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The New Shackle Of Serfdom: Clinging To Healthcare Insurance
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
The shackles of this new serfdom are invisible, but no less destructive for being invisible.
One of the more remarkable characteristics of American life is our passive acceptance of systems that are so obviously completely insane. Yes, I refer to our healthcare system, a.k.a. sickcare because in America sickness is profitable and health is not, and healthcare profiteering that would be the envy of pirates and warlords everywhere is the norm.
What warlord wouldn't jump on the opportunity to jack up the cost of a medication from $13.50 a tablet to $750 overnight, or as the article highlights, jack up the cost of an off-patent med from $1 a pill to $750 a pill in a few years?
This piratical pillaging is not an outlier--it's the norm in America's parasitic pharmaceutical industry:
Cycloserine, a drug used to treat dangerous multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, was just increased in price to $10,800 for 30 pills from $500 after its acquisition by Rodelis Therapeutics.
Imagine getting to jack your weekly wage from $500/week to $10,800/week while issuing a laughably lame excuse.
These profiteering prices are not the shackle of serfdom, at least not directly; few pay these prices in cash--insurers pay. And when prices rise, insurers jack their rates up accordingly (plus a bit to cover their costly political lobbying and the profit margins expected of quasi-monopolies).
Healthcare insurance is the new shackle of serfdom: Americans are forced to cling to whatever coverage they have, lest they lose coverage and risk bankruptcy.
Low-income Americans theoretically don't have to worry, as their medical care is covered by Medicaid. (They only need to find doctors and clinics that accept Medicaid. Good luck with that....)
Retired Americans only have to scrape up the few hundred bucks for Medicare Parts A, B, C, D, and of course E through Z (shall we talk about insane levels of complexity in the system? Perhaps another time...).
Modern capitalism has one necessary dynamic: the mobility of labor and capital. Financial capital is entirely mobile now; a click of a mouse button is all that's needed to send capital almost anywhere.
What happens to labor mobility when no one dares quit because that would mean losing their medicare coverage? Yes, I can already hear the obvious: the new employer will provide the same coverage.
Oh really? What if the new employer is the worker himself? What if the new employer is too under-funded to afford America's insanely costly healthcare?
And please don't offer ObamaCare as the "solution": in high-cost regions such as the left and right coasts, any household with a moderately middle-class income doesn't qualify for ObamaCare subsidies.
Please explain the wisdom of shackling employers to employees' medical insurance, and employees to these employers. You can't, because there is no wisdom in this insanity. The system is not the result of planning or coherence--it's simply the result of a jumbled series of historical accidents.
Yet this is the system we cling to. Why? 1) We have no choice or 2) it's so insanely profitable for those at the top of the heap. Are these good reasons?
Is shackling our workforce to their current employer simply to avoid the risk of not having insurance and not qualifying for subsidies good for the economy? No.
This system makes no sense whatsoever.
There are only one way out of this insanity: break the shackles from employer to employees' healthcare insurance and from employees to employer.
There are only two ways to break these shackles:
1. Offer everyone universal healthcare coverage via a government agency
2. Go back to a cash-only system. The "Impossible" Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash (July 29, 2009)
Guess how many pills the pirate would sell for $750 each if insurers were eliminated and cash payments by patients were the only form of payment: yup, near-zero. The parasitic pirate would either have to drop the price back to $13.50 (or better yet, $1) or go broke and have to sell the rights, or be accosted by those who'd lost loved ones to his rapacious greed.
The shackles of this new serfdom are invisible, but no less destructive for being invisible.
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There should be a law
No more Clintons ever!
No more Bushs ever!
Screw them families!
The food sets you up, and "The doctor is ready to see you now."
vs
Eat organic, drink clean water, and take a fucking walk.
Paleo works every time it is tried, but wont work with 7 billion people trying it. Most of them will have to live primarily on grass seeds, like ruminants, but with only one stomach.
Between the birth of my son this year and typical medical expenses (most paid for by insurance), our family of 4 has spent over $40,000 this year! No major surgeries included. Yes, over $40,000 and the year is not even over.
All billed by government monopoly-licensed suppliers pricing to government given billing codes and pricing schedules. Private medical is so evil.
F U.S. "Health Care" chains.
Try to do what's right to stay healthy.
When the time comes, make your peace with creation, then crawl in a hole and die like the rest of nature.
You guys pay for that crap? Suckers.
The smart money option is to eat right, exercise, and when you do get hurt/sick, go to the ER and stiff them on the bill.
