Good, I'm a medical student as well. You've made an important point that malpractice insurance has led to defensive medicine and therein lies part of the problem. Yet, I would be hesitant to claim that this is the major reasons why health care costs are so high. Simply stated, insurance companies are run like businesses, even if the number of suits were to halve tomorrow, the insurance agencies would try to keep their premiums as high as competitively possible. Secondly, pharma and administrative costs take the biggest piece of the pie.

At one hospital I did my rounds, the doctors' average cost (skill, labor) amounted to 11%, while hospital's malpractice budget received 6%. Where did the other 81% go. Hint: around 60% went directly to pharma companies.

Furthermore, more hospitals in this country are going bankrupt than making enormous profits. Do a little research and ask around, see how your local hospital is doing.

@trollkiller:

It's not that hard. You're now making at an issue between federal and local government, not an issue that socialized medicine is welfare versus essential service.

Fun fact for you, since you list "printing money" as one of the functions of the federal government, and you exclude medical service from the framers' thoughts when the constitution was written. The federal government did not print money until 12 years after the civil war. It's a true fact. Google the "Free Banking Era" for a cite.

In the areas that the Federal govt. does provide with refunding, it uses the money as a sword to make sure the states fall in lock step with the Federal govt.

Example would be highway funds, lower the speed limit or no money for you. Speed limits, drinking age etc. are State issues, not Federal issues.

(refunding is NOT a typo, the government does not provide any funding, it redistributes tax money received from its citizens)

I would say they are long-sighted ideologs. The Federal government exists to do the things that state and local govt. can't do. Things like provide for a common defense, treaties, print money, etc. [www.usconstitution.net] You may argue that socialized health care falls under the "promote the general welfare" but that was not the meaning of welfare when the Constitution was written.

Unlike most countries, our United States of America consists of independent states, each with its own constitution. The states are not puppet governments but independent governments that answer to the people in their states. (at least that is how it is supposed to work)

If the people of my State feel the need for socialized health care then we can approach our representatives for it. I see no great rush by the states to move to socialized health care. That tells me the people do not want it.

Even if you disagree with it, the people own the government not the other way around. The Federal govt. needs to keep its dirty paws out of what is clearly a state issue.

Apparently, people of middle America are so independent minded that they're willing to pay more than citizens of any other industrialized nation, both through taxes and to the private sector, for third-world standard service that they may not even receive.

Yet, according to you, these independent minded people who are willing to sacrifice their own health even when affordable care is demonstrably attainable, have no problem ignoring their "I don't want no gumbint in'erferin' with mah life" mantra when they drive on socialized roads, have their streets protected by a government funded police force, depend on pinko commie fire fighters, see criminals tried by a government-backed court system, and wash their dishes with government water. So you're saying that they're not only short-sighted ideologs, they're also hypocrites.

Though of course, you could argue that all the stuff I listed are truly essential services that would be grossly inadequate or inefficient when left to private enterprises. You know, like healthcare.

Not sure what post of mine you are replying to but if it is the evolution post I will explain further.

If you pick up a middle school or high school science book you will see that evolution theory evidence is presented as fact.

Let me give you an example. When I went to school it was taught as FACT that Neanderthal man was a human ancestor. It was taught that we evolved from them. Now evidence suggests that human and Neanderthal lived at the same time in the same areas. Evidence now suggests that we did not evolve from them. What we were taught was WRONG. We were also taught as FACT that dinosaurs were cold blooded reptiles. Evidence now points to some being warm blooded and avian.

My son is like most 10 year olds, he loves dinosaurs. He can give you more information then you would ever care to listen to. He also understands the difference between a proved fact and a theory. When he tells you about a certain dinosaur he will preface his information with "scientists BELIEVE" or "evidence suggests".

Hopefully you now understand what I mean by evolution facts being disproved or changed. My children are taught not to take unproved scientific "facts" as facts. They are taught to reason and to understand that all the evidence is not in, so today's "fact" may not be tomorrow's "fact".

If you have anymore comments on evolution or home school feel free to contact me. I won't answer anymore in this thread because it is off topic.

In this country, moreso than other industrialized nations, ideology and cult of personality trump pragmatism and human decency.

