The Goat Pen

A few reasons: one is tax-based. They often show a loss on paper of $13000. And, at the end of the year, they can apply for money with through a payment reconciliation with the insurance company. Also, not all insurance companies are treated the same. Big dogs like BCBS may pay less than a lesser known. So, what percentage they get from insurance varies. Finally, they can stick it to the self-pays or partial pays.

AlabamAlum wrote:A few reasons: one is tax-based. They often show a loss on paper of $13000. And, at the end of the year, they can apply for money with through a payment reconciliation with the insurance company. Also, not all insurance companies are treated the same. Big dogs like BCBS may pay less than a lesser known. So, what percentage they get from insurance varies. Finally, they can stick it to the self-pays or partial pays.

so in your analogy - is the drive thru place going to charge $7000 for the we charge $20K but really only expect to get $7K except if we get lucky Hospital procedure?

I do not know what, exactly, the drive-thrus billed. Never ran one of those. I have a friend who is CEO of a freestanding, same-day surgery place. I can ask if you need to know.

I think I'm gonna stick with competition driving the marketplace and not go with the $20K hoping to get $7K approach to medicine.

It drives it, and has for 20 years. Your scheme would make things much, much worse, though.

AlabamAlum wrote:It drives it, and has for 20 years. Your scheme would make things much, much worse, though.

hows that worked out for the consumer in the last 20 years?

For the vast majority, exceedingly well. The working poor? Not so much. So, we threw the baby out with the bath water in deference to them in the form of Obama-Romney Care.

Giving a guy a windfall/bounty/premium rebate because he has used many times more in services than he has paid into the system would capital C cripple healthcare. It would often reward smokers, fatties, alcoholics, and sweet tea drinkers for their diseases of choice and put the medical centers in financial harm. They would have to model themselves after the fly-by-night shams operating in strip malls and portable sheds. And when those shams fail and the medical centers would have to clean up the messes made, who repays the ill gotten bounty paid? WHO??

AlabamAlum wrote:For the vast majority, exceedingly well. The working poor? Not so much. So, we threw the baby out with the bath water in deference to them in the form of Obama-Romney Care.

Giving a guy a windfall/bounty/premium rebate because he has used many times more in services than he has paid into the system would capital C cripple healthcare. It would often reward smokers, fatties, alcoholics, and sweet tea drinkers for their diseases of choice and put the medical centers in financial harm. They would have to model themselves after the fly-by-night shams operating in strip malls and portable sheds. And when those shams fail and the medical centers would have to clean up the messes made, who repays the ill gotten bounty paid? WHO??

you define exceedingly well with premium increases that exceed inflation at more than twice the rate?

The middle class has not done exceedingly well in being able to afford health care, hell its why we have this nightmare in Obamacare now. I'd venture to say the average worker took each years cost of living increase and just rolled it back into the increased cost of health care premiums and that's been going on for years

I think your definition of exceedingly well varies wildly from mine.

Waiting to see a specialist is a problem now and has been for a number of years in our insurance-based system.

The bottom line is that US healthcare is way too expensive and truthfully no better than in other countries where it costs much less. Too much entitlement by all those with their hands in the pot, it would seem.

The middle class did not drive Obamacare. The uninsured did. Rates rose at first with demand for increased tech, and hit its high point with the threat of a system change (obamacare).

My plan was great and my increases very moderate until about 2000.

Anyway, tapping out. I teach this stuff now. I don't have to talk about it on Sunday. So, I will concede the point.

Stu, just wait specialist wait times will increase 10-fold.

But when you can't afford to see a doctor, much less a specialist, as most can't, who fucking cares? Let's see who can stitch them all back together from all the bombs going off.

Obamacare and then an NHS style single payer in 10 years. You'll see your specialists in 36 months, and other than a 54% tax rate, it will be FREE!

I have to wait until May 9 to see my general practitioner.

They kept calling me with messages saying "It's been 3 years since your annual physical, you really need to schedule ASAP." So, I did, and they schedule me 2 months away.

AlabamAlum wrote:Obamacare and then an NHS style single payer in 10 years. You'll see your specialists in 36 months, and other than a 54% tax rate, it will be FREE!

And yet, it will still be cheaper and faster than now. Go figure.

Interesting convo. I'm neither versed nor impacted enough to get a dog in this fight. It has been interesting, though.

