The sad thing is that the country had already started down the right path with HSA's (Probably the best thing to come out of the Bush years), but we have started to reverse course from that.
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Not much bothers me more than dumb ass politicians talking like they "know" or "understand" economics. Most of them are attorney's aren't they?Originally posted by beefytee View Post
Remember when Bush and other republicans were talking about self directed or partially self directed Social Security. When the market tanked we had all these jackasses like Nanci Pelosi and Harry Reid and the ilk talking about how they told you so and SS is to be safe.
Do you realize if you had bought a 10 year treasury note about a year ago, if you wanted to sell it now you wouldn't get much more than 60 cents on the dollar. Sure if you held it for 10 years you would get a whopping 14.6% plus your money back. I guess the Chinese aren't so bright after all either.
Oh by the way if you had put your money in the S&P in October of '07, 6 years later you would be up 7%. Now maybe after 10 years you wouldn't do better than a Treasury, but really what dumb asses to claim how much safer the Treasury note is than the market.
To my progressive friends on here, most of these dumbasses are democrats. I imagine you folks loaded up on 10 year Treasuries too.Comment
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I was at a big company that was one of the biggest companies exploring the benefits of HSAs. They self-insured, and conducted a big experiment by tweaking company contributions and deductibles in different states. They found that with the right combination, and by trying to get employees to view medical insurance as they do auto insurance, they actually kept their total medical cost increases UNDER inflation. High-deductible policies, with company contributions to cover routine medicine, and HSA contributions to get tax deductions for expected costs, provided remarkable changes in behavior.
The one problem with such plans - once people have hit their high deductible, they start spending on medical care like drunken sailors. "The next time I hit my deductible, I'll finally get my carpal-tunnel/back/knee/shoulder looked at..."
But the reduction in medical services used, when people know they're on the hook for the first several thousand bucks, is dramatic. But really not that surprising...Comment
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Doesn't inelastic demand refute all of this? I heard about this concept at a dinner party and even though I don't know what the hell it means, it sounds like something to put as a reply to your post.Originally posted by statman View PostPart of it is based on academic grounds. Among major conferences, the Pac-10 is the best academically, largely because of Stanford, Cal and UCLA. “Colorado is on a par with Oregon,” he said. “Utah isn’t even in the picture.”Comment
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Actually it proves that the demand for medical care ISN'T inelastic. You can change consumer's appetite to consume medical care by making them bear a significant portion of the cost. Cover their expected baseline routine checkup costs. Cap their maximum exposure. Make them pay out of pocket for a chunk above the checkup-level costs and a deductible, and a portion from the deductible to their out of pocket maximum. Cap for catastrophic care over the out of pocket max. And with the HSA, they can save away for the unexpected problems when they arise - especially if you start putting money in an HSA when you're young and healthy and don't have many unexpected medical costs...Originally posted by Color Me Badd Fan View Post
The young healthy people in my office loved the switch because their cost on the premiums went down - if they paid as much as they had previously, a chunk of it went into the savings account. The old and enfeebled liked it as well because of the out of pocket cap that wasn't there before. The people in the middle liked it some years and didn't like it in others. If they had a baby that year, they'd be hitting that deductible before insurance paid much of anything. And if that was completely unexpected, you'd be coughing up several grand that you weren't planning on.
