Originally Posted By: Donald
The OP is not the typical person the health car act was going after. It was the 7 million Americans who had no insurance and worked at Walmart or McDonalds. They will get a subsidy and finally have health insurance and can go and see a primary care doctor when they are sick vs wait until they are critical and go to the ER.
The full cost of an average health plan if you worked for a major company is around $7500 per year for one adult. Now in most cases the employer pays about 2/3 to 3/4 of that.
If the new health care act was not in place, what would the OP like to see, pay a lot for substandard plans? All the new health care act did for the OP was to not allow him to purchase a substandard health care plan.
I would guess the OP earns about $75K. Health care is expensive, so the full cost of the plans is expensive if you have to pay it all yourself.
I hope in the not too distant future we go to a single payer health care system. We are one of the few democracies in the world without a single payer health care system. And we get worse health care than most countries that do have a single payer health care system.
This is fair and balanced. I would add that we pay far more per person for overall worse healthcare and with a significant number uninsured. We have overuse because cost is hidden which means many insured don't have any motivation for controlling how many visits they make or how expensive the facilities are, and doctors are incentivized to over treat purely to make more money.
I have a HDHP so track my costs. A few years back, my insurance company told me the cost of my annual check up at a local nice facility that was in network was in line with the average. I went there and a week later the bill for a one hour exam and blood tests was over $1000. The average was $250. I had a huge battle with the insurance company over this.
Meanwhile, most people without HDHP go to this facility oblivious to the 4 times increased costs. This opaque system has helped push up everyone's costs and transferred wealth to the medical sector. It's economically inefficient.
Another example was when a sports injury specialist was able to squeeze me in to check out some leg pain. The result? A hurried 10 minute inconclusive diagnosis with a recommendation for physiotherapy sessions. Cost of 10 minute visit was $200 and projected cost of physiotherapy was $1000.
What I did? A 5 minute casual conversation with a friend suggested the possible cause. 5 minutes on the internet confirmed the problem and YouTube videos with simple exercises to alleviate. Later down the line, further research yielded an understanding of the root cause and other changes I've made now manage the issue at a root cause level.
I won't mention the time that a close friend ended up in ER as a result of misdiagnosis and mis prescription of a minor matter and then misdiagnosis before admittance with a warning they might very well be dying.
So I'm sorry but the medical profession is pretty poor and the system has a part to play in that. It has taught me buyer beware, question everything and to be self sufficient. But why as a country should we pay double for that privilege?
Btw, a great way to understand this better is to look at how other countries do healthcare. Switzerland believes in free market principles and introduced healthcare reform in the 70s to much opposition, but now are glad they did. Australia introduced mandatory private healthcare to supplement free universal healthcare. Taiwan researched healthcare around the world before deciding on the best system to introduce from scratch. The bottom line is you have to design a healthcare system holistically, it has to emphasize preventative, efficiency, quality and prevent overuse and abuse. If you want private then you need patient responsibility for cost or price controls. If you want public, you need some copay to prevent misuse by patients and some form of quality control to assure providers are incentivized.
The OP is not the typical person the health car act was going after. It was the 7 million Americans who had no insurance and worked at Walmart or McDonalds. They will get a subsidy and finally have health insurance and can go and see a primary care doctor when they are sick vs wait until they are critical and go to the ER.
The full cost of an average health plan if you worked for a major company is around $7500 per year for one adult. Now in most cases the employer pays about 2/3 to 3/4 of that.
If the new health care act was not in place, what would the OP like to see, pay a lot for substandard plans? All the new health care act did for the OP was to not allow him to purchase a substandard health care plan.
I would guess the OP earns about $75K. Health care is expensive, so the full cost of the plans is expensive if you have to pay it all yourself.
I hope in the not too distant future we go to a single payer health care system. We are one of the few democracies in the world without a single payer health care system. And we get worse health care than most countries that do have a single payer health care system.
This is fair and balanced. I would add that we pay far more per person for overall worse healthcare and with a significant number uninsured. We have overuse because cost is hidden which means many insured don't have any motivation for controlling how many visits they make or how expensive the facilities are, and doctors are incentivized to over treat purely to make more money.
I have a HDHP so track my costs. A few years back, my insurance company told me the cost of my annual check up at a local nice facility that was in network was in line with the average. I went there and a week later the bill for a one hour exam and blood tests was over $1000. The average was $250. I had a huge battle with the insurance company over this.
Meanwhile, most people without HDHP go to this facility oblivious to the 4 times increased costs. This opaque system has helped push up everyone's costs and transferred wealth to the medical sector. It's economically inefficient.
Another example was when a sports injury specialist was able to squeeze me in to check out some leg pain. The result? A hurried 10 minute inconclusive diagnosis with a recommendation for physiotherapy sessions. Cost of 10 minute visit was $200 and projected cost of physiotherapy was $1000.
What I did? A 5 minute casual conversation with a friend suggested the possible cause. 5 minutes on the internet confirmed the problem and YouTube videos with simple exercises to alleviate. Later down the line, further research yielded an understanding of the root cause and other changes I've made now manage the issue at a root cause level.
I won't mention the time that a close friend ended up in ER as a result of misdiagnosis and mis prescription of a minor matter and then misdiagnosis before admittance with a warning they might very well be dying.
So I'm sorry but the medical profession is pretty poor and the system has a part to play in that. It has taught me buyer beware, question everything and to be self sufficient. But why as a country should we pay double for that privilege?
Btw, a great way to understand this better is to look at how other countries do healthcare. Switzerland believes in free market principles and introduced healthcare reform in the 70s to much opposition, but now are glad they did. Australia introduced mandatory private healthcare to supplement free universal healthcare. Taiwan researched healthcare around the world before deciding on the best system to introduce from scratch. The bottom line is you have to design a healthcare system holistically, it has to emphasize preventative, efficiency, quality and prevent overuse and abuse. If you want private then you need patient responsibility for cost or price controls. If you want public, you need some copay to prevent misuse by patients and some form of quality control to assure providers are incentivized.
