@sfdragonboy do I hear you say soda tax? 
How much chicken wing tax? People who only eat fatty chicken wings need to pay more for health care!
Shoot, if we collected on that, we would solve our federal deficit problemā¦
Come on, if we eliminated the Dennyās chain altogether wouldnāt that actually have a measurable positive impact on the health status of the American people? Seriously. San Tung is a mere one (or two) restaurants, but Dennyās is nationwide and not exactly Mixt by any stretch of the imagination.
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Canada:
You want medicare for all? 2013 claim denial rates:
Aetna: 1.5%
Cigna: 0.5%
United Healthcare: 1.2%
Medicare: 4.9%
Safeway did was @sfdragonboy is discussing. It worked.
86% of spending is on a handful of chronic conditions and most cases are preventable through living healthier. Thatās our biggest problem.
https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/overview/
Itās time America starts having an informed discussion about this.
The study found that 26 percent of 2,002 American adults surveyed said they waited six days or more for appointments, better only than Canada (33 percent) and Norway (28 percent), and much worse than in other countries with national health systems like the Netherlands (14 percent) or Britain (16 percent). When it came to appointments with specialists, patients in Britain and Switzerland reported shorter waits than those in the United States, but the United States did rank better than the other eight countries.
I am from South Korea which has single public health care system.
Health care quality there is not worse than US at much much much lower cost.
Many Korean Americans return to Korea when they have medical problem which they canāt get the treatment for in US due to lack of insurance.
If you are Korean American (who already gave up the citizenship of Korea yet used to have Korean citizenship) you can get special visa to stay there more than 3-months. Although you are a foreigner (who legally stays there), as long as you pay more than 3 months medical insurance payment, you are immediately covered.
How is this possible? Low medical cost. No humongous ecosystem around health care.
There are plenty of walk-in clinics(internal medicine, pediatrics, ENT etc) everywhere and most of time you can see a doctor within an hour or two even without appointment.
If you go to Emergency Room, the max payment you have to pay is $30.
There are things not covered by insurance such as thorough health exam (which cost about $500 but it really includes everything you can think of.) or plastic surgery. However, those are not covered by US private insurance either.
I guess the main problem of US is its medical system created too big ecosystem (lawyers for medical lawsuit and agents to negotiate medical cost etc) and overall cost is much much higher than other countries with public health care system. Also, it needs to increase medical school and accepts more students. I saw the article that medical school admission rate of top US universitiesā pre-med program is less than 10%. I am sure pre-med students in top US universities are well qualified for study of medicine. We should educate more doctors if medical cost is too high due to lack of doctors.
In addition, many non-profit health organizations are making profits and spend money on non-medical related things like luxurious buildings and so on. We should make sure that they are not violating the rules.
Furthermore, simple tylenols are charged at 100 times more expensive if you are hospitalized than if you buy from amazon for example. Such unfair marketing should be stopped. You charge 100 times more only because patients are in the position to accept whatever provided by doctor/hospital doesnāt make sense to me.
I understand overall cost problem of health care system in US grew too much to fix aggressively. There are simply too large number of people who make living around this ecosystem. I believe this is very tricky problem to fix.
However, I think single public health insurance could be the very first step to start the process. This is just my opinion.
There are many countries which provide decent health care at much much lower cost.
US happens to be only one country that I am aware of as the country with dominant private health care insurance and it has serious medical cost issue.
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Health access delayed is health access deniedā¦Plus deductibles are so high that many chose not to go to a doctor. .Insurance is the problem. .Obamacare did not reign in the insurance industry. .It in fact enriched it and has caused its demiseā¦Obamacare is a bastard stepchild that nobody wanted, and that nobody understood. .Single payer with medicare for all is the only solution, with modest deductibles. .But that means no lawsuitsā¦no lawyers benefits and cost controls on drugsā¦ We also need 10 times more doctors and 10 times less lawyersā¦
Put frivolous lawsuit plaintiffs and their lawyers into prison. Forbid lawyers from becoming a politician.
