Healthcare reform by just removing two words, 'over 65'

[I'm Watermark]

BAC, you're awesome. Thank you for making posts I look forward to reading.

 

[blackascoal]

BAC...please...don't jump in the teabagger fire and research before you repeat inane talking points and misquotes.

The actual quote from Pelosi is:



That's got a far different meaning than what you and others are implying; and Pelosi told the truth. If we take all the naysayers, critics, misinformation, and outright lies on both sides of the discussion out of the equation, let the ACA get fully implemented, we'll then be able to see what needs fixing.

Until then, we just need to STFU.

WRONG, WRONG .. and seriously WRONG.

FIRST, "We had to pass the bill to find out what's in it" is exactly what she said .. you posted the same thing.

"away from the fog of the controversy" also means away from people who were telling the truth about the bill .. such as it doesn't control costs.

The notion that people should "STFU" and wait for the catastrophe to hit first is nonsensical, anti-intellectual, and typical of the democratic double-standard of governance. Did you wait for Bush policies to fail before you critiqued them? Of course you didn't.

Considering the debacle of Obama .. you should be careful talking about the Tea Party.

By the time Obama leaves office, he may leave with the same approval numbers Bush had.

 

[blackascoal]

BAC, you're awesome. Thank you for making posts I look forward to reading.

Thank you brother.

 

[blackascoal]

Stop.

I need to give BAC some credit here.

Rarely does someone post something that draws derision and praise from both sides of the aisle. Tight work, BAC!

:0) It's because I don't have a side.

I only care about what is in the best interests of people.

 

[blackascoal]

except the numbers you have provided don't back that up....the numbers are still there for everyone to see.....you have stated that it costs $8k per person under Medicare.....even under your new numbers that's $12k more than the average family....

I also wonder about your new numbers, given that I pay BC/BS about half what you say a combined employer/employee cost is for premiums......I never suspected that walking in the door and taking the only thing available to me I would be able to get a better deal than some company with 5000 employees......

My numbers may be off .. but post #56 should demonstrate to you why Medicare costs less than your private insurance.

 

[I'm Watermark]

I'd call this the proverbial 'nail in the coffin' of the healthcare debate.

Hospital Prices No Longer Secret As New Data Reveals Bewildering System, Staggering Cost Differences

When a patient arrives at Bayonne Hospital Center in New Jersey requiring treatment for the respiratory ailment known as COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she faces an official price tag of $99,690.

Less than 30 miles away in the Bronx, N.Y., the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center charges only $7,044 for the same treatment, according to a massive federal database of national health care costs made public on Wednesday.

Americans have long become accustomed to bewilderment and anxiety when confronting health care bills. The new database underscores why, revealing the perplexing assortment of prices for medical care, with the details of bills seemingly untethered to any graspable principle.

Even within the same metropolitan area, hospitals charge prices that differ by staggering degrees for the same procedures. People without health insurance pay vastly higher costs for care when less expensive options are often available nearby. Virtually everyone who seeks health care winds up paying inflated prices in one form or another as these stark disparities in price sow inefficiencies throughout the market.

While this basic picture has emerged as the consensus reality among health care experts, their evidence has been primarily anecdotal. Hospitals have protected their price lists -- documents known as charge masters -- as closely guarded secrets.

Their prices are secret no more.

The database released on Wednesday by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services lays out for the first time and in voluminous detail how much the vast majority of American hospitals charge for the 100 most common inpatient procedures billed to Medicare. The database -- which covers claims filed within fiscal year 2011 -- spans 163,065 individual charges recorded at 3,337 hospitals located in 306 metropolitan areas.

The Obama administration shared the data in advance with The Huffington Post, The New York Times and The Washington Post. What emerges through a preliminary analysis is a snapshot of an incoherent system in which prices for critical medical services vary seemingly at random -- from state to state, region to region and hospital to hospital.

These price differences impose a uniquely punishing burden on the estimated 49 million Americans who have no health insurance, experts say. They are the only ones who see on their bill the dollar amounts listed on these official price lists. Yet these same prices effectively shape what nearly everyone pays for health care, because they determine how much private health insurance companies must surrender in reimbursement for services. That in turn influences the size of the premiums that insurance companies charge their customers.

Obama administration officials declined to characterize the causes of these gaping disparities in price, leaving unclear whether they reflect some form of malevolence -- profiteering by some institutions or price-rigging -- or rather more nebulous factors, such as varying estimates about the underlying costs of providing services.

[Click here to search the database.]

---

How is it possible that two hospitals in close proximity would set prices as differently as Bayonne Hospital Center in New Jersey and the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in New York? It's partly a relic of how hospitals used to operate and partly reflects their strategies to maximize revenues in ways that don't have a direct connection to the cost of the care they provide any individual patient.

The charges are the prices hospitals establish themselves for the services they provide. Although Medicare and Medicaid don't base their payment rates on these figures, private health insurance companies typically do, which means they usually pay more for the same health care than the government does. That translates into higher premiums for people with insurance. And uninsured people are expected to pay the full list price or a discount from that number, which tends to mean they pay more than anyone else.

