demondeacfreak
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I think this is the place to point out that the contact phone number listed at healthcare.gov is 1-800-318-2596. That would be, 1-800-F_UCKYO.
Brief recaps:
1. Tax "bad" food and similar items (fast food, soda, beer, pizza, tobacco, now e-cigs) at a rate of at least 100%. Use the tax revenue solely to (a) build clinics that are free to attend for any citizen, and (b) fund full med-school scholarships for doctors who commit to working at the clinics for ~5 years, similar to the GI Bill. If successful, it could fund program-specific med schools. This accomplishes four objectives. First, it discourages, but still permits, a large cause of our healthcare problem. Second, it creates a baseline system of care for everyone. Third, it allows people who do not want to participate to still purchase whatever insurance and healthcare they want in the normal market. Fourth, it explicitly ties the costs of healthcare to the behavior causing the need. The worst-case scenario is that it fails funding because it discourages purchases of the unhealthy items to the point that it can't support itself, which in the long run would actually be a huge victory in health care and our society.
2. Vastly expand Medicaid eligibility, with tiered co-payments based on income levels. That would also accomplish two objectives. First, it would hopefully force a corrective look at Medicaid to get the system working better for those on it, those who now be going on it, and those paying for it. Second, it would keep the negative stigma associated with the program, such that for most epople it would still be a last resort option, secondary to private insurance. Obviously, the cost of the overall program would explode, but hopefully some of that would be offset by fixing a lot of its problems; and in the long run I think it would be less costly than the ACA and with much more care arising from it.
While #1 is extremely preferable in my mind to #2, either of these plans would accomplish the goal of providing baseline health care for all Americans, while avoiding the bureaucratic nightmare that would arise if we were to go to a single payor system for everyone, when most people do not need it. In other words, help support the least common denominator without forcing the majority down to that same level.
What are you going to do when the food tax revenue decreases due to decreased demand similar to the gas tax? Also, this would put a lot of people out of work.
Brief recaps:
1. Tax "bad" food and similar items (fast food, soda, beer, pizza, tobacco, now e-cigs) at a rate of at least 100%. Use the tax revenue solely to (a) build clinics that are free to attend for any citizen, and (b) fund full med-school scholarships for doctors who commit to working at the clinics for ~5 years, similar to the GI Bill. If successful, it could fund program-specific med schools. This accomplishes four objectives. First, it discourages, but still permits, a large cause of our healthcare problem. Second, it creates a baseline system of care for everyone. Third, it allows people who do not want to participate to still purchase whatever insurance and healthcare they want in the normal market. Fourth, it explicitly ties the costs of healthcare to the behavior causing the need. The worst-case scenario is that it fails funding because it discourages purchases of the unhealthy items to the point that it can't support itself, which in the long run would actually be a huge victory in health care and our society.
2. Vastly expand Medicaid eligibility, with tiered co-payments based on income levels. That would also accomplish two objectives. First, it would hopefully force a corrective look at Medicaid to get the system working better for those on it, those who now be going on it, and those paying for it. Second, it would keep the negative stigma associated with the program, such that for most epople it would still be a last resort option, secondary to private insurance. Obviously, the cost of the overall program would explode, but hopefully some of that would be offset by fixing a lot of its problems; and in the long run I think it would be less costly than the ACA and with much more care arising from it.
While #1 is extremely preferable in my mind to #2, either of these plans would accomplish the goal of providing baseline health care for all Americans, while avoiding the bureaucratic nightmare that would arise if we were to go to a single payor system for everyone, when most people do not need it. In other words, help support the least common denominator without forcing the majority down to that same level.
W&B - I'm not opposed to that. If people want to be 100% responsible for their own healthcare, then they are free to do whatever the hell they want. But if we are operating under a premise that society is repsonsible for people's healthcare, which apparently we now are, then society should definitely have a say in what contributes to the state of that healthcare.