If you are in the USA and a Christian, you might want to consider one of the health ministries. Christians outside the USA, especially missionaries, can also use them if the bills are translated to English.
They are not for everyone - no heavy drinking or smoking. They are ACA compliant and most have been around for decades.
CHM or Christian Health Ministries, Samaritan Ministries, Liberty Healthshare, CURO, Altrua, Medishare and one or two others.
http://selfpaypatient.com/2013/11/27/health-care-sharing-ministry-member...
CHM has been in business for 35 years. They have grown about 10 fold in the past 5 years.
The two that I like the best are CHM and Liberty Healthshare. If you call them you talk to a real live American speaking English.
These ministries are exactly what health insurance should be. Matching preiums to needs and no $40 million a year stock bonuses like the CEO and CFO at United Helathcare (who helped write obamaCare).
Thank you yet again Freddie for reminding me of this option.
I need to get off my butt.
The sad truth is - you didn't really spend that much. Doctors write off stuff and insurance companies pay pennies on the dollar based on schedules/agreements. The 40,000 is what you might have paid had you not had insurance. It is just a way to make you feel good that you have insurance.
Absolute Fact:
In two weeks, I'm having a joint repair done "in private" by the top knee-guy in New Zealand, with an all-in cost of US$3,400, which includes surgeon, anaesthetist, any meds, and the operating facility. "Private" means there is no government subsidy.
I think everyone knows that the US "health" system is a fraudulent rip-off; it's the insurance industry, government bureaucrats and Big Pharma who are the Winners. And you, my little amurican porkchops, are the Losers. The US system WILL implode, and the main trick is to stay healthy until after it has.
FWIW, prescription drugs in New Zealand are basically free, and life expecancy is higher than in the USA.
Absolute Fact:
I just had surgery to repair my sinus issues (in Mexico). He repaired my deviated septum and shrank my turbinates. I'm still not 100% sure he has addressed my problems but total cost, including office visits - surgery and anesthesia - less than $900 USD.
FWIW : this was 'private' treatment (even though we could have gone the cheaper government route).
All these dietary fads are just that.
Pay attention, eat for the season, eat as much locally grown food as possible...
And take a chance, deal with some pain....pain is the only door back to real healing.
It's your life, take it back...
https://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/snake-eyes/
The paleo fad lasted hundreds of thousands of years? Or is eating grass seeds, which has been on for all of ten thousand years, more faddish, comparatively? Answer: farming enabled civilisation which is to say it enabled government. Government is big on us eating lots and lots of grains. Because they are cheap and preserve easily.
Hell Yeah,
Our stone age ancestors had a life span of 20-35 years.
Infections, accidents and war. Most of the increase in lifespan since the beginning of homo sapiens came from sanitation(clean hands, clean water, clean food), most of the rest from anti biotics and anti septics. But we were not designed to eat grass seeds.
Diets high in fat do a *terrible* job at lowering fatty deposits and their related diseases in the human body. The China Study
Grains have been the primary source of calories for every successful civilization since we entered the agrarian age.
Grains remain the primary source of energy for low-incidence disease civilizations (rice, potatoes, corn, wheat).
Gotta be wary of people making money off of telling people good things about their bad habits.
try to buy local, grow your own and try to avoid big store food that all has U's and Parve and other symbols on them which are the Kosher tax. The goyim must pay billions to eat. This is not a joke.
Eat a lot of good oils (EVO, etc.) and saturated fats.
Get 50% or more of your calories from fats.
Mmmm tasteee fatzzz...
Or eat based on the highly flawed China Study. Or even more flawed study by Keys.
"There should be a law"
Said every Democrat voter, about every public health issue, since FDR first militated on this and up to the present day.
Pecker pills and baldness cures forever. They've created a nation of hypohrondiacs to sell their snake oil to, jacking up the prices just speeds up the process....
Actually "snake fish" oil is rich in omega 3 fatty acids. The real thing was good for you, and very helpful if you were trying to scratch by eating typical agricultural staples of the 19th century.
Cod liver oil fixed everything.
"There should be a law"
Used to be a cartoon strip "There aughta be a law". I wonder if that was population conditioning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hatlo and Al_Fagaly
How about the new 12 week Hep-C cure that costs $100k?
How about the life choices behind most Hep C infections?
Those don't enter into the thinking, those choices make people feel good.
