Do you think that the prices of medical and dental care are inflated because?

the main way they are paid for is through insurance companies? They can pretty much set whatever price they want, and they do.





If all insurance dissapeared tomorrow I dont think anyone but upper class people could afford health care.





I went to the emergency room after a weight lifting injury and I was charged $300 for each doctor that came in and just said "hello, how are you" 4 doctors, what kind of crap is that? And the nurses did most if not all of the work, they are the ones that are under-paid.

Do you think that the prices of medical and dental care are inflated because?
Charges are inflated because of insurance companies and government ineptitude and meddling:


When 75% of the people who declare bankruptcy over medical bills ARE INSURED, then insurance is CLEARLY not the answer.


"Aldrich’s situation is "asinine" but increasingly common, said Dr. Deborah Thorne of Ohio University. Thorne, co-author of a widely quoted 2005 study that found medical bills contributed to nearly half of the 1.5 million personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, said that ratio has likely worsened since the data was gathered.


...


Like Aldrich, Thorne said, three-quarters of the individuals in the study who declared bankruptcy because of health problems were insured. "


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20201807/





Linda Peeno, MD testified that SHE had often denied treatment JUST to save the insurance company money http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/DrPe...





Furthermore:


"the vast majority of health insurance policies are through for-profit stock companies. They are in the process of “shedding lives” as some term it when “undesirable” customers are lost through various means, including raising premiums and co-pays and decreasing benefits (Britt, “Health insurers getting bigger cut of medical dollars,” 15 October 2004, investors.com). That same Investors Business Daily article from 2004 noted the example of Anthem, another insurance company. They said the top five executives (not just the CEO) received an average of an 817 percent increase in compensation between 2000 and 2003. The CEO, for example, had his compensation go from $2.5 million to $25 million during that time period. About $21 million of that was in stock payouts, the article noted.





A 2006 article, “U.S. Health Insurance: More Market Domination, More CEO Compensation”


(hcrenewal.blogspot.com) notes that in 56 percent of 294 metropolitan areas one insurer “controls more than half the business in health maintenance organization and preferred provider networks underwriting." In addition to having the most enrollees, they also are the biggest purchasers of health care and set the price and coverage terms. “’The results is double-digit premium increases from 2001 and 2004—peaking with a 13.9 percent jump in 2003—soaring well above inflation and wages increases.’" Where is all that money going? The article quotes a Wall Street Journal article looking at the compensation of the CEO of UnitedHealth Group. His salary and bonus is $8 million annually. He has benefits such as the use of a private jet. He has stock-option fortunes worth $1.6 billion."


--Save America, Save the World by Cassandra Nathan pp. 127-128





"Insurance Companies Robbing Patients


Robbing patients to pay CEOs leads to unprecedented medical insurance corporation greed.


Thursday, January 3, 2008 8:52 AM


By: Michael Arnold Glueck %26amp; Robert J. Cihak, The Medicine Men"


http://www.newsmax.com/medicine_men/medi...





You can see the government's failure to enforce CONTRACT law which allows the insurers to deny legit claims with impunity leads to bankruptcy and blood money profits in the millions for SOBs who are NOT earning the money, just STEALING it by refusing to pay legit claims.





Whenever you have antitrust violations you have the taxpayer being robbed--and that's the norm for big markets where the insurers effectively set the prices. Look at their profits and do the math.





We have NO price transparency in this field only. There is NO other field in which you have NOT a clue as to what you'll be left holding the bag for. Buying a house? It IS all spelled out for you before you commit (some idiots ignore the facts, but that's on them, the info IS there). Buying a car? Same thing--it has to be spelled out. Go to the grocery store? The guy ahead pays $1.49 a pound for apples and so do YOU and the price was marked. There are laws about charging people the same for rentals, about car places having to provide a written estimate and coming within 10% of that or get your permission and provide a new estimate. EVERYONE but those in health care have to tell you about charges and you can shop around. ONLY in health care can you be "insured" only to discover AFTER the fact that the insurer refuses to pay his obligation and now you're saddled with $20K in unexpected bills and idiots expect you to pay in violation of contract law. (Refusal of legit claims; reliance on a third party promise; failure to form a contract as a meeting of the minds REQUIRES agreement on price, etc.)





