Americans Hate Their Private Health Insurance
Americans Hate Their Private Health Insurance
The response to UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder surely disproves the claim that Americans love the private health insurance system. It’s a political force waiting to be harnessed — but few in DC seem interested.
Health insurance in America is a legalized extortion system that converts American lives into investor dollars and enjoys overwhelming support of our ruling class thanks to regulatory capture.
It's a fundamentally unethical and immoral business comparable to black market arms dealing or human trafficking because of the evils it knowingly perpetuates.
All insurance. I have paid enough to homeowners to buy another house, with no claims. Health insurance we've had maybe 5 years where we got out more than we paid in, maybe. Could certainly have bought a dozen cars with what I've paid car insurance, net of what they have paid to or for me.
All these you can only win by losing but all are worse for being for-profit rather than just risk pooling.
Health insurance I explain to people as: we are paying in taxes for the most expensive groups (old, poor, sick) plus paying for the work insurance premiums, plus paying most of the cost of seeing a doctor for anything except the annual wellness visit. It would be cheaper to cover everyone with the national plan. But everything we pay, is paying someone else's salary, right? All those people want it to stay like this.
Delete the first three words
Always annoys the hell out of me when politicians say BS like, "We know you like your private insurance plan and want to keep it".
So out of touch.
It's not entirely out of touch tho. Trust me, there is a not insignificant sect of the populace that firmly believes if private insurance goes away and the country just dips it's toes into universal healthcare, the communists have won and the country is ruined beyond repair somehow.
After talking to a good amount of these folks, I'll say the absolute bonkers mental gymnastics to justify that line of thought is truly something to behold.
I think they were also trying to keep folks who already had decent insurance plans, and there were definitely a bunch. Thinking of people in good careers who were also on the tail end of when employers treated employees better - there were a lot of people doing comparatively well who had (at least somewhat justifiable, we're talking healthcare) concerns about the idea of single-provider.
(referring to the "if you like your plan, you can keep it" angle during ACA days)
By definition, a healthcare system based on insurance can’t be as efficient as a universal system. Profits for healthcare companies and hospitals are wasted resources. Also, why the hell is medical school and residency so selective? They basically cap the number of doctors that we can have. We should be increasing the number of doctors. Create a universal system like every other developed country has. Cut out the waste that is private insurance. We pay way more than anywhere else for worse outcomes.
From a medical student: There is a different problem coming up with the production of more physicians. There are more new medical schools opening and existing medical schools are increasing class sizes....but the number of residencies has barely moved in decades. Residencies are funded through Medicare and the number of them is determined by appropriation bills in congress. There are some privately-funded residencies being created, but a lot of those are hideously low quality and being used as a source of indentured servitude by for-profit health groups like HCA. (They won't even hire their own graduates from their emergency medicine residencies because the quality of the training is so poor.)
And if you don't complete a residency, you can't practice independently. You have to have a board certification from an accredited residency to be able to practice medicine, and the only alternatives are working under supervision like a PA/NP....or working for the insurance companies. And you still have a mortgage's worth of student loans to pay off.
A lot of the doctors working for the insurance companies are ones that couldn't get into residencies or ones that have not kept up with continuing medical education and likely do not have active board certification anymore.
Agree, these are serious problems. I did consider going in to medicine, but realized that after taking on, like you say, a mortgage payment in student loan debt and spending years making little to no money in school, residencies, and internships, that the “doctors” salary was not that high after all. Rather you’ll spend your first several years playing catch up and paying off debt. Not to mention the hours…
My father-in-law always grunts "socialism something something" whenever I mention supporting a universal healthcare system. Of course, he does that while being on Medicare.
Time to shame him for sucking on the socialist medicare teat
The part I find most puzzling is we just elected a guy who wants to repeal Obamacare along with a lot of other corporate regulations….. this country amazes me
A lot of those voters are on Medicare. They aren't clued into the fact that Trump and a lot of his (real) base would love to completely gut Medicare and Social Security.
They're so clueless they don't even understand that Medicare is government run free insurance. I've literally heard people say things like "The government better keep their hands off my Medicare."
