Healthcare & rationing

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Skipjack
Posts: 6805
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

Live free or die. - Motto of New Hampshire.

Living free is a risk. So you have to ask what is liberty worth to you?

There were some guys for whom it was worth enough to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. If it is not worth that much to you I think Austria is a more congenial place for you.
Freedom is relative. The US has willingly sacrificed a lot of their freedoms since 9/11. Out of fear. Because people do not want to die.
If you ask me, that was all bullshit (all the deaths of 9/11 combined could not tobble flying from the throne of savest means of transportation that year, even if there was one every year it would still be saver than crossing a street), but that is just my opinion.
Anyway, people dont like dying. I dont. I died once and trust me, it is not funny, nor is there anything worth your while in the afterlife. So naa, I will better let it be for now.
You expect everyone to take a risk other than the insurance companies, who are in the risk business. I find this somewhat funny.

ravingdave
Posts: 650
Joined: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:41 am

Post by ravingdave »

Skipjack wrote:It will be tough, no question about it. I am actually very worried about our low birth rate. This combined with an increased immigration has led to a shift in population. The US, to my understanding is experiencing the same, yet on a smaller scale (for now).
In Vienna every second child born these days is turkish.
The only good thing about this is that the turks breed like bunnies. So they help keeping our system afloat for a while. Noone here is willing to say anything about it, because of what happened 65 years ago. Any politician that dares to do so ends up on the US watch list. No kidding. This is indeed one of the biggest problems socialism causes. Most socialist countries have much decreased birth rates.
Anyway, I am looking foreward to the day the turks will be the majority here. Then we will get an islamic system and all the assholes that brought this upon us will be the first to end up locked up somewhere or just right out killed. That will be higher justice then. Of course I hope to be gone from here by that time. I hear Iceland is nice.
I wanted to move to the US, at least for a while, see how things turn out there, but your healthcare system and a lot of bad luck with a heart attack leave me no choice.


Have you seen this video ? I'm told it exaggerates, but even so, the point remains. It was an eye opener for me.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU



David

ravingdave
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Joined: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:41 am

Post by ravingdave »

Skipjack wrote:
But you want to privatize your profits and socialize your losses. That is what we refer to these days as corpratism and was how the fascists operated.
Dont put to much on the "evil fascists". This kind of argumentation left me cold a long time ago already. So much is attributed to fascists these days, it is funny. Pretty much whenever someone dislikes something "the nazis did it too".
It is a very lazy kind of argumentation, targeted at shutting up people that care about political correctness. Problem is: I dont give a darn about political correctness. I consider it a pest and a symptom as well as a reason for the fall of the western civlization.

Now, no I dont want to socialize my losses. See I have been paying into our system for many years now, without ever needing anything. So I kinda earned my rights in it. Austria has contracts with other countries that have public health insurance (we accept theirs, they accept ours). Kinda practical normally. Only problem is, the US does not do that. So I am fracked.
Anyway, as I mentioned, chances are that I will never have any hart issues again or at least not until very old age. Taking the chance is what an insurance company should do. After all that is their business (taking risks for money). However the private insurance companies dont want to do that. So I am stuck. I wished I could just take my insurance from here over to the US, but since the systems are so different it does not work.
It was actually a lot easier for my wife to get insurance here. She was automatically insured with me, once we married. She does not even need a job here and she did not have to pay a dime extra (I paid about 20 Euros more). So yeah, I think it is kinda unfair.

I posted this before. Read the essay from Ace.


Let me offer the words of Ace (Ace of Spades Headquarters blog) as an example of a point i'm trying to make.




Image


"This idea that taxpayers ought to pay for someone's eyeglasses or routine visits to the doctor or utterly-predictable need of antibiotics or flu immunizations is, well, two words; In. Sane.

That's not "insurance." Insurance is a contract by which someone agrees to pay if you suffer a rare expense. That's how real insurance manages to be fairly inexpensive -- the risk insured against may be costly as hell (e.g., your house burns down) doesn't happen very often.

In the US, "insurance" moved away from real insurance to disguised payments in lieu of wages during the Depression and WWII, where the socialist Roosevelt Administration controlled wages. So firms began offering more and more generous "insurance" to evade/break/semi-legally flout these restrictions, which stopped being insurance against a rare risk, and began becoming simply disguised wages as they paid for things which weren't "risks" at all but inevitabilities, such as your needing to pay for eyeglasses and flu shots and routine check-ups and everything else. "



Excellent Essay by Ace.