@jamar0303: Are you Chinese? I will admit I have not seen Sicko as I am not a Michael Moore fan. The last Michael Moore movie I saw was full of statistical junk. Turned me off to seeing anything by him.

@Elviswasntmyhero: both links failed

If link fails, story here: [www.guardian.co.uk],,2167671,00.html

Expensive and divisive: how America is losing patience with a failing system

@chouchou: I would continue the argument but I think we have thread jacked enough. Feel free to contact me.

"We live in a great country that has got the best healthcare system in the world, and we need to keep it that way."

(George Bush, June 2003)

I'd rather have SOME type of treatment in a month than no treatment at all.

And every time ''policed'' countries turn against US. Look at Afghanistan, that's becoming an opium platform for the world, or Vietnam, that still dislikes US military. And look historically : talibans would never have seized power, if it wasn't for US intervention on monarchy reigning in the region.

@mr_jrdn:If you enjoy your way of life I hope that you would say the world needs policing.

We have interests all over the globe, things that directly and indirectly effect our physical and economic security. We sat back during the first part of WWII as an isolationist country and it cost us a lot more good men to overcome what could have been done earlier.

Being proactive is always better than being reactive.

There is always a choice, and violence never solved much. This money is better invested in citizens of it's country. Charity should begin at home. Once own problems fixed, lead by example. Not by sending kids to war.

@mr_jrdn: Canada does not have to police the world, we do. Hey someone has to do it, might as well be us.

@trollkiller: Or maybe Canada doesn't wander the globe with a huge army like the school bully pissing people off. Even so, the UK has excellent healthcare and has still managed to keep a strong military. Maybe research next time before posting?

@trollkiller:

Just to make it clear we spend more in absolute dollars per person and more as a percentage of per capita GDP by a factor of almost 2 than the average industrialized country. Seriously.

For anyone that would like to bash universal healthcare please read the following report:

[assets.opencrs.com]

It compares the cost of healthcare in the US with the cost in 29 other OECD countries. It also compares healthcare outcomes. The short and sweet of it is that in the US we spend roughly 15% of our GDP on healthcare. The median of all countries in the study is 8.8%. Yes that's right we spend nearly 2X as much as a percentage of GDP than the average industrialized country.

It also compares healthcare outcomes across different treatment patterns and guess what the US is either average or below average in the results in almost all cases. So in the US we spend twice as much to get what would be considered average service. If this doesn't scream it's broken to you, I have no idea what will.

The issue with healthcare is that it is not a consumer good or service. It is complex, there is a large information assymetry and no one wants to take chances that they are wrong or cheaping out if they don't have to. This distorts the choices that people make when consuming healthcare. I'm not saying people can't be responsible for their own healthcare, I'm saying that it's far too easy for people to be taken advantage of and the normal form of recourse a consumer has to express displeasure (vote with your wallet) really doesn't exist. There is little evidence that a nationalized system of healthcare leads to either more expense or poorer health outcomes. In fact the evidence is to the contrary. Free markets are good for allocating goods and services that market participants can readily value. Healthcare is not one of those and is therefore a poor free market good.

@spinachdip: I understand scientific method, schools don't. Read a science text book from any middle or highschool and they show theory as fact.

@johnva: Are we spending more total or more per person?

Well I can explain exactly why prices billed and paid are so different. I worked for a large Ca. Healthcare company. I saw bills everyday where the bill was for 6,000 and we paid 1,100, it was the contracted rate we had with the hospital. When the health ins. companies sign a contract with the hospitals and medical groups both sides decide what they can afford to pay and accept for payment. The prices you see on your bill for huge amounts are the amounts they charge people without health ins, its the non-contracted rate.

An example of it was when I had surgery on my knee because I tore several ligaments and muscles completely off the bone. The bill the Hospital sent was about 65,000. The contracted rate was 7,600, we sent a check for 7,580 to the hospital and I paid $20 as my co-pay. The rest is written off because it was above the contracted rate. It was funny to look at my own bills and see exactly how much the hospital inflated thier prices. It is presented in a way to make you glad you have insurance, even though most people could negotiate the price down to the contracted rate if they didn't have health insurance.

