Comments on: Abortion, health care and the media

By: L.K. Collins

L.K. Collins — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:40:09 +0000

“Cause I think we all would like to get a feel for how much of the bluster get in your posts is just noise.

By: Mike Benedict

Mike Benedict — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:59:01 +0000

@LK: Since you claim to know so much, why don’t you explain it for us?

Then you can help pay for my retirement from the medical bills you incur when we rip you a new one.

By: L.K.Collins

L.K.Collins — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 01:25:04 +0000

You fail to see the see the spread of risk to the greater pool of “investors” .

Perhaps you should do some research and some of the thinking that you keep telling us that you are so capable of doing.

Couple of points for you to focus on.

1. How insurance companies actually make their money. And,

2. How the approximately 35% of the premium dollar that does not go for claims is actually “spent”.

And I am so, so sorry that your wife the doctor is not able to support you in the way that you would like to become accustomed. Life’s a bitch, ain’t it.

By: Mike Benedict

Mike Benedict — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:32:33 +0000

Uh, LK, under single payer, your health care premiums will “pay for your care and rehabilitation after you ski your way into a tree on a slope in Aspen.” Not sure why you think one eliminates the other.

Back to the books. There’s still a little time before you die.

By: L.K. Collins

L.K. Collins — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:24:27 +0000

As one who has been in favor of universal single-payer since before your elementary school days, I welcome you to the correct answer to the health care debate. You’re late to the party!

As for the rest, it is best not to make assumptions.

I thought you would have learned that by now.

By: Mike Benedict

Mike Benedict — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:35:41 +0000

@BP: The money does go to the insurers, but not always as efficiently (i.e., profitably) as you suggest. Witness the disaster that is Rhode Island’s insurance landscape. And BCBS here in Mass. is teetering too, under the weight of innumerable recently hired auditors whose only job is to say “no” to providers. In Mass. today, BCBS has added to all previous paperwork a 2-page form that every provider must fill out for every single patient on every single visit. The paperwork alone is immense. Then factor in the five or six or eight calls (with supporting paperwork submitted each time) a provider must make to get paid.

BCBS’s standard initial response to any claim my wife has submitted is to reject it. She then spends that many more hours chasing down payment — even when the consult and service were preapproved by … you got it .. BCBS.

None of this is unusual, btw. Every physician in Massachusetts must endure this.

This notion that the private sector is capable of handling the mess is absurd. A single-payer public option is indeed the only resolution for this problem today.

@LK: Please do some reading on how actuarial science works. Thank you.

By: BP Myers

BP Myers — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:21:38 +0000

@Mike said: health care premiums go up in double-digits every year. Rest assured, doctors (even specialists) don’t see their paychecks go up like that, and I would know — I’m married to one.

On that, we can agree. So where is that money going? Into the pockets of insurance companies, their executives, and their shareholders. Middle men who provide not a scintilla of health care to anyone. And this bill, mandating people buy their products, will only make their profits, income, and compensation soar.

The only way out of this mess is to eliminate the middle man, e.g. with a single-payer public option.

By: Mike Stucka

Mike Stucka — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:29:28 +0000

A Washington Post writer named T.R. Reid had a column on how abortion opponents should be backing universal health care, because it's linked to lower abortion rates. (His major evidence, though, is one priest and statistics that neglect the correlation-is-not-causation fallacy.) If nothing else, the last two paragraphs are food for thought.

By: L.K. Collins

L.K. Collins — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:35:31 +0000

Sorry Mr. Benedict, I not only didn’t miss the point you are making, I get the sense that you don’t understand either the rationale of insurance or the advantages that truly universal health care coverage can provide.

If the ability to buy a way around a health care system isn’t restricted, a) the rich (or those who can afford to) will create a multi-tiered health care system by buying “improved” care, and b) will increase the costs of health care for those that can’t.

I find a multi-tiered system to be offensive, as would most who find themselves being ill and unable to pay for even the most minimal of medical care and intervention.

Universal, not-for-profit health care, which takes away the buy-around, will take out of the calculus of the affordability issue that skews both the access and delivery of the care.

I see this as an equal opportunity issue and the “not-from-my-paycheck” entitlement as far less persuasive than the right to medically appropriate care for the sick, whoever the sick might be and whenever they may be sick.

Let me put this another way.

Why should my health care premiums pay for your care and rehabilitation after you ski your way into a tree on a slope in Aspen?

Isn’t that they system we have now?

I’d rather pay for all to have the same coverage than have to pay selectively for your inability to control your forward momentum.

And if you think carefully about some of the other positions you have taken and apply your arguments here, you will see that a truly broad-based insurance scheme is the best hedge against discrimination and abuse.

It may well be the only one.

By: Al Fiantaca

Al Fiantaca — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:05:29 +0000

I never liked the argument of the risk pool in the sense that if I was buying individual coverage, I paid one rate, but someone who worked for a small company, with a small group paid a lesser rate, and the fellow getting his insurance as an employee of a large company cost an even smaller amount, yet we could live side by side in the same neighborhood and be of similar circumstances, riskwise. I think the whole idea of risk pool has to be turned on its head, with group population being something more akin to geographic population than who your employment group is, or isn’t.