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/290967.php#290967



David

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

Have you seen this video ? I'm told it exaggerates, but even so, the point remains. It was an eye opener for me.
The video exaggerates and really the message at the end does not help its credibility.
The statistics are not that far off though. The US will indeed be taken over the hispanic population though (all the christians will be happy though, because the hispanics are mostly catholic, LOL)
According to Wikipedia the USA has 0.8 to 2.4 % muslims or at most 7 million. Not 9 million. Austria has 4% right now and we have a 1.4 per woman birthrate. So we are not going to be doing very well. We are selling our country out to them. But hey, noone here is allowed to say anything about it because then people like Msimon emmediately bring forth their "Nazi" argumentation. So we are doomed. I am just glad that those that dont let anyone say anything here, will be among the first to go to the schaffott. You know those muslims dont like leftwingers and they definitely dont like jews. So I might loose my people, but I will still live to see them die first. Also some kind of satisfaction, isnt it?

In regards to your article that you are reffering me to.
We do have private health insurance here, as I have mentioned several times. Let me do that again: We do have private health insurance here. They are doing fine. Despite government competition. They are still cheaper than the insurance in the US. They are doing really good business. They are - like our government health insurance- paying for way to many unnecessary treatments (as I mentioned before).
I do however think that routine checkups are better than going to fix things when they are broken. A lot of deaths and costly treatments and prolonged illnesses (that cost employers, families and insurance companies a lot of money) can be prevented tha way.
In fact our health insurance spends a lot of money on campaigns to make people get their vaccinations and checkups. Why? Because if they do, it saves them a lot of money! In fact children here get tought at school to do that because it not only makes them healthier, but it also helps society.
No what really is costy for our system here are fertility treatments for muslim women with 8 or more children. Sexchanges for people with "psychological problems". Treatments for immigrants who have never paid a dime into our system and who bring their illnesses out of 3rd world countries. HIV infected and hepathitis infected drug abusers or simply HIV positive immigrants from afrika (note some african countries have 33% HIV positive rate).
Yeah all these things are costing us to much money. That is where we are loosing money. Still, our system works. Noone is going bankrupt and even the "poor, exploited and abused" health insurance companies are doing good business here.

alexjrgreen
Posts: 815
Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2008 4:03 pm
Location: UK

Post by alexjrgreen »

ravingdave wrote:Have you seen this video ? I'm told it exaggerates, but even so, the point remains. It was an eye opener for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU

David
Another viewpoint:

THE FUTURE OF THE BIRTH RATE
Ars artis est celare artem.

ravingdave
Posts: 650
Joined: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:41 am

Post by ravingdave »

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

:)

David

Skipjack
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Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

This article while encouraging does unfortunately not go with the sad facts.
If this article was true, then TFR would be on the rise again in countries like Austria. It is not, in fact it has declined further from 1.7 a little more than 20 years ago to now opnly 1.4. That is despite us having moslem and other immigrants that have an average of 5 children per woman.
Oddly enough they themselves come from countries where the average is just barely above 2.2 (turkey has a TFR of "only" 2.23), yet immigrants from these countries usually have a TFR of 5 or even 6 when they are living here. Now there are people that are saying that these same people are just the worst in their own country and they have the same amount of children when they live there. I dont think like that. I think that there might be some mechanism that drives this in minorities.
Well, we will see what happens. All I know is that there are turks that are speculating on soon owning Europe.
The turkish Minister President Erdogan recently said in Cologne (to 20,000 turks) "in 20 years this place is ours". Seeing how things are going at the moment, I have to sadly agree.
I dont have to like that though, do I?

pfrit
Posts: 256
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2008 5:04 pm

Post by pfrit »

Skipjack wrote:This article while encouraging does unfortunately not go with the sad facts.
If this article was true, then TFR would be on the rise again in countries like Austria. It is not, in fact it has declined further from 1.7 a little more than 20 years ago to now opnly 1.4. That is despite us having moslem and other immigrants that have an average of 5 children per woman.
Oddly enough they themselves come from countries where the average is just barely above 2.2 (turkey has a TFR of "only" 2.23), yet immigrants from these countries usually have a TFR of 5 or even 6 when they are living here. Now there are people that are saying that these same people are just the worst in their own country and they have the same amount of children when they live there. I dont think like that. I think that there might be some mechanism that drives this in minorities.
Well, we will see what happens. All I know is that there are turks that are speculating on soon owning Europe.
The turkish Minister President Erdogan recently said in Cologne (to 20,000 turks) "in 20 years this place is ours". Seeing how things are going at the moment, I have to sadly agree.
I dont have to like that though, do I?
On a serious note, this is a good reason to be move to the US. It is not a problem here because we are not an ethnicity, we are a nationality. A US citizen is a US citizen regardless of their color or creed. Even at our worst, their children are. Is that whistleing in the dark? I don't believe so.
What is the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

