The House is about to socialize your medicine, and your life.

Originally Posted by brianwspencer

Ok, well if you get warned that you're at risk for diabetes and don't change your habits to lose weight, exercise more and reduce your sugar and refined carb intake, I don't want my dollars to go towards helping you once you get sick. I think you should be sick all the time if you can't afford it because you're too irresponsible to do your part.

If you cut your finger off with a saw while doing work to improve your home, I also don't want to help pay for that, since you should have been more careful and not greedy to want your home to be nicer. You should just be responsible and not want your insurance to help pay for your hosptial care because you did it to yourself.

And for that matter, why pay for pregnant women and their care from insurance money either? It was their choice, and if they didn't want to accept full financial responsibility, why should I help pay for the care that they brought on themselves?

Point being, it's bulls*hit to try to deny legal medical procedures to someone else while enjoying different ones for yourself.

I agree with all of that. Let them pay out of pocket or take out private insurance to cover those expenses.

[brianwspencer]

Originally Posted by Coach Pants

I agree with all of that. Let them pay out of pocket or take out private insurance to cover those expenses.

And as a "socialist" (!!!!) supporter of national health care, I think it comes with the territory, that you don't get to pick and choose what you think should be allowed even if it's entirely legal, while enjoying legal medical care for yourself that others may find objectionable or totally your own fault for doing it to yourself.

Private insurance companies should have the freedom to decide what they will offer.

Maybe then the masses will realize that it isn't the evil insurance companies who sent them a $15,000 bill for a simple outpatient surgery. And maybe, just maybe, they'll realize the real enemies are the attorneys who have crippled the doctor's and hospitals with yellow tape and fears of literal anal rape in a courtroom.

[jms62]

Originally Posted by Coach Pants

Private insurance companies should have the freedom to decide what they will offer.

Maybe then the masses will realize that it isn't the evil insurance companies who sent them a $15,000 bill for a simple outpatient surgery. And maybe, just maybe, they'll realize the real enemies are the attorneys who have crippled the doctor's and hospitals with yellow tape and fears of literal anal rape in a courtroom.

In your usual eloquent fashion you nailed it.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by jms62

In your usual eloquent fashion you nailed it.

Then you guys will be happy that tort reform and malpractice arbitration improvements are in the House bill.

[jms62]

Originally Posted by Riot

Then you guys will be happy that tort reform and malpractice arbitration improvements are in the House bill.

43% of Congress are lawyers. To think Tort Reform will have any bite is like letting the foxes be in charge of securing the hen house.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by jms62

43% of Congress are lawyers. To think Tort Reform will have any bite is like letting the foxes be in charge of securing the hen house.

The foxes have been ordering their hens not to allow any healthcare reform whatsoever.

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by Riot

Then you guys will be happy that tort reform and malpractice arbitration improvements are in the House bill.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...760366872.html

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Coach Pants

Private insurance companies should have the freedom to decide what they will offer.
.

Private insurance companies do exactly that. They can even take it back after they sign a contract to do so and you've paid them. They can even take it back after they have said they would pay. They can drop an insured at any time, at their whim, as there are no laws to hold them to their side of the contract. The majority of bankruptcies in America are due to insured people paying for healthcare (google, Dell, it's everywhere).

In this, the wealthiest and most generous of countries, where all are created equal, we have thousands of our citizens getting extremely ill and dying every year because they cannot get regular basic health coverage, or they are ill and their insurance company pulls the rug out from under them and they lose their savings and their house and all they worked for their entire life.

And that is why decades have been spent trying to get health care reform instituted. Thank goodness there is a real chance of that.

Originally Posted by Riot

Private insurance companies do exactly that. They can even take it back after they sign a contract to do so and you've paid them. They can even take it back after they have said they would pay. They can drop an insured at any time, at their whim, as there are no laws to hold them to their side of the contract. The majority of bankruptcies in America are due to insured people paying for healthcare (google, Dell, it's everywhere).

In this, the wealthiest and most generous of countries, where all are created equal, we have thousands of our citizens getting extremely ill and dying every year because they cannot get regular basic health coverage, or they are ill and their insurance company pulls the rug out from under them and they lose their savings and their house and all they worked for their entire life.

And that is why decades have been spent trying to get health care reform instituted. Thank goodness there is a real chance of that.