Actually Hep C is endemic in the SE Asian population, for reasons I don't understand, but nothing to do with whores or heroin. It ain't just life choices.
Hep B, on the other hand....that's why we kill newborn babies with the vaccine, to protect adults from their life choices.
Hep C has a low sexual transmission rate unlike B. It is common for me to diagnose a hep C case and their sexual partner is negative. Often these cases are from blood transfusions when in the past hep C was transmitted in 1 in every 10 transfusions. So they had sex with their partners for many years before diagnosed. Symptoms of jaundice usually don't show until one is down to 10% of liver function so you can live 10-20 years with Hep unknowingly.
I'm expecting what you may be seeing has something to do with a tainted blood supply in the past. But this is only conjecture on my part.
Miffed
Needles.
A lot of Viet Nam vets caught Hep C through no fault of their own. There's a 1,000 ways to die in that fucking jungle if you're a round eye. As a survivor, thank you VA, the drug is a miracle. I shoulda bought the stock.
There are those who made life choices and there are those who had the SSS make them for them without any right to appeal.
FORWARD PHARMA SOVIET!
TBT how about you suck my dick? $100k in USSA and a pittance elsewhere. Wake the fuck up. The Hep C treatment costs is in line with the article. Who would actually write a $100k check? OBomberCare was the start - wait until they REQUIRE you to take tretments for the "good' of others. Again - wake the fuck up and hit your knees
Yes, the cost of Harvoni is outrageous. My Hep-C treatment with the other medications, doctor visits, lab work and various other tests cost around $150k. If it hadn't worked I'd be pissed, but the treatment cleared the virus and may have saved my life. Of course that's where Gilead Sciences fucked up with Harvoni. They produced a cure that works remarkably well. If Gilead had produced only a treatment that people had to keep taking, perhaps they could have squeezed even more money from sick people.
That's the system we have. Like a highway robber, a person who wears a mask when they work tells you: your money or your life.
Well, there are. They just so happen to be written by the pharmaceuticals to protect their profits and keep you from bringing in cheaper drugs from outside of the country.
Congress critters are their most ardent defenders.
The infamous refrain from parents of my generation. And who knows, perhaps it's even worse with the current generation.
We already have the solution. We have auto-insurance and home-owners insurance that work wonderfully. We need to cut the tie between employers having to provide insurance and let the individual decide on what plan they want. There should literally be 1000's of different health insurance companies with 10,000's different coverage options and plans.
Read Denninger
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3363559
Regardless of what you think of him-and he's a lightning rod for many people-his is the ONLY commonsensical writing about healthcare in the public venue anywhere, today.
Essentailly-"healthcare", as with "finance" are institutions that should exist to services societies' needs for their services.
We the People do not exist as collateral for their indulgent excesses. That it is apparent that both those institutions regard our existence for their benefit is a fundamental civic disorganization. We as a society can go no further until this civic disorgaanization is rectified.
My wife's miracle chemotherapy drug costs $15,000 a month (= $180,000 a year).We pay $0.
She's worth it.
salzburg, who pays the $15K??
Everyone deserves heat in their house. I am therefore assembling a committee to put together a proposal for the new Obama Furnace! Suckers.
a former hedge fund manager...2 and 20 just wasn;t enough
Still got a health savings account with my employer, but when hired, HR had no idea what I was talking about.
lol - cnbc cast now trying to "give themselves cover" on the BS "time correction" narrative they tried laying-out over the last 3-6 months.
maybe next segment we can re-vist the "great rotation" arguement. u remember, the "everyone will soon be moving out of bonds & into stocks" ... that was around 3.25% on a 10-year. we're now at 2.13%. good stuff.
cramer, bring up how everyone should own a house & flood it with HD, LOW shit they don't need so when the deflationary spiral hits they're really trapped in something they can't get out of!
That is the choice:
Single payer government run health care
Or
Free market health care with no insurance
Guess which one people are going to choose. Hint, not the one they should.
Befriend a doc who takes cash. Problem solved.
Yeah, a doctor that does everything. Fucking idjit. The system was designed to codify the fucked up medical business in the USSA. Yeah, save 10 bucks on a doc visit then get hit by a drunk driver and go BK due to medical costs. Go back to posting on Yahoo - problem solved
I do like to post on Yahoo. Those people are fun to fuck with.
Signed,
Idjit
Agreed, A GP that takes cash would be nice but they're hard to find. The money is in the insurance scams.