I loved it because with the high deductible plan, you got the HSA, so it was all pretax dollars. My kids braces, wisdom teeth, etc all got done with pretax dollars - making them about 40% cheaper. Same with the birth of one of our children. And my wife's knee surgery (injury was at the end of one year, surgery in the other, so we got to put away $$$ pretax to pay for it).Comment
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Impressive, particularly as he was in enemy territory.Originally posted by CardiacCoug View Postτὸν ἥλιον ἀνατέλλοντα πλείονες ἢ δυόμενον προσκυνοῦσινComment
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Yep. I love how John Oliver says he will go back to the UK if he has a medical problem: "At least they will take care of me."Originally posted by All-American View Post
Sure, and the British NHS will take great care of you -- they guarantee you will wait no more than 18 weeks to be seen after a referral. http://www.nhs.uk/choiceintheNHS/Rig...g%20times.aspx
Then read the comments and they're all about how the waiting times are in fact much longer than 18 weeks.Comment
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That's absurd. We've been Kaiser members since '79, and we've been very satisfied overall, including the quality and timeliness of the care (my typical wait for an appointment is 1-2 days). Early on, I was concerned about whether the physicians were of the same quality as those in truly private practice. Fresh out of law school, we learned that Parrothead's wife-to-be had a VSD (she was three months old). We joined Kaiser and her first visit was with a pediatric cardiologist who taught the subject at Stanford. Pretty much every specialist and primary care physician we've seen over the past four decades has been very good.Originally posted by CardiacCoug View Post
The cost of U.S. healthcare is very high, and could certainly be controlled better with some changes, I think, but I wouldn't trade it for any country's, certainly not the UK's.Comment
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There was a time, decades go now, when physicians looked down their noses at "Kaiser docs." No longer. Kaiser (actually, the various regiona versions of Permanente Medical Groups) is inundated every year with applications from the best residencies, and other health systems are trying to emulate Kaiser. How times have changed.Originally posted by PaloAltoCougar View Post“There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.”
― W.H. Auden
"God made the angels to show His splendour - as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But men and women He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of their minds."
-- Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-ExuperyComment
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That was my concern when we first started, and I was less impressed then than I am now by the quality of care and the resumes of the docs. But yes, the competition for slots at our particular medical center is apparently very intense. I wonder why that is. I assume it's easier to focus more on medicine and less on the administrative crap, but I'm not sure.Originally posted by LA Ute View PostComment
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That really is a good interview. He seems like an impressive guy. I wonder if, after all the latest revelations of government abuse, he might get a lot more traction than his dad ever did. Of course his dad was kinda crazy, so there's that. In the course of a campaign I imagine he'd also have to fellate the evangelicals so I might still end up hating him.Originally posted by CardiacCoug View PostComment
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The commonly accepted explanation (which makes sense to me) is that today's crop of young physicians want the regular hours and stability that working for Kaiser offers. Partly it's a Millennial thing, but also a reflection of changes in health care and the practice of medicine. Anyway, I think Kaiser is a great choice for both patients and physicians. (They're also a client, so I'm biased.)Originally posted by PaloAltoCougar View Post“There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.”
― W.H. Auden
"God made the angels to show His splendour - as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But men and women He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of their minds."
-- Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-ExuperyComment
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I think his problem would be just the opposite. He is fairly uncompromising. That's a fantastic characteristic of a Senator whose life mission is to pull the discourse in a certain, and I feel necessary, direction. It's less of a characteristic you want in the supreme executive.Originally posted by woot View Postτὸν ἥλιον ἀνατέλλοντα πλείονες ἢ δυόμενον προσκυνοῦσινComment
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Well, shit. I'm just really hoping that the Snowden stuff will get people thinking about some of the really important non-partisan issues so that we nominate people that might change something. A lot of the partisan issues are important too, but I just worry about some of the most important things being ignored simply because it doesn't matter who you vote for. It's like people who are lamenting having voted for Obama because of the NSA spying. It's an understandable reaction, but McCain and Romney are unlikely to have done anything different.Originally posted by All-American View Post
I don't necessarily agree with those who say that there is only one party in this country, etc., but it does seem like as long as the same old divisive issues like abortion are at the forefront, it's going to be hard to get new, [currently] non-partisan issues to matter. I'm hoping one of the parties simply adds a pro-privacy stance to their platform. Right now it seems like it might even be the republicans. That would massively increase their stock with the younger crowd, but I worry it would go against the seemingly dominant pro-war, security uber alles faction of the party. So maybe we're just screwed.Comment
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