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Health care law's massive, hidden tax change

If someone is paid a very good salary, isn't that their own personal profit? It does not sound like it is going into thin air.
The highest insurance CEO salary is nothing compared to outlays. The bulk of moneys collected are going to payouts and cash on hand witholdings(which is a federal requirement not that I am complaining about that, makes sense).

Harry and Louise were false health care prophets. Remember them? They used scare tactics to prevent health care reform. They stopped health care reform.
This bill is not reform however, it's going to make things worse.

Someone is not telling the truth. Hello!
None of the big guys are, ethical agents will tell you the truth, as will ethical medical professionals, the guys and gals at the top are lying and the politicians as well. So at this moment it is what it is.
 
The highest insurance CEO salary is nothing compared to outlays. The bulk of moneys collected are going to payouts and cash on hand witholdings(which is a federal requirement not that I am complaining about that, makes sense).

This bill is not reform however, it's going to make things worse.


None of the big guys are, ethical agents will tell you the truth, as will ethical medical professionals, the guys and gals at the top are lying and the politicians as well. So at this moment it is what it is.

I think the health care givers deserve a decent salary. Every once in a while there are a few bad apples but for the most part they are very dedicated and hard working.
 
I think the health care givers deserve a decent salary.
Absolutely, they do a very difficult and sometimes emotionally scarring job that requires years of learning and practice and continuous education. And no one can argue it as one of the most important industries we have. One thing I'd like to see a real reform bill address is the federal limit on medical school enrollments that was passed in the earlier part of the nineteen hundreds, the artificial supply comes with an artificially elevated price and limits even more qualified individuals entrance into the market.
Every once in a while there are a few bad apples but for the most part they are very dedicated and hard working.
It's like that in every industry TBH, mine certainly suffers a bad reputation because when an agent goes to prison for fraud or abuse it makes the news, they never hear about the one that saved a senior on fixed income hundreds to thousands a month or protected their family's inheritance. Med. professionals sometimes have a more dramatic save such as a crisis or catastrophe, or a lawyer might get a wrongly convicted person out of prison. It's about what the public gets to see.
 
What do we need health insurers for anyway? - Los Angeles Times

Her testimony, and other statements she and other WellPoint executives have made, suggests that insurers can’t profitably manage through periods of high unemployment. They can’t price policies in a way that keeps healthy young people in the same pool as older people, producing a mockery of the very point of indemnity insurance. Despite a decade of unobstructed consolidation, which was sold to regulators as a way to control healthcare costs by creating mega-insurers like hers, her industry can’t control healthcare costs.

Braly’s words are a reminder of the most important unasked question in the entire healthcare debate: What do we need insurance companies for, anyway?

The only way insurers can remain profitable at all is by selling healthy people on policies that don’t offer much coverage at all, while squeezing older, less healthy people remorselessly so they either pay for most of their care out of pocket or get priced out of the insurance market completely (thus becoming a burden for taxpayers).
 
Saunter back NationMaster - World Statistics, Country Comparisons with me - because I agree that it's a GREAT source for statistics - it's quite accurate, too:
Tuberculosis treatment success rate > % of registered cases (most recent) by country

(It's a huge site - and can be confusing - here's how to get to individual statistics on various issues - and to that particular statistics page if you get lost or booted:

In the "Statistics" section let's look at "health" - (scroll to the bottom of this short list - and click "view all health statistics" - scroll down and then select: "Tuberculosis treatment success rate > % of registered cases (most recent) by country ")

So, at this page we see a long list of countries/provinces - and their category (USA ranks #165)

From the GDP list bar-graph we have quite a few countries that we can compare

USA - # 1 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks #165 for tuberculosis success rate
Germany - # 4 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks #148 for tuberculosis success rate
Belgium - # 5 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 128 for tuberculosis success rate
Portugal - # 6 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 71 for tuberculosis success rate
Austria - # 7 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 146 for tuberculosis success rate
Canada - # 8 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 164 for tuberculosis success rate
Netherlands - # 9 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 79 for tuberculosis success rate
Denmark #10 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 45 for tuberculosis success rate
Sweden # 11 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 158 for tuberculosis success rate
Iceland # 13 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 177 for tuberculosis success rate
Italy # 14 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 13 for tuberculosis success rate
Australia # 15 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 66 for tuberculosis success rate
Norway # 16 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 38 for tuberculosis success rate
Hungary # 19 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 173 for tuberculosis success rate
Japan # 21 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 171 for tuberculosis success rate
New Zealand # 22 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 154 for tuberculosis success rate
Slovak Republic # 24 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 43 (Slovakia) for tuberculosis success rate
Czech Republic # 26 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 120 for tuberculosis success rate
Mexico # 27 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 85 for tuberculosis success rate
Korea # 28 GDP<-> healthcost (which one? North or Sourth)
North Korea: Ranks # 42 for tsr
South Korea: Ranks # 96 for tsr
Poland # 29 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 107 for tuberculosis success rate
Turkey # 30 GDP<-> healthcost, Ranks # 24 for tuberculosis success rate

