New Testingstan

Metatwaddle wrote:it's hilarious he thinks that since birth control pills are "regular" they shouldn't be covered by health insurance

what came to my mind on that is insurance is based on spreading financial risk around

normally like you don't expect to get sick. if it costs $100 to cure you and you have a 1% chance of getting sick your insurance premium will be like $2 more because it is spread around all the 100% (and the company wants a profit lol)



but if it is a regular expense, it is more like a 100% chance of incurring the cost

so if it costs $100 you're now paying a minimum of $100


even prescription drugs you take on a regular basis aren't near universal in their use; you don't get that if you got unlucky on the illness odds anyway

birth control is almost universal though


so basically the insurance doesn't do anything financially. it is just a middle man there obscuring where the money actually comes from





the counter is of course that it isn't a 100% thing. more like 50%. so you get to share the cost with the guys of the world too

so that's a good thing



i'm just saying it isn't necessarily bullshit to say insurance doesn't do anything on regular expenses

birth control is not universal, even among women of childbearing age. i'm not on it. some women aren't sexually active, some want to get pregnant, some don't want the side effects, and some just prefer to use methods besides the pill. so it's much less than 50% -- the cost is shared by men, old women, and young women who don't want it.

remember that since you can't deny someone for a pre-existing condition, insurance companies will routinely take on people that they know, with 100% certainty, will need insulin shots or ssris or whatever. i don't see why being a woman of childbearing age is any different.

scratch that: it is different, because covering their birth control is a net gain! birth control pills save money in the long run, so the other people in the insurance pool should be glad their insurance covers it, unless they're planning to leave that pool soon. otherwise it will benefit them.

the especially ridiculous thing about grumman's position is that he thinks it's good for the govt to subsidize birth control but they shouldn't force people to buy insurance from third parties that covers birth control. but it makes no difference, at least not when averaged across everyone. in one scenario, you're paying for all the women in your insurance pool who want to take birth control. in the other, you're paying for all the women in the country who want to take it, but the cost is spread out across all taxpayers.

the one advantage to the latter plan is that uninsured women will be covered too, which is a big plus, but he's not an uninsured woman of childbearing age so i don't get why he thinks it's an injustice or who he thinks it's unjust to

i still really want to see a comprehensive single payer system

so much simpler

so much fairer

btw so i found this shroom thread in testing and started reading it

nice thread

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 1&t=153120

adr wrote:i still really want to see a comprehensive single payer system

so much simpler

so much fairer

i agree, even though red would be out of work

maybe, but not necessarily; the government adminstration would prolly hire ppl from the private sector to run it anyway (or contract it out to the existing company entirely)

of course there'd be a lot of downsizing so yeah probably


anyway health insurance jobs

one of my dad's friends worked one for blue cross iirc for a long time

made good money doing data analysis or organization or something like that


but in the 90's he was replaced by a computer and unemployed for a while


been working as a coordinator for volunteers for a long time now though. not nearly as much money as the old job but hey its better than nothing and he seems to like it except for some of his idiot coworkers





not really on topic (LOL) but it just came to mind

broomstick's story is almost the same thing i believe

i guess improved efficiency usually sucks for someone

btw on gattica i haven't seen it for a while and only once

but as i recall at the end the one doctor doing the tests gave the main guy a little wink

he knew about the lies all along but let it go



that guy is the real hero of the story

improved efficiency usually sucks for most people except those who own the production of whatever

especially when it comes to state contractors, because there increased efficiency will not necessarily even be translated into reduced prices for the customers (taxpayers ), but simply more profit directly to the owners

increased efficiency also often comes in the form of less workers having to do more under worse conditions

yeah

i guess the phrase to remember

"people are costs, my friend"

-- governor ritt momney

Metatwaddle wrote:

adr wrote:i still really want to see a comprehensive single payer system

so much simpler

so much fairer

i agree, even though red would be out of work

Might not be, private insurance exists here to cover what the gov doesn't; rooms, drugs, glasses, mental health etc.

Same thing here : private insurance is there for those who want "more" protection than the basics covered by the National Health Insurance.

ditto in australia

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 3#p3636603

here's a worldbuilding exercise for you

given ur fictional society

what kind of fiction would they produce

i just saw a picture on the facebook of a baby saying share for donation

its obviously a hoax

but now i wonder what that baby's real story is

Aaron wrote:

Metatwaddle wrote:

adr wrote:i still really want to see a comprehensive single payer system

so much simpler

so much fairer

i agree, even though red would be out of work

Might not be, private insurance exists here to cover what the gov doesn't; rooms, drugs, glasses, mental health etc.