Working for a unionized large telecom I can tell you the medical costs have sky rocketed. Went from $0 to $400 per month in a couple of years with deductables around $1200 to $2000. I have been reasonably healthy and rarely have to see a Doctor so basically I am just giving them the money. Same goes for Obama Care. Rates are ridiculous for a middle income working family so they can give the lower income brackets their subsidies.
Aside: Escape Obamacare. For people who are proactive and intelligent in caring for their health and well-being, are spiritually inclined, and prefer to be in a pool with others of similar ilk, there is another option: Liberty Healthshare.
One of the more remarkable characteristics of American life is our passive acceptance of systems that are so obviously completely insane. Yes, I refer to our healthcare system, a.k.a. sickcare because in America sickness is profitable and health is not, and healthcare profiteering that would be the envy of pirates and warlords everywhere is the norm.
I personally have incurred zero health repair costs in the last 55 years. It would seem that I shouldn't be paying 15% of my efforts to insuring against that risk.
Yet they tell us that the health care industry is 15% of the economy.
Can you imagine anyone selling cars that demanded that kind of repair costs? Cars' reliability is truly splendid now compared to 50 years ago ... but they never cost 15% of my total effort to keep in good working order.
In the last 10 years of your life you will incur 85+% of lifetime medical costs.
Is your car worth more than your life? Wife or child's life?
Job of actuary is to make sure these insurance companies make money based on probability/statistics of you needing some sort of coverage. Now I totally agree the entire healthcare system is broken..but it's not just insurance companies..it's the whole chain top to bottom left to right.
I pay car insurance..no tickets or accidents but I pay more than my fiancé who has had both.. because I am a white male with a nice car. Stats say it's more likely I speed and get into an accident.
Is your car worth more than your life? Wife or child's life?
In the olden days there was no health insurance. I can remember those days. Life was better (and you had to go to the fair to see a fat person). I could break an arm and get it fixed quickly and at reasonable cost out of my own pocket. If that happened today with prevailing costs I would have to view it as a terminal injury. Wife and child's life are no longer issues.
Job of actuary is to make sure these insurance companies make money based on probability/statistics of you needing some sort of coverage.
No it's not. The job is to make premiums exactly equal claims. The money is made on investment income. I wrote financial models for insurance companies.
but it's not just insurance companies..it's the whole chain top to bottom left to right.
You are correct. I saw the seeds of the problem initially planted when health care became part of the bargaining unit's (union) contract at work. The farther you move the source of payment from the sink of service the worse the situtation becomes. Doctors actually made house calls back then. They personally knew all the details about their patients health.
I pay car insurance..no tickets or accidents but I pay more than my fiancé who has had both.. because I am a white male with a nice car. Stats say it's more likely I speed and get into an accident.
Stats don't lie. Only 8% know about WTC7 falling down.
I can remember those 'olden' days too... Broke my wrist,,, Mother took me to County Hospital. Wasn't paying attention to the cost,,, no one asked for a card or cash,,, took me immediatly to a doctor. Fixed in a jiffy.
We were poor so Mother paid out the bill on her waitress wages and tips. Took about a month so the cost could not have been too high.
This monster we have today is sick,,, plain and simple,,, like about everything else we do. The Medical professionals are just as guilty. If I need a script renewed I have to see the Doc... $200 for the Mother may I slip of paper and the pills are free at this particular pharmacy. Even in Mexico they can walk in and buy what they need without bribing the doctor.
Don't think it can continue too long.
PS and somewhat applicable.... If a Pomeranian puppy can cost $2700 (Petland) then it's just about over for the economy and country.
If a Pomeranian puppy can cost $2700
You mean to have its teeth cleaned, right?
"I personally have incurred zero health repair costs in the last 55 years."
Uh-oh... There was a piece of wood close by when you made that comment, I trust? There was, right...?
I'm not religious. I never did understand that "knock on wood" thing. At my age, health insurance just needs to finance a funeral pyre. So I'm self insured.
It would have been nice to put all the Medicare / Medicaid money they stole to better use though.
HEY!!! YOU ALL MAKE IT SOUND SO EASY!!
IT WASN'T!!!!
First they had to bride a shitload of politicians...
then they had to bribe a few presidents...
then they had to bribe the fda...
then they bribed all those doctors and hospitals...
then they had to invest in all that PR and marketing to make the servs more clueless...
THAT ALL COSTS MONEY!!
And what's the problem?? The people don't revolt. SO!!! THE AGREE!!!
It's not those farma companies fault that the people are stupid.
