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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (130174)	2/5/2010 12:48:17 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 541946

I often talk about our care in Scotland. It was great. Never saw a bill. Here? Every freaking bill has a mistake. The stupid hospital coded my husband's insurance wrong for an 11/25 visit to the ER for a kidney stone, so now I have dunning letters from at least 5 separate providers- including the ER doc, the imaging folks, and the hospital. Yesterday I spent at least 1/2 hour on this (again) because the hospital had not managed to clear up the numbers for anyone but themselves- even though they released all the bad information. On top of that some of the folks are so stupid, they can't even tell what information they have in their own systems- so I spent more time making calls to an HMO that I didn't need to make, because the doofus of a billing cretin told me a claim was denied, when it had never even been submitted. YAY for our stupid, wasteful and moronic system. We are the USA- I guess we deserve the worst, because we are too stupid to demand better. I hope all the folks who think our system is so great run up against private insurance death panels at some point. That'll teach 'em. Of course they they will be dead, and their new found "wisdom" will die with them. Ce la mort.

To: Cogito who wrote (130174)	2/5/2010 12:51:34 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541946

Why? Because it works It works if you don't mind the wait, or if you have the US as a backstop to get around the worst waits if need be, and to fund the drug development for the conditions you might get, while your government operates as a monopsony buyer to force down the local prices. "It works" as in "it works in a way that's clearly much better than what we have in the US", is very debatable, and to the extent it works in that or any other way, it would work much less, in Canada, if we followed their example.

To: Cogito who wrote (130174)	2/5/2010 12:55:21 AM
From: Jeff Hayden	Respond to of 541946

Gosh Allen. How can the Canadian system work? After all we've been extolled day in and day out on this "View from the Center" SI site that privately operated, for profit insurance leads to health care nirvana. Hmmm? I wonder when that nirvana kicks-in? Come to think of it, is it possible to have health care nirvana in a for profit system? Some of the disillusioned seem to think so. Jeff

To: Cogito who wrote (130174)	2/5/2010 12:58:48 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541946

I just dug out one of the more bizarre bills- on it we were billed 543.00- because the insurance company had not paid. I contested the way the bill was coded and it was resubmitted- guess how much the write down was? It was the biggest one I've ever seen. The insurance ended up paying 75.00. Now tell me, how do you have the giant greedy balls to send a claim out to Mr. And Mrs. Smith- not knowing whether or not they have any money to pay (and threatening their credit rating) and billing them for the full amount, when an insurance company would pay a pittance. I don't know ANYONE who gets a cash price as cheap as the insurers get- when they actually pay. What I wonder, is how many people are too stupid to contest this stuff, and just roll over the first, second or third time their claim is denied for spurious reasons. That's the kind of data that is hard to find. But every time I have discussed this with people everyone has a million false denial stories. And some of them end rather badly.