The new Medicare database is replete with examples of inexplicably high prices and wide variations between hospitals in the same geographic area. The peculiar disorganization of the American health care system is evident by looking at just a few instances.

In the New York metro area, Bayonne Hospital Center -- part of a chain called CarePoint Healthcare -- charges the highest prices for several types of procedures, including COPD treatment, among the regional hospitals reviewed by HuffPost. Its price for that treatment runs four times the average in the New York area, according to the database. Medicare -- the government health care program for older people and people with disabilities -- paid an average of $6,826 for these same treatments within the New York area -- or less than 7 percent of Bayonne Hospital Center's charge.

Major joint replacement surgery at the hospital comes in at $155,769, which is almost three times the local average and more than nine times the price at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx. Medicare paid an average $18,944 in that area.

---

"It would be hard for a hospital -- unless there's a justified reason -- to be able to preserve a large margin over what its otherwise equal competitors charge," Huckman said. "If someone knows the amount that even the most advantaged payer reimburses a hospital for a particular service and they can take that in with their own bill, I think that gives a pretty powerful opportunity for that customer to interact with the organization and say, 'Why is my number so different?'"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/hospital-prices-cost-differences_n_3232678.html?1367985666

Medicare for all Americans was the easy answer for America's healthcare crisis.

This information is just being revealed to the public, but the Obama Administration had this information when it walked away from the easy solution and opted for a corporatist nightmare instead.

So let me get this straight... There's no rhyme or reason? Hospitals can set ridiculous prices and keep them a secret to prevent consumers from making informed decisions?

 

[blackascoal]

Here's something else, BAC. I'd like you to read all of it and then comment. This is, btw, from a progressive like me who shares my thoughts.

http://www.winningprogressive.org/d...or-72-days-during-president-obamas-first-term

I took the time to read this post slowly brother. What I found glaringly absent was any critique of Obama. Everything was somebody else's fault or misinterpretation. Therein lies the problem with today's democrats/progressives .. who too often believe themselves to be the only smart people in the room.

I have a comment to make on every issue cited, but I think it more important to discuss the overall product of Obama .. who walked into the White House door with about the same margins that Bill Clinton had when he walked in .. and Obama walked in the door with Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. At that very moment, both you and whoever wrote that article should have known that you did not elect a progressive, you elected a corporatist. That's the 'C' word that all democrats run from. There is NO question that Obama is a corporatist, NONE. The biggest beneficiaries of his entire time in office has been corporations BY FAR.

Yet, I didn't read the 'C' word anywhere in the article. The author failed to address an obvious truth.

I also didn't read anything about the Bush foreign policy in that article. Why not? The number one issue that democrats claim they hated about Bush was his foreign policy .. yet, Obama conducts the Bush foreign policy on steroids and democrats say nothing.

Health care? Democrats blew it big time by allowing Obama to put forth a cumbersome clusterfuck of a bill that cost them the House .. and I saw that nowhere in the article. How it is possible that you and other democrats don't see what's coming completely blows my mind.

Gitmo .. all it takes is balls to close it .. which is why Obama hasn't done it.

Democrats have allowed Obama to get away with any and everything without the slightest accountablity. To every critique they shout 'racism' and 'republicans' so much that you'd think the two were inseparable. At no time have democrats engaged in any honest critique of your own.

Until democrats and progressives can stand and fight for something greater than partisan politics, they don't deserve to lead. They aren't any different than the Tea Party .. who by the way, DEMOCRATS have just invited back to the table.

You cannot blame Obama's every ill on somebody else.

 

[blackascoal]

So let me get this straight... There's no rhyme or reason? Hospitals can set ridiculous prices and keep them a secret to prevent consumers from making informed decisions?

The answer to why health care is so ridiculously high.

No rhyme .. no reason.

 

[Howey]

WRONG, WRONG .. and seriously WRONG.

FIRST, "We had to pass the bill to find out what's in it" is exactly what she said .. you posted the same thing.

Context, my dear...context.

Thank you brother.

:0) It's because I don't have a side.

I only care about what is in the best interests of people.

Huh. Thank him and not me? You don't have the best interests of the people in mind when you'd rather Obamacare be repealed with nothing viable to replace it.

 

[PostmodernProphet]

My numbers may be off .. but post #56 should demonstrate to you why Medicare costs less than your private insurance.

first of all, we have no evidence at all that Medicare costs less....in fact, the evidence you yourself presented shows the opposite......#56 shows something is wrong......however, it does not show that Medicare is the way to fix it.....if anything it appears Medicare is what caused it........

 

[PostmodernProphet]

The answer to why health care is so ridiculously high.

No rhyme .. no reason.

there is a reason....no one cared if the cost is high.....providers wanted the costs to be high.....insurance company profits are based on what they pay out in benefits so they wanted costs to be high......until the last few years the patients didn't care what the costs were, their employer's paid the insurance......employers didn't care if their premiums were high, they just wrote them off as a tax deduction.....its only been the last ten - twenty years that anyone cared what it cost.......