It's not those farma companies fault that people sell out for a few handouts
It's the people who sell their future.
Use your inside voice please
Where is the competation that naturally keeps prices in check? Pretty sure another company will start making the $750 drug and undercut the price by, say, $725
Maybe. A lot of the time it is not the actual drug that is patented but the chemical process or reaction chain involved in making the molecule. I don't know what it is here but could involve something like this.
SD:
Fortunately, SCOTUS has made it possible for the lobby crowd to bride many politicians, regardless of their self-perceptions of gender. I'd bet that some of the lobby guys 'n' gals are going to bride more than one politician and many politicians will be brided by more than one lobby-type. So SCOTUS will have the "unintended consequence" of fostering polygamy as well. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I think I missed a lucrative profession as a divorce lawyer, given all the briding going on.
- Ned
There's nothing wrong with anything anymore.
MSM headline "The TSA allegedly decided that her genitalia didn't match up to their (mis)perceptions about gender."
Yeah, so a man who is confused about his gender tells TSA he's a woman. When he goes through the scanner and it keeps alerting to a "package" he gets irate. So someone lied about gender, TSA finally do something correctly and people are saying TSA has misconceptions about gender. I'm only 35 and can't believe this is America.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/transgender-woman-live-tweets-her-expul...
Here are some of this confused person's tweets.
Shadi Petosky @shadipetosky
I am being held by the TSA in Orlando because of an "anomaly" (my penis)
Shadi Petosky @shadipetosky
Cop asked me what sex I was. I told him I wasn't going to answer that question. I am complying but come on.
Wouldn't be the first time my penis was called an anomaly. Most likely due to deployment rather than something else.
That is a hell of a lot of bridin'. I'd think one would get sore...
All these short catchy little names for our marketed little drugs, HEP-C, E.D., AFIB, O.B., how about...
FUCKED-D!
Because we are all fucked!
Get out while you can.
This piratical pillaging is not an outlier--it's the norm in America's parasitic pharmaceutical industry:
In his defense he noted it costs $1B to bring a drug to market. We know much of that is genuflecting to the FDA.
With a billion dollars you could hire 1000 people, pay them $1M each, and see how many die. I guarantee you, you wouldn't have trouble finding subjects.
typical insurance:
strep infection--doctor closed. walk in clinic which is inplan--closed. non plan walk in clinic--open. ER open.
You opt for non plan since the ER trip is way beyond necessity, don't feel like waiting 8 hours to be treated.
Bill at ER would have been $50 under most plans. Visit to out of plan walk in clinic--$256.
Our system is so fucked up.
Given our outrageous levels of corruption, the simple solution is politically impossible: universal, fully-federalized Medicaid.
The simple solution is federally backed catastrophic plans ($5000 and higher deductibles) available to everyone at a reasonable price. If you are too poor to afford one, then you don't have enough assets to need one.
Beyond that - leave it to the marketplace and local municipalities for anything beyond that.
tying insurance to the employer is a win win for insurance cos and large employers. you cant leave and you must pay.
if we could just get out of this debt mind frame and back to equity....as in save save save as a youth until you have 10k in the bank then move into own place and live on 1/2 of income, save 1/4 for old age and 1/4 for large purchases like car/house and then only pay cash....took 2 generations to get us here and may take 3 to get back up and out.
they'll never allow you, or your great-great-great-etc... grandchildren to escape.
That plan requires a pretty good gig to meet the criteria.
double post.
edit to say look into heatlt cost sharing groups. Very affordable and it's a possible solution.
We're in one and you are right; it's inexpensive by comparison, We have catastrophic coverage if the need should arise, it's 'compliant' with the HC/Fed mandate so they stay out of our business, it helps to starve the HC/Fed machine by not paying into it.
Observation: the preponderance of comments here speaking to good food and exercise choices is indicative of the sea-change in attitudes toward our personal health being a personal responsibility. Those of my parents generation were ignorant by comparison and the knee-jerk response to illness was to "see your Doctor".
I'm thinking it's a better plan to just die. Why burden our families with such thievery? Fuck the system. Fuck the insurers. Fuck the pharmas. fuck the hospitals. fuck the surgeons. fuck em all.
Most will think this suggestion sounds extreme but I would say this is the ultimate thumb-in-their-eye political statement.
While you're in good health, remove your money from the system, remove your food choices from the system, remove your method of entertainment from the system, remove your obedience from the system.