In addition to the $80,000/year (not inflated, I've seen the check) my attending pays for malpractice insurance, he also has a family (!). He, like 100% of you out there, will not risk some money-grubbing lawyer coming in to sue him for everything he's got and leave him and his family on the street because Mr. Smith got a viral infection and was in "dire agony" because he had to use kleenex to blow his nose for a day. So we have to order tests and obtain images, probably more than necessary in many doctor's opinions, but they have to be done.

The bottom line is if doctors didn't have to practice defensive medicine in fear of some frivilous lawsuit, they could do what's best for the patient with the patient in mind. Instead, they have to do what's best for the patient with the lawyers in mind. This leads to more tests -> increased costs -> insurance companies don't want to pay -> 1.5 million dollar bills.

She BITCHES incessantly about her current (really not bad) health insurance and how much she loved the Canadian health system. She is the only person in my department with insurance (she's salaried, the rest of us are hourly) and every time she complains to those of us who have no coverage at all, I just want to smack her.

My husband is also Canadian. His theory? Canadians complain freely and loudly about the health system because they're well aware that they have a decent system that could be better. Americans complain less because far too many of us are in the ranks of "too poor for insurance, too wealthy for Medicare, bitching won't FIX anything." It's the elephant in the corner nobody wants to talk about. (Although conversations like this make it clear that's changing.)

The current uncertainty, perversely, makes things worse; it looks like we might get a MassHealth-style system in my state during the next three to five years, and so I'm afraid to even go to the doctor and pay out of pocket now and foul up my chances for actually getting treated for what might be labeled a pre-ex later on. If I had no real hope of ever being covered, I'd say the hell with it, go into debt to get my health fixed, declare bankruptcy, and start fresh. Instead I suck it up, work, hurt, and vote more left-wing than I'm really comfortable.

@ad8bc: It wasn't the "only option" to attack Iraq. We've lost a lot more than we gained by doing so; Saddam was effectively contained as a regional threat before the war. The problems that we are now having in Iraq were entirely predictable and in fact were predicted by people who knew what they were talking about. The Iraqis aren't "ingrates"; it's just that they couldn't be expected to smoothly transition from a totalitarian dictatorship to a democratic state when they had no history or experience with democracy. It's really unfair to blame them when the problem was inflicted on them by Saddam and by a foreign invasion. Things won't calm down until there is a functioning government and political process to fill the power vacuum. But they can't know how to build that overnight.

That is part of it, a lot of the "facts" on evolution have been disproved or modified. I find it is better to be able to show the children the current theories and then discuss why they may be wrong. It is better to make them think then it is to memorize the latest flavor of the week.

@johnva: The real problem with the war are the ingrates that were given freedom and continue to blow each other up. The war was a great idea at the time and, really, the only option. Saddam had to get taken out. Now it's time to bring our guys home and let the ingrates kill themselves off.

@trollkiller: Great point!

@Brad2723: Absolutely.

Most of the problem with insurance and why it is so expensive for us is because of the prices hospitals think they can get away with charging. Almost $800 for a $12 pair of socks? You've got to be joking.

@donnie5: For all your loaded language about "personal responsibility" people "being lazy" and "handouts," you completely fail to acknowledge the fact that 1. There are plenty of people who work damned hard and don't have access to healthcare and 2. under our system the insurance companies who pay for health care have a strong financial incentive to deny care.

Unless you're willing to address those problems in a rational way without using Sean Hannity talking points, you have no argument.

Malpractice insurance is a lot but in California they changed the laws capping malpractice amounts so the insurance is now a lot cheaper than it used to be.

I guess this guy can literally call himself the 1.2 million dollar man.

Glad to hear he was able to get the bill wiped clean.

I think government can do a better job than the insurance companies are currently doing with healthcare because the insurance companies are doing an absolutely horrible job. We're paying more and getting less for our healthcare dollar than people in countries with totally socialized medicine do. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I do know that the status quo is not acceptable.

@spinachdip: Really? Have you heard of the VA?

My family has been in and out of canadian hospitals for years, and we have never had a single complaint - when my brother had open heart surgery at 6 years old, the WHOLE THING was covered. My parents had to pay gas to and from the hospital. That was it. There was no waiting period, even though what he had wasn't considered immediately lifethreatening. There was no debate about whether it would be covered, no looking into what company would do what - honestly, how is oft-referenced canadian waittime any different or any more detrimental than that "is-it-covered?" time in the states?

