Non-US minimum wage + healthcare

We yanks have been living with this nonsense of a trickle down aka "voodoo" economic system for decades. Most minimum wage earners qualify for public relief, while their employers, like walmart, are some of the wealthiest in the world.

Meanwhile, we're spending over 17% of our gdp on healthcare (in the UK its around 8%) yet our scores with issues like longevity, infant mortality, are way below other industrialized countries, according to the world health organization.

We must look pretty screwy to you europeans, kiwis, + Australians.... any thoughts?

IMHO we have the best delivery system BUT the high cost has a lot of reasons for it. ambulance chaser's, government regulations and insurance co just to name some of the issues. it takes a crew just to work on the insurance co billing and what they will or will not pay for along with how much they pay. than you have insurance co playing doctor with what medicine they will pay for even if you cant this one but the other brand / type you can take but they don't get as good a deal with co B. next is the drug co where the same drug outside the us is penny's on the dollar. a good example of greed is the gentleman that was just in front of congress for buying a drug co and increasing the cost of one drug 4000 percent. i have nothing against profit but this jack ass should be strung up by his man hood.


PS bernie would bankrupt us if he got his way.

"It's all gonna burn"

I always had a hard and fast rule to leave politics in the street before entering the pits, and I don't want to get into a no win pissing contest on here, but I'll pass along my single payer health care experience. As a Vietnam veteran I'd always been eligible for VA health care, but since I'd always had health insurance coverage thru work and had no service related health issues, I just never fully signed up with the VA. In the early 2000's when another layoff looked imminent, I did sign up and made some appointments to get fully in the system. I was quickly and pleasantly surprised at how good the health care is and how simple it and fair it is to be in the system from my end. Your co-pay is based on your previous year's income and the level of health care you are eligible for which is based on your actual service. That's it. No deductibles, no countless phone calls arguing with Blue Cross, no employer claiming they can't give out any raises because health care costs are eating them up, etc, etc. Simply the best health care I've ever had. Maybe I'm just lucky to have an excellent VA facility that's only about 40-45 minutes away, but if this is anything what a single payer universal health care system would be like, I'm 110% for it and don't believe it would bankrupt us.
Bill

I have to pay $800 a month for mine and wifes....

well I started it, so here's my disclaimer:

Like most here, I've been around a long time. Two things I know for sure about politics (maybe the only two) are that 1. everyone has a right to an opinion that must be respected (or we become nazis) and 2. the issues are much bigger than any of us, our individual opinions matter, but mustily to us. That said, we're going with the real progressive, Bernie.

HRC is the poster child of Wall St., Big Pharma, and The Military-Industrial-Domestic Security-Congressional- Complex. I'm glad I didn't have to say that because just typing it makes me tired. All that stuff costs everyday Joes buku bucks, and goes up, not down. Genuine voodoo.

Sanders' Medicare for all gets paid for by an increase in income tax. For somebody with an income like mine (60k), thats about $1000 a year in new taxes. Currently, Mrs. and I are covered with the "gold" HMO , over $800 a month. I'm no mathematician, but it seems like we would be ahead about $6000 a year. A whole shitload of Norton upgrades!

Cheers,

Don

HAAAA I did say "I'm no mathematician" medicare for all could save us $8600 a year

As a 40-year member of the Carpenter's Union, I have been covered since the age of 26 pretty much continuously. All three of my daughters were born covered and new rules have allowed the younger two (21 and 25) to remain on my plan. The oldest is also covered since I got her husband a job. Both my grandchildren (7 and 4) have been covered all their lives by that same healthcare, although "same" is something of a misnomer since costs, deductibles, copays and coverages constantly change and usually not for the better. I know for a fact that 15-20% of what we contribute hourly to our healthcare coverage goes to pay for those who cannot or do not pay for health services or insurance. So the idea of a system where all are covered sounds good to me. Breakdowns of hospital and doctor charges reveal astronomical charges which our PPO (preferred provider organization) holds down by signing up providers who will accept negotiated payments. But for those with means but not insurance, those negotiated payments do not exist.

Case in point: You may have heard the "rattlesnake selfie" story, but I'll tell it for those who haven't. A man (obviously no genius) picked up a live rattlesnake to take a selfie with the snake with his phone. Of course, the snake bit him and he had to go to an ER for treatment. He was given 6 vials of anti-venom and sent home. When he received the bill, he was flabbergasted to discover the hospital charged him $156,000 for the anti-venom. He immediately went online and found that the anti-venom is sold to the hospitals for $2000 per vial, $12,000 in his case. A PPO will pay around $14,000 giving the hospital a tidy $2,000 profit for administering 6 hypodermic injections. The man called the hospital to ask why they had charged him more than 10X the amount they normally got from an insured patient and they replied that they had to make up the money somewhere for all those who receive treatment and do not pay. So another good possibilty with a system where everyone is covered is the scrutiny and power it takes to negotiate fair charges and thusly hold down costs.

