
WildCat said:
No one should have to ask, it should be required by law to publish them for all to see, preferably on the internet.

And no tiered pricing, everyone pays the same.

A little market pressure isn't a bad thing.
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Why should docs be required to publish their prices on the internet? I see little benefit to such a law. If people would simply shop around for a doc or hospital like they do for anything else, they would find prices are not as hidden as widely believed.
 
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