The US has willingly sacrificed a lot of their freedoms since 9/11.
Bullhooey. This is a meme spread by leftists with almost no truth to it. We have more hassles at airport security. The average American has seen no other effect.
If you ask me, that was all bullshit (all the deaths of 9/11 combined could not tobble flying from the throne of savest means of transportation that year, even if there was one every year it would still be saver than crossing a street),
Most planes don't crash into the World Trade Center. That cost around a trillion dollars. That's almost a tenth of the entire economy's yearly output.
I will either be denied health insurance, or not get any coverage in case I have a remission (for this particular illness), even if that happens 30 years from now.
This is laughably wrong. Unless you are in a situation where an insurance company is guaranteed to lose money on you, they will cover you. And they generally can't deny coverage for more than a few months after your policy begins. Who is telling you this?
Last edited by TallDave on Fri Sep 18, 2009 6:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Most people here are quite happy with our system.
No offense, but you guys are poor compared to us. Did you see The Gods Must Be Crazy? Those people were happy with their health care too. And they didn't even have Band-Aids.
I very well do, my mother is working at one, actually.
No, you clearly don't, or you wouldn't insist they cover the outcome of known events as though they were "risks."
Also in the link I had posted earlier, they denied coverage to a woman who simply had a crooked nose.
That's most likely because the treatment is mandated. That's the government's fault for creating a situation in which the insurance company can only lose money on her policy. Again, would you sell life insurance to someone on their deathbed?

I went back 15 pages and couldn't find that link. Maybe you could post it again.
Last edited by TallDave on Fri Sep 18, 2009 6:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ravingdave
Posts: 650
Joined: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:41 am

Post by ravingdave »

Skipjack wrote:
Have you seen this video ? I'm told it exaggerates, but even so, the point remains. It was an eye opener for me.

In regards to your article that you are reffering me to.
We do have private health insurance here, as I have mentioned several times. Let me do that again: We do have private health insurance here. They are doing fine. Despite government competition. They are still cheaper than the insurance in the US. They are doing really good business. They are - like our government health insurance- paying for way to many unnecessary treatments (as I mentioned before).
I do however think that routine checkups are better than going to fix things when they are broken. A lot of deaths and costly treatments and prolonged illnesses (that cost employers, families and insurance companies a lot of money) can be prevented tha way.
In fact our health insurance spends a lot of money on campaigns to make people get their vaccinations and checkups. Why? Because if they do, it saves them a lot of money! In fact children here get tought at school to do that because it not only makes them healthier, but it also helps society.


No what really is costy for our system here are fertility treatments for muslim women with 8 or more children. Sexchanges for people with "psychological problems". Treatments for immigrants who have never paid a dime into our system and who bring their illnesses out of 3rd world countries. HIV infected and hepathitis infected drug abusers or simply HIV positive immigrants from afrika (note some african countries have 33% HIV positive rate).
Yeah all these things are costing us to much money. That is where we are loosing money. Still, our system works. Noone is going bankrupt and even the "poor, exploited and abused" health insurance companies are doing good business here.



Either you're not getting the point i'm trying to make, or I need to go back and re-read what is in that Ace of Spades essay.


The salient point is that INSURANCE is something you use to avert the economic consequences of a Disaster. Not something you use when you get the sniffles.

Ace's Point, (and mine as well) is that if people had to pay up front for their medical care, they would thereby reduce costs to everyone, for people wouldn't pay for procedures they don't need, and they wouldn't tolerate outrageous costs for the treatments they do get.

In other words, the mis-use of INSURANCE is the major CAUSE of Health care costs being ridiculously high.

People aren't paying their own bills for routine maintenance of their bodies. They are letting insurance pay for medical treatment that they wouldn't bother getting at all if they had to pay for it themselves.

Insurance makes medicine appear to be free to the people who are using it, therefore there is no incentive for people to exercise any self control about how often they go for medical treatment or how much it costs.


To sum it up, insurance, used for anything other than a catastrophe is WRONG. People should pay their own bills for all other medical care.

David

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

As any private company, insurance companies want to maximize profits. Denying coverage for a condition increases their profit, because they took the persons money and still dont have to pay for his treatment. That means more profit.
By this simplistic argument, car companies would have an incentive to not deliver you a car after you write them a check for it. Yet this hardly ever happens. In fact, it's pretty rare that any company survives for long by not fulfilling their contracts, despite your strange notion this is a great way for them to "maximize profits," because two things happen: 1) they get dragged into court and 2) people stop doing business with them. Insurance companies are no different.
Insurance companies are always making good money. Very few are closing. At least here they are doing pretty well, despite the financial crisis. I wonder why that is?
AIG just went bankrupt. They are one of the biggest insurance companies in the world.