When it comes to be your time to leave this circus, find a caring hospice with a great reputation for pain alleviation.
Save your money. Give it to family, friends, charity, animal welfare, habitat preservation, whatever. DO NOT give it to the medical system, Big Pharma and the countless human leeches who subsist by draining the life savings of America's middle class as they lay dying, to be given to the very SOBs who have brought this on us.
If you've made your life here count while you were vital and alive, why not make the ultimate statement of principal in how you choose to exit? Die with a gladdened heart, a peaceful mind and a GO FUCK YOURSELF on your lips.
And who decides whether your life was TRULY one that "Counted".
Just askin' because I tend to favor myself.
It doesn't have to take a long, expensive time to die. Let me tell you a secret: people who have the courage to face death, die quickly. People who have a specific reason to hang on for, hang on just that long. And people who are AFRAID of dying -- who think they'll go to hell or some such nonsense -- end up in the limbo of hospital life-support, dragging out death for months or years as their brains turn to jello.
I've sat beside the dying and spoken to their spirits. I've talked to a lot of Dead -- I'm a witch, that's what I DO. Just don't hang on. Be ready when it's your time, and don't worry -- be HAPPY. There's nothing terrible on the Other Side unless you make it that way. As my Teacher-Brother used to remind me, Soma/Sema -- The Body Is The Tomb. And the Tomb is the doorway to Life, and so the Body is the doorway to both life and death because -- BINGO! -- they're the same thing. There is nothing scary Over There. And the only thing that keeps you hanging around half alive and racking up medical bills is being scared. Go when you get the call. It's okay. The kids will cope (a lot better if you don't leave a couple hundred thousand in bills). Somebody will come to pick you up at the station. You'll get a little bit of time to relax, get together with old friends, and grow your hair back (I have it on good authority that you DO get your hair back!). There is nothing to worry about. Except clinging. Don't cling. It makes it harder for everyone, most especially yourself.
Slowly but surely they are convincing the nation that mature people have no worth and are a parasitical drain on the system which sustains them using your money.
Soon enough, they will just put us on an iceflow and send us out to sea.
It's a sad vision that most young folks embrace.
No matter that I have paid in for 60 years and have yet to pull out one thin dime.
Remove yourself from the system.
#1) Stop working for a paycheck. Leave the system and find a way to make a living on the black market (produce something, cash work, tips, etc)...or where at least a majority of your income is derived from cash.
#2) Remove all assets "from the system". Cash out 401k/IRA/etc. Buy physical precious metals and keep the rest in hard cash. Invest in a foreign country with a corporate identity. Make yourself poor on paper.
#3) Get on ANY program you can: Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, rental assistance, utilities assistance, phones/phone plans.
If you are like me and in your 30's (give or take a decade or so), you will NEVER get what you paid into social security. Take it now.
Whenever I get my social security statements telling me they will pay out $~1200 a month when I retire, I want to punch someone. Either they will default, make me work until I am 80, or they will have gutted the currency to the point where I can only buy rice and toilet paper with my monthly payments.
Time to take the power back..!!
Tick tock, tick tock...
Insurance worked very well when it was used for catastrophic care and everyone was responsible for their day to day medical needs. Of course then people were not so grossly overweight, on 25 meds and challenged to walk to their mailbox and back. The situation now is unsustainable.
People don't want to take responsibility for their lives and think health comes from a bottle. Big Pharm is simply a flock of swarming vultures feasting on an endless income stream in this environment. Trying to rein them in wont stop the problem. Reverting insurance coverage to a catastrophic model is a step in the right direction.
Miffed
Bingo.
Don't forget the influence of a steady diet of propaganda -- you MUST have this procedure, that surgery, this drug, you MUST be PERFECTLY healthy and happy at all times or SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH YOU. And don't forget that in order to remain employed in today's workplace, you must be 150% all day, every day. You can't GET sick, and stay employed. You can't even be unhappy. Because your smile is your job. You also can't get enough time off work to get a decent night's sleep -- but you can get any number of late mornings, early outs, and days off if you have a Doctor's Excuse.
In many, many jobs you can't take a day off to fight a cold or flu unless you go to the Doctor and get a note verifying that you are sick. And yes, employers will pay for you to have "medical coverage" that pays for that waste of time, but they won't pay for you to have sick leave without it. They'll pay medical insurance to buy you insulin, but they'll fire you if you leave your desk to walk around the floor for five minutes every hour to keep yourself from needing it. Much of the stupidity of wall-to-wall medical care is now ingrained in our culture, the result of idolizing both Science and Unfettered Capitalism -- the first as the cure for all of the ills created by the second.
