Sales guy. They're not always the sharpest knives in the drawer.

-Mark

Dick, you make my arguement for me. The reason no one, except employers, do not care for a repeal of MC is for 2 reasons. First, the other payers see what MC does, follow their lead and make money, because if the providers don't follow the MC rules to get a claim out the door, the payers do not pay.

Secondly, and the most unfortunate, and as evidenced by a story in today's Strib, providers are forced to take MC/MA patients by law. Further, MC/MA pay at a rate of about 35% of total charges. Then, when those patients, who are now babyboomers, have no money left, they still can not be billed. So, as a provider, you have a MC patient show up and be admitted into the hospital. He stays for 3 days with no major procedures done. Cost may be about $10,000 for the facility and say $3000 for the doctors.

MC/MA pay 35% of the total, if you are lucky. That is the most they pay. The balance is "Provider Liability". Then, because you are forced to accept MC/MA patients, and because those payers become, usually, 35 to over 50% of your total business, and you get paid at such a low rate, you have to raise your rates across the board. It is a ridculous cycle that the providers will lose every time because they send the bill to the patients. In the patients mind, the insurance is not the bad guy, the provider is. They sent the bill demanding payment. And it all starts, and ends, with what Medicare does. Nothing of what they do, however, makes one bit of difference in how the doctor treats you. It only effects the hoops providers have to jump through to get paid. You want more of that? No thanks. The solution is to get government and all their unnecessary rules and regs out of health insurance. Government is not the solution, they are the problem!

Health care is something you either "need" or you don't. It's great if you don't. But because it has become too expensive to pay out of pocket over the last 35 years, we all now need expensive "insurance".

It's like being a crime victim. You need to call the cops. Why should I have to help pay for that? You should have to pay the cost of the cops coming to your aid, it's nothing to me that you are a crime victim. (Just like if you get sick. Your problem, not mine.) If you are afraid of the cost, you could buy "cop insurance".

If you don't have "cop insurance" and still cannot pay, you could fill out a bunch of forms and apply for the government to pay the cop's bill. Otherwise, the cops could report you as a bad debt and destroy your credit.

If course, we'd have to pay the cost of operating the insurance companies, and more agencies to be sure the government didn't get stuck paying for ineligable folks to get cop services. So what? I don't have to pay for it, so I don't care.

And the cops could charge whatever they wish. Hey, it's a free country.

Hey, competition and accountability in the police force? I'm in.

Do you see competition and accountablity in the medical industry? Ever try to negotiate price or care standards?

Not since the government took over.

Well, I think they "took over" out of necessity so everyone would have some medical care. But as long as they run the show, they should pay the bills.

Do keep in mind that until recently, MN HMOs could negotiate prices that were *far* cheaper than what those without insurance paid. Nothing to do with the .gov, or Medicare- just the good old free market ensuring that those least able to pay would be charged more...

Yeah, those without insurance paid 40% more. Mayo Clinic "negotiated" with Blue Cross, but not with me.

Ain't "capitalism" great? At least, the way I learned it in grade school, and the way talk radio hosts still think it works.

The medical industry has to charge the government the "lowest price". So they cannot negotiate anymore.

Who is this mysterious "they" that will be paying the bills? I don't remember "they" ever getting a job or producing anything. "They" are a leech spending "our" money.

It's amazing, how, even up through the 70s, everybody had access to all of the healthcare they needed. It was possible, in the late 70s to have a baby, spend a week in the hospital, and go home with a bill for just $300. Enter government, and the price goes up, forcing people to get insurance to cover their bills.

Government caused the problem with health care costs, more government can't be the answer.

Until the 70's, health care was cheap because people died young.
Check the death rates. It was a completely different technology. The medical revolution started about 1965. Now we've got all this wonderful stuff, but we don't have a reasonable distribution system.

I'm so old I remember the 50's. My "pediatrician"went to medical school for a year or two, and hung out a shingle.

IIRC Bill Clinton was the first President born in a hospital.

I'd love to know what that has to do with the 1970's $300 baby birth, versus the bill I received for my son's birth in 2007.

Kinda like this?

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First of all,"$1601.51 in the year 2007 has the same "purchase power" as $300 in the year 1970."

http://www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus/result.php

Second, you might want to look at the itemized bills for both. Figure how many people were involved, what equipment, what supplies. I'm thinking there will be a definite difference there. It probably won't account for all of the cost difference, but you would have a much more solid argument.

My great-grandmother was a midwife in the factory worker neighborhoods of St. Petersburg (Russia) about 100 years ago. What she charged probably amounts to quite a bit less than $300, but she didn't have IV's, heart monitors,ultrasound, or even a hospital to work in.