I mean, Obamacare is pretty much a subsidy to the private healthcare industry. It should have been Medicare for all, but instead we got a watered down, rebranded Republican program.
And they still want to make it worse for us. For money.
The only people who wanted private health care were the industry lobbyists and politicians who wanted to make rich people richer, and the ignorant and selfish citizens that preferred pissing off the libs and refusing care to poor/people of a different skin color.
Even today there are plenty who seem fine knowingly pissing away more of their paycheck and health security to make a rich industry richer than pay less to an evil government that would offer the same care - and the option to buy your own insurance on top of that.
The 3 conversations the USA needs to have are about: 1) healthcare, 2) energy, and 3) immigration. Don't let media distract from the important things.
The first one should be about runaway capitalism and the capture of government by the wealthy. That will take care of healthcare and so much more.
Maybe we should handle the failed democracy and two awful parties as our only options first and foremost. I dont trust any dem or repub to talk about your 3 issues. We might as well be honest for once just invite corporations and AIPAC in to discuss it themselves if we are going to rely on this lot of corrupt hand puppet crisis actors that we call politicians.
I remember being told we loved them and we loved all the choices lol
My company gets a choice but I never did.
I never understood that argument and how people bought it.
GOP touted choice, you can choose your provider... But most everyone gets 1 choice, the one from work or nothing
Also then, choose your doctor..... But you don't, the INS company tells you what doctors you're allowed to see.
There is no choice, there is no free market when it comes to health care, especially during emergencies..... Call 911 for an ambulance, you don't get to compare prices, you take the 1st one available..... You are taken to emergency room, you don't get time to compare services and pick a hospital, you're taken to the closest one.
Do they now?
But not enough to allow Socialism to destroy our country! That's why we elected a fascist to deal with this issue, Trump has the "concepts of a plan"!
Careful saying something like that in this community might get you banned
But have you thought about feelings of rich executives and their billionaire owners?
.world mods first three days of the celebration
Also Americans: anything else is a commie!
Publicly traded private health insurance that you can only get and "afford" through your ambivalent employer. What's not to like?
Yes. Of course. WHY DOES THIS EXIST!?!???!???
Gosh, whatever could we do about that?
How is this news to anyone? No shit.
Did the author of that article even read their own links?
Most insured adults (81%) give their health insurance an overall rating of “excellent” or “good,”
Most of the links they cite are about health care in general, not health insurance.
How in the hell are people so blind? Practically everyone I know hates their insurance company, if they even have insurance.
I wasn't able to afford health insurance until my early 30s. And really I couldn't afford it then but since I had malignant melanoma it was the least worst option for me financially. Nearly metastisized because I had to save up and wait for enrollment period. They told me it was 2mm from my bloodstream. About two inches across by the time I was able to afford having it removed.
My friend offered to have me drink a bottle of liquor and he'd cut it out of my back and I seriously considered it.
And my credit score got killed for seven years because they wanted $250 per month from me on the after insurance bill. I tried to negotiate, but this was the lowest they would go. My wife and I would have literally starved if we had to pay that.
I never paid them a cent.
I think it tracks. Most people that have a decent plan are also rather healthy. They might use the plan a few times a year for meds and a family doctor visit. Which the insurance is not going to fight you to hard on, so you might perceive the system to be working well. If you are unhealthy then you are about to find out a lot of what the market values.
This is news? I've been talking about the difference between health insurance and health care for years.
One pays for the other. They are quite different by definition. I don't think you need to help define the difference.
We hate people who administer it even more but even those guys are just useful tools of the owner class.
Maybe depose was meant for them?
It takes one CEO's sacrifice to achieved insurance progress!
Aw. Are you sure about just one?
Progress is progress, no matter how small. You want more? Wanna go faster? Yeah, you're gonna need more CEOs. Good luck with that, god speed. I'll watch from my couch and well talk good things about you eternally for a good solid week.
This isn't "news." We all knew this already.
Please inform the Canadians and brits
This is what the US voted for all those years. Kill Obama care, make the divide between rich and poor bigger and bigger.
You voted orange man, you get orange man.