And 75 percent of bankruptcies due to medical bills were by people who didn't have health insurance. Excuse me while I break out the world's smallest violin for you and the other liberals.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Coach Pants

And 75 percent of bankruptcies due to medical bills were by people who didn't have health insurance. Excuse me while I break out the world's smallest violin for you and the other liberals.

Sorry, your facts are backwards.

[Riot]

Does it matter to anyone that federal funds haven't been used to fund elective abortions for the last 35 years or so, and that nobody is asking the federal government to fund them now, in any of the healthcare reform provisions?

What has been introduced in the amendment from "The Family" Senator from C-street, in his self-rightous religious zeal, is trying to implement and backdoor more restrictions than the current law provides for.

Fortunately today, Sen. Boxer said she knows there are enough votes in the Senate to block it. How she's gonna manage that, I don't know.

Originally Posted by Riot

Sorry, your facts are backwards.

One of them, yeah. 75 percent had insurance.

You, on the other hand, conveniently left out that 60 percent figure includes households with medical bills totaling more than 10 percent of family income. And only 29% cited medical bills as the main cause.

Now take away the people out of those useless statistics that had other bills outside of their mortgage, and the stupid god damn statistics are rendered useless and once again I am basically right and you are wrong.

Because lets face it if I were wrong then more than likely you would end up with a major medical problem and probably go bankrupt and die. And really I'm not that lucky.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Riot

Private insurance companies do exactly that. They can even take it back after they sign a contract to do so and you've paid them. They can even take it back after they have said they would pay. They can drop an insured at any time, at their whim, as there are no laws to hold them to their side of the contract. The majority of bankruptcies in America are due to insured people paying for healthcare (google, Dell, it's everywhere).

In this, the wealthiest and most generous of countries, where all are created equal, we have thousands of our citizens getting extremely ill and dying every year because they cannot get regular basic health coverage, or they are ill and their insurance company pulls the rug out from under them and they lose their savings and their house and all they worked for their entire life.

And that is why decades have been spent trying to get health care reform instituted. Thank goodness there is a real chance of that.

That is completely untrue. Private health insurance companies cannot drop whoever they want. If insurance companies could drop people at any time, they would probably drop anyone that needed an expensive operation. If they found out that a person had cancer and that there were going to be tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills, they would probably drop that person if they could. Insurance companies would probably drop anyone that consistently had high medical bills if they could.

They can't do that. What they can do, is drop people that lied to them about a pre-existing condition. If you get medical insurance tomorrow and you don't disclose that you have diabetes, cancer, or some other condition, then the insurance company can drop you. That is the only way they can drop you.

Here are a couple of articles that talk about these issues. Here is a quote from one article: "By law a health insurer can't drop you, provided you pay your premiums in a timely fassion."

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache...&ct=clnk&gl=us

Here is another article about the issue. Here is a quote from the article: "A surprising number of patients have been in the middle of costly treatment for a serious disease only to have their policies canceled, sometimes even retroactively, and found themselves responsible for astronomical bills. It’s called rescission."

“It’s a secret program that if you have a serious illness … or are on costly medications, when they get the bills, they go through [your file] and look at your application … and get medical records from the last several years. And if they find an inconsistency in your application, even if it’s an honest mistake, your policy is rescinded,” says Shernoff. “It’s a very harsh punishment visited upon a lot of people.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20186938/

This is an example of what I was talking about. They can cancel your policy if they can prove that you failed to disclose a pre-existing condition.

[GenuineRisk]

brian, going back to your earlier post about looking for information on the health care proposal(s)- I highly recommend factcheck.org for unbiased information. Here are some links I found interesting:

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/sev...t-health-care/

(From August; dismantles the "illegal immigrants will get free health care" claim)

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/11/clu...adillac-plans/

Addresses a misleading AFL-CIO commercial about the plan

In the end, the problem with our current system is that it's based on an insurance industry- and the problem with that is that insurance is meant to protect you against an unlikely, but expensive, occurrence (flood, fire, theft, etc). So a lot of people pay a relatively little amount of money to a company that makes money because it seldom has to pay out anything. It makes its money not on the people who do experience fire or flood or theft, but on the ones who don't. Health care is not unlikely; we're all going to need it at some point in our lives, and, to some extent, every year. So you're putting your necessity (health care) in the arms of an industry that makes its money by not providing service for a necessity.

