PostmodernProphet
06-19-2009, 06:33 AM
I can live with these....
one of the bad things about our health care system is that large corporations can negotiate rates with insurance companies that are much cheaper than individuals can....those of us outside the group have to pay higher premiums to offset the losses that insurance companies negotiate when giving good rates to large groups....therefore 1) I suggest the government form a group for the groupless and negotiate a special rate on our behalf....then people will have the option of choosing to insure under the government group rate or under any other group or contract they can find......
now obviously, one of the saving incurred by the insurance company when dealing with a group is savings on billing.....I suggest that 2) for everyone who joins that group, the premium be added to the IRS collection system.....the government writes a check for the premium to the insurance company, the weekly cost of the insurance gets deducted from pay, just as SS is......this should add very little to the IRS expenses.......
now, I think it is wrong that some people get their health insurance tax free and other don't....I suggest that 3) health insurance and other benefits no longer be deductible by corporations that provide them.... W2 should reflect the cost of those benefits as income to the employee who can deduct the same percentage of health care premiums that any other tax payer can......
there is a fourth problem I have not quite put a handle to solving yet......it is frequently said, and rightly so, that hospitals pass on their losses for unpaid bills to their paying customers in the form of higher rates.....so in reality we are presently paying for uninsured persons anyway....now, if we are going to pay for uninsured persons anyway, I would rather have a structure in place to regulate it instead of some nebulous type of "whatever the hospital charges" system.....if you have a solution I would love to hear it....
Likewise with this problem.....now there is supposedly a regulatory system that determines when a hospital can expand services....I read an article just this week where one local hospital was denied the ability to expand it's open heart capacity because another hospital was already doing it and it was decided there was insufficient demand for a second......however it doesn't seem that this system is very effective.....here in our small town we have a new hospital that was just completed at a cost of $35 million....it's not doing very well....I heard at one point last fall they had eight beds filled out of over a hundred....yet a competing hospital has just announced it is building an outpatient surgery facility at a cost of $20 million....where?.....two hundred yards down the street from the first hospital......and it's been approved, despite the objections of the first.....twenty miles down the road they recently opened a new interstate.....on one exit, three of the four corners are occupied by three brand new medical facilities, each run by a different hospital, providing identical services.....each of the buildings cost $20 mill plus......incidentally, ALL of these medical facilities were built during the time that the economy in here in Michigan sucked......
one of the bad things about our health care system is that large corporations can negotiate rates with insurance companies that are much cheaper than individuals can....those of us outside the group have to pay higher premiums to offset the losses that insurance companies negotiate when giving good rates to large groups....therefore 1) I suggest the government form a group for the groupless and negotiate a special rate on our behalf....then people will have the option of choosing to insure under the government group rate or under any other group or contract they can find......
now obviously, one of the saving incurred by the insurance company when dealing with a group is savings on billing.....I suggest that 2) for everyone who joins that group, the premium be added to the IRS collection system.....the government writes a check for the premium to the insurance company, the weekly cost of the insurance gets deducted from pay, just as SS is......this should add very little to the IRS expenses.......
now, I think it is wrong that some people get their health insurance tax free and other don't....I suggest that 3) health insurance and other benefits no longer be deductible by corporations that provide them.... W2 should reflect the cost of those benefits as income to the employee who can deduct the same percentage of health care premiums that any other tax payer can......
there is a fourth problem I have not quite put a handle to solving yet......it is frequently said, and rightly so, that hospitals pass on their losses for unpaid bills to their paying customers in the form of higher rates.....so in reality we are presently paying for uninsured persons anyway....now, if we are going to pay for uninsured persons anyway, I would rather have a structure in place to regulate it instead of some nebulous type of "whatever the hospital charges" system.....if you have a solution I would love to hear it....
Likewise with this problem.....now there is supposedly a regulatory system that determines when a hospital can expand services....I read an article just this week where one local hospital was denied the ability to expand it's open heart capacity because another hospital was already doing it and it was decided there was insufficient demand for a second......however it doesn't seem that this system is very effective.....here in our small town we have a new hospital that was just completed at a cost of $35 million....it's not doing very well....I heard at one point last fall they had eight beds filled out of over a hundred....yet a competing hospital has just announced it is building an outpatient surgery facility at a cost of $20 million....where?.....two hundred yards down the street from the first hospital......and it's been approved, despite the objections of the first.....twenty miles down the road they recently opened a new interstate.....on one exit, three of the four corners are occupied by three brand new medical facilities, each run by a different hospital, providing identical services.....each of the buildings cost $20 mill plus......incidentally, ALL of these medical facilities were built during the time that the economy in here in Michigan sucked......