Get rid of AMA. Let people, states and cities to open medical schools without AMA approval.
Too many lawyers. Democraric party is full of useless lawyers who are pit bull attacking dogs. Letās have more productive people, less attacking lawyers.
It is cheaper to fly overseas for medical attention than to pay the deductibles here.I already go to Mexico for my dental workā¦It is like getting a free vacation. .Thailand and India are thriving with medical tourism. ā¦I find the dentists in Mexico to have the same equipment and training as in the USā¦
My favorite is Gental Dental in Cabo San Joseā¦15 min from the airportā¦The least painful dentist ever for 25% the price of a BA dentistā¦Puerto Vallarta is a medical tourist destination full of American and Canadian retireees
Insurance profits are 3-5%. Those tiny margins arenāt the problem.
In this world of self-interest human beings, INCENTIVE and MOTIVATION is the only thing that matters.
Lack of incentive to choose low cost doctors. No incentive for doctors and hospitals to control cost.
The systematic problem is that no one cares about high medical cost. When I select doctors, I would choose the best which is usually the most expensive, because my insurance pays the bill, I do not care.
What could force people to choose low cost medical services? If no one cares about price, why would doctors and hospitals charge less?
Insurance companies actually negotiate a lower price with doctors. Usually doctors charge a very high amount and insurance would reduce to a 1/3 to 1/5 of the charged amount.
Single payer system might be the only solution to control cost. But first, we have to drain the swamp. With so many professional politicians, no one will care about cost control.
It makes total sense to require that everyone here has some skin in the game. You canāt be 100 lbs overweight, sucking up medical care and not doing anything about it on your end. Even marginally. Yes, medical care cost should be based on how healthy one is to a certain degree. Yeah, you canāt account for everything that way as some thin people still get sick but like I said, a fat person who is chronically in and out of the hospital ought to pay and pay dearly for his/her medical care. No money, toughā¦
Since most big employers are self insured for healthcare, is there tendency for employers to avoid unhealthy people, avoid people with cancer and avoid people with pregnancy? For low wage coampanies like Target, Walmart, Safeway and Costco, healthcare cost for employees could be a huge percentage of total compensation. If Walmart hires a cancer patient, the medical cost could be 10 workerās salary.
Are big corporation employees more healthy in general based on in-face interview?
Why is there no lawsuit from unhealthy people to sue employment discrimination yet?
Is it ok to add a physical exam or fitness test to job interviews? How about pre-employment drug test and psychological evaluation?
Is it ok to reject candidate based on mental illness and psychological illness?
If mental illness is a disability, can employers reject candidate due to depression, anxiety, bipolar or violent tendency?
@Janeās experience is the same as mine in Hong Kong. You can get basic and emergency care in government clinics and hospitals. Yes, there are wait times. Itās actually very critical to have wait times in government systems, to make sure itās not abused because cost is so low. If you donāt want to pay you can always go see a private doctor. Cost is higher but not extravagant.
When I told my parents people can go bankrupt just by riding on an ambulance they think I was crazy. Yes, this is the system we had before Obamacare. Maybe we will go back to that with Trump.
I think one reform Trump is likely to do is streamlining FDA drug approvals. If a drug is safe for Canadians it should be fine for us too. Why waste time and money to go thru clinical trials again? Maybe he can get patent reforms too if his rhetorics are to be believed.
I am no fan of Trump. But compared to Paul Ryan heās an angel. Maybe like only Nixon can go to China, only Trump can bring in single payer. Letās hope.
Trump is as pragmatic as the Chinese.
I like businessman since they are pragmatic, reasonable and can get things done cheaply. Coincidently, the current administration is full of accomplished businessmen and businesswomen. Letās test this bunisessman theory with an open mind.
Many democrats voted for Trump silently. This is one fact neither Democratic not Republican Party wants to acknowledge, very interesting.
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Donāt military does that already?
Should be at global level. A global drug test centre managed by WHO?
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That sounds like a wonderful idea!
Lol. You think WHO would be faster?
Not faster. Less wastage.