True, but we can’t necessarily blame the healthcare system for that state of affairs. The bigger culprit is the average American lifestyle and diet vs that of Europeans.
OT: Health Insurance
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True, but we can’t necessarily blame the healthcare system for that state of affairs. The bigger culprit is the average American lifestyle and diet vs that of Europeans.
How true. The only reason that there is a Europe is because of America, otherwise it would be known as greater Germany.
Additionally, I love whisky. It does me no good, but oh how I love that stuff.
Also I love good grain fed beef. I am going to have a big old beef steak this evening.
Here is to you MrBaracus:
live life well. I could care less about living until I am 100. Give me good food, drink and family.
How true. The only reason that there is a Europe is because of America, otherwise it would be known as greater Germany.
Additionally, I love whisky. It does me no good, but oh how I love that stuff.
Also I love good grain fed beef. I am going to have a big old beef steak this evening.
Here is to you MrBaracus:
live life well. I could care less about living until I am 100. Give me good food, drink and family.
You can eat very well without consuming tons of GMOs or insane amounts of sugar and processed junk.
Greedy companies have convinced everyone here that pummeling 16 sodas per day is normal and great, and everyone wonders why they’re obese and diabetic. Studies showing the dangers of chemicals like glyphosate are suppressed by greedy ****s with no consciences. Cancer rates are through the roof. It’s hard to spin our health care “system” as a success.
Conventional doctors are too in bed with Big Pharma to give people the care they need. Y’know, preventive care and searching for the root cause, rather than prescribing 12 RXs to treat symptoms and creating worse ones in the process. Then, yes, once the “system” has you so ****ed up you can barely get through the day, a wonderful surgeon is available to operate for only a half a million bucks.
Obesity is the leading cause of the healthcare crisis. Preventive healthcare is the number one most effective way to combat the crisis. Go figure, it is largely self controlled. I think there should be massive benefits to Americans that live and maintain proper health. It should penalize the lazy, not burden those who actively take care of their bodies.
You do not know jack shit. You make these assumptions when I eat far better than your worthless ass.
I am nearly 73. I weight 175 and I am 5'11". I eat fat. I just finished a nice 12 oz strip steak. I got nearly zero carbs. I am not obese. In fact I will bet that you are more obese than old Bert.
So bring it on dude. I am a chemist and I can blow you away on facts.
My last post I was agreeing with you.
You don't even know when someone is agreeing with your stupid ass. Geeze. How stupid can you be?
Ha....if you weren’t such a defensive Sally, you’d realize that I was making a generalization and didn’t aim anything at you specifically. In case you haven’t realized, the topic in this thread is American healthcare, not Bert’s lifestyle.
But for the record, I have very low body fat.
The one who got personal and made dumb assumptions is actually you. Shocking.
Good. Let us take a test. You have my data. Do the math.
But I still love you and I enjoy our discussions. I am just not as nasty.
Bert you know I am reasonable and you are as well in terms of our interactions. Health insurance is a racket in this country and that has no bearing on the quality of the doctors or medicines produced. If anything those factors contribute to the cost being a racket.
Are you really shocked that Bert A) didn’t actually understand the point of your post, and B) became an attacking personal assholes first?
Come now.
I recently did an online game where you answered 30 questions and it guessed where you were from. That bitch guessed that I was from New Jersey. Fvck you, @TheDude1
I can only assume there were questions like "Do you want to live in a state with some of the best education in the nation?" and "Do you want to live in a state famous for its parks and outdoors but also within driving distance of the greatest city on earth?" and "Do you want to live in a state with some of the best health care in the county?" and "Do you want to live in a state with three of the top 12 wealthiest counties in the nation?"
Oh, and maybe "Do you like to drive like a dick?"
Congrats, btw.
I’ve done that quiz before. It was surprisingly accurate. The 3 cities it guessed where I was from were OKC, Amarillo and Little Rock. I guess I have what you can describe as the Mid-Con I-40 dialect.
