Gyroscopic Investing

Doodle, that sounds like a great plan. How much does it cost, and is it available country-wide?

My plan is through Humana. It is some variation of the National POS - Open Access Plan. My employer pays most of it ...I pay about 12 bucks a month. I'm not sure how much it would cost for a private individual to purchase. Anyways, it works great for me.

I really feel that health care is one of those areas that the free market should be allowed to fix. The only part of the system whose purpose I question are insurance companies. I think a single payer system would be much more streamlined and efficient. Let the hospitals and doctors compete amongst each other though in an open manner.

doodle wrote: Government single payer like medicare or medicaid.

I don't see why we can't have a private single-payer system with private delivery.  There's nothing magical about public single-payer.  If we don't trust the government to deliver medicine competently, how the hell can we trust them to manage insurance competently?  Fraud in Medicare is an epic fail.

OTOH, the pure socialism of the Veterans Administration receives better scores from patients than those on Medicare: http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=718025
And my experience with medicine in the military has always been top notch.  But I think that comparison needs to be kept in perspective since theres no real free market in health care and government already eats up 60% of healthcare spending.  The regulatory deathgrip is tighter than a virgin.

Where is the Poland-style shock therapy?  Sigh.

MachineGhost wrote:

doodle wrote: Government single payer like medicare or medicaid.

I don't see why we can't have a private single-payer system with private delivery.  There's nothing magical about public single-payer.  If we don't trust the government to deliver medicine competently, how the hell can we trust them to manage insurance competently?  Fraud in Medicare is an epic fail.

OTOH, the pure socialism of the Veterans Administration receives better scores from patients than those on Medicare: http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=718025
But I think that comparison needs to be kept in perspective since theres no real free market in health care and government already eats up 60% of healthcare spending.  The regulatory deathgrip is tighter than a virgin.

Where is the Poland-style shock therapy?  Sigh.

Maybe a non-profit insurance company....

Preventing fraud is tough if doctors salaries are tied to how many complicated and unnecessary procedures they can push through. Maybe doctors should have salaried positions to prevent this conflict of interest.

Then again, how do you spur innovation and cost competition among people who have nothing to gain because they're salaried.

If you got a group of unbiased experts in a room and gave them the power to design a working health care system, I'm sure they would design something much better than the cobbled together mess we have now. Really, it's the monied corruption of our political system by industry lobbyists that is hamstringing our ability to get decent consumer oriented health care  pulled together.

The very first Health Insurance Exchange is off and running in CT.  Nine insurance companies plan to offer Qualified Health Plans (5 health, 4 dental) . Take a look:

http://www.ct.gov/hix/site/default.asp

doodle wrote: Maybe a non-profit insurance company....

Cool story, bro. So if we have non-profit insurance companies, then insurance costs will be reduced by 3% because that's what their profit margins are.

That will certainly save us.

TripleB wrote:

doodle wrote: Maybe a non-profit insurance company....

Cool story, bro. So if we have non-profit insurance companies, then insurance costs will be reduced by 3% because that's what their profit margins are.

That will certainly save us.

I've heard that most non-profits get rid of their profit by giving it to the CEO. Nonprofits in general are a big rip-off, IMHO. People see "non-profit" and imagine a bunch of caring do-gooders motivated by altruism and compassion, rather than simply a corporation like any other that simply has to spend all of its profit.

There is a large group of non-profilt hospitals in the town that I work in nicknamed "the evil empire".  Suffice to say that they earn their nickname.

What is the advantage of having private insurance companies over a single payer system? It seems that the former would provide many efficiencies and cut down on the overwhelming amount of paperwork and billing issues that doctors and hospitals have to face. This paperwork nightmare is additional cost that is placed on the health care system as well as just the 3% profit margins you mentioned for private insurers.

As far as fraud, could there be other ways to tackle this issue than using private insurers? What incentivizes doctors and hospitals to commit fraud, and how could these incentives be reduced?

The paperwork nightmare is caused by having insurance pay for everything, mostly routine expenses. How much paperwork and contact with a billing department did you have the last time you bought groceries? If the government didn't force insurers to pay for non-insurable expenses, insurance could work like insurance is supposed to and people would be able to shop around for non-life-threatening expenditures and pay in cash like they do in every other market without having to do a ridiculous roundabout with co-insurance and deductibles and out-of-pocket limits and paperwork and bureaucracy and all that nonsense.