Insurance Company Gets Fucked Over By Another Cancer Patient
CHICAGO—Frustrated executives from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association announced Friday that they are getting “completely fucked over” by Allentown, PA resident Matthew Greison, a 57-year-old man suffering from an advanced form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Stressing that this is not the first issue they have had with such patients, company sources expressed their outrage to reporters over Greison's “totally unfair” comprehensive health care benefits and claimed the skyrocketing costs of his cancer treatment have gotten out of hand.
“We got the first bill and just couldn’t believe how expensive it was,” said Blue Cross Blue Shield CEO Scott Serota, adding that at first, he thought the invoice was a mistake. “Every visit to the oncologist ran about $140, not to mention the thousands of dollars for every MRI and CT scan, and then the chemotherapy and cancer drugs were more than $10,000 per month. And he paid for maybe—maybe—5 percent of it. The rest was dumped on us.”
“It’s absolute fucking bullshit,” Serota continued. “I can’t believe they’re just allowed to get away with that.”
According to reports, Blue Cross Blue Shield’s expenses have only gotten more unreasonable since Greison was first diagnosed with the life-threatening disease this past March. After an initially successful chemotherapy treatment, the health insurance company was reportedly informed that the cancer was no longer in remission and was forced to pay over $125,000 for a further two weeks of inpatient care in a hospital.
Sources confirmed that such headaches for insurance companies are unfortunately incredibly common when dealing with any cancer patient.
“These assholes are just bleeding us dry here,” said Serota. “We try to talk to them about it, to beg them to just sympathize with our situation, but they just kept bringing up bullshit excuses about deductibles and coinsurance payments and citing all these stupid small-print details about coverage eligibility. All they try to do is get out of paying for anything.”
“Trust me, dealing with these people is a total nightmare,” Serota added.
Serota went on to say that the federal government “has to step in and completely revamp this fucked-up system” and claimed that if nothing is done, many insurance companies could be stuck with increasingly costly health care bills that they will have no choice but to pay for out of their own pockets.
“The bills are really racking up at this point, and it just can’t continue like this,” said Serota, adding that cancer patients will only become harder to deal with if this disturbing trend continues. “For the sake of all insurance companies across the country, something has to change, and change soon. It’s like cancer patients don’t even care about us at all. They’re only concerned about themselves.”
“We’re human beings, goddammit,” added Serota, growing visibly incensed. “They can’t just treat us like this.” At press time, Blue Cross Blue Shield executives were relieved to learn that Greison’s coverage had abruptly expired.
I can't remember which thread the NY Times article was posted that showed the number of citizens that would not be covered by Medicaid but also did not qualify for any subsidies, but how on earth did that happen? I know the expanded Medicaid would have lowered the number in many southern states, but why could they not legislate it to where the subsidies begin the instant you make more than the Medicaid maximum?
Well, the designers of the law seemed to believe the states would expand medicaid since it would cost them little, help their poor, and be part of a cooperative effort to improve the delivery of healthcare to our citizens. Since so many, especially southern/poor states have rejected the medicaid expansion there is now the need to at least extend the subsidies to those living below the poverty level. That would seem a reasonable fix. Think we could get the house of representatives to go along with that?
Understood, but even with the expansion I believe there would have been a group (albeit smaller) trapped in the middle. Seems like they'd somehow tie the two cutoffs together regardless of whether the state participated in expansion.
2and2, shouldn't we tax stress under your plan? Stress causes myriad health problems that cost Americans millions, if not billions, of dollars a year. Cancer, heart disease, etc. To be consistent in your "tax the causes" plan, you would need to measure stress levels in American humans, and then tax them accordingly.
I don't think so. As written, the ACA required states to expand Medicaid to all citizens living at/below around 135 percent of the federal poverty level. And subsidization starts at 100 percent of the federal poverty level. So there was overlap in the medicaid coverage/subsidies. That is before the SCOTUS gutted the Medicaid expansion allowing states like NC to opt out and screw up things for their poor and for the designers of the ACA. Again, seems a partial fix could be to just extend the subsidies to medicaid eligibility, as you suggest. But that would have to pass the GOP House.