Health Care Profiteering--WTF

[kairos12]

Just heard on the radio a woman bought a generic drug for $4.00. She went back 3 months later and it was $160.00 for the same generic from a different company.

Our health care system is completely screwed.

[Separation]

1. Disgusted with medical insurance.

I have TriCare as my families insurance. I am allowed 36k a year for mental health care for the entire family. My son has autism and schizophrenia. So %100 of our mental health insurance goes to him. We have an aide that works with him throughout the day in the special needs school he goes to.

Within Tricare we use a program called echo. We are on pretty good standing with our sons aid so we know what he gets vs the company. In 6 months we have gone through $26k with only $10k left to the fiscal year. He gets %20 and the company get the other %80.

They now say we have to cut his hours because we are going to hit our cap. It's criminal. Basically our insurance company is paying itself and screwing us out of MUCH needed assistance with our son.

Currently we are writing our congress and senate critters with years of documentation and diagnosis pleading for the help with our son not being yanked out from our feet. I'm not expecting anything to be honest.

[nineteen50]

7. Get used to it

Americas new economy is finance based no productive tangibles allowed.

[talkingmime]

2. They charged me $20 per pill when I could get the same thing for under $10 for 90 pills.

My wife wanted to bring in my prescription bottle and they wouldn't let her. The pills alone racked up about $600 for the stay. That's just not right.

[kairos12]

4. If you haven't read it yet, read the article by Stephen Brill in Time

magazine about our Health Care System. It explains much, dreadful as it is. It shares stories like yours. Peace.

[talkingmime]

5. I saw portions of it. Yes, the system is broken. Hospitals and insurance should be non-profit.

They're running a scam and they know it. A doctor comes in, asks me how I'm feeling and leaves. The charge? An hour and a half at $200/hr for 30 seconds of his time. That's just wrong. Almost half of my wife's salary goes toward health insurance and we can't go without it. The rates keep going up and the deductable amounts keep going up, and it's fairly decent insurance from what I've gathered. Until we get to single-payer and cut the insurance companies out of it, nothing good is going to happen.

[subterranean]

9. Some of the most profitable hospitals are non-profit.

Non-profit just means they can't distribute surpluses to shareholders.

[talkingmime]

11. Yes, but they still compete for services. One hospital gets a machine and the others duplicate it.

One way or another they have a board of directors and have to meet quotas to pay for machines. It doesn't matter if they're for or non profit. They still need to pay for the machines using quotas. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper to share machines using ambulances but they won't do that.

And most of the non-profits are affiliated with a religeous organization and funnel the excess into the church they are beholdened to. The most outrageous charges I've gotten were from the local "non-profit" hospital, alegedly Christian. They're all for-profit no matter how you spin it, but the profits are tax exempt if they call themselves "non-profit". Either way you get screwed. Our health care system sucks and the alledged Christian non-profit hospital almost killed me due to negligence. I'm not into suing, but I certainly had the grounds to do so, but my wife was royally pissed off.

[Curmudgeoness]

8. I agree. Everyone should read that whole article,

all 11 internet pages----ugh, I really hate reading that much online, but it was so worth it.

[Trajan]

3. Why in hell do we pay for health insurance ...

When we really just want to pay for health care ?

We MUST eliminate health insurance .... The only thing that is actually insured is the transfer of family wealth to health insurance corporations ...

[Egalitarian Thug]

10. Because now, it's the law. n/t

[adieu]

6. The big pharma learned it

from the street side drug dealers on how to "dynamic price" their products.