If private insurance companies are lobbying to prevent Medicare for All because they’d lose their business, then make them the claims processors. Like, the government pays the bill, but the carrier process the claim as a contractor to the government. That way they can still be publicly trades and still keep their profit margin, and people still get guaranteed healthcare. They’d even be able to keep what they’ve killed in previous profit, and they’d not have to be the source of funds for actual claims.
Since there are a few companies, maybe we could even use a regional distribution of the populace for who has which card on their wallet. So maybe the east coast has Blue Cross Blue Shield, the west coast has Aetna, and the central states have Kaiser?
This way everyone wins: heal insurance keeps in business and still makes money; the people have healthcare; and the government improves the lives of its population, has fewer bankruptcies, and can tax the revenue of its contactors like they do with their current contractors.
In order for almost anything to get better at all, it now requires that some rich sack of shit lose a little money.
I know its be a sour pill to swallow for the investors. I don’t care if that “industry” dies. They didn’t care about the all the people they sacrificed for the sake of the investors, why should actual people give a shit about them?
I know its be a sour pill to swallow for the investors. I don’t care if that “industry” dies. They didn’t care about the all the people they sacrificed for the sake of the investors, why should actual people give a shit about them?
Be practicable. Yes, the insurance industry is caustic to society. But, if a legislator took on the cause of killing such a profitable industry in post Citizens United world, the industry will drop a banker’s truck on them to ensure that their reelection campaign won’t go through. They did that when the ACA was first being considered, didn’t give up after a watered down version was passed, and it’s a hill the Republican party is still willing to die on years later because they’re supported by the insurance industry.
Edit: We may not like having to live in a society where money equals speech, but that’s where we are today since the Supreme Court has made the rich into first class citizens. So, operating in today’s society, we second-class citizens need to basically bribe the first-class citizenry that is the insurance industry into supporting universal health insurance by society’s relieving the insurance industry from having to pay their contractual obligations, which would increase their profit margin, while simultaneously providing it with a new avenue to remain in business.
What’s the old Kennedy quote? “We do it not because it is easy but because it is hard”, same thing applies here. Worst case scenario ya start doing good old vandalism on the insurance infrastructure, also I’m pretty fucken sure most businesses that aren’t the insurance industry fucken hate the insurance industry probably wouldn’t be that hard to get the ball rolling on at minimum dissolving and outlawing health insurance companies.
I edited my previous post to include some text, but I am going to add it as a reply here:
We may not like having to live in a society where money equals speech, but that’s where we are today since the Supreme Court has made the rich into first class citizens. So, operating in today’s society, we second-class citizens need to basically bribe the first-class citizenry that is the insurance industry into supporting universal health insurance by society’s relieving the insurance industry from having to pay their contractual obligations, which would increase their profit margin, while simultaneously providing it with a new avenue to remain in business.
Or we can start outlawing them on the state and local level effectively knocking out their feet from under them. You are assuming that they have infinite resources but being liked is a resource and everyone fucking hates them, while it’ll definitely be uphill battle the problem thus far has been that it’s a singular approach. Also if the supreme court says no you can’t do that, fuckem they will make their decision now enforce it.
You wish to play their stupid little game, I wish to burn everything they love and care about to cinders. If they continue to cause issues regardless just start killing them and burning things, not like society will lose anything.
You wish to play their stupid little game, I wish to burn everything they love and care about to cinders.
Until more people start doing Luigi stuff, this is t.he practical step forward.
Also, if there were many more Luigis, do you think the rich wouldn’t get their government goons to respond? Of course they would, and look at how ICE is acting. Yes, guillotines are going to be the ultimate solution, but not today. I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to lose what little family I have left to a drone strike or a goon squad. So, the next generation can start chopping heads.
You think I want to go after the heads of these shitheels, no I wish to burn every scrap of infrastructure to the ground if need be. We can start with their office building then move on from there its rather hard to stop someone from breaking into a server building and setting a diesel fire. Eventually people will stop wanting to work for them and their insurance primiums will ironically go up and up and up.
