Specifically, What is it you'd like to change?

Right, the way our system is set up now, we pay the insurance companies to act as middlemen and negotiate on our behalf with hospitals and drug companies. The government negotiates these things for us once we reach Medicare age (and people are still free to purchase insurance over and above Medicare).

The question is, why can't the government just do that for everybody, regardless of age? It would be less complex (=less $), and the government is pretty strong at negotiating in this regard, so strong that Coach is about to come on here and tell us that doctors will go broke and Pharmaceutical Companies will fold if we dare switch to a Medicare for all program.

right, no arguments, but where are the cost savings?  lower pharma costs?  that is not enough.

noip wrote

right, no arguments, but where are the cost savings?  lower pharma costs?  that is not enough.

Salary costs, advertising budgets and CEO pay for hundreds of thousands of insurance company workers will be a thing of the past?

Medicare payments to hospitals that are structured so those payments go to patient care instead of administrative duties? (hospitals dealing with insurance companies is a major time suck and, with lower Medicare payments, Hospitals and Hospital conglomerates might think twice about paying their CEOs millions of dollars a year).

Just a couple of things off the top of my head...

When I go into the doctor's office there are more people working there to deal with paperwork than there are healthcare professionals.

Lots of time suck and money dealing with CMS ( Medicare, Medicaid )  , DOH and other state and federal reulators who also suck cash out in the form of  receipts taxes and other unfunded mandates and pervasive time wasting oversight . ALso when one considers deep discounting that CMS and other insurers do the actual net revenues of hospital are often just fractions of cost . NOt any easy answers here .

Right now MOST hospitals in NY with the possible exception of metro have a difficult timr recruiting physicians and making MARGIN . M&A and other affiliations are wringing out every bit of efficiency they can while still trying to maintain hospitals in small communities and within reasonable distance of an expanding catchment area.

This decade in terms of the rate and complexity of change in healthcare is making the last decade look like the 1950's AND that is making it difficult to recruit and RETAIN QUALIFIED BOARD MEMBERS who serve as volunteers YET have FIDUCIARY responsibility  .

So if u r interested in serving make yourselves KNOWN in your communities because HEALTHCARE is worth fighting for for your fellow citizens and we need good solid thinkers on boards that represent a diversity of opinion. It is a steep learning curve and takes a lot of time but if the improvements are to come they can only be dealt with by people of good will who step up to the plate rather than just bitching from behind a keyboard  .

Remember insurers play the dely and denial game and add excessive regulation and cost by constantly gaming the system by changing coding .  This afdds unproductive churn to the revenue cycle which is often just a bullshit game to slow payment

BUT this stuff drives up IT requirements and cost as well as coding cost . Often  insurers play with update (a euphemism for more delay ) adding to AR . That is the paper chase you see in your docs or hospital offices .

There is so much of this iceberg that goes on behind the scene that the public does not see yet insurance execs make tremendous salaries . One in partivcular in the recent past was paid a bonus that amounted to MORE than the combined profitability of nys hospitals so the legend goes.

Did we figure out what it is we'd like to change yet?

ml242 wrote

Did we figure out what it is we'd like to change yet?

My list:

1. Helicopter drops of money (not actual helicopter drops, but a check that goes to every single living person with a social security number for $1,000.

2. Reallocate military spending. Keep the money we spend on soldiers and veterans flowing, but  instead of spending tons of money to have Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin develop weapons for us, spend that money hiring people to do stuff in this country.

3. Raise the minimum wage to $15

4. Go after tax cheats, both individual and corporate. Make everyone pay their fair share.

5. Eliminate the cap on earnings taxed by Social Security.

Plus PeeTex's list:

PeeTex wrote

Incentivize colleges to lower tuition by funneling more grant money to affordable colleges and away from the ones that are outrageously high.

Restore the GI bill, full college tuition should be a reward for serving our country.

Rework Obamacare so that it is not a regressive tax on lower income families.

Stop raiding the Social Security trust.

Stop importing slave labor from Mexico or other parts of the world, if we have a guest worker program than they too should be paid $15/hr.... If it takes putting trade restrictions on China - so be it, we buy more from them than they do from us. Our prices for goods will go up, but my economics says that when the jobs come back the tax base comes back and the country gets stronger, not weaker. A rising tide lifts all boats. I believe the time has come for us to put up some trade barriers.

Don't be afraid to call radical Islam what it is, a political party/organization and not a religion and we can start fighting it like we did the Nazis. We were fighting to eliminate a radical political system and not the German people.

Since the Supreme court overruled the restrictions on campaign finance and super pacs - tax the hell out of them. I say a 95% tax on any contribution to a super pac.

That seems to be a consensus, I guess. I would take the tribalism out of PeeTex's post: the battle is against extremists of all religions (planned parenthood bombers, genital mutilation practitioners, etc.), but the rest seems about right (maybe a tad too protectionist even for me, but if it works for Germany, it should work here).

Also, note that none of these things are "riot in the streets" kinds of concerns. At best, we're calling for things that put slightly more money into people's pockets, mostly at the expense of huge multinational corporations (who have so much money, they use complicated tax schemes to shield their income and hide it in tax shelters).

Point is, when you read stories that voters are "angry", it's mostly bullshit. People want more money and more time with their loved ones, and the American system (as it is set up now) is not good at giving that to them. The extent of their anger is limited because the extent of their "suffering" is limited. It's good to live in America. It's even better to be a white guy who can afford skiing.