If we were to just look at these in the Tuberculosis success rate and put them in order it would be:
Italy (#13)
Turkey (#24)
Norway (#38)
North Korea (#42)
Slovak Republic (#43)
Denmark (#45)
Australia (#66)
Portugal (#71)
Netherlands (#79)
Mexico (#85)
South Korea (#96)
Poland (#107)
Czech Republic (#120)
Belgium (#128)
Austria (#146)
Germany (#148)
New Zealand (#154)
Sweden (#158)
Canada (#164)
United States (#165)
Japan (#171)
Iceland (#177)

This all seems like a jumble - but it really speaks volumes for how accurate examining GDP is when trying to discuss HEALTH CARE. See - healthcare doesn't center or depend on crunched numbers - you can spend a million, like we do, and get crap care - or a thousand and get stellar care. . . and vise versa. What REALLY matter is HOW it's implimented - rules and regulations - and so on, so forth - when it comes to actually efficiency of Care.

I think these types of comparisons are the best way to accurately determine the most successful systems - it changes depending on the nature of the disease, social issue, location and so on.

What do you have a 100% BETTER chance of being treated for Tuberculosis in Portugal or even Mexico than in the USA and Canada?

when the Healthcare debate really got going I started to look at these numbers - and STILL don't believe that we're going to FIX any of these issues. We're just moving things around - We're not actually examining why things work better in Italy or Turkey - we're just looking at vapid #'s like GDP % and then drawing conclusions that less cost = more efficiency.
 
Gabriel, you are using biased sources from people who are all UHC advocates. The L.A. Times is a very left paper, the Google link had nothing but pro-UHC links, the last submission is from a position of admitted bias. If you want to be taken seriously in this debate you will need more than journalistic opinion and propoganda pieces, journalists are "know it alls" but they are not professionals, pro-UHC groups are not professionals, and 450K doctors out of millions practicing is NOT a case maker, actually quite the opposite. You have so far dismissed professional opinion, statistics you do not like, etc. without any valid reasons except that you don't agree. Summary, your position needs better support.

*This is not an attack, rather advice.
 
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Gabriel, you are using biased sources from people who are all UHC advocates. The L.A. Times is a very left paper, the Google link had nothing but pro-UHC links, the last submission is from a position of admitted bias. If you want to be taken seriously in this debate you will need more than journalistic opinion and propoganda pieces, journalists are "know it alls" but they are not professionals, pro-UHC groups are not professionals, and 450K doctors out of millions practicing is NOT a case maker, actually quite the opposite. You have so far dismissed pr

Insurance companies are not bias?
 
Insurance companies are not bias?
We do the homework, you are getting down the middle analysis from me and trying to dismiss because you don't like my industry, take it for what it's worth.
 


Ok - I follow and agree most of it (I've stated it in the past, too, so no flip-flopping here) - I don't like the insurance companies making any PROFIT off of health-care.

But here are things I have issues with:

Water: I PAY for the water I use. I pay usage fees, base cost, taxes, etc etc.
Fire: I PAY annual dues to my fire department. $55.00/year. If I don't pay every year - they will charge me $500.00 if my house catches on fire. On top of that, my fire department is VOLUNTEER - they are not fully government funded.
And, at 3:10 he starts to talk about 'fire insurance' - and what he talks about sounds oddly like HOME owner's insurance AND auto insurance.

If you don't OWN a home you don't HAVE to have homeowners insurance.
If you don't OWN a car you don't HAVE to have homeowners insurance.

So - my issue - is that this new Healthcare is the Mandatory - you MUST have it and if you can't afford private - the government will sell it to you.
I think people should be able to opt out if they so choose - even if it means they have to pay $100,000 in medical bills.

So - I don't support mandatory but I do support efforts to reorganize the system so it's more efficient and cost effective. .. I don't think the current healthcare bill is going to make it more efficient - I think it will just go the way of SSA and other things.
 
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Ok - I follow and agree most of it (I've stated it in the past, too, so no flip-flopping here) - I don't like the insurance companies making any PROFIT off of health-care.