My american cousin has the same problem as my brother - he can't have surgery because his parents can't afford it. Period.

I have NEVER heard anyone complain about having to wait a long time, UNLESS it is to see a depression counsellor in Toronto. Part of the reason there ARE wait times is due to prioritizing - it isn't a first - come -first - paid - first serve situation up here. Those with serious problems get prioritized first, and those who don't have them, get to wait a BIT. If, in the intervening time, there is a health-related breakdown, then two phone calls gets you moved up in the list.

Also: Private insurance isn't illegal in ontario. You can purchase, if you want, supplementary insurance, to make sure you get a private room and whatnot. Why you'd want to is beyond me, but you can. Be away from the proles, maybe.

I have had the weirdest experiences when talking with my american relatives about general cost-of-living between canada and the states. Inevitably, i mention going to the states to buy milk - it's much cheaper down there than up here, where it's currently about $5 / gal. They are horrified that canadians would pay so much for milk. Then, i say, yeah, but my health care is covered, and I don't have to worry about it. and they say "well, i still wouldn't live there, because everything's so much more expensive."

All in all, it's a cultural mindset thing. And that is probably not going to change.

@spinachdip:

My ex-girlfriend (she's from Heidelberg if you must know) says they have the same problem in Germany that we have in the states WRT people using their health care system but never contributing back to it. Here it's illegal aliens, malpractice costs & people who go bankrupt trying to pay for care. There it's Turkish immigrants & others who never bother to get a job to put tax money back into the system.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm saying that we may not want to model ours after existing national health care systems. We can do better.

One thing that always bothers me hearing from the lefties is how the government has borked the war. However, they are the ones begging the government to take over healthcare. This confuses the hell out me.

Just say you're an illegal immigrant next time so they won't charge you.

That's a shitload of money, excuse the expression!

@timmus:

No, it's completely true. My dad is a physician and my mother is a nurse and the amount of medical malpracitice in our state has driven doctors to move or just stop practicing. Those god-awful ambulance chasers on TV and sue-happy people who buy into it are making it even worse. The doctors are not the enemy (with the exception of a handful), the system, pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies are.

@kretara:

The hospital system I work for doesn't pay their doctors great (I know from hearing complaints from doctor-friends and my neurologist). It does, however, pay for their malpractice insurance 100%.

@masser:

Medicare/medicaid. Start speaking with financial counselors NOW, pre-transplant. You may be eligable without losing your house, and it'll save you the 20% copays on the pre-transplant workups.

Here's hoping you get a heart quick and have a fairly uneventful post-transplant experience.

I am a 46 year old woman, with a congenital heart problem. I am currently on the transplant list. I collect Social Security disability through having worked( albeit with difficulty) up until 3 years ago.
My husband has insurance which will cover 80% of the estimated $500,000 surgery/ first year's expenses. I have no idea how we will pay for the balance. Currently, I am in arrears on current medical bills- I pay what I can, when I can.
We need a total overhaul of the system, but I don't have the faintest idea where to start.
BTW I used to live near the Canadian border along New Brunswick and there were many people who came to the US for better medical care.

My husband does some collections work for a local hospital and he hates it, because there are two kinds of people who end up in hospital collections -- absolute assholes driving Ferraris who CAN pay, but decide not to and hide all their assets (usually transferring them to mommy dearest), and middle class families who've had catastrophic illnesses that have usually required one wage earner to quit work to deal with the illness (either of self or of child) who now own over a million dollars and who are flat broke and facing losing their homes because of medical debt and loss of income.

And while I don't agree with everything the hospital spends money on, their charitable aid program is pretty generous, and their write-offs of unpaid care is high for the region (but their prices are equivalent to places writing off much less). There's simply a point at which even at the most generous hospital, middle class families are going to get fucked.

What usually happens is a "payment plan" is worked out where people are paying $80/month on a million-dollar debt.

@bustit22: "She'll be needing an artifical knee in the future. The wait time? 18 months."

Wait time is not that much lower in many parts of the U.S. People always bring up these wait times in socialized systems (which are always for surgeries that are necessary, but not life-saving), but they're usually pretty much the same in the U.S. unless you are extremely wealthy. And if you're extremely wealthy, my understanding is you can buy yourself care outside the Canadian socialized system ANYWAY.

