Anonymous
09/30/2019 13:36
Subject: How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Op, not going to read all this crap. I lost my company provided healthcare two years ago when the cost soared to twenty plus thousand per employee. That’s not what I paid but at some point our small company of thirty employees could not support a plan. Had a few individuals but my pop with deductibles was close to twenty thousand. I am now uninsured for the first time in thirty years. I use my money to pay for a concierge doctor and hope for the best for my long term health.
Yup, another victim of Obamacare and Dem false promises.
Only Warren or Sanders would make things even worse.
Those DC folks who have never run anything don't know how to get anything done. We need some Governors in the race.
You're an idiot. Do you know how much cobra was pre ACA? Do you know how many people were uninsured pre ACA? Answer to both: a lot.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 13:34
Subject: How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Op, not going to read all this crap. I lost my company provided healthcare two years ago when the cost soared to twenty plus thousand per employee. That’s not what I paid but at some point our small company of thirty employees could not support a plan. Had a few individuals but my pop with deductibles was close to twenty thousand. I am now uninsured for the first time in thirty years. I use my money to pay for a concierge doctor and hope for the best for my long term health.
Yup, another victim of Obamacare and Dem false promises.
Only Warren or Sanders would make things even worse.
Those DC folks who have never run anything don't know how to get anything done. We need some Governors in the race.
My husband too. Owns a business with about 10 full time employees. Used to provide healthcare (paid 100% employee premium, but no dependent care- employee paid for dependents). The first 2? Years or so of ACA weren’t bad (and we got a tax incentive to help, also) but it quickly became unaffordable. We now buy a (worthless) plan on the ACA. The employees go without or buy plans on the ACA (heavily subsidized). In many ways this doesn’t make sense- we used to pay something (100% of employee premium) at least, but now that is all foisted onto taxpayers. This just makes no sense (from a public policy perspective). It almost as if the government doesn’t WANT us to provide insurance at al. So the taxpayers now pick up the whole tab.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 13:31
Subject: Re:How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Not going to happen. Supplemental policies will be offered just like for employees over 65 now.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 13:28
Subject: Re:How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Everybody is getting their panties in a twist about health insurance costs, but what we actually need is a national discussion about health care costs. Why is it so expensive to have any health care procedure done here, especially when compared to the rest of the world? We can moan about health insurance, but until health care costs are brought under control, nothing will change. Bring down health care costs, and people will not be going bankrupt. Insurance should be for "major stuff" like cancer treatment, surgery, etc. We should not be using it for checkups, flu shots, etc. However, we can't pay for these things out of pocket right now because they are priced too high.
+ a million.
Obamacare ignored this basic fact, creating an even less affordable healthcare system.
+1. Yes! And no one ever wants to discuss this. Until this is addressed, all of these plans are just cost-shifting with different winners and losers.
Correct. But the legislators, lobbyists, healthcare, insurance and pharma execs don’t want it fixed. And so it won’t be.
Look what happened when Democrats proposed a very small, common-sense way to tackle a small piece of the problem: reimburse doctors for their time discussing advanced directives with Medicare patients during routine office visits so that we're not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on treatment that neither the patient nor the doctor think are appropriate.
Republicans jumped on it and called it "death panels." It didn't make any sense, but it didn't stop a significant percentage of the population from imagining a panel of bureaucrats deciding who gets treatment, despite the fact that it did nothing of the sort.
There are a lot of reasons costs are high. Part of it is unnecessary treatment, and continuing treatment well beyond what makes rational sense. That's going to need to be tackled politically at some point, but before we get there we probably need the American public to mature to a point where we can have a serious discussion about this problem.
So much this!! Americans seems to want “the best best healthcare, no stone unturned, top of the line everything- regardless of what makes sense” yet don’t want to sacrifice other things (spending $ Etc). Not only that, they force ALL of us to pay for the above for EVERYONE even if it doesn’t make sense (based on age/quality of life). We need to have these conversations but people just bury their heads in the sand. They want absolutely everything done for their own family member but don’t want to pay for it.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 13:14
Subject: How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Anonymous wrote:Op, not going to read all this crap. I lost my company provided healthcare two years ago when the cost soared to twenty plus thousand per employee. That’s not what I paid but at some point our small company of thirty employees could not support a plan. Had a few individuals but my pop with deductibles was close to twenty thousand. I am now uninsured for the first time in thirty years. I use my money to pay for a concierge doctor and hope for the best for my long term health.
Yup, another victim of Obamacare and Dem false promises.
Only Warren or Sanders would make things even worse.
Those DC folks who have never run anything don't know how to get anything done. We need some Governors in the race.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 13:13
Subject: How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Anonymous wrote:Op, not going to read all this crap. I lost my company provided healthcare two years ago when the cost soared to twenty plus thousand per employee. That’s not what I paid but at some point our small company of thirty employees could not support a plan. Had a few individuals but my pop with deductibles was close to twenty thousand. I am now uninsured for the first time in thirty years. I use my money to pay for a concierge doctor and hope for the best for my long term health.
and that's the thing. No one is really "safe". You could also get laid off at any point, and then what? Cobra is super expensive.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 13:11
Subject: How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Op, not going to read all this crap. I lost my company provided healthcare two years ago when the cost soared to twenty plus thousand per employee. That’s not what I paid but at some point our small company of thirty employees could not support a plan. Had a few individuals but my pop with deductibles was close to twenty thousand. I am now uninsured for the first time in thirty years. I use my money to pay for a concierge doctor and hope for the best for my long term health.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 13:04
Subject: How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Anonymous wrote:If I'm a doctor, I'll just stop working. The govt will not dictate what I charge. If I'm a pharma company, I just move my Enterprise overseas. You will not dictate my business. If you don't want it, don't buy it.