Even the few insurance companies that are profiting at all on individual ACA plans lost a ton in the first few years. Nearly all pulled out of the market entirely.
No one seems to consider that extra mandated benefits and prohibiting underwriting forced premiums and deductibles to rise. And even with skyrocketing rates and deductibles, they've been insanely unprofitable for most. Subsidies didn't even come close to offsetting what they were paying for claims after being forced to insure anyone and everyone.
Hospital lobbies are far and away the biggest problem. When a hospital charges $20 for a Tylenol and a million dollars for a 3 week stay in ICU, how could insurance companies afford to have low premiums or deductibles?
Global Havok thinks that you and everyone else are lying. This can't be. An article proved that rates are lower than they'd have been without the ACA. It's an undeniable fact.
(Oh, wait...the article referred to businesses. Oops.)
I wish I was lying. I wish I didn't just write a check yesterday for $1091.03, the same check I write every month for health insurance.
I can't lie. I have no health care expenses unless I actually go to a doctor or use name brand prescriptions. We have a free clinic and free generic drugs. We don't have kids, so that is probably where we would be paying otherwise. So I am completely ignorant to the topic.
I don't believe that you are as stupid as your argument here, so you're clearly just being childish, but I'll bite anyway because your argument is as insufferable as it is illogical.
The Forbes article posted by TheDude1 and adopted by GH is about overall trends ("the average rate of premium growth from the time the law passed in 2010 through 2015 was actually lower than from 2004 to 2010"), not as applied to each and every business, person, and area of the country (insurer consolidation limits choices and drives up rates, particularly in rural areas). And the rates paid by businesses are relevant to the costs passed on to employees. Whether or not an employer decides to pass premium hikes at a faster rate than they have to pay for them is up to that employer. In fact, the scare mongering associated with the ACA would have provided just such an opportunity.
So it's entirely possible that GH (and the data behind the referenced articles) is correct, and that WeAreDepaul is also correct. What's not possible, however, is for your post to be correct because it's devoid of logic and reason.
I think the entire point is that we replaced the old system with a supremely flawed and not ready to be rolled out ACA system---just to compound our problems. We need a well thought out overhaul.
That wasn't the point.
He made a blanket statement that health insurance premiums are increasing at a lower rate since the ACA passed. Not true. That's only true for businesses. Not the tens of millions that have enrolled in individual ACA plans, for which the reform was mainly intended.
GH was smugly parroting a general statement and berating anyone who didn't accept his "undeniable facts."
My point throughout has been that the ACA has driven up premiums and deductibles wildly for anyone who doesn't qualify for a subsidy, which is anyone who isn't close to poverty level or part of a huge household.
This article explains why individual ACA premiums more than doubled between 2013 and 2017.
https://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/how-obamacare-raised-premiums
Deductibles have also more than doubled on average since the ACA passed.
I don't doubt the data in the articles. But GH was not correct.
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Every working person I know had their premiums go up at least 20% after ACA.
Premiums on average could have risen at a lower rate, but only because a lot of people got it for free.
Premiums on average could have risen at a lower rate, but only because a lot of people got it for free.
Last year BCBS started lowering premiums in many states around the country. This has never happened before and the CEO attributed it to ACA.
My BCBS premium went down 11% in Texas for the same coverage. It’s still nearly double what it was in 2014 but it was nice to see it drop that much in 2019.
http://mediacenter.bcbsnc.com/news/blue-cross-nc-files-to-lower-aca-rates-by-average-of-4-1-percent
“This is the first individual market rate decrease in Blue Cross NC history and will benefit people across North Carolina. We’re moving in the right direction, but even with a lower rate, premiums are still too high – particularly for those who don’t get a subsidy,” said Dr. Patrick Conway, President and CEO of Blue Cross NC. “With more certainty from Washington, rates would be 15 percent or more lower. We must address both market instability and the rising price of health care.”
I make a general statement that had nothing to do with you, then you fire a bunch of personal insults...yet I was “nasty.”
Can’t make it up.