@Indecision: "Meanwhile, CBC in Canada says "A shortage of urologists has become so pronounced that patients' lives are at risk", partially because there are only about seven of them in all of Newfoundland."

This is also common the American system. When I lived in NC, there were NO ob/gyns in the entire western half of the state outside Charlotte, which meant up to 4-hour drives to deliver a baby (or get routine prenatal care). Where I live now, in downstate Illinois, they routinely remind us we have no brain surgeons south of I-80 (that is, outside Chicago), and it's a 2.5 hour life flight from some places to a hospital that can treat that kind of injury. (Ergo we should drive more safely is the point of the reminders, since catastrophic brain injuries will not receive prompt treatment. And then we should vote for tort reform is the second point of the reminders, because it's all the lawyers' faults.)

I don't know a single person who's come to the U.S. from a socialized system and who's been happy with our system, even highly-paid executives with excellent PPO coverage and very low premiums. They still don't like it and find it very insecure and stressful.

I worked in health care for a number of years as a Respiratory Therapist and I had high malpractice bills. I was paying almost $3000/yr for my malpractice insurance, and no I never had a suit brought against me. I made the unfortunate career "choice" of working with premature infants and attending high risk births. For that reason, my malpractice insurance was really high.

I'm friends with a number of doctors and every one of them has left private practice because they cannot afford the $15-30,000/yr they have to pay in malpractice insurance.

Most of the doctors (all have been in practice for more than 10 years) that I know make less than $200,000/yr, have $500,000 or so in medical school debt, work 60+ hours/wk and dislike our health care system with a passion.

Charity care has nothing to do with WSJ. It deals with your income from the last year and is a sliding scale based on federal poverty guidelines.

The only thing the WSJ could've done was expedite the processing of his application at the risk of bad PR for the hospital involved.

Ok...but I'm not the one who said it's a problem. According to the article I linked to, even the Health Minister thinks it's a problem.

And MRI scans, you can get them in private care (which does not offer insurance, but the prices are still cheaper than paying insurance all your life.) So if you feel urgency, there are always ways of proceeding.

Canada does need a lot more doctors and nurses and more funding. But a parallel system exists in private sector, too. It's not as popular, but regular insurances still cover some of private expenses anyway.

Unfortunately perfect system does not exist, but I prefer seeing Canadian government gradually improving the current health care, then losing everything I possess halfway through my life, because of some freak accident or hereditary illness.

@donnie5: Do you live in a country with universal health care? Because as was stated here, ask anyone in one of those countries if they would trade systems with us, and they will say no. That should tell you something. People love to trot out universal health care horror stories, but our own horror stories are looking much worse these days.

(I prefer to sue, that to get a guaranteed sweet and hearty funeral.)

We have considered this or Thailand. If we could find a verifiable Indian pharmacy we would be buying our medications and having them shipped here. They cost less than our copays there.

This is, to be honest, the first thing I think of when people talk about how great the Canadian health care system is.

I, in the US, went to a walk-in clinic on a Thursday, and had prescriptions written for a blood test and an ultrasound, and got a referral to a urologist. Blood test was done the same day, ultrasound done Friday. Saw the urologist on Monday.

He diagnosed me with testicular cancer, and wrote a prescription for a chest/abdomen/pelvis CT scan. The scan was done two days later, on Wednesday, and I was in surgery (not just at the hospital but in surgery) at 8:00am on Thursday.

Meanwhile, CBC in Canada says "A shortage of urologists has become so pronounced that patients' lives are at risk", partially because there are only about seven of them in all of Newfoundland.

"First of all, [patients deal with] the shock you might have prostate cancer, then the shock of being confirmed with prostate cancer," he said. "Now you have the shock of saying, 'I have to wait until next year?' "

Y'all can keep that on your side of the border. I went from "I think I should see a doctor" to being basically cured in a week. Sounds like in Newfoundland I would have died from it after it spread to my other organs while I waited for surgery. My urologist was adamant that I not even wait until Monday for the surgery, 4 more days (I had a trip planned), nevermind waiting a year!

@mycroft2000: Seconded. No Canadian seriously complains about the Canadian system unless they're a retarded right wing goofball.