But here are things I have issues with:

Water: I PAY for the water I use. I pay usage fees, base cost, taxes, etc etc.
Fire: I PAY annual dues to my fire department. $55.00/year. If I don't pay every year - they will charge me $500.00 if my house catches on fire. On top of that, my fire department is VOLUNTEER - they are not fully government funded.
And, at 3:10 he starts to talk about 'fire insurance' - and what he talks about sounds oddly like HOME owner's insurance AND auto insurance.

If you don't OWN a home you don't HAVE to have homeowners insurance.
If you don't OWN a car you don't HAVE to have homeowners insurance.

So - my issue - is that this new Healthcare is the Mandatory - you MUST have it and if you can't afford private - the government will sell it to you.
I think people should be able to opt out if they so choose - even if it means they have to pay $100,000 in medical bills.

So - I don't support mandatory but I do support efforts to reorganize the system so it's more efficient and cost effective. .. I don't think the current healthcare bill is going to make it more efficient - I think it will just go the way of SSA and other things.

I don't think it goes far enough personally but any step in the right direction is good. But this is only a tiny step towards state run healthcare efficiency. There is privatization throughout the system for profit that should be removed over time.
 
I support government run healthcare, but I fear that the government will ration it and manage it extremely poorly. Medicare is failing, social security is failing, and I don't know if I can trust the government to efficiently and cost effectively care for 300+ million people. It would be much more feasible if states took control. I do support some form of universal healthcare, but it needs to be efficient and not bloated like the UK's.
 
Ok - I follow and agree most of it (I've stated it in the past, too, so no flip-flopping here) - I don't like the insurance companies making any PROFIT off of health-care.
So wait, others provide you a service like restaurants, mechanics and physicians but it's okay for them to make a profit? But not an insurance company that provides same? That is a little difficult to grasp.
 
I support government run healthcare, but I fear that the government will ration it and manage it extremely poorly. Medicare is failing, social security is failing, and I don't know if I can trust the government to efficiently and cost effectively care for 300+ million people. It would be much more feasible if states took control. I do support some form of universal healthcare, but it needs to be efficient and not bloated like the UK's.

Many countries manage the cost just fine and spend much less then America does .. 5% gdp less is a substial amount.
 
So wait, others provide you a service like restaurants, mechanics and physicians but it's okay for them to make a profit? But not an insurance company that provides same? That is a little difficult to grasp.

"restaurant, mechanic"
Are not essential to someone's LIFE.

I can handle almost every issue with my car/truck - so I've never needed a Mechanic.
I can feed my family - so I don't need to go out to eat.
When I didn't have health/dental/auto insurance I covered those costs by myself, out of pocket

if someone wants to waste money on fastfood - fine :shrug: But that's not essential and that's not me.
 
Many countries manage the cost just fine and spend much less then America does .. 5% gdp less is a substial amount.

I know this, but I fear that America won't handle it in a cost effective and responsible way. I never said that they couldn't, I just said that I don't see that happening. Most countries that have excellent socialized healthcare are usually countries with small populations (like Denmark) and thus there is less to manage and pay for. Our government wastes massive amounts of money in bureaucracy and wasteful spending, and I don't want this to happen with everyone's healthcare either. Right now they are failing at managing and funding Medicare.
 
"restaurant, mechanic"
Are not essential to someone's LIFE.
Sure about that? No car means you have to find another means to work, not every city has transportation, no restaurants/stores/farmers/meat producers means you must gather your own food, without them most Americans would probably starve. Insurance is a service, so is medical care. If you want the best you have to pay, end of story.

I can handle almost every issue with my car/truck - so I've never needed a Mechanic.
I can feed my family - so I don't need to go out to eat.
When I didn't have health/dental/auto insurance I covered those costs by myself, out of pocket
Great, most people can't these days in ever increasing numbers.

if someone wants to waste money on fastfood - fine :shrug: But that's not essential and that's not me.
Ah, but they are service providers, as are insurers.
 
Many countries manage the cost just fine and spend much less then America does .. 5% gdp less is a substial amount.
No, they don't manage costs just fine, they have to increase taxes or deny/delay more services. Any large country in the world has those problems, the "solutions" don't "manage" money, they just hide cost.
 
The main reason the US stays privatized.

No More Bribes
A political agenda? Now you are reaching, nothing you brought so far is new or hasn't been exposed already. All of these sources are biased based upon an agenda, they also completely misrepresent the issue.
 
A political agenda? Now you are reaching, nothing you brought so far is new or hasn't been exposed already. All of these sources are biased based upon an agenda, they also completely misrepresent the issue.

Again I understand you work with private health insurance. You understand I don't think that should job should exist. Lets just leave it at that shall we?
 
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