Women's preventive health care now easier to afford
 

Good news for families everywhere. Anything that decreases the number of abortions, increases the health of women and infants, and lowers the cost of healthcare for all by prevention is a good thing. Not to mention healthier women.

Wish they would include colon cancer screenings and prostate exams.

Long detailed article with much explanation, this is an excerpt:

It doesn't make up for the other ridiculous goings-on in Washington this week, but it's still a good thing.

No more co-pays equal higher premiums for all!!! :zz:

Take a deep breath and see how preventive health care means lower premiums for all:

Cost of the pill for 20 years (to insurance company) about $1000 or less

Cost of one baby - prenatal care, delivery, 18 years health care, about $40,000 if they are healthy.

Cost of cervical pap smear: $20
Cost of treating cervical cancer: $80,000

Cost of breast pump $10
Cost of infant formula plus health care for infant not raised on breast milk $thousands

Plus: less abortions, healthier children, healthier women, which lowers costs for all.

PS and this is RIOT posting from my friends computer

Women will still refuse birth control. And this coverage is useless without the day after pill.

anytime any coverage is expanded, you can bet your ass the price expands along with it.
is it a good thing to have bc, sure...will it cost somewhere else~absolutely...
after all, dont you think that if it was a real cost saver, it wouldnt have happened a lot sooner? ins cos dont make profits by being stupid...

Mostly insurance companies make money by only insuring healthy people, and kicking off people that are not healthy and they have to pay out on. It's like any insurance company.

Insurance companies do not make money by providing healthcare. They make money by not providing healthcare.

Medicare is run by the government. The cost of delivery, as there is no profit taken, is far, far less than the cost of healthcare delivered by every private insurance company in the US.

Preventive health care is ALWAYS less expensive than treating the disease or health problem you are trying to prevent.

If you are in a group of employees sharing insurance costs, what would you rather pay: the lung cancer and emphysema from a smoker, or the cost of his Nicorette? Would you rather pay for mammograms or breast cancer? Colon fecal blood exam or colon cancer? Birth control pills or pre-natal care, delivery, and 20 years of healthcare to a (hopefully) healthy infant?

Cholesterol testing for those over 50 (30 in the US), screening blood tests, colon cancer testing, mammograms, pap smears, prostate cancer exams, annual skin physical exams at a dermatologist, good nutrition counseling, healthy lifestyle - all should be covered for the minimal cost possible because prevention is cheaper for everyone than payment for the illness

That's why it's called the Affordable Care Act. Right now in the US about 1/5 of our economy is healthcare costs. That's beyond absurd. Most other first world countries it's less than 8%.

stop right there and do the math!

20 years equals 240 months. BC pills at $4.17 per/month or 13 cents a day?

And the president thinks that's too much to have a co-pay :zz:

How about paying a 34% co-pay of BC pills just to make it fair to everyone! And a lesson to how much the 'rich' are actually paying!

No. The President had nothing to do with it. That's what medical commissions recommended to improve womens health. Much easier to pay .13 a day than pay for an unwanted pregnancy, birth, and 20 years of life, right?

Only you could be making the argument that it is better to not pay preventive care, and rather pay for the disease.

Although the new women's preventive services will be free of any additional charge to patients, somebody will have to pay. The cost will be spread among other people with health insurance, resulting in slightly higher premiums.


well, no joke. that's as obvious as the statement that medicare is run by the government. who knew?!?! :rolleyes:

my bills keep going up, and i haven't done a thing to cause that. most premiums for insurance are based on specific things-your age, your level of risk, your past claims, your bad driving.
health insurance-nope, the hard working and healthy get to carry that burden, and it won't be getting lighter.

Yes, exactly as it is now. But again: would you rather, as a group paying for the others in your insurance group, pay for a pap smear? Or cervical cancer? Pay for a mammogram? Or treating breast cancer? Pay for birth control pills? Or for a pregnancy, delivery, and 20 years of health care for the child?

Which do you think is gonna lower your premiums over time? Paying for preventive care for everyone, or paying for the diseases?

BTW, birth control pills cost about a dollar a month or less to make. The pharmacist buys them for a couple dollars. The insurance company negotiates a charge to their insured at that pharmacy, and they pocket your "copay".

You guys would be furious if you knew how little it costs to make drugs that you pay hundreds of dollars a month for. But, the drug companies put the money into research and development, so I can't begrudge them their profit. But it is sad to see people die because insurance companies won't pay exaggerated inflated prices to the drug companies for particular drugs. Death panels.

And, that is exactly why the ACA exists. It's mostly consumer protections. To stop insurance companies from gouging their clients for profit. While they are making record profit.

The insurance companies will gouge you for all they can, until the ACA provisions kick in to stop it.

Just like the credit card companies gouged their clients for all they could, before those consumer protections kicked in.

i don't take any regular medication.

and i know that the more people who buy insurance, the better. the trick is getting everyone to buy, and i still don't see how they're going to do that. hell, most states still can't get drivers to buy liability on their car; they buy a policy just to get tags renewed, and then they cancel. why pay? they won't wreck-they think. it's why the rest of us have to carry uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage.
and many will rather pay the fine then buy when it comes times-but what happens when they need care? we pay for it.
i never, ever understood the mindset of people that i hired where i used to work. they were all for the insurance til it came time to sign up, then they balked at the small amount they had to pay. then they'd bitch when they had to go to the doctor-it coooosts sooo muuuuch. duh


as for credit cards, i don't have any of those. easy to avoid that gouging.

another concern i have-how much will this cost the states? the feds say it'll save them money in the long run, but the states say that's because they will bear more of the burden.
how much will my taxes go up? my premiums go up every year, so now i guess i have an increase in taxes to go along with it...no insurance co. is going to do a thing out of the goodness of their hearts-any increases they will face will be passed on. carrying people with pre-existing conditions will cost me, not the co. kids til age 26-that'll cost me, even tho none of mine are on my insurance. free coverages, yeah, nothing is free.

all the govt should have done was expanded coverage thru medicaid to cover those who can't get coverage.
and get this, arkansas has had that available for some time. if you couldn't get covered, or your plan was too high-you could get covered thru the state. i wonder how many other states have the same type of program...

thing is, many who don't have insurance don't have it for a reason..they don't want to pay.