B.S.
Medicare already dictates prices to a significant degree. Sure, there are some primary care doctors that don't take Medicare, but the vast majority of specialists take Medicare because a significant number of their patients are old.
And if you're a biopharma company, I suppose you could move operations, but just about every other country has tighter regulations and price controls on drugs.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 12:59
Subject: Re:How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Everybody is getting their panties in a twist about health insurance costs, but what we actually need is a national discussion about health care costs. Why is it so expensive to have any health care procedure done here, especially when compared to the rest of the world? We can moan about health insurance, but until health care costs are brought under control, nothing will change. Bring down health care costs, and people will not be going bankrupt. Insurance should be for "major stuff" like cancer treatment, surgery, etc. We should not be using it for checkups, flu shots, etc. However, we can't pay for these things out of pocket right now because they are priced too high.
+ a million.
Obamacare ignored this basic fact, creating an even less affordable healthcare system.
+1. Yes! And no one ever wants to discuss this. Until this is addressed, all of these plans are just cost-shifting with different winners and losers.
Correct. But the legislators, lobbyists, healthcare, insurance and pharma execs don’t want it fixed. And so it won’t be.
Look what happened when Democrats proposed a very small, common-sense way to tackle a small piece of the problem: reimburse doctors for their time discussing advanced directives with Medicare patients during routine office visits so that we're not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on treatment that neither the patient nor the doctor think are appropriate.
Republicans jumped on it and called it "death panels." It didn't make any sense, but it didn't stop a significant percentage of the population from imagining a panel of bureaucrats deciding who gets treatment, despite the fact that it did nothing of the sort.
There are a lot of reasons costs are high. Part of it is unnecessary treatment, and continuing treatment well beyond what makes rational sense. That's going to need to be tackled politically at some point, but before we get there we probably need the American public to mature to a point where we can have a serious discussion about this problem.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 12:48
Subject: How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
If I'm a doctor, I'll just stop working. The govt will not dictate what I charge. If I'm a pharma company, I just move my Enterprise overseas. You will not dictate my business. If you don't want it, don't buy it.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 12:45
Subject: Re:How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
The drug companies and the companies that make expensive medical equipment are among the most profitable and highest ROI businesses in the country. They make their shareholders very happy at the expense of the patients.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 12:43
Subject: How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Anonymous wrote:Let's not leave out the pharma fraud. My child has needed the same medication for a chronic illness for the last 10 years and the price fluctuations have been absolutely insane and unjustifiable. Literally $5 one month and $300 the next, with doctors constantly being forced to "try" a new medication in order for it to be covered, when the old one was working and the new one doesn't and has terrible side effects. They have to prove my child suffering the side effect that they knew would happen, before being allowed to go back the one that worked! It's child abuse.
This is happening to my son now. His medication is more than $300 a month out of my pocket. It was once $20. The last time the doctor tried an alternative I had to call the “volunteer” rescue squad and he spent five days in the hospital. I got a bill from the rescue squad for $500 which insurance would not pay. My bills for out of network doctors at the hospital were huge. I have given this rescue squad $100 or $150 per year for 20 years. They will not see another donation from me. My son was unconscious so it was necessary. What an awful period.
I see the dentist and eye doctor but I haven’t gone to a physician in more than five years. We were paying $1040/month through old employer and now only pay $740 for a family of four. HR told me they will try to negotiate his $300 medicine into the plan next year.
I think there needs to be some consumer protection applied to the drug companies and hospitals. I will probably vote for Warren.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 12:43
Subject: How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Anonymous wrote:Which drug is that? How much did it cost in research and development to bring to market?
And then subtract from that cost the absurd and obscene salaries paid to Pharma execs, lobbyists and sales reps and that is the actual R&D cost of the drug.
Anonymous
09/30/2019 12:21
Subject: How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Which drug is that? How much did it cost in research and development to bring to market?
Anonymous
09/30/2019 12:18
Subject: Re:How would you feel about losing your company-provided health insurance for "medicare for all"?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Everybody is getting their panties in a twist about health insurance costs, but what we actually need is a national discussion about health care costs. Why is it so expensive to have any health care procedure done here, especially when compared to the rest of the world? We can moan about health insurance, but until health care costs are brought under control, nothing will change. Bring down health care costs, and people will not be going bankrupt. Insurance should be for "major stuff" like cancer treatment, surgery, etc. We should not be using it for checkups, flu shots, etc. However, we can't pay for these things out of pocket right now because they are priced too high.
+ a million.
Obamacare ignored this basic fact, creating an even less affordable healthcare system.
+1. Yes! And no one ever wants to discuss this. Until this is addressed, all of these plans are just cost-shifting with different winners and losers.
+1!!!!! Unfortunately, our political system has degenerated to a point where this is not possible.
Pro tip -- lobbyists love this partisan circus which allows them to do their business in the dark
Yet another +1 to the need to actual control healthcare costs
I take a medicine that has a $100 monthly co-pay, which is a huge amount of money until you see the list price is $900 a month (over 10k a year!). I assume the insurance company gets some of that knocked off but it’s still probably many hundreds of dollars a month. For one drug - crazy.