[quote]Vires Eternus wrote:
Brother Chris wrote:
Vires Eternus wrote:
Brother Chris wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Vires Eternus wrote:
But what about the person who loses a job. Had health insurance through their employer, and cannot afford to ‘buy’ their policy and take the insurance with them therefore losing insurance.
The solution is right in front of you. Just think a bit about what you just wrote and how to fix it.
Don’t expect an answer, he probably won’t get it.
Thanks for the vote of confidense. I apologize for not responding till now.
I as well as many others have had drastically vile experiences with Insurance companies as well as fairly good experiences. Insurance companies aren’t evil or good per se but the industry could stand better regulation.
Claiming you do or even can pay everything out of pocket is rediculous. You might be able to cover a few very basic things, but unless you are exceptionally financially successful you will not be able to pay for a long term dibilitating condition. Insurance is VERY necessary and VERY expensive. There has needed to be reform of the entire system for decades.
This current health care bill is I believe far too ambitious and expensive, but 180 degrees from wrong is not necessarily right.
Like I said, I wouldn’t expect everyone to be able to pay out of pocket. I am not sure which long term debilitating condition you are talking about, but I am pretty sure I can cover it. Few basic things? When did knee surgery become basic? How about back surgery or heart valve replacement become basic?
If you can actually pay those things out of pocket, you are probably in a FAR better financial position than most. Certainly better than the tens of millions without health insurance. Good for you. I would like to see the numbers on the knee surgery (total cost) that you paid out of pocket… I’m curious how much money someone would have to have in savings to buffer an expense like that.[/quote]
These are rough and rounded numbers. The first knee surgery my father had was to clean out the cartilage that was making a mess of his knee. It cost total (insurance and him) $10-12,000 and who knows how much was actually paid by the insurance (these first numbers are his as I did not look at the bills when I was 14 years old). His second surgery to clean it out was paid out of pocket and cost 5,000+ prescriptions for some pain killers. Looking at his knee replacement, there is three numbers billed with insurance, actually paid, and out of pocket. Billed $50,000, actually paid the doctor said between none (he stopped accepting that insurance company) and $30,000. From what the nurses told me there was about $5,000 difference in different insurance companies. Out of pocket was $20,000. He told my father he charges 5000 an hour for a surgery (takes him less than that but bills by the hour), and the rest goes to the hospital and his aides.
Yes, there is things wrong with insurance and hospitals. We just need to deregulate. Hospitals cannot collect, insurance companies can subjectively pay the bills they said they would, insurance companies are stuck with community ratings, etc. This causes all kinds of linking problems.
Hospitals not being able to collect payments means they have to spread the cost when people do not pay, and fair prices mean they have to charge to the least common denominator (high), which makes it difficult for insurance companies to operate in the green, plus community ratings which make it hard for people to get insurance, which goes back to people going to the ER and not paying. Plus other things like not being able to operate in the green, which made it so that they subjectively pay bills/deny claims, which creates people fixing the symptoms or after the problem arises, which costs more, and around and around it goes. Regulating an industry is the equivalent of throwing a wrench into the gears, it may not shut it down, but it sure as hell doesn’t run smoothly.
We can agree, I am lucky to be able to do the stuff I do. I just wish (as someone who deals with underwriting) that the market would be deregulated because there is just some people who I would not hold a policy for because 1) they are too risky and I cannot charge them a big enough premium, etc. or 2)they do not have enough money, but are not much of a risk, but still cannot offer them a lower premium because of community ratings.
Underwriting has a triangle of business just like any other one. You have risk, cost, quality, you can have two, but you cannot have all three. You can be high risk and low cost, but you’ll get a shitty policy (won’t cover shit), or you can be a high risk, and high quality, but you will be charged more. And you can have a high quality and a low cost policy, but you cannot be much of a risk.
However the third one is the down fall, because with insurance comes moral hazard, and when people feel they have a golden net to catch them, they actually become more of a risk than before. So the third one is moderated to either be less than high quality, more expensive then bottom price, adjusting for the level of risk that person raised to because of actually having the insurance policy.