The only serious problems are such:

1) Shortage of trained doctors. This is because we a) withdrew a lot of Government sponsorship for training doctors maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and are paying for it now. That's most of the reason for the waiting periods here in canada

2) Chronic UNDERfunding of the medical infrastructure. A lack of proper equipment explains the rest of the waiting periods.

Seriously though, the system works, and works well. If the Governemnt gave the health industry the support it needed to work properly, it would be a thing of beauty.

@bustit22:

Screw off. That's a ridiculous example. Do you think a 4 week head start is going to make a difference to terminal lung cancer. My grandmother died of the same thing, so don't even bother answering. A 5 year headstart? Maybe. 4 weeks. Bullshit.

Seriously, it's gotten so that it's basically impossible to know what your bills will be like if you go into the hospital or even an outpatient clinic. There is NO price transparency and NO functioning free market for health care. I'm so sick of people claiming that the "market" works so much better than an actual regulated system of healthcare when we don't have a real free market. If you think that the healthcare economy is functioning in a way that promotes price competition, etc, you are out of your mind.

Prices for care here are considerably higher than elsewhere, more along the lines of the Mayo Clinic prices quoted by someone else.

Our hospitals are rolling in money, both own the the two major health insurance plans in the state and most people carry a huge out of pocket medical debt.

It is insane and has to stop.

We have to get national health insurance. This would not have the government running hospitals but it would assure everyone has insurance and they would be able to demand realistic fees from hospitals. They do this right now with Medicare. Hospitals can't try to get Medicare to pay some crazy inflated price like $300 for a pair of $12 socks.

Right now I am in my third week of trying to get my health insurance to cover an expensive pain medication. They refuse to cover it because I have not tried the other medications they say I have to try first. The medications they say I have to try first are for shingles, I don't have shingles so trying these other medications would do absolutely nothing for my back injury. This is all over formulary rules and stupid insurance company staff making these decisions yet have no medical knowledge.

@mycroft2000:
My mother lives in Canada. She'll be needing an artifical knee in the future. The wait time? 18 months.

Her friend had a lung infection that a Canadian doctor diagnosed. She had to wait 4 weeks for an MRI, turned out it was cancer. Maybe if she had gotten an MRI sooner, she'd be alive.

The Mayo clinic cost more because it's the Mayo clinic. When you go to one of the major research/treatment clinics, you pay for the higher expertise of those who work there as well as for the name. One doesn't go to Mayo with a sprained ankle. They go there with complications or unusual items that need more advanced care.

Thankfully, my wife's teacher insurance is excellent, so I think in the end, I will owe a $50 copay. Ah, HMO, because 0% always better, and I'll be glad to get a referral for 0%.

So insurance doesn't always suck, but it does make a very big difference who your insurance is with, and what the terms are.

A law office I was at had a shitty plan that was basically a self-insurance (by the worker out of pocket) plan up to $5,000, then it would kick in 90% to 20,000, and 100% after that. Still sucked a lot since anything you did until you got to the $5,000 deductible was out of pocket. Routine visit... Out of pocket. MRI... out of pocket. I'm much better off now.

@balthisar:

I was born and have lived in Toronto all my life, and although I've heard some "mild inconvenience" stories, I've not heard a single "horror" story from anyone I know. My parents' and grandparents' lives were saved multiple times in various hospitals after receiving prompt care, and we've had absolutely no reason to complain about any level of care that our family has received. I rather think that if the system was really failing us, we (meaning my family personally) would have had some personal experience of this failure at some time or other over the past forty years. Something tells me that the grief you were catching was from the type of people who enjoy complaining for its own sake.

I was just talking about this with a coworker because I had gotten a bill from a lab that my doctor's office incorrectly sent to my old insurance. It was for $200. When I filed it correctly with the current insurance, I get a nice letter saying that they paid $40 and now I don't owe anything. Come again?

Just another example of the heightened power of big business over the individual now (right along with mandatory binding arbitration, etc).

What happened next? You guessed it. A nasty infection resulting in another trip to the ER, and another hospital bill. On top of that, they charged me $190 for one of those shoes for a sprained ankle that I didn't take and refused to give me an itemized bill citing that, "their system didn't support it."