I have reasonably good insurance, but I'm dealing with a limit on physical therapy visits, and the physical issue I'm being seen for (bum shoulder) is not clearing up. But my visit limit is up and the fact that I'm still in pain every day is not the insurance company's concern. I have a friend who spent 2 years of her life on crutches because her insurance fought her doctor on a knee replacement, claiming she was too young (she was 33). So, two years in the prime of her life, she couldn't walk, because the insurance company didn't want to pay. (Though they cheerfully shelled out for the antidepressants she was put on as a result of being almost suicidally depressed about being unable to walk.) They finally caved, but she'll never get those 2 years back.

It's gotta change. Who knows if this bill will end up being any good (the Senate can screw up a lot of stuff), but we're closer than we've been at any time before.

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

This is an example of what I was talking about. They can cancel your policy if they can prove that you failed to disclose a pre-existing condition.

And the insurance companies are stretching the legal laws to the limit to do this, and rewarding employees who find ways to drop clients. Here's a charming story about a woman who got dumped after a $30,000 cyst surgery on her scalp, because she hadn't reported on her original form that sometimes her back felt sore after playing soccer:

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/0...-check-and-be/

In the same article a woman had her policy cancelled after an serious accident costing $150,000 because her HUSBAND had injured his back ten years before. Because, of course, that had everything to do with her accident.

And another article on it:

http://www.litigationandtrial.com/20...sian-roulette/

Fact is, these insurance companies go in AFTER you've incurred a major medical situation, and scour your records for anything, anything that they could use against you. It might not even be related to your current situation; it doesn't matter. And you can say, "But... but... technically they aren't canceling coverage" but the end result is exactly the same. You end up with bills you can't pay and the insurance company maintains their record profits. They're happy to take your money while you're healthy, but when it's time to provide service, forget it.

Yeah just forget about the fact that they lied on the application. It's them evil insurance companies with their record 1% profit!

[Riot]

Originally Posted by GenuineRisk

Fact is, these insurance companies go in AFTER you've incurred a major medical situation, and scour your records for anything, anything that they could use against you. It might not even be related to your current situation; it doesn't matter. And you can say, "But... but... technically they aren't canceling coverage" but the end result is exactly the same. You end up with bills you can't pay and the insurance company maintains their record profits. They're happy to take your money while you're healthy, but when it's time to provide service, forget it.

Exactly. I was talking to a person in the U KY billing department, and she said the major insurance companies are retroactively denying claims they have already approved and paid in record numbers, demanding reimbursement from the hospital, telling the hospital they have retroactively applied recission.

And it's because they have divisions that go back through medical records, months after the fact in some cases.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

That is completely untrue. Private health insurance companies cannot drop whoever they want. If insurance companies could drop people at any time, they would probably drop anyone that needed an expensive operation.

No it is not completely untrue. They do, Rupert. They indeed do. I have been with the same insurance company for some years. I declared all my pre-existing conditions. The insurance company agreed to cover me. Last year I had a procedure. The insurance company approved payment. Six months later, they said they changed their minds.

And the reason, I swear this is in the letter, was: "When we first insured you, and you declared this pre-existing condition, we should have excluded it, but we didn't. We are now. "

That is recission, just to make money.

And the choice given me was: Now pay thousands of dollars out of my own pocket to cover a procedure the insurance company already approved payment for, and stay insured. OR I can "drop" my insurance, and get reimbursement for every premium I have ever paid over the years - MINUS any payments the insurance company has made on my part.

I have already pursued the company through my State insurance board, there is nothing the state can do, there are no regulations covering consumer protection for the insurance industry. I am sueing them, but they have more lawyer than I do, so I'm sure that will come out poorly.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Riot

No it is not completely untrue. They do, Rupert. They indeed do. I have been with the same insurance company for some years. I declared all my pre-existing conditions. The insurance company agreed to cover me. Last year I had a procedure. The insurance company approved payment. Six months later, they said they changed their minds.

And the reason, I swear this is in the letter, was: "When we first insured you, and you declared this pre-existing condition, we should have excluded it, but we didn't. We are now. "

That is recission, just to make money.

And the choice given me was: Now pay thousands of dollars out of my own pocket to cover a procedure the insurance company already approved payment for, and stay insured. OR I can "drop" my insurance, and get reimbursement for every premium I have ever paid over the years - MINUS any payments the insurance company has made on my part.

I have already pursued the company through my State insurance board, there is nothing the state can do, there are no regulations covering consumer protection for the insurance industry. I am sueing them, but they have more lawyer than I do, so I'm sure that will come out poorly.

That is surprising to me. By law, I don't understand how they can do that. Maybe the laws are different in different states.