Until the recent mortgage crisis (another perpetrated larceny) medical bills were the #1 cause of personal bankruptcies. So while Obamacare may be far from a perfect solution, it lays the groundwork for getting a grip on costs, not only in the sense of outrageous billing practices, but in preventive treatment for illness before they reach critical stage, a point at which EVERYONE receives treatment regardless of their ability to pay. The whole problem is we can spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives in the name of "freedom and democracy" and "nation building" in countries whose people have beliefs so far from our own as to make success nearly impossible, but anything spent to benefit ALL citizens is branded "socialism" which is just a label politicians use to scare old people into voting for someone who will kick them in the head once elected.

Are your hospitals privately owned, sounds like they are pretty corrupt,

splatt said:

Are your hospitals privately owned, sounds like they are pretty corrupt,

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Any institution that involves billions of dollars has potential for corruption. Public hospitals are pretty much a thing of the past in the USA.

Our hospital in Anacortes is a public one. It's a bit of a moot point for me, as I've never been hospitalized in my 74 years - just a couple of out-patient visits in the 16 years we've lived here. My wife has been an in-patient a couple of times. We've both been on Medicare for quite some time. We have to pay just under $400 a year for both of us for Medicare Supplemental coverage from a commercial insurer (through AARP).

It's not the seamless service you get with the various governmental schemes in Europe and the UK, but at least the equipment is fairly up-to-date and the processes are efficient. When you get an appointment time, it's just yours (with your doctor) - there aren't 50 other people with the same time. It was that "herd" medicine that I disliked so much about the British NHS.

In the US, equipment and facilities are second-to-none. We have built and added on to many new hospitals in this area to the tune of several billion dollars worth of construction. The game now is to have the latest and greatest to attract the high-powered assembly line doctors that do multiple joint replacements or multiple heart bypasses on a daily basis. Two of my three daughters are employed in the healthcare industry. Hospital construction runs slightly ahead of senior- facility construction in dollars spent. There are new nursing homes and assisted-living apartments popping up everywhere. More people are living longer than ever and the money going into the healthcare industry reflects that. Prescription drug companies spend more on advertising than they do on r&d. The main problem is the system is so megalithic, it becomes impossible to control. Costs and fraud are rampant.

frankdamp said:

Our hospital in Anacortes is a public one. It's a bit of a moot point for me, as I've never been hospitalized in my 74 years - just a couple of out-patient visits in the 16 years we've lived here. My wife has been an in-patient a couple of times. We've both been on Medicare for quite some time. We have to pay just under $400 a year for both of us for Medicare Supplemental coverage from a commercial insurer (through AARP).

It's not the seamless service you get with the various governmental schemes in Europe and the UK, but at least the equipment is fairly up-to-date and the processes are efficient. When you get an appointment time, it's just yours (with your doctor) - there aren't 50 other people with the same time. It was that "herd" medicine that I disliked so much about the British NHS.

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re; " "herd" medicine that I disliked so much about the British NHS"
What exactly do you mean by this description :?:

When you have a hospital appointment in the UK system, for something like an x-ray, you get there at your appointment time and find about 50 people in the waiting room, all of whom have the same appointment time as you. The check-in goes on person at a time then they go sit down again. When everyone has been checked in, they all go together to the x-ray facility where they all sit down in another waitnig room and are called in one-by-one for the procedure. After the procedure, they go back to the waiting room until the last patient has had the procedure. At that time, they all head to another waiting room to have their x-rays reviewed by a doctor. After the last patient has done that they all head to a final waiting room to be checked out.

What could have been a simple 20-minute procedure for a single patient turns into a 4 hour trudge through hospital waiting rooms in a 50-person "herd".

I've lived in the US since 1968, wne I was 25, so this description is based on old experience.

Wait till you get a severe stomach pain and have to go to the ER at midnight.

Sit and wait (in pain) for 4 hours, get a 3-minute MRI, wait (still in pain) another 2 hours, then get checked out as "can find nothing wrong".

2 weeks later, receive a bill from the hospital for $12,000.00

Yes, my typing is correct, twelve thousand dollars for a 3-minute procedure, and for a doctor to look at it for maybe 5 minutes tops.

Why? Because they have EVERYONE over a barrel after paying off congress thru their lobbyists.

The doctors aren't making a lot of money (some people say). Mm-Hm. 5,000 square foot homes in gated communities with 3 or 4 very late model cars in the driveway. Poor things.

