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Which just goes to show that a single payer system is far more useful. It also controls the excessive over-charges. Medicare should be extended to younger ages, and the cost would be minimal since the younger tend to be healthier.
-- Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
Disagree with the first part. There are lots of legal non-citizens who have contributed the same amount as others, for decades. Or more. When I look at foreigners (mostly engineers) in the Bay Area I'd even dare to say that they have contributed more than the average citizen because their salaries have caused the contributions to peg at the max.
Sigh. I hope that's not true but it probably is :-(
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
Makes me glad that I can retire to Canada when the time comes. I'm 55 now and between myself 20% and my employer 80% we pay $625.00 a month just for one person here in the Los Angeles area.
I'd love to keep working here when I turn 65 but I'll be moving back to Canada where they have socialized medical insurance (no not socialized medicine).
I know this does not help but it does tell you there has to be some sort of revolution down here before the cost goes completely out of sight.
And note that when my daughter was visiting Canada and she had an allergic reaction and need an ambulance to a hospital in Vancouver, the uninsured bill for the ambulance ride and the entire ER visit was $110.00. And that included the doctor fees.
Compared to what here?
Dan
I see two main reasons for hyper-infaltionary health costs: One is that there is literally no transparency. If you ask for the cost of certain procedures they either won't give out that info or don't even know how to get it. I've asked. You should have seen the looks.
The other issue is malpractice litigation. Tort law is seriously out of control. When cardiologists pay >$100k/year that has to come from someone. And that someone is us :-(
There are other reasons as well. We visit sick people, mostly for our church. Often you see 3 nurses actually working with patients while almost a dozen others are incessantly typing stuff into computers.
A friend of mine had an ambulance ride near Sacramento, maybe 10-15 miles. 800 bucks, sans doctor fees.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
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I recently (July) had a roughly 200 mile ambulance ride. IIRC the bill was about $1500. I was pretty well out of it when the bill came by, but medicare and AARP handled it.
-- Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
Just one more reason to have universal single payer health care. Like most of the rest of the world.
-- Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
Four false hopes: cheap health insurance, perpetual motion, better sound through monster cables, and world peace.
Ed
Although I am normally leaning towards conservative I have to agree with you on that one. The current "system" of a myriad of HMOs is IMHO not working. With a cost inflation of 15-20% per year there will be a mind boggling number of people dropping out altogether because they simply cannot afford health care. Of course, they will then also not have any savings at the end of their career because those are often wiped out at the first instance someone in the family is seriously sick.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
:-)))
Add one: Lower taxes.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
Health insurance is where I like to see my premuim disappear, i.e. I lse money while others have the health problems.
The Netherlands is now at 80 - 90 euros per months for health insurance, plus a (capped) income-dependent amount which should make up for half the income of the insurers. So make that around 200 - 220 dollars per month out of pocket. Includes 18-to-death age range, and compulsory acceptation independent of health or age. No price discrimination allowed either (well, a 10% discount can be given which basically most working people get).
Thomas
This probably also means 'applying all procedures possible'. My grandmother died this year at age 90 from internal blood loss. So she got some transfusions and pain killers, and was offered endoscopy. She refused and felt it wouldn't be worth it. She probably was right, but you never know.
If the next-of-kin could have sued she probably would have been endoscoped and CT-scanned at very little use.
That's also bad. But nurses here do not make a lot of money; managers do (and managers produce nothing).
Expensive here, too. And an ER visit is 175 euro or so. Oh yes, the 80 -
90 euro permium includes a 'reverse deductible' - you get back 200 euro if you didn't use any care (GP excluded).Thomas
That sux. In aus i need to get that medical insurance shit to stop the tax dude raping me. I would never go private, cause it sux here in au and cost you more than public even though you pay mega$$ in insurance.
But that extra $200 or whatever a month/week/fortnight saves me paying the taxraper thousands..
When I lived in Chandler, AZ, I was paying about $950/month for myself/wife and daughter. We just moved back to Oregon a few months ago, and under the Oregon Medical Insurance Pool (OMIP) very similar coverage is $834/month. Just got a notice a few days ago saying that the premium for 2007 has actually dropped to $608/month. This is for the best plan with a $500 deductible.
Not sure if California offers a similar insurance "pool", but it's worth looking into.
Chris
After reading this thread, you all have my sympathy. Everything is essentially free at point of provision here in the uk, so you will always get treated and no-one is left to die in the street. The downside is that the structure built up to provide the service has too may layers, too many managers and is inefficient. The only way it can be paid for is through general taxation, but most here agree that such provision is a good idea.
One of the characteristics of any society that considers itself civilised is that money alone should not be the deciding factor in terms of quality and timeleness of medical care. Different countries interpret this in different ways though...
Chris
-- Many thanks, Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073 Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552 rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: don@tinaja.com Please visit my GURU\'s LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com
Expensive, but personally I have been quite pleased with Kaiser in CO. Like everyone else, you pay and pay for times that you don't need the medical attention, but as time marches on, eventually you become a consumer of those services. My family premium is over $800 (maybe over $900, I try not to look). We are in our 50's and have one daughter still on the plan.
Last year I had a really stupid cooking accident. While cleaning a food processor blade I managed to cut my left index finger to the bone. $15,000 of surgery later I was glad there was no big deductible.
Scott
this is true in the US too, not sure why people outside of the US think like this, the lack of socialized medical insurance in the US doesn't equate to lack of universal health care
I know it nice not to pay a big deductive, but it really doesn't make much financial sense to pay an extra $1000-$2000 a year so that you don't have to pay a $1000 deductible
Yep. We even provide treatment to illegal immigrants.
And we don't have to wait on queue for treatment.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
That's how I arrived at a plan with $5K deductible... run a spread sheet on annual premium versus deductible... you come out ahead if you manage to go ~12 months without a costly medical event.
Dropped my monthly premium from $900 down to $475 but, as I aged, it gradually crept back up to just shy of $900 again :-(
Then, fortunately, I became eligible for Medicare... BIG bucks saved and, with a Plan F supplemental, virtually NO out-of-pocket costs.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
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