AMA Support of the Healthcare Plan

[Hallelujah]

From what I understand, only 29% of the physicians are members of the AMA. So how about the other 71% of the physicians? You know, those who the citizens will eventually have to go to for healthcare?

The AMA endorsement doesn't mean squat! But the average, dumb, young American thinks they are somehow going to get their healthcare for free. Instead they will be forced to purchase healthcare and will get a bill they will be paying for the rest of their lives. Are the youth of america really that dumb?

[Viking]

From what I understand, only 29% of the physicians are members of the AMA. So how about the other 71% of the physicians? You know, those who the citizens will eventually have to go to for healthcare?

The AMA endorsement doesn't mean squat! But the average, dumb, young American thinks they are somehow going to get their healthcare for free. Instead they will be forced to purchase healthcare and will get a bill they will be paying for the rest of their lives. Are the youth of america really that dumb?

Merry Christmas, Hallelujah.

[CardiacCoug]

I think the AMA and most physicians support a mandate that young working people be required to purchase health insurance. This is a positive aspect of the plan that doctors and insurers support.

The negatives of the plan, as I see them, include:

1. No cost-control measures to contain the ever-increasing percentage of every person's income that health care costs will consume.
2. Increasing reliance on third-party payers (rather than health savings accounts) which will continue to drive up costs, since patients have no incentive under this system to seek out lower costs.
3. The fact that this plan will in all likelihood significantly increase the cost of health insurance for middle-income people (making $40K to $100K per year).

This isn't a Republican/Democrat thing, either. The last time the Republicans were in charge they pushed through the Medicare prescription drug bill that hugely expanded the government's role in health care and effectively put billions of tax dollars into the pockets of drug companies. All so seniors could get more expensive name-brand prescriptions in place of just-as-effective and much cheaper generic drugs.

[statman]

Increasing reliance on third-party payers (rather than health savings accounts) which will continue to drive up costs, since patients have no incentive under this system to seek out lower costs.

A guy in our corporate HQ walked us through the changes my company saw in health care spending after we switched to a high deductible HSA plan. The insurance is there to cover big stuff - the patient is responsible for the first $1000 of all treatment each year - with the company chipping in $400 into the HSA (so if you spend less than $400, you pay nothing out of pocket beyond the premium out of your paycheck). After you've paid $1000, you're responsible for 10% of the bill, until you've paid a total of $2000 out of pocket. After that the insurance pays everything.

The results so far, two years into the change, are pretty remarkable. For those that spend a lot & hit their out of pocket maximums, their claims against insurance actually go up a bit. But for everyone else, claims are way down. Total cost of insurance claims are down over two years, and employee payments for healthcare are down slightly as well - this as, over the same time period, they would have expected total spending to go up 15-20%. This is for a compnay with 100K+ insured in the US - so it's a pretty decent sample size.

HSA's are the REAL future of healthcare. The bullyewt Congress is trying to push through right now is nothing but a power grab...

[DU Ute]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCFCeJTEzNU"]YouTube- Silent Monks Singing Halleluia[/ame]

[CardiacCoug]

A guy in our corporate HQ who walked us through the changes my company saw in health care spending after we switched to a high deductible HSA plan. The insurance is there to cover big stuff - the patient is responsible for the first $1000 of all treatment each year - with the company chipping in $400 into the HSA (so if you spend less than $400, you pay nothing out of pocket beyond the premium out of your paycheck). After you've paid $1000, you're responsible for 10% of the bill, until you've paid a total of $2000 out of pocket. After that the insurance pays everything.

The results so far, two years into the change, are pretty remarkable. For those that spend a lot & hit their out of pocket minimums, their claims against insurance actually go up a bit. But for everyone else, claims are way down. Total cost of insurance claims are down over two years, and employee payments for healthcare are down slightly as well. This is for a compnay with 100K+ insured in the US - so it's a pretty decent sample size.

HSA's are the REAL future of healthcare. The bullyewt Congress is trying to push through right now is nothing but a power grab...

I agree completely. What we need is for the cost and quality measures for every health care visit and procedure from every provider to be on the internet where patients can choose where they will receive their care (at least for non-emergent conditions) and for the vast majority of health care to be purchased out of health savings accounts. That is real health care reform.

Expanding and entrenching our current failed system is a joke. I'm not in favor of a single-payer, government-run system, but at least that would be one way to fix the system. What Congress is doing with this bill just expands all the components that are responsible for high cost and low quality in the current system.

