Millions Paying 10k Plus inHealth Care Premiums and Remain Afraid

originally posted by: Logarock


Have been hearing this for years. Same old BS. Health industry overcharges and has crafty ways of doing it. Fancy commercials as well. Insurance company I had very good, would even try to warn you that your health care provider was about to stroke you.

The sad thing is, they spend a lot of money on those commercials. Which forces them to overcharge even more to pay off the cost of that also.


But it's a two way street. Medicare often mandates prices for a service that actually fall below cost in a way that insurance companies and hospitals are simply powerless to cost-cut their way out of. So they gauge someone else to make up for it (if they can.)

The worst example that gets pointed out the most is ER. They can't refuse anyone, even a totally peniless homeless person, access to the ER. So they just take the loss there, and try to see where else in their list of services they might be able to overcharge someone to make up the difference.

That is one reason many people believed Obama Care would fix things: by giving everyone insurance. But it doesn't appear to be working at all.

I still remember back around 2001, when I was building my second PC from parts. The Pentium Coppermine was the latest CPU I wanted.

The 1000 mhz version cost something like 600 or 800 bucks. But if you could settle for 800 mhz, it was less than 200.

I could buy 80% of the speed, at 20-33% of the price.


(They had just recently locked the ratios, so you couldn't simply buy an 800 mhz and then overclock it, unless you wanted to run your whole system (ram and everything) faster than it was meant to go.)


For me, a college student living on my parent's money, but like.... not a whole lot of money..... the choice was obvious. I had a lot of fun with that 800 mhz chip.

But you can feel pretty much certain there plenty of rich kids out there buying those 1000 mhz chips.


That's what I mean when I say that it doesn't take much of a difference in quality to get the rich to shell out. They're happy to do it.

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: queenofswords

There is no answer until we get a grip on COSTS.

I don't care if next year we pay $1,200 a month with $12,000 deductibles and $150 co-pays. IT WON"T BE ENOUGH.


Priced controls and clipping the medical giants wings is the only solution. Anyone who thinks there is a legislative action that can magically make premiums $400 a month with out cost controls is not paying attention.

Get rid of all the damn freebies would make costs lower across the board where as price controls will just make people not work. If you would pick up a history book and read about the fall of the Roman Empire You would have learned this.

My birth state (Michigan) just announced that ObamaCare premiums are skyrocketing 28% for 2018. That's after a 17% hit this year.

www.mlive.com...

Millions of people across the country have dropped their insurance THIS year. Couldn't afford it.

But Democrats say Obamacare is a success. Just needs a little tweaking..that's all.

originally posted by: jkm1864

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: queenofswords

There is no answer until we get a grip on COSTS.

I don't care if next year we pay $1,200 a month with $12,000 deductibles and $150 co-pays. IT WON"T BE ENOUGH.


Priced controls and clipping the medical giants wings is the only solution. Anyone who thinks there is a legislative action that can magically make premiums $400 a month with out cost controls is not paying attention.

Get rid of all the damn freebies would make costs lower across the board where as price controls will just make people not work. If you would pick up a history book and read about the fall of the Roman Empire You would have learned this.

The problem is too much work is being done. Too much research. What we're really paying for is the research and development.

Scientists with phd's and the accompanying wage requirements working day and night to devise new cutting edge drugs to replace the existing drugs (which already work.) The moment the new drug comes along, it becomes essentially illegal to prescribe anyone the old drug (even though it works.) Because it's illegal to give inferior to perfect care.

So it is an arms race. Each company attempting to steal the others' market. Make their drug obsolete, and immediately claim 100% of their sales.

And would be a good thing. - It really would - IF IF only it didn't COST SO MUCH.

But it does, and we need to bring it to a stop somehow. Or slow it down.

If a company invests 400 million dollars to develop a new drug, you can't just not pay them. Or impose a price control where they don't make 400 million off of it.

But next year, we'll be shelling out another 400 million for the same drug (with a new added tweak). And then the year after that, and the year after that........... etc......

All because it is illegal to give inferior care. (Illegal to prescribe the earlier version of the drug without all the tweaks, even though it still works.)

a reply to: bloodymarvelous


That explains why the "latest and greatest" drugs are promoted so heavily on television. Thanks for that insight, BloodyMarvelous.

Are the cutting-edge medications just as expensive in other countries? Or are they even available in countries that have Government-run healthcare systems?