Agree with the general thrust of your post. But one question: why pick Rasmussen as your polling source? Gallup's daily tracker has Obama at 52-41 favorable. Even that represents a pretty steep decline, but I'm guessing that given the circumstances, no human alive would be pulling better numbers.
RG,
Most healthcare providers are willing to negotiate with patients who are willing (or forced in the case of the uninsured) to pay cash for services. Many patients don't ask because they are unaware of that option. You are right on target with your comments about the administrative overhead of submitting bills only to receive a $5.00 check. However, your doctor agreed to those fees when he/she signed the contract in order to participate with that particular insurer. If more people would get involved with the process of their insurance coverage, and actually read their EOB's, etc.. and ask questions such as yours, I think the powers in charge would be challenged to do a better job at 'reforming' the system.
One additional comment ; If you pay cash for your visit rather than submitting through your insurance, you may end up paying less, but it won't count towards your deductible. This may or may not matter, depending on your situation. A healthy person who has a large deductible ($2500 or more), may never meet their deductible and therefore may be tempted to pay cash if that amount is less than what they will end up being charged after the insurance company applies the charges to the deductible and pays $0.00. Or, a person may choose to go to an alternate source for care, such as a Walgreens Take Care clinic, and pay $34.00, rather than going to their primary care doc and paying $150.00. It doesn't seem to make sense or be fair for people to have to pay premiums for insurance AND pay for everything out of pocket, but that is the common scenario, especially for the healthy insured. Why not go back to the indemnity days, when most policies were high deductible, catastrophic plans ? Premiums would be lower and the 'coverage' would basically be the same.
Bottom line, the insurance company does have the advantage and will continue to profit, no matter what the outcome of 'healthcare reform' is.
I checked my most recent Explanation of benefit declaration from my last doctor visit. The doctor sent in a request for $125, minus my $50 copay for a balance of $75. He was re-imbursed $5 from my insurance company. This seems like an awful waste of time, as that additional $5 the doctor recieved does not even cover the cost of processing and mailing out the claim forms.Why can't the doctor give ME a discount for instant cash payment, as done in other industries. They have to mark up their services higher to get their fair share. Same goes with Hospital bills, they are artificially inflated. If like most folks, your coverage is 80/20 and you have a $10,000 hospital bill, you'll pay $2000, your insurance company may settle for even less than your 20%. You should only be on the hook for 20% of the final negotiated amount. No matter how you slice it, you're getting scammed. Insurance is nothing but a money machine, they add nothing but grief and pain in the healthcare industry. The sooner their gone, and universal single-payer coverage is available, the better off we'll all be.
We have gone Through The Looking Glass into Backwards Land in the Health Care debate.
On one hand, Conservatives and Repuglicans are fighting a bill that would massively enrich the Insurance Industry, and vastly increase revenues for those insurers to invest in Wall Street, and greatly increase revenues to go to insurer lobbying and political campaign funding. The Pro-Business-Uber-Alles side has become anti-business.
On the other hand, "Liberals" and Democrats are working overtime to force the nation to patronize AND to provide taxes to go to that private insurance cartel.
Right wingers who love privatization of public services oppose this privatization scheme.
“Lefties” who despise such privatization support it here, in the absolutely last area that ought be privatized.
The sides have switched roles in this case. It will be a great irony if the right-wing, of all people, stops this Insurance Windfall Act.
Could it be that this is explained by Conservatives-Repugs simply being displeased that they aren’t getting as much money as they’d like from pharms and insurers…and they expect those contributions to expand considerably to pay them to cut out the resistance?
As for Avatar, Cameron should have called those people Na-vi, not Na'vi. An apostrophe always makes me wonder what was elided from the name.
We have gone Through The Looking Glass into Backwards Land in the Health Care debate.
On one hand, Conservatives and Repuglicans are fighting a bill that would massively enrich the Insurance Industry, and vastly increase revenues for those insurers to invest in Wall Street, and greatly increase revenues to go to insurer lobbying and political campaign funding. The Pro-Business-Uber-Alles side has become anti-business.
On the other hand, "Liberals" and Democrats are working overtime to force the nation to patronize AND to provide taxes to go to that private insurance cartel.
Right wingers who love privatization of public services oppose this privatization scheme.
“Lefties” who despise such privatization support it here, in the absolutely last area that ought be privatized.
The sides have switched roles in this case. It will be a great irony if the right-wing, of all people, stops this Insurance Windfall Act.
Could it be that this is explained by Conservatives-Repugs simply being displeased that they aren’t getting as much money as they’d like from pharms and insurers…and they expect those contributions to expand considerably to pay them to cut out the resistance?
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