[SoonerCoug]

Preventing insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions and forcing them to spend 85% of premium dollars on actual healthcare (instead of the current 60%) are fantastic changes. Nothing wrong with forcing insurance companies to be as least as efficient as a government program.

Requiring a larger percentage of the population to maintain coverage ought to make premiums less expensive, right?

Furthermore, the congressional budget office says that this bill will significantly reduce the deficit.

Now they need to get control of malpractice litigation.

[Hallelujah]

Preventing insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions and forcing them to spend 85% of premium dollars on actually healthcare (instead of the current 60%) are fantastic changes. Nothing wrong with forcing insurance companies to be as least as efficient as a government program.

Requiring a larger percentage of the population to maintain coverage ought to make premiums less expensive, right?

Furthermore, the congressional budget office says that this bill will significantly reduce the deficit.

Now they need to get control of malpractice litigation.

So government should be the benchmark for efficiency?

Everyone's premiums will go down?

The CBO indicates that the deficit will decrease? After spending $1 Trillion?

Have a wonderful Christmas. You'll come out of your daze pretty soon.

[SoonerCoug]

)

Gosh I love it when you disagree with me. It really boosts my credibility around here.

[ERCougar]

Preventing insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions and forcing them to spend 85% of premium dollars on actual healthcare (instead of the current 60%) are fantastic changes. Nothing wrong with forcing insurance companies to be as least as efficient as a government program.

Requiring a larger percentage of the population to maintain coverage ought to make premiums less expensive, right?

Furthermore, the congressional budget office says that this bill will significantly reduce the deficit.

Now they need to get control of malpractice litigation.

I don't like the arbitrary 85% idea. Part of cost control is fraud investigation and other cost-cutting efforts. Get an open marketplace and companies that are putting too much money into administration will fall by the wayside.

Malpractice litigation needs a passing thought, I agree.

And yes, the future is HSA. We're moving there quickly anyway as companies find premiums increasingly unaffordable. The public just has to get used to the idea of paying for portions of their healthcare, and they will. I love the two fixes for the system they're putting in place--the rest of it just makes a broken system worse.

One other thing that's missing (and probably always will be with a Democratic Congress) is the tax breaks for insurance premiums for employed workers. Premiums need to either be tax-deductible for everyone or no one. All the current system does is encourage the Cadillac plans that have gotten us into this mess and screw over the self-employed and small business owners.

[LA Ute]

The three problems that need fixing, in my view, are cost, access, and quality. The current bill is pretty much an insurance reform bill, and addresses access only. Even so, it does that poorly - CMS estimates the bill will still leave 20 million or more people without insurance. Cost will increase and quality is unaddressed. I like the idea of the individual mandate, but only at a state level; the federal government getting so deeply involved in regulating insurance seems like a very bad idea to me. The fact that insurance companies also love the mandate worries me (why would they not love it?).

As a matter of policy, I hate the Senate bill. It is massive restructuring of the healthcare payment system that is totally partisan. Such huge changes ought to be bipartisan to some extent, not rammed through like this one was. (The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was totally bipartisan, for example.) I fear the politics behind the bill; the Democrats want a huge new entitlement, and they are getting it; I worry that this entitlement will be both unrepealable and unsustainable.

Otherwise, I like it a lot!

[Hallelujah]

A guy in our corporate HQ walked us through the changes my company saw in health care spending after we switched to a high deductible HSA plan. The insurance is there to cover big stuff - the patient is responsible for the first $1000 of all treatment each year - with the company chipping in $400 into the HSA (so if you spend less than $400, you pay nothing out of pocket beyond the premium out of your paycheck). After you've paid $1000, you're responsible for 10% of the bill, until you've paid a total of $2000 out of pocket. After that the insurance pays everything.

The results so far, two years into the change, are pretty remarkable. For those that spend a lot & hit their out of pocket maximums, their claims against insurance actually go up a bit. But for everyone else, claims are way down. Total cost of insurance claims are down over two years, and employee payments for healthcare are down slightly as well - this as, over the same time period, they would have expected total spending to go up 15-20%. This is for a compnay with 100K+ insured in the US - so it's a pretty decent sample size.

HSA's are the REAL future of healthcare. The bullyewt Congress is trying to push through right now is nothing but a power grab...

What you have basically proved is that responsible, tax paying citizens are being prudent in their medical expenses. Now, what are we doing to make the Medicaid and Medicare patients (who the tax payers support) as responsible? Nothing. Their behavior will not change. Just the behavior of those footing their bill.

Gotta fix the freeloaders as well.