First of all, fuck the health insurance companies. Let them die. Let the CEOs meet an untimely and horrifying end.
The only people working at those companies that we care about are the low wage workers who will undoubtedly struggle to find another job when the market is flooded with other unemployed low wage workers. This will absolutely cause a small recession.
Fuck the rest of them. These are people who profit on denying claims for any reason. This is not an industry we need to break ourselves to preserve.
First of all, fuck the health insurance companies. Let them die.
While I agree with the sentiment and your point would be met in an ideal society, we live in a post-Citizens United world. So, we have to ask ourselves what is the most practicable way to get to universal health insurance today? Taking a position that the established industry would spend ungodly sums to resist? Or, do we insentivise the establishment to go along with the care plan in a manner that they could swallow (read as keep their hordes of money and still subsist today)?
Also, keep in mind, a lot of the industry has a lot of employees around the country. If you were a politician who wanted to get re-elected, what would be the best political history to have? One where you voted to kill an industry that put so many people (read as “voters”) out of work? Or, one that gave health insurance to the populace in a way that had them retain their jobs, more or less?
My suggestion was lets get all just get to the first step and secure the universal health insurance first, and then worry about the vested interests AFTER we get the universal insurance. I mean, look at how society reacted when the ACA was being considered. The insurance industry exploded and whipped the populace into a frenzy.
The insurance industry is caustic to society. But, if a legislator took on the cause of killing such a profitable industry in post-Citizens United world, the industry will drop a banker’s truck on them to ensure that their reelection campaign won’t go through. They did that when the ACA was first being considered, didn’t give up after a watered down version was passed, and it’s a hill the Republican party is still willing to die on years later because they’re supported by the insurance i
There is no universe in which the insurance companies sign off on universal healthcare. It does not matter what bow you put on it. If it cuts in to the bottom line, they will aggressively oppose it.
It doesn’t cut the bottom line if they no longer have to pay the obligation pursuant to the terms of the contract, and instead merely contract as a claims processor.
If it’s a publicly traded company, then they are obligated to pursue shareholder value above all else. If total revenue go down, shareholder value go down. They would see some pretty marginal gains because they’d still be able to lay off most employees, but they’d practically be cutting off both of their arms.
They make their money by absolutely draining every working class American for every dollar they can afford. Most claims are handled automatically by computer, we do not need them to do that for us. The 5% of claims or so that are not automatically handled are given over to review by a pretty small group of people, we would not need 3 insurance companies to do that work nationwide.
What you’re proposing is a form of universal healthcare where Americans continue to spend more than every other developed nation for similar outcomes as to what we already have.
What you’re proposing is a form of universal healthcare where Americans continue to spend more than every other developed nation for similar outcomes.
Yes, our system is fucked up in 2 ways: (1) middlemen deny care b/c the care affects the bottom line, and (2) our care is expensive.
I’m thinking we solve problem 1 now by de-linking the care provided with the profit motive to deny care. But, if we do that unilaterally, we’ll run into a wall of cash that opposes that change. We might still spend more as a society, but at least people won’t be dying in the streets. The future people can work on getting the price down tomorrow. But, today? Give universal health-insurance by any means.
Kicking the can got us the ACA, it’s been almost entirely gutted in under 15 years.
If we leave them in place, on the presumption that there’s profit motive for them to remain, then we leave them with enough cash to claw back everything they lost, and they’d keep their cushy government contracts.
Again, there is no universe in which that wall of cash doesn’t oppose this anyway. Don’t negotiate with terrorists.
If private insurance companies are lobbying to prevent Medicare for All because they’d lose their business, then make them the claims processors. Like, the government pays the bill, but the carrier process the claim as a contractor to the government.
This already exists. It’s called Medicare Advantage Plans.
Then it’ll be easy to make universal.
There is no Republican health care plan because Obamacare is already the most conservative idea that could even conceivably work. It was directly based on existing Republican plans, like Romneycare in Massachusetts. It only became a toxic idea to them when Obama pushed it. They’ve been promising an alternative plan “any day now” since 2009. That plan doesn’t exist and never will.
