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Healthcare's bipartisan problem. Almost half of healthcare spending

Posted: Jan 13, 2017

healthiest half of the population consumes only 3% of health care costs. The only alternative would appear to be taxpayer subsidies. It is next to impossible, politically, to take away freebees once in place. Income redistribution continues to increase. The 2010 health law, also known as Obamacare, forced insurers to sell coverage to anyone, at the same price, regardless of their risk of incurring big claims. That provision was popular. Not so were rules requiring nearly everyone to have insurance, and higher premiums for healthy people to subsidize the costs of the sick. Most U.S. health-care spending is for a small number of very expensive patients: •-Most expensive 1% of patients = 21% of health care spending. •-Most expensive 5% = 49% •-Most expensive 10% = 65% •-Most expensive 15% = 75% •-Most expensive 20% = 82% •-Most expensive 50% = 97% This is shocking. ;

The most appalling way to look at the chart is 50% - of the population only uses 3%

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of the expense of health care! When everyone is insured for everything, that 50% will gradually give up being responsible for their medical decisions, and they'll increase their expenses, too. That's an unaffordable spiral, We're already seeing some of that with the numbers of seniors who get hips and knees replaced, rather than live with limitations. Another aspect we're seeing is the heroin epidemic caused to a great degree by getting hooked on prescription meds.

Back in a college in philosophy class in the 1970s, one of our classes was an ethical discussion about this. What happens when there are expensive cures for diseases, but not the means to provide them for everyone? If I remember, the conclusion was that for every high-priced medical solution, there had to be a low cost option available.

What I would favor is a policy that covered catastrophic situations and diseases....nothing else (like insurance used to be). For those who chose that option and nothing else (or not even that), there should be first-aid/self-healing clinics for those who choose that. I don't see how else the problem can be solved. It's just not sustainable.

"seniors who get hips and knees replaced, rather than live with limitations" sm - prettykitty

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Live with limitations: Such as severe pain, immobility, loss of independence? When there is something that can address all that? Pretty cold.

Gotcha! BO told a woman to just give her 90 YO mother - an aspirin and send her home to die.

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Beyond "pretty cold"

Fake news. nm - prettykitty

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X

Obama's healthcare solution to elderly woman, - "just take a pill"

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x

More fake news. Works both ways. nm - prettykitty

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X

First and foremost, I think someone ought to stand up and - clarify this "pre-existing condition"

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terminology. Prior to Obama, if you had a pre-existing condition like asthma, insurance companies would still give you insurance. They just wouldn’t cover your asthma meds for one year. After that, everything was the same.

Reason I know, I priced a catastrophic plan, Tonic Plan(I thing they called it), with a prescription supplement. They were as nice as could be and the premiums were under $200/month and everything was good.

However....before of that is even discussed, we need to talk about all the elephants in the room that Ann Coulter brings up ad nauseum (I agree with her), about the cost of healthcare for all the foreigners that are here: illegals, refugees, their kids, asylum seekers...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gAYUfrF0Lw

The definition of pre-existing conditions varies and will...sm - VTMT

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totally be up to the discretion of the individual insurance companies. When the ACA is abolished asthma, diabetes, cancer, obesity, mental illness/depression, autoimmune diseases, allergies, congenital heart disease/murmurs, prematurity, chronic pneumonia/bronchitis, kidney disease, and on and on.....all pre-existing conditions.

Fear mongering and not true. The question is how do we pay and - be compassionate w/o forced

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taxation. The lower taxation rates are the more compassionate people are. They have more money and time, such as doctors and medical personnel, to donate to free clinics, etc.

Every policy should be like car insurance. You pay for all the routine maintenance and the policy pays for the big stuff. The price for regular, routine medical care would become competitive and plummet. If someone can’t afford the routine stuff charity, free clinics, etc. would take care of it.

There is still Medicaid, which is what Obamacare is.

The point is how to pay for it, because it's not sustainable as it stands.

"I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to - keep the money you/ve earned, but

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not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

Thomas Sowell

Middle class Americans are treated as piggy banks. - America was once the beacon of

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freedom in the world. We are now merely the flashlight, and the battery is fading...

MAGA

I had - diabetes

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and could not get insurance at all. I asked if they meant that I had to wait for coverage for a year for it and they told me they would not even give me insurance. This was several insurance companies. When I remarried, the insurance that my husband had through work would let me get the insurance but had to wait a year to be covered for diabetes related things.

Same here - diabetes

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Many years ago, we couldn't afford diabetes care so we got insurance (outside of work that didn't offer it). Eventually, we had to cancel the insurance because we couldn't afford the diabetes care while waiting for the insurance to kick in AND pay for the insurance at the same time (while it wasn't benefiting us anyway). Crazy.

More doctors, more hospitals/clinics are on the way - SM

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I remember the days when doctors did not charge patients or wrote "insurance only" on their billing. I remember when I began this business, since I was a medical worker, I recieved free care to a certain extent in my small town.

Expect major changes. See the those who are advancing globalism? The clarifying data which NSA holds of who is who through money trails, will send just about everyone in leading rolls at this point in history into a FEMA camp.

Those who support globalization despite the fact it will destroy very fabric the country was built on, Agenda 21 and the United Nations climate programs included. Details are horrifying and on the internet (Rosa Koire on Youtube)are traitors and if you want to hear who they are loyal to, google "Joe Biden "God Save the Queen" after the electorate vote was confirmed and firming stating "It is over" was the response to the hysterical woman attempting to overthrow the US election.

I believe through cronyism, nepotism and rascalism, they have, over the last decade, risen to every level and brought in like-minded people to work with them. From politics to business ownership, dentists, every faucet of this society.

Except the military (which is why Trump is now POTUS). It became obvious a war was in the making and US military was being sent into a war that they would lose.

So, there will be jobs, their jobs.
Their jobs. Did you know if your parent is British, regardless of where you are born, you are as well. Obama's father was British.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tt-dxwLWmU

"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for - doctors, hospitals and medication

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somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.” - Thomas Sowell

How are all these news hospitals and clinics with staff going to be financed?

Once the ACA is repealed there will be no need for more - doctors and hospitals. nm

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.

The greatest medicine is to teach people how NOT - to need it. I stopped eating all sugar

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and essentially reversed my diabetes. I eat mostly a paleo diet. Fresh fruits and veggies, lean meats, basically eat things that will rot.

Skin in the game. Allowing people who have none and - contribute nothing and never intend to

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contribute anything have a voice in how taxpayer's money is spent. Just look at Southern California.

This issue is coming to a head in many urban areas (soon to be whole states) where services are rapidly disappearing because there are no current revenues. Importing foreigners to keep housing and classrooms occupied while keeping the public employee caste on the gravy train worsens the matter; those fleeing these areas are usually the net contributors, while those remaining as well as those trafficked in from abroad are usually net takers.

Until this is addressed, the working poor who deserve help will be pushed aside.

Most of these cities are sanctuary cities going bankrupt. They ignored - our immigration laws. You reap what you

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sow. CA state legislature has a bill pending to put all illegal aliens into the ACA. You made your stew so now sit in it.

Some 14 million Californians are on Medi-Cal (Medicaid) and they just put every illegal alien 18 and under into the program.

The chickens are coming home to roost and we are all paying for it.

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