But again, you demonstrate your ignorance of how insurance companies make profit. They actually lose money on underwriting; they make it up by investing the float.

Here, read this. It explains a lot that seems mystifying to you, starting with the first sentence:
Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance

Here's why float is so important to understanding how insurance companies make profit:
Insurance companies also earn investment profits on “float”. “Float” or available reserve is the amount of money, at hand at any given moment, that an insurer has collected in insurance premiums but has not been paid out in claims. Insurers start investing insurance premiums as soon as they are collected and continue to earn interest on them until claims are paid out
...
In the United States, the underwriting loss of property and casualty insurance companies was $142.3 billion in the five years ending 2003. But overall profit for the same period was $68.4 billion, as the result of float. Some insurance industry insiders, most notably Hank Greenberg, do not believe that it is forever possible to sustain a profit from float without an underwriting profit as well, but this opinion is not universally held.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

What people generally don't appreciate is that problems like adverse selection and rescission are largely a function of the fact you can't buy a health insurance policy that follows you around the country from job to job. This is because of state and federal laws that 1) make individually-bought health care much more expensive due to tax law and 2) state laws that prevent interstate insurance competition.

What they need to do is give individuals the same tax incentive for health care as they give employers, and allow interstate insurance competition. Then the whole problem would be solved, because insurance companies would be forced to sell you guaranteed-reissue and guaranteed-coverage policies, because those are the things people really want from insurance. Denial of coverage would only be an issue for the small proportion of people who chose to go long periods of time without insurance.

ravingdave
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Post by ravingdave »

alexjrgreen wrote:
ravingdave wrote:Have you seen this video ? I'm told it exaggerates, but even so, the point remains. It was an eye opener for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU

David
Another viewpoint:

THE FUTURE OF THE BIRTH RATE

I read through the alternate argument. It appears to overlook a couple of salient points. American and European women nowadays are too sophisticated to be bothered with having babies. It has become fashionable for these better informed women to take precautions or if they make a mistake, to remedy their problem with abortion.

The article does address this issue in terms of pointing out that succeeding generations will have the child bearing women's offspring increasing their percentage of the population while the non-child bearing women will die off.

Nature always corrects for the idiocy of mankind, but sometimes the correction requires time. It appears to me that during the course of a genetic\meme invasion, time is on the side of the invading meme\genes.

The prevalence and encouragement of Homosexuality and various other forms of sexual excess (i.e. promiscuity) likewise damage a society's ability to keep it's societal population numbers high enough to ward off an invading attack from a different meme/gene.

From where I sit, it looks like the hedonistic, athiestic, excessively tolerant genes are going to be culled from both Europe and America in subsequent generations. Much misery will ensue before this occurs, but the people responsible will have brought it upon themselves, as well as the rest of us.

Allah Akbar!


David

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

No TallDave, I do understand that. PRIVATE insurance companies invest the money we give them and they get interest from it. That is fine and dandy. The Austrian public health insurance does not do that and it is still mostly fine. As I said the highest problem is with the unnecessary treatments that are paid for. I have said that before and for some reason you keep ignoring it.
People aren't paying their own bills for routine maintenance of their bodies. They are letting insurance pay for medical treatment that they wouldn't bother getting at all if they had to pay for it themselves.
Again, this is bullshit. Spending money on routine checkups helps prevent much more expensive treatments later. Same goes with vaccinations.
As I said, children here learn that in primary school.
No offense, but you guys are poor compared to us
I still raise the bullshit card on that. You can ask my wife. Even poor people here have rather good lives. There are people in the US that have it a lot worse. We just have fewer superrich people here, than you have.
At least we still have a middle class.
My wife is an US citizen living here with me. She will happily confirm this to you.
The quality of medical care here is excellent. Again, you may ask my wife. She has had multiple routine checkups since she got here 4 years ago. She has not seen any qualitative difference to the US. According to her the wait times are the same, but the doctors here have more time for you and they dont shove you off.
In the US she went to the ER for a severe and sudden backpain once. She was basically shoved out, without much checkup or concern from the doctors. Had they done the same with me, I would not be talking to you right now.
Here vaginal ultra sounds are done at the gynecologist with every checkup. In the US it is only done if the doctor thinks that something is wrong (by which time it might be to late) at least at the clinic that she went to, which was affordable...
Here people are encouraged to get their vaccinations. It does not cost you more than the prescription fee. Just recounting a few things from the tops of our heads here.
I went back 15 pages and couldn't find that link. Maybe you could post it again.
Well here it is for a third time (yeah, I had already posted it twice):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 455_2.html

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