It's complete bullshit what these hospitals can get away with. I fought, and fought, and fought with the hospital for that second uneeded bill and that overpriced shoe. The best they could do was give me 10% off.

I did have health insurance, but it was a crappy Health Spending Account offered by Cerner, my employer at the time. You'd think that a healthcare company would have decent health benefits.

No, see what'll happen in your scenario is the hospital bills will go down, insurance prices stay the same (or go up) and they'll just pocket even more of the profits.

tbh going after insurance companies isn't the right thing to do.

Fix the hopital bills and insurance prices go down. Hospitals make a ton of money

Therein lies the problem. If everyone were to "play nicely", so to speak, overall costs would end up decreasing. If doctors stopped ordering unnecessary costly procedures, if patients stopped agreeing to them, if hospitals stopped price gouging those items, and if insurance companies paid their bills like they were supposed to, the system would function far smoother and as a result, there would be a lot less unnecessary waste.

And if kisses were made of rainbows, and gold fell from the sky, etc. etc.

Get rid of your equity ASAP! Mortgage your house to 80% of its market value. Take the cash and put it in an offshore (preferably Suisse or Cayman) bank. When your equity position gets higher than 20%, take out a new mortgage and bank the left over equity. You can not afford to have any valuables where an insurance company can get their hands on it. This is the same thing as leaving bars of gold inside your car parked in a public parking lot. Someone will break in and steal it. I'm sorry to put it this way, but this is how the system works.

Yet another example of the costs that can be cut in the health care industry. This type of price gouging is routine, to say the least. Every person you know has a story about their hospital visit/emergency room trip/etc. that cost about 10 times what it should have cost.

Hospitals justify the overcharging by saying they need the money to keep their hospitals up and running, and are enabled to do so because the insurance companies keep paying for these things. Insurance companies have their hands tied because their only recourse is to not cover the costs, which only ends up screwing the patient, because they already incurred the cost of the treatment. And the patient rarely knows better, and even if they do, have very few options. What are they going to do? Let their bodies get ravaged by MRSA?

Right now, I think a big step to cutting these costs is to require more transparency in the pricing of things. The fact of the matter is, a lot of these costs are relatively unnecessary, and people will stop accepting these "services" when they are offered if they know the price that accompanies it. I can't count how many patients this flu season have told me about how the doctor gave their child an MRI because of a sinus infection.

Okay, yes I can. Four. But that's about $25,000 worth of medical procedure that could have been replaced with some easily Sudafed and a script for an antibiotic to boot, if they're really worried.

How much is life worth?

1.5 million dollars for one person?

If this was 100 years earlier someone would of handed the guy a gun and a bottle of whiskey and walked away.

In all seriousness I agree some hospitals push the billing on items up because costs are high, they get screwed on bills alot and insurance companies don't always pay the bill fully.

Also to answer the person who wonders why he might pay 1000 for something at one hospital and 6000 at another, it might be a more money because of a investment in newer machines or newer facilities throughout the hospital.

(Court cases in Quebec have put some doubt into the illegality of private insurance in Canada. Also, there is additional insurance that must be provided that the province doesn't cover, such as medicines, dental after age 13, and other miscellaneous stuff.)

(sarcasm)

And did YOU ask the Americans who died because their insurance companies had to mull it over whether or not they were going to authorize a procedure? Takes time to decide whether or not there's some way for them to profit off of it.

This is an overstatement; It's actually the opposite that happens in Canada: The needy (those in life or death situations) get the immediate attention (at no cost, of course), while those with minor things (think hip replacements...I know, not too minor, but not life threatening) end up waiting forever.

But it's a safe bet that almost all Canadians would rather keep their long wait for minor (and often annoying and painful) afflictions to be cured than to ever see a medical bill.

@mycroft2000:

Did you ask the Canadians who sued the Canadian gov't because they had to wait so long for medical treatment that they were dying?

You need a whole 'nother savings account just for medical emergencies.

Stop almost any Canadian in the street (i.e., one who isn't a millionaire) and ask whether he or she would like to trade the Canadian system for the American system, and you'll get a look that suggests that you must be out of your mind. You would only be able to take our socialized medicine by prying it from our cold, dead hands. This is how much we love it.