For those lucky ones like myself with insurance, the providers can only charge so much for a given service. Unless you go out-of-network, you are protected from the gouging the medical industry regularly engages in. A PPO (Preferred Provider Organization) negotiates prices with signatory providers. Your co=pays and deductibles are set in advance, so no surprises. For those with the "means to pay" but no insurance coverage, you are at their (ungiven) mercy.

You all may have heard the "rattlesnake selfie" story. A dumbass picks up a rattlesnake with the intention of taking a selfie with his phone. Naturally the snake bites him, so he goes to a local ER. The ER administers 6 vials of anti-venom and sends him home. Some time later, he receives a bill for $156,000! Flabbergasted, he gets on the internet and discovers the anti-venom costs the hospital $2000 per vial, total $12,000. Normally they would charge a PPO $14,000 for a tidy $2,000 profit for administering 6 hypodermic injections. So he gets on the horn and demands to be told why he is being charged more than 10X the normal rate for this service. The person in the hospital's billing department tells him, ":Well we have to make up for those who can't or don't pay somehow."

And on a personal note, around 12-14 years ago, I started experiencing some chest pains. Always at rest, never got out of breath, but I figured better get checked out. Went to my (then) doctor and asked for a stress test. "Oh," he said, 'we are really paranoid about doing that first, so I'd like you to have an echogram."

I go back to his office in a couple of weeks and a technician brings in a portable echocardiogram machine for my test. After the test, which showed nothing, I again asked for the stress test. The doctor tells me, "The test was inconclusive, so we'd like to send you to the cardiologist to have it done again." So I go to the cardiologist and have another echogram. Which again, shows nothing.

I go back to the doctor's office again and ask for a stress test (3rd time) This time, the Nurse Practitioner says, "We'd like you to wear a monitor for a bit to make sure." Now my wife had to carry a suitcase monitor around for a week previously, so I tell the NP, "I can't do that, I have to work." And she replies, "We have this new monitor. You paste the electrodes on your chest, clip on the wires and dial a number in Florida and hold this beeper up to the phone and it does an electrocardiogram readout." So I had six episodes of pain in three months and the over-the-phone EKG shows nothing.

A couple weeks later I get a bill for $2500 for the monitor because the insurance considers it experimental and won't pay. So I take the rig back to the doctor's office, throw it on the NP's desk and say, "I didn't ask for this, I asked for a stress test. Now the insurance won't pay for it, and I'm not paying either. Do I get a stress test or do I get another opinion?" Finally they schedule the stress test.

I return to the cardiologist, run on the treadmill with the wires hooked up until I'm huffing and sweating. And the test shows (guess what) NOTHING! So I asked the cardio what he thought was the source of my pains. He asked, "What do you do for a living?" I said, "I've been hanging a lot of drywall lately" He says, "Ahh, it's probably just muscle pain." So I figure, end of story, right? Wrong!

Several weeks later I get a bill for $40,000 for the cardio putting a stent in my heart! In the interim, our insurance carrier had changed from HealthLink to GHP, which saved the plan several million dollars per year. The cardio's office had sent the bill to HealthLink, who told them, "WE don't insure these people any more." So they sent the bill directly to me. When I call the cardio's office, there was a lot of shucking and jiving and they finally said "it must have been a mistake " and they'd take care of it.

They have cut down the waiting times in the new NHS, but I get your point about the “herd system”
The last time I had an X ray on the NHS was 3 years ago for my chest, where I had an appointment from my GP for the X-ray. I was in and out in about 45 minutes; this includes waiting for the x ray results from the radiologist.

Both self and partner have been through some age related checks recently.

Mine was the Aortic Aneurysm scan which all men get at 65, I arrived an old school 15 mins early. Two guys got seen before me - takes about 5 mins, as I went in on time, the next guy turned up. Not herd like at all.

MsNG had a bit more complex diagnostic. IIRC, 4 different appointments, total wait less than 4hrs, including the debriefs.

My experience is that the herd thing has reduced to almost nothing.
What needs to happen now is arranging to get all related tests, where possible, done at the same time.
I seem to have a slightly high BP, so I have a triage nurse do a repeat BP next week and the phlebotomy nurse drain an arm the week after.

I'm glad to hear that the "herd" is pretty much eliminated. We left our home town in Lancashire and lived in Kenilworth and Wolverhampton before we emigrated. Kenilworth didn't have a hospital - the nearest one was about 15 miles away in Leamingto Spa. Luckily, at that age we never needed to go. The only excitement we had was when our second daughter was born at home (as planned). Because of the antiquated phone system, we couldn't get a hold of either of the midwives who serviced our area. I called our GP and he said he'd be there.

Eventually, the chief midwife of the area showed up, took her coat off, washed her hands and delivered the baby. The doctor showed up 15 minutes later and the two "local" midwives 15 minutes after him. Fortunately, the baby was just fine and there were no major complications. The births of out additional two chilren in the US went a lot more calmly!