> I agree with Dan, Nick, David and everyone else who sees the need > for some sort of universal risk pool.
I'll be glib here and object to "universal". What I think you really mean is "all US citizens", or perhaps "all US citizens and non-citizen residents". But see my question here about why we are not more concerned about helping those much worse off than most Americans. > The one thing that irks me about > talking about high deductibles and health savings accounts is that no one > has talked about stop loss so far. "stop-loss - the dollar amount of claims filed for eligible expenses at which the insurance begins to pay at 100% per insured individual. Stop-loss is reached when an insured individual has paid the deductible and reached the out-of-pocket maximum amount of co-insurance." I think these sorts of details should be up to each consumer to decide upon. It sounds like you and your family would favor a policy with a lower stop-loss. I think if the government reduced most of their interference in the health care market (see some of John Mackey's points in the article I linked to earlier), that there would be a lot more choice for consumers as to what type of health care plan they can buy. > Having worked in both Canada and the US as an R.N. (although it was many > years ago that I worked in Canada), I'll take the Canadian System with all > it's problems *ANY DAY* over the expensive, administratively cumbersome > system we have now. No offense intended, but I have seen that attitude by many people who work as health-care providers. But I think the needs and desires of health care providers are quite different from those who must bear the costs of that health care. Certainly it is easier to work in a hospital if you do not have to worry about the costs and benefits of each test or procedure, but that is not the way for those who bear the costs to get the most value for their money. Also, I think John Mackey had an interesting comment about the Canadian system: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html John Mackey wrote: | Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic | right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by | government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to | receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized | medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines | to receive scarce treatments. | Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 | Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get | treatment, according to a report last month in Investor's Business | Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million. | At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits | they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British | employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want | supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend | themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they | want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have | an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear—no such | right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other | country. > I worked at a 600 bed hospital in Edmonton that had 2 (yes, that's > right, TWO) people working in the billing office. Here there are 10's > if not 100 working in a similar system because they have to deal with > all the different insurance programs. Do you have any idea about the breakdown of the workload by those people on Medicare/Medicaid vs. private insurance? Also, do you think their work is mostly pointless, or did their work (together with the insurance rules) help to keep costs down? In other words, if not for their work (and insurance rules), would there have been many more tests and procedures performed that had a low benefit to cost ratio? > Compassion, folks. IAAMOAC. Compassion and government are strange bedfellows. I'd prefer to express my compassion without government. _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