Our universal health care system has its faults -- like any other -- but the peace of mind we have in knowing that we cannot go broke because of illness outweighs them all by a wide margin.

@stinerman:

Hey cool! Totally worth it then. Would suck to have bad credit though, but I guess that only lasts for 10 years.

I currently dont have any need for loans & I save & accumulate like an old miser(I can pay cash for cars & such). So... could I make a "one time gift" *wink wink* of my life's savings to a friend & then declare bankruptcy?

P.s. But wait... didnt they make it harder to declare bankruptcy?

This is why I don't get why people are so against universal health care. You're already paying for the uninsured whether you want to or not.

@dirtymoney:
If you can't pay, they sell your debt to a bill collector and then you declare bankruptcy. It's actually a common occurrence. Most bankruptcies in the US are because of medical expenses.

@timmus: Proven where? Or is the lack of specialities in some states a farce also?

If that happened to me, I'd liquidate all my assets & just say fuck it.

How did the staph infection spread through his body? Was it acquired while he was in the hospital? That'd be a fun one there.

WHat I want to know is that... doesnt the hospital KNOW that there is no way in hell that they are going to get paid 1 million dollars by the guy they billed it to? (unless the guy is a millionaire)

So what will happen?

What happens when you owe an insane amount that you could never ever pay?

If that happened to me.... I'd liquidate all my assets & move to phucket or some other cheap-to-live-in place & live in a hut on the beach.

That has been proven to be bullshit. You've been sold a bill of goods, my friend.

Bravo, bravo. Seriously, I'm rooting for a collapse of the entire system, because nothing else is working. Every time I see a medical-bill donation jar for a sick 3-year old in a local shop around here, it is a reminder to me how this system has completely failed. The big regional hospital system here has naming rights on a $2 million stadium and their CEO has a $12 million compensation package. WTF?

The best way to reform healthcare is to require that insurance companies pay the same rate as the private pay. Insurance (and medicare/cade) pays the doctor/hospital/lab etc aprox 30-40% of the private pay fee. To keep insurance payments at a decent level the doctor/hospital/lab have to gouge the private pay customer.

I had to have surgery once, I had insurance that paid 80%. I got my bill for the $4000 I owed toward the $20,000 hospital bill. A couple of weeks later I got a letter from the hospital stating the insurance had decided to deny my claim. The letter also stated that they had returned the insurance company's $5000.

Ok I am no math wiz but 5+4=9 not 20. I can see a discounted rate for an insurance company, but $11,000 is not a discount.

Granted, comparing Medicare to general healthcare isn't the most parallel comparison, but you should disabuse yourself of the idea that private sector is inherently more efficient than the public sector.

Efficiency aside, the insurance industry (along with the pharmaceuticals) has shown that it can't be trusted to handle the nation's wellbeing. Its basic tactic is to:
(1) Deny coverage
(2) Take their chances in court
(3) And if they don't prevail in court, blame the ambulance chasing lawyers and lobby for tort "reform".

There's a special place in hell for the people who run health insurance in this country.

Edited to add - someone once told me what an average doctor pays to get malpractice insurance. It's quite an eye opener.

I went to the Mayo clinic had a 15 minute doc. appt, a CT Scan. Bill = $6000. After insurance I owed $600.

I had the same tests done in Iowa at a clinic, same results. $1000 After Insurnace $100.

It's weird how they could charge me 6 times as much for a CT scan. It was $4000 of the charges. I was like are you kidding. It took you 20 minutes to do a CT Scan and maybe 30 minutes to read the scan. 1 hour of work = $4000?

How much are these people making...

Medical Bills have put me in alot of debt, and thats after insurance and guess what I work for an Insurance company.

I have had no surgeries or anything, just scans and a bunch of appt. to doctors that can't figure anything out and just keep telling me to come back every 2 weeks.

Great.. I get to suffer and I get to pay lots of bills..

Doctors make a lot of money for their skills ... and to help cover their medical malpractice insurance bills.

This is not a political right/left rant...

Our government, left or right doesn't know the meaning of save and cost cutting and when they take over paying for everything, do we really believe that costs are going to go down?

Or that you won't be charged? One way or another?

Wait until the poor bastard figures out how little the insurance company really paid for thier part. I gurantee the insurance company did not pay $1.5 mill