It’s no coincidence that Republicans push HSAs. They don’t fix anything, but they are a tax haven for people of means. The funds can be used for general retirement later.
A 401k is money that goes in tax free, grows tax free, but is taxed when you take it out. An IRA is money that’s taxed now, but grows tax free and is withdrawan tax free. An HSA, though, does all three. Tax free now, tax free growth, tax free withdrawal.
Combine that with the fact that you can invest HSA funds in the stock market once you reach a certain threshold. Of course Republicans love it.
If you’re in the US, do what you need to do for you and your family. Often, taking the HSA with a Bronze plan is your best choice. Just keep in mind that it’s a tax dodge masquerading as a fix for a broken health care system.
The Republican healthcare plan is that poor people should just die already.
That’s also their plan for food insecurity, the housing crisis, energy costs, and climate change.
But not before they’ve given birth to an unwanted generation of more poor people.
Less people = climate change fixed & more planet for them.
The US won’t get that for decades if ever. The insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, medical manufacturers, etc etc, will never willingly lose their trillions. They will kill people like Boeing killed John Barnett.
Well, if you look at what I wrote, the companies would keep their business and relationships. They’d just transfer the fundamental guarantee over to the government.
This could be a boon to the medical field because those who couldn’t afford health insurance can now get care. That means more medication is consumed, more beds are filled, all while insurance companies keep a business model where they still make profit without the risk of paying the costs of care.
Won’t happen. More likely is preexisting conditions will be an issue again. Rolling back America, every day.
Well, that couldn’t be unilateral like it is now because of the 5th Amendment, which requires due process. The 5th Amendment specifically states in relevant part:
No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Healthcare insurance seems like an ecconomic liberty interest to me.
On top of that, the government is actually insentivised to ensure its populace recieves coverage. As I said in my origional post, ensuring healthcare would mean fewer bankruptcies. Also, the government isn’t insentivised to deny coverage like the privately-traded insurance providers because the government doesn’t have a profit margin to improve for its share price.
Obligatory “not American” warning, but I think the problem is more complex than just making the government a customer. Countries with public healthcare generally don’t refer to private providers because the cost is orders of magnitude higher than a state run operation. (With few exceptions; my country paid for me to go to a private hospital once because I needed a specialist for something uncommon, and there weren’t enough in public hospitals / I was overspill.)
You don’t just have hospitals, you have an entire economy of insurance, administration, and severely inflated pricing to account for all the useless jobs and bloat. If none of that goes away, then I don’t see why the government would be incentivised to use them, rather than just set up state hospitals.
Also, unrelated but I just re-read the title; does Dr Oz still have any credibility whatsoever?
To answer in order:
- Yes, the administrative overhead (and potential removal of private insurance brokers) is a massive problem for Med4All. That is why Sanders and Warren have previously put forward retraining and redirecting those workers into their prior plans for the system.
- Yes, it would better for us to have state health clinics. However, the current idea is to have Medicare have even more leverage to reduce cost overruns (Many hospitals accept their lower rates due to the sheer scale and consistent payments by the program). This is a nuanced issue though, and I could imagine things like overbilling for redundant services (aka fraud) could be an endemic problem for providers looking to game reimbursements.
- No, he never had any credibility. He just had a presence on television and a following. Our current president decided to place him in a major position over public health likely because he saw him on television, not because of any (nonexistent) competency.
You don’t just have hospitals, you have an entire economy of insurance, administration, and severely inflated pricing to account for all the useless jobs and bloat. If none of that goes away, then I don’t see why the government would be incentivized to use them, rather than just set up state hospitals.
Well, even if the government is now paying an inflated price, how would that be any different than what it currently does? Besides, what other expenditure would be a better use of the money? Bailing out Argentina? Giving the money to people who give the president a gift? Buying another aircraft carrier and base over seas? Funding Israel at the expense of your populace?
I mean yeah, it’s a massively bloated system. But, at least the populace would finally have health insurance. Someone getting hit by a car wouldn’t result in them facing bankruptcy after they wake up in the hospital but have no health insurance.
Broken clock… twice a day… etc