It's been a constant fight for us. We finally threw in the towel. No longer covered. Fort live in a state they can't take our house over the shit. If it comes to that, i'm burning the motherfucker down and making some visits before I checkout. Fuck this BS.
I don't know if either or both of these would suit you - but check out Liberty Healthshare and/or short term health plans (true catastrophic insurance). In my state you can get short term insurance to cover a full year. Some states limit it to 6 months.
I have nothing to gain by sharing this info. After two years of paying exorbitant premiums, I've chosen - like you - to opt out of Obamacare and am using the alternatives.
Please be reassured that, while you may have worries about healthcare, you are home free when it comes to ObamaCare fines from the IRS. The solution is easy: Never have a refund due you on your income taxes.
The IRS was not given the legislative authority to collect the fine that is stipulated in the legislation for those who are not covered by any policy, either from employment or individual coverage. You NEVER have to worry about being dunned for it or having it taken. Just make sure you never have a refund due you because they WILL take it out of that in a heartbeat.
Nice to know we still can get around the SOBs from time to time.
Since when does any 3-letter agency give a shit about legislative authority?
Eat vegetables, fruits, and nuts,
exercise,
....and you will probably never have to pay for overpriced pills.
Many natural ways to reduce blood viscosity.
Donate a pint 4x per year and reduce risk of heart attack.
Women do it naturally every month up to 45-50 y/o.
Magnesium and Potassium supplements are great for heart health.
Vegetables and fruits pretty much all contain high amounts of pesticides.
As for nuts, most are now being sent to China, they are nuts for nuts. That's why walnuts have doubled and pistacios have tripled.
Exercise--I agree.
Buy real minerals and vitamins from good sources (not Walmart).
Get some sun, donate some blood.
Clean your ventilation system and replace air filters.
BE PREVENTATIVE INSTEAD OF REACTIONARY.
Doctors in the west aren't traied to prevent conditions, only treat them.
Hear! Hear!
And, BTW, the original shackles of Serfdom were invisible too.
The original shackles were the shackles of tax-debts during the last years of the Roman Empire.
The taxes were literally unpayable as they required physical coinage that was not available due to the Roman practice of shaving the edges off of precious metal coins. Since the government would only accept payment in its own coinage at full weight...but systematically and intentionally shaved to coins such that none of them were at full weight, it amounted to bureaucratic enslavement of all who were insufficiently influential.
The tax bills were reported as so underpaid that the Empire (who was responsible for the problem in the first place) resorted to the draconian position of making taxes hereditary.
Remember that next time you hear someone promoting estate taxes.
They are literally promoting the method that created Serfdom in the first place.
Interesting historical mythology you've got there.
Roman taxes were ALWAYS inheritance taxes, from before the Republic. They taxed wealth, not income. The problem came when multiple heirs died in quick succession during wars and plagues, which could devastate an estate. That and the removal of burgeoning Senatorial and slave classes from the tax rolls, so that the taxes were paid by an ever-decreasing middle (curiales) class.
As for the shaving of coins, sure, everybody did it. Weighing the coins in the latter eras didn't matter a bit, they were all nummi, a fiat currency that had no precious metal value. The problem was that precious metal had been hoarded out of circulation, and nobody had any silver, let alone gold. But taxes were payable in kind from Diocletian onward.
Serfdom was an evolution of the old Roman slave class in the rural villas ("survival" refuges). As the Empire deteriorated, many free families of the curial class turned their property over to tax-free Senators or Churches, and became slaves of their patrons. However both the new (Christian) religion and the former free status of so many slaves militated against treating them as poorly as slaves had been kept previously (and slaves in Rome were never abused as severely as slaves in the U.S. South). So the descendants of slaves gradually accumulated a large number of customary rights, to the extent that by 1100 or so, most of them had more freedom in many ways than supposedly "free" American workers. They had job security, an average of three days off per week, and multiple holiday bonuses, as well as free access to both such healthcare and education as were available in their time and region. So no, America isn't evolving towards serfdom. Serfs had it better than we do.
A government that can give you everything can take anything from you.
Please stop encouraging the fuckers by voting and paying taxes.