UHC is a load of BS. Canadian doc:


"...Another sign of transformation: Canadian doctors, long silent on the health-care system’s problems, are starting to speak up. Last August, they voted Brian Day president of their national association. A former socialist who counts Fidel Castro as a personal acquaintance, Day has nevertheless become perhaps the most vocal critic of Canadian public health care, having opened his own private surgery center as a remedy for long waiting lists and then challenged the government to shut him down. “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week,” he fumed to the New York Times, “and in which humans can wait two to three years.”





And now even Canadian governments are looking to the private sector to shrink the waiting lists. Day’s clinic, for instance, handles workers’-compensation cases for employees of both public and private corporations. In British Columbia, private clinics perform roughly 80 percent of government-funded diagnostic testing. In Ontario, where fealty to socialized medicine has always been strong, the government recently hired a private firm to staff a rural hospital’s emergency room.





This privatizing trend is reaching Europe, too. Britain’s government-run health care dates back to the 1940s. Yet the Labour Party—which originally created the National Health Service and used to bristle at the suggestion of private medicine, dismissing it as “Americanization”—now openly favors privatization. Sir William Wells, a senior British health official, recently said: “The big trouble with a state monopoly is that it builds in massive inefficiencies and inward-looking culture.” Last year, the private sector provided about 5 percent of Britain’s nonemergency procedures; Labour aims to triple that percentage by 2008. The Labour government also works to voucherize certain surgeries, offering patients a choice of four providers, at least one private. And in a recent move, the government will contract out some primary care services, perhaps to American firms such as UnitedHealth Group and Kaiser Permanente.





Sweden’s government, after the completion of the latest round of privatizations, will be contracting out some 80 percent of Stockholm’s primary care and 40 percent of its total health services, including one of the city’s largest hospitals. Since the fall of Communism, Slovakia has looked to liberalize its state-run system, introducing co-payments and privatizations. And modest market reforms have begun in Germany: increasing co-pays, enhancing insurance competition, and turning state enterprises over to the private sector (within a decade, only a minority of German hospitals will remain under state control). It’s important to note that change in these countries is slow and gradual—market reforms remain controversial. But if the United States was once the exception for viewing a vibrant private sector in health care as essential, it is so no longer."


http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_ca...





The ONLY sensible solution I've seen offered to date and it's COMPREHENSIVE:


QUALITY, ACCESSIBLE, AFFORDABLE health care for all.


That means preventative care (physical with follow up). Real medication (no Medicare "donut holes" the really ill are ripped off again.) No bogus ridiculously low "caps" on needed medical procedures. No abuse of the ER. No paying for the silly with the sniffles to go to the doc for free. No more bankruptcies over medical bills. I want THIS plan that ends abuse of the taxpayer, takes the burden off employers, provides price transparency, and ends the rip-off of the US taxpayer at the hands of greedy insurance CEOs (which has been repeatedly documented).


http://www.booklocker.com/books/3068.htm...


Read the PDF, not the blurb, for the bulk of the plan. Book is searchable on Amazon.com


Cassandra Nathan's Save America, Save the World


We NEED more doctors, nurses, etc. and we need COMPETITION. THAT plan recognizes those facts, others just funnel MORE money to insurers with NO reform. Idiocy.
Reply:Hospitals have to treat everybody and those that don't pay are paid for by those that do, plus the tort laws cause the doctors insurance to be very high...
Reply:Insurance IS the problem.
Reply:There is no doubt, I am a provider for health insurance and I know it is full of bureaucratic bullsh** that detracts from the quality of care and inflates the price so what you get is really really really bad quality health care that may, in fact, kill you, for a huge price. Universal healthcare would help and the rich should get the same good quality but that would be a reallly big change from what we have now, which is bad healthcare for all. Dangerous and costly. Vote for Obama
Reply:If insurance disappeared tomorrow the doctors and hospitals would lose too much business unless they started re-evaluating what they charge the average American.





So it would be beneficial to do away with insurance companies (i.e. middlemen) and make these professions deal directly with their consumer base.





Your analysis of emergency rooms is correct and if you had no insurance they inflate the price more than they do for the insured so you are paying a far greater price for their services if uninsured.

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