If we're really serious about enacting our agenda, though, it seems to me that it'd be better to appoint a competent bureaucrat instead of a racist, authoritarian, demogogue, but what do I know?

mattchuck2 wrote

If we're really serious about enacting our agenda, though, it seems to me that it'd be better to appoint a competent bureaucrat

Who would that be? You can't be talking about Hillary with her statements on the email debacle. I thought is was Ok, I didn't know, what I did was allowed, It was fully above board, I don't know how to use email on a computer etc etc etc

That's either one incompetent person or a complete BS'r

Is Hill really any more of a bullshitter than any other politician or is she just not as good at it?

raisingarizona wrote

Is Hill really any more of a bullshitter than any other politician or is she just not as good at it?

More than a bad bullshitter, she is likely a criminal.

You hear little about her email exchanges with Obama on her private address. He claimed he didn't know it was a private address....... yeah OK

PeeTex wrote

raisingarizona wrote

Is Hill really any more of a bullshitter than any other politician or is she just not as good at it?

More than a bad bullshitter, she is likely a criminal.

 

And you don't think that if the right person dug deep enough they couldn't come up with something "criminal" on Trump? He has shady dirt-ball written all over him. Fuck, we have so many laws in this country anyone can be arrested at any given point for some sort of BS.

How come Bush/Cheney haven't been found to be criminals for the Desert Shitstorm they dragged our military into creating more of terrorist threat than ever before?

Yea - like Hillary@scammersandscumbags.com

raisingarizona wrote

PeeTex wrote

raisingarizona wrote

Is Hill really any more of a bullshitter than any other politician or is she just not as good at it?

More than a bad bullshitter, she is likely a criminal.

 

And you don't think that if the right person dug deep enough they couldn't come up with something "criminal" on Trump? He has shady dirt-ball written all over him. Fuck, we have so many laws in this country anyone can be arrested at any given point for some sort of BS.

How come Bush/Cheney haven't been found to be criminals for the Desert Shitstorm they dragged our military into creating more of terrorist threat than ever before?

If gross incompetence were a crime likely half the population would be locked up. The worst you can say about them was it was a gross misjudgment - a fucking huge gross misjudgment.

I mean some people say that Cheney shot that guy in the face on purpose.  I'm not saying that because I don't know, but a lot of people are saying it. I mean a lot of people. But I don't have any proof, I just know a lot of people are saying it.


Peetex if you really truly think that the Iraq was "merely" gross incompetence, I guess your ability to discern.

I'd be happy to see Hillary spend some time in the big house if we could get for some time for Cheney too.  Be kind of cool to put them in cells next to each other.  It could be like a sit com.

PeeTex wrote

If gross incompetence were a crime likely half the population would be locked up. The worst you can say about them was it was a gross misjudgment - a fucking huge gross misjudgment.

They deliberately went against Geneva conventions and tortured people, and had their slimy lawyer write a cheap justification. Then they destroyed thousands of emails in a coverup.

They outed a CIA agent out of spite after her husband called into question a state of the union lie about WMD that they included even though they knew it to be false.

They pressured U.S. Attorneys and fired some because they "insufficiently addressed voter fraud", meaning, they didn't try to stop minorities from voting.

Those 3 things are "incompetence" and "misjudgment", but Hillary Clinton trying to use her blackberry is part of an all-encompassing global conspiracy that includes the Clinton Foundation and a massive coverup. Got it.

Ya I don't know Peetex, there was a lot of money made on the efforts in Iraq and I can't say for sure but I would bet Bush and Cheney were in on that. We are talking BIG $$$.

It may be that they used 9/11 and the made up story about WMD's there just to secure areas around Iran, a potential greater threat than Islamic terrorists but again, this is just me thinking out loud.

I have always wondered about Cheney shooting that guy in the face. How the heck does an accomplished hunter pull off such a amateur move like that? It's definitely suspicious imo.

raisingarizona wrote

Ya I don't know Peetex, there was a lot of money made on the efforts in Iraq and I can't say for sure but I would bet Bush and Cheney were in on that. We are talking BIG $$$.

It may be that they used 9/11 and the made up story about WMD's there just to secure areas around Iran, a potential greater threat than Islamic terrorists but again, this is just me thinking out loud.

I have always wondered about Cheney shooting that guy in the face. How the heck does an accomplished hunter pull off such a amateur move like that? It's definitely suspicious imo.

I don't doubt the hunting accident was indeed an accident - these guys were incompetent.
I also don't doubt that a lot of motivation for the war came from lining the pockets of their business cronies but I have not tracked the Bush/Cheney net worth deltas so I can't say whether it is likely they profited. Firing people is not a criminal offence.  It's clear what laws Clinton may have violated, Racketeering, money laundering, tax evasion, mishandling of secret information, and federal records keeping.

P - I put the Donald in my post so you would know I was kidding.  Shooting that guy in the face was incompetence. Maybe if the biggest hawk of our lifetime hadn't ditched the draft he'd know how to use a weapon.  

If you are looking for a something real maybe start by googling "biggest no bid contract in US history."  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz all dodged the draft.  Real soldiers understand that you don't go to war for the hell of it, or for 40 billion dollars.