Funny my grandmother takes no medications, not because they haven't been prescribed, but because her stomach is so sensitive that she can't even tolerate tylenol. When she was 50 she had horrendous asthma and they prescribed meds which she couldn't take; years later the asthma went away. Then she had high blood pressure but again took no meds, suppopsedly she still has the HBP. Finally she had arthritis, again she couldn't take any meds. She is now 103 years old and has never taken any medications....coincidence?
Maybe the meds do more harm than good, or maybe they don't really buy you much in the way of time. Maybe, even these days, when your time is up, your time is still up. Maybe we are vastly over estimating the medical system and their ability to extend life?
The big trick is not to have surgery. They push it for just about everything that goes wrong with you these days, but it is RISKY, and so are many of the tests that they insist on doing to "prepare" for it. Something life-threatening will go wrong with at least 10% of surgeries performed on an over-40. And they tend to gloss over all of the negatives real fast and then make you sign a release with four pages of fine print saying you were warned.
DO NOT TRUST A DOCTOR. It's not their fault. They're human. As humans, they want to believe that they can do more than they can. They want to believe that they are acting out of altruism all the time, so they push the fact that they make lots of money and ego-boosts out of the fancier, riskier stuff into their subconscious. They subconsciously push YOU towards whatever is best for THEM, whether it means a surgery that makes them $50,000 or scheduling labor & delivery by C-section so they don't miss their golf game.
Do your own research, demand full answers (not baby-talk) to all your questions, and a full disclosure of all risks AND ALTERNATIVES. In many, many cases doctors automatically ignore behavioral and lifestyle changes in favor of drugs, drugs in favor of surgery, even oral meds in favor of things they could inject, because those are things that YOU control, and THEY want to be in control. Accept no "orders". Remind them that it's your body, your life, and your decision.
I was in academic medical administration for 15 years, and I read all of the journals on the sly. Some 30% of deaths in this country are the result of botched or unnecessary medical procedures. Except for immediate life-threatening trauma and infectious disease, you will usually live pretty much as long and much more happily if you never go near a doctor.
Talk about sticker shock. I have some teeth problems so decided to see if a full set of dentures was for me. Now I am not talking the new screw in stuff,,, just old school dentures.
$23,500.
The insurance paid $1200 LOL.
Full dentures UK NHS Dental cost - £225 or about $350
Privately £600 or about - $925 a staggering 25 x cheaper
http://www.healthcentre.org.uk/dentistry/dentures-privately.html
Cebu, RP (Republic of Philippines) cost of a full set of dentures = $500.
Current cost of a ticket from Boston to Cebu = $800
Methinks you have been had.
take the plan F supplemental medicare ins (high deductable option not the plan f with bells and whistles )$250/month vs 40/month..if you get sick you will meet the deductable with $2000 or so outta pocket, but do the math on the plan F low deduct it is a wash. but if you have low health costs you keep $2000..stay healthy and you get paid. if you are a fat diabetic copd blob who thinks exercise is lifting a fork..just shoot yourself.
If you choose Option 1, single-payer government healthcare coverage, then vote for Bernie Sanders, who has not only promised Medicare For All, but is nuts enough to try to deliver it. Sure, the Wall Street Journal claims it will cost $18 billion, but that's $18 billion we'd be spending anyway -- it's just a matter of who gets the money.
If you choose Option 2, go back to cash-only, you need to add the following provisions to make it workable.
a) Deregulate the drug market, making it legal for any person to purchase any form of medicine or diagnostic test without the approval of a "licensed medical professional"; i.e., stop treating American citizens as children who can't decide when they need an antibiotic or a blood test.
b) Deregulate the market of medical practice, ceasing to issue state licenses and prerogatives to individuals to monopolize the practice of health care in its varying forms. Leave it to consumers to decide what qualifications they desire in a health adviser or procedure provider. Break the cycle of occupational birth control exercised by medical schools which compete on "exclusivity" and charge top dollar for 2nd-rate education with the assurance that a degree guarantees the right to charge monopoly fees with virtually no upward boundary due to artificially limited supply of professionals.
A switch to a cash market addresses only the demand side of medical pricing, it does nothing about supply. These two measures address that side of the issue.
Like Brazil, we'll do Option 2 while pretending to do Option 1. The poor will go to government clinics where minimum-wage workers dispense generic antibiotics and painkillers with a "come back in three days if these don't work", while everyone else goes to private doctors and pays cash.
I tought Americans DON'T WANT SOCIALISM, eh??
So, WHY are you having this then??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_States
Only COMMIE'S state do that. Right??
Very sad to know thi really. There must be a law regarding every types of life insurance