abusive medicine

hey lainhum, what do you think about the fiscal abuses in the medical industry? the patient is often in a vulnerable state, willing to overpay, so the doctor (grossly) overcharges. and medical insurance, the insuror negotiates so called 'discount' for it's members (for itself, because insuror pays, but this effects the price charged by the insuror to the insuree), which is often still overpriced, so different classes of patients pay different (still overpriced) prices for the same service. sometimes, those who pay more get worse service. it's like if a café charged $1000 for a coffee, but, depending on one's club membership, the café would charge 'only' $30, or $50, or $10, or (rarely) $3, however, one's club would pay (most of) it, and one would pay one's clan. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_of_Asclepius#Confusion_with_the_caduceus

>>14875 This is a bit difficult with us not being all same country and all but look at treatment contracts. Insurance makes deals with pharma companies for including their products in their treatment plan. Meaning insurance won't pay for generic cheaper alternatives and neither will the doc/pharmacy even mention it because for practical purposes a 50% cheaper generic is more expensive than a expensive version that gets almost entirely covered by insurance. Secondary you can read about amazing profits & ceo's getting raises while treatment is running barebone. So money is going to the owners and not for the treatment you supposedly pay for. But honestly the people who repeat "free health care" like a mantra deserve it. Got to be legally retarded to not understand you are paying for these scams with increased monthly fees.

>>14885 Forgot one thing: They also relabel the active ingredient to make it harder to find the cheap replacement. In some cases you can actually buy the same soykaf at 1/1000 of the cost which makes it competitive even without insurance coverage. More extensive when you find a new application for old cheap products take the structure formula and make a small change that doesn't change the effect. Then patent your brand new structure formula and treat it as a completely new product for that sweet 100x markup. A rather public example was with some heart treatment - there was a documentary about it.

>>14875 Oh yeah, it's my firm belief that medicine by nature breaks all the supposed market forces like supply and demand that are (somehow, naively) meant to keep things fair. If a person's health is on the line, it's an existential risk--and the demand is therefore infinite. People will obviously always prefer to give up all their assets to survive rather than perish and lose all those assets anyway. Passing on their wealth to a next generation or third party notwithstanding, but even with those cases a person's drive to survive is pretty massive. And it's fundamentally non-insurable. I'll just repeat that for emphasis. YOU CAN'T INSURE HEALTHCARE. It's a trust, not the kind of insurance you'd get for a car or something. You are able to insure cars because there's a significant portion of people who will not get into accidents and make claims, so they form a pool of low-risk funds to take care of the people who do incur costs. In healthcare, on the other hand, there are no customers who will never need to spend money on their health (now a massive amount due to the perversion of the US healthcare system by the same insurers and other special interests). Except for the rare individuals who instantly die in violent accidents at a young age and never even get put in the ICU to malinger for a couple days, every single person who lives today will need to make big healthcare claims. So there is no good low-risk pool. If you look at it in the short term, there appears to be a low-risk pool--young people mostly--but this averages out over time and they aren't really low-risk on a proper timeline. They also will all require massive healthcare costs eventually. So it becomes a pyramid scheme--perpetually keep adding more young people to take care of the also-growing roster of old people. But what about declining birthrates and an aging population--issues that always crop up in advanced industrialized societies? So what's going on? Well, what we have is essentially just a big parasite on top of an expense that we must pay anyway. We already pay what we would for a single-payer system through government mandated insurance that isn't meaningfully distinct from a normal tax like proper singler-payer countries have, and even before ACA the uninsured were still all going to end up paying all they have for procedures they can't really refuse because they're human and they want to live. Every society has the same expenses as single-payer healthcare, regardless of what window dressing we put on it or what sophistry we use to disguise the mandatory expenses of health and make it seem like a personal choice instead of obligation to our society. But now, in the US system at least, we also spend massive fortunes to support a giant insurance industry on top of our healthcare. An insurance industry that actually raises the prices of the base services, but obscures its effect with incredibly opaque and baroque practices. It is 100% true that health insurance offers NO value at all to society--it simply extracts economic rent. It gets in the way and sets up a toll booth. They are a petty gang of moochers who are sucking on the dry veins of the American public. We're perverting things to make sure the poor pay more than their fair share and the rich pay almost nothing (or, rather, make a lucrative profit off the whole situation). What could be more familiar?

Funny to see this, I've actually been writing about this for school. Here's a good source I'm using, it explains a plethora of problems our medical system is facing.

Private health insurance can only ever work as a parasite on our completely essential healthcare system. It can never reduce costs or even match the costs of a single-payer system. This unnecessary, non-value-adding man in the middle must always extract a huge margin to be profitable, which will always make healthcare more expensive and less likely for everyone. It's a fundamental flaw. No incremental system or rework will change it. We have to gut the private insurance industry and redistribute their exploitative profits back into an actual healthcare system. Gotta burn it down and stamp out its embers.

>>15181 Private can be already cheaper by not letting degenerates in / making them pay appropriate more if they live a soykafty lifestyle. public health care system = responsible people forced to pay for fat fuarrrks & other degenerates soykafty life choices. Public health care is the parasitic system.

>>15183 Landwhales are actually supposedly cheaper thanks to dying early and thereby saving all those long years of pensioner extended care. Read some publication on it by chance >yfw fats are actually subsidizing fit people but everyone blames them

>>15183 Total nonsense. You're assuming an open system. Everybody needs massive expenditures in healthcare when they get old enough. Do you really think that "degenerates" living bad lifestyles are the primary source of expense in the healthcare system? Nice term btw. "Degenerates" is basically a modern-day version of untermensch and anyone who uses that word kind of tips their cards a bit. Also--you expect these same degenerates to have the capital to support the whole system through essentially vice taxes? How the would that ever add up? Are they simultaneously incredibly irresponsible and rich? Have you thought about this very hard? You have this puritanical, punishment-based ideology that says people who have health costs are bad and responsible people don't get sick or make claims and should be free from having to pay for anyone in society. That's wack. I'd argue that helping to support the society you're part of is the most essential part of being responsible. That is what makes a citizen upstanding in the first place. All people either need healthcare, or will eventually have to be left on the street to die. And that's still expensive, by the way. There is no good risk pool. All private insurance necessarily requires a greater net expenditure on the part of the populace. You're already paying more in taxes than democratic socialist countries with nationalized healthcare--the taxes are just obfuscated as opportunity costs, social decay, insurance mandates, and of course you still have to pay real taxes too. Yes, you already personally pay more for far, far worse healthcare. Do you just like spending a lot for a crappy product? People obsessed with punishing of degenerates will happily pay more to line the pockets of private insurance grifters rather than run even a slight risk of helping someone who they deem doesn't deserve it. It's really bitter and sad.

>>15181 >>15187 I think you are both wrong. >"Degenerates" is basically a modern-day version of untermensch Not really, degenerates was used back then even. Though its more behaviour based than genetics based as the term subhuman was. Under Hitler there were of course subhumans but there was also degenerