"waste increasingly big chunks of your premium dollars on nonessential things like exorbitant CEO salaries and profits for the big institutional investors who own them. A public plan would not waste your precious dollars that way".
Do you really believe that statement? Ok, maybe not waste it on CEO salaries and institutional investors, they will invent new and astonishing ways to waste our precious dollars..
I think a regulated exchange WITHOUT a public option is closer to a real-world solution.
...you apparently know nothing about how insurance companies operate. That, or you don't read the news. The only thing binding about an insurance contract is the amount of money the policyholder is required to pay into it. Nearly any claim can be denied or made negotiable, or the person who wrote the policy wouldn't have a job.
Seriously, you have no idea how the real world works, do you?
<blockquote>"As an economist who has never read any of the insurance company spin, most, if not all the points made by "conservative talk" etc are quite intuitive to me, and I do not need a corporate PR wonk to point them out. Really, it is that intuitive. I seriously doubt your image of Big Insurance controlling the message of conservative talk radio, etc."</blockquote>
I'm reminded of the film, 'The Shawshank Redemption', where Tim Robbins' character sits down with the Warden after explaining the story told to him that could free him from prison. To that I borrow the question - how can you be so obtuse? Is it deliberate?
Also, economists are not experts on every issue, health care included, but I would advise anyone to please read what economists have to say, as they all do not share the kind of sentiments this person would have you believe.
Many reformers recognized roughly 30 percent of all health-care spending in the U.S. -some $700 billion a year- might be wasted on unnecessary tests and treatments, and payment reform could solve this problem. Is this claim an overstatement?
Provided the American people pay around double the amount of efficient systems, the result is still well below them, the ratio of waste might be estimated to far more than 50% in the U.S.
Let's be conservative regarding the ratio. If 10% of savings apply to the combined Medicare and Medicaid cost of $923.5bn per year, as of July, the savings of $923.5bn over the next decade are possible.
And when these savings add to the already allocated $583 billion, the savings of wastes involving so called "doughnut hole" , the unnecessary subsidies for insurers, abuse, exorbitant costs by the tragic ER visits etc, the concern over revenue might be a thing of the past.
As a matter of fact, with the promising redesign in the pipeline, some patient-focused clinics in 10 regions have already achieved 16% of savings in Medicare while their quality scores are well above average.
Please be sure to visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13gawande.html?hp for credible evidences !
Thankfully, the provisions in the reform include more expansive, systematic policies including 'a patient's outcome-based payment system' than they have. I for one firmly believe this American innovation, 'a patient's outcome-based payment system' , is capable of turning profit-oriented practices into patient-focused system / value.
Dr. Armadio at Mayo clinic says, "If we got rid of that stuff (waste), we save a third of all that we spend and that is 2.5 trillion dollars on health care. A third of that and that is 700 billion dollars a year. That covers a lot of uninsured people."
Please visit http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=820455&catid=391 for detailed info.
Thank You!
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