On another note, Mike Murphy is interviewed while shutting down the JEB Super PAC...

Let's think through Trump, Murphy says. "He doesn't understand the presidency. You don't call up the head of Mexico and say, 'Hey, I'm going to build a fabulous wall with first-class gold toilets and you're gonna pay for it.' You don't call up the head of the Ford Motor Company and say, 'You can only manufacture things in the U.S. or I'm going to unilaterally impose tariffs.' He has no understanding of presidential powers. He has no understanding of Congress. It's like putting a chimp in the driver's seat of a tractor. He's not going to plow the field. He's going to drive the tractor into the lake. So the stakes are high. And having problems is not a license to vote stupid. People need the tractor to plow the damn field, now."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/debriefin ... le/2001632

politicians have been promising to "plow the field" to conservatives for years. Instead they hired a Mexican to do it

That statement is the kind of arrogance that will continue to have these kinds of politicians on the outside looking in

Its exactly why a man like Donald Trump can not only run for president but garner the popular vote - because people in Washington have been telling their voting base how Washington works, not how Washington works for them - and they're OK with the whole thing crashing down since it hasn't worked for them in decades.

No one really wants that - but they do believe in an America where you will build a wall and tell Mexico to kiss your ass if they don't like it, and the more people stand up and mock them for believing it, the more people tell them look down at them as dog track patrons for wanting it, the more they tolerate whatever Donald Trump says, no matter how outlandish.

To define Jeb Bush as the longshot is just as insulting

I'll drop the health care thing after this

it was not the uninsured that drove the creation of Obamacare

Its been the millions of policy holders who were continually told that the reason their health care costs were going up was , in large part, because of the uninsured.

Obama had to lie to sell Americans on health care by saying that they'd be able to keep their doctor and save an average of $2500. If he hadn't pushed that narrative people would have shot down Obamacare and the 40M or so that were uninsured wouldn't have been able to do a damn thing about it.

The uninsured were a tool to motivate the masses to want Obamacare.

At this point Obamacare is just a failed step to a single payer system.

sardis wrote:

Bklyn wrote:The failed state of Kansas

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... ansas.html

Yup, the right have their Kansas, the left have their Illinois.

A state budget stalemate in Illinois, which has dragged on since last July, is offering a masterclass on the destruction political gridlock can cause.

At risk are the state's 57 public universities and community colleges, which were once a model for access and diversity.

In the mid- to late-1990s, Illinois was the top performing state in helping its residents attain higher education through need-based grants and affordable tuitions, according to a report by the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Research on Higher Education. The report said such efforts helped minority communities.

Today, minority students are akin to collateral damage in a battle between the state's Republican governor and Democrat-controlled legislature.

The two sides can't agree on a state budget, so the government has been limping along since last summer using accounting maneuvers. While those measures have kept government functioning, the state cannot send funds it has promised to organizations, such as its higher-learning institutions.

Public universities and community colleges haven't gotten any state money for months, even though such funding can make up as much as one-third of an institution's budget. The schools have been relying on cash reserves, and, for larger institutions, on money from their endowments or private donors.

But smaller schools are feeling the financial pressure.

The state's budget impasse reached a new level of urgency when Chicago State University recently announced that it is in dire financial straights, and in danger of closing. The university canceled spring break and shortened its school year, so that it doesn't run out of money before students finish their semester.

The university's president, Thomas Calhoun, who has been critical of the governor's role in the budget impasse, said he is planning to lay off employees - potentially including tenured professors - in order to keep the school open in the summer and next fall.

"All employees have received notice or will receive notice, including the president of the university, all senior administrators. There are no exceptions," Calhoun said at a press conference.

There is a real danger that Chicago State University might not only downsize, but close completely. Just the potential of such an outcome could trigger a downward spiral. Take the example of what Chicago State freshman Noah Burke plans to do, in response to the school's financial troubles.

Obama had to lie to sell Americans on health care by saying that they'd be able to keep their doctor and save an average of $2500.


MO of socialism for ages.

Illinois is a prime example of the widening chasm between some in government who feel like it should provide a certain level of services to its constituency and others who want their government "small enough to drown in a bathtub."

I have no admiration for those who want runaway spending on the backs of taxpayers, but I also have no illusion that exceedingly small government does nothing but ultimately harm the tax base and increase government program needs.