I didn't realize Canadian government didn't cover mental health. Not that the American system is any good, but that seems a bit unfair -- like they think physical health problems are actual problems, and mental health problems are either not serious or your own fault. But you've probably given this a lot more thought than me.

If Americans had to pay for their own prescription drugs, I'm sure they'd be impossibly expensive for a lot of people, but I understand they're cheaper up north.

Anyway, I read from a reputable source (the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter) that Canada spends like $22k per doctor per year on administrative stuff (paperwork, billing, etc) and the US spends $85k (I think) per doctor per year on the same. That suggests to me that if we switched to a single payer system, things would be more streamlined and the huge healthcare industry would be cut down by a lot. Which is one of the reasons I think we should do it! (That and social/economic justice for poor people.) That $85k number confirms what I already thought, which is that the healthcare industry is a fucking behemoth with lots of people whose jobs I don't understand. I've been looking at a temp agency and one-third of their listed job openings are in the healthcare field.

This was from way back in 2003 or so, but I remember reading an article (or a whole website?) written by a group of American doctors in favor of single-payer. They claimed that the US was spending over $400 billion a year on just healthcare administrative stuff, and they figured that if we basically just copied the Canadian system outright, the savings in administrative costs alone would more than cover the cost of providing to all Americans who lacked coverage.

I completely agree with you, I wish there was some way we could push single-payer here.

edit: Also, the "it's regular so it shouldn't be covered by *insurance*" argument is something I heard on a couple of right-winger talk radio programs recently, so it's unfortunately one that people will probably be parroting for awhile.

How does that even make sense
Is it sme kind of American expectation of evil insurance companies
I mean my insurance pays for stuff ins regular basis all the time, they don't mind

Course they can't they're prevented by law from discriminating loo

Mental health is kind of hit and miss here Meta, I got coverage cause of VA and I think its covered under workmans comp and for kids under a certain age but adults kinda have to pay unlesd they have insurance or the above.

Generally its pretty pathetic up here and years of government promises haven't lead to much. And of cojrse, the stigma.

But drugs are heavily subsidized.

dennis kucinich's single payer plan is for it to cover virtually everything at no cost to the patient

it isn't perfect but it sounds pretty damned good to me

starku wrote:How does that even make sense
Is it sme kind of American expectation of evil insurance companies
I mean my insurance pays for stuff ins regular basis all the time, they don't mind

Course they can't they're prevented by law from discriminating loo

The (bad) argument made is "insurance is supposed to smooth out unpredictable costs and protect against catastrophe". It's an extremely literal reading of the word "insurance", and fails to take into account the real world. What the right-winger talk radio host or caller forgets (or deliberately omits) is that insurance companies actually do cover shit like routine doctor's visits, in order to lower the costs incurred from expensive treatments that could have been avoided if the problem had been caught or prevented earlier.


tl;dr American politics increasingly driven by ignorance and spite, news at eleven.

Oh, here it is: Administrative Waste in the U.S Health Care System in 2003

The U.S. wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured. Administrative expenses will consume at least $399.4 billion out of total health expenditures of $1,660.5 billion in 2003. Streamlining administrative overhead to Canadian levels would save approximately $286.0 billion in 2003, $6,940 for each of the 41.2 million Americans who were uninsured as of 2001. This is substantially more than would be needed to provide full insurance coverage.

It's really scary when you can say 'streamlining to the <socialist> level'

But maybe Canada's system is better run than the Australian one

What bloat there is here is almost all administrative. Health care has been chronically underfunded for years and in ontario mismanaged to an almost criminal level.

Yet it still provides effective care. Wierd.

I can safely say if America went to single payer I'd be out of a job. All my work revolves around underwriting stuff that wouldn't be applicable to Medicare-for-everyone, and there's only so much dental/vision/accidental death and dismemberment you can sell. Maybe if I got into claims auditing I'd be safe, but there'd be a lot of competition for Federal claims auditing jobs from a lot of other out of work claims auditors.

Of course, even if I did get laid off I'd still have free health insurance, so there's that. I'd be pretty bummed personally, but it wouldn't exactly be unfair or bad for society (or even bad for me, probably, in the long run).

adr wrote: what kind of fiction would they produce

Lots of Solaris clones prolly