I don't know what you are talking about. The ACA in it's entirety? The costs are listed in the Wikipedia entry for it, if you want to see how it was paid for. The CBO has scored it a net zero - meaning your taxes are not predicted to go up to pay for any of it.

The birth control thing is a consumer protection for private insurance companies.

I agree. But that was called socialized medicine and death panels, and people feared it and screamed they didn't want that government takeover of their healthcare (they talked about expanding Medicare, not Medicaid). That is essentially what they have come up with temporarily, until the insurance exchanges kick in.

Actually, I think everyone in the country should be able to buy into Medicare if they want.

That would also leave the private insurance companies with only the healthy patients, they would refuse to insure and orphan anyone with any problem at all. That wouldn't work.

Why have your insurance premiums gone up in the past couple of years?

What a load of propaganda. They average between a 1-3% profit margin on average.

If you're this b.utthurt over it then you should have eleventy billion threads on Apple, Google and GE.

Poor insurance companies.

BWAWAAAHAAAAAAAAA

Life's not fair so I go after insurance companies for assessing risk properly. They are the worst companies on earth!

*limps off*

No limping. Don't you pay attention?

I'm limping. Fell down two flights of stairs this weekend. Fortunately for me I'm genetically superior to most humans. No broken bones.

Don't try to run away while pulling on your pants, that won't happen.

I can understand falling down one flight. But how did you manage two?

I tried to recover quickly by getting up but my foot was on the top step of the second flight and it was wet due to rain so I slipped again.

I'm real sore and bruised but other than that I'm alright.

I've always had a problem with running up and down stairs too fast.

You are very, very lucky.

I don't suppose that's on video, on YouTube, or anything .... :rolleyes:

i doubt the cbo counts anything that goes towards the states portion. i just read the other day that medicaid is going to explode cost-wise to help pay for what is affectionately termed obama care. that by 2020 the states are going to be in a world of hurt because of their share, that grows every year.

medicare is part of ss. it's supposedly paid for by ss taxes with extra $ required for anything beyond part A, and extra premiums if you don't have that oh so difficult to achieve 40 credits. i can only imagine the sheer cost if people could just jump in earlier...as i said above, i know this state has something in place to cover those who can't otherwise find insurance, either due to prohibitive cost, pre-existing conditions, etc. i doubt arkansas is the only one to have this program. medicaid is for the indigent, medicare for the elderly...problem is, medicaid is so beyond screwed up already, i don't know how they'll handle the increase they're about to get. or how we'll pay for it.

Obamacare does help the states with funding in the early years, but the Medicaid expansion soon becomes just another unfunded mandate. From the report (emphasis in original):

The massive increases in new federal spending under the health care law did not include the new Medicaid state spending mandates; and American taxpayers are still discovering the extent of PPACA’s costs. In 2017, state governments will be forced to spend new money on expanded Medicaid populations, and by 2020, the states will shoulder these new costs fully. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) originally estimated new state spending on Medicaid at $20 billion between 2017 and 2019, and an independent report from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured found that new state spending would be even higher at $43.2 billion through 2019. More recently, CBO has estimated a $60 billion cost to the states through 2021. …This report conservatively estimates that PPACA will cost state taxpayers at least $118.04 billion through 2023.

The state-by-state findings9 of this report indicate just how unrealistic PPACA’s Medicaid mandates are for the states. California will spend at least another $19.4 billion on Medicaid; perhaps that is why former Governor Schwarzenegger said, “It is not reform to push more costs on states that are already struggling … and this bill … is a disaster for California…” The Texas Health and Human Services Commission estimated that Texas alone will be forced to spend $27 billion—more than the program’s entire annual budget today. The state of Idaho found that the law would grow its Medicaid program by nearly 50 percent. With $675 million in new costs for his state, it is not surprising that Governor Beshear (D-KY) recently said, “I have no idea how we’re going to pay for it.” Finally, former Governor Bredesen (D-TN) noted reality: “I can’t think of a worse time for this bill to be coming … nobody’s going to put their state into bankruptcy or their education system in the tank for it.”

and another google result:

http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...-state-budgets

and this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...854557922.html

....while we are on the subject of healthcare, my doc sends me a letter yesterday saying he will be converting his practice to "MDVIP". Is this a scam or what???

don't buy any green bananas.......

The one thing our country should offer for free is birth control.

now if you could only convince the population to actually use the free resource....

States are broke. Most of them have been living off federal stimulus money to help balance their budgets and avoid layoffs the past 2 years. Medicaid is a very expensive program, as those people are, as you say, indigent, and most can't work and often are younger, or have certain disabilities.

I think that allowing a younger, healthier population to buy into Medicare would be awesome - it would help save the system, too, with cash influx.

No, it's no scam, but go to the website and see if it's for you. Doctors are desperately trying to get back to practicing medicine, and not just doing what the insurance codes say they can do for a patient.

It's not like the government is handing it out or anything :D You have to be insured with a private insurer, and it is part of the new lower preventive health care stuff that the ACA is trying to institute. No copay for birth control (and other preventive cares) so patients will actually have no excuse to do it. Remember when insurance companies wouldn't ever pay for screening mammograms? And many don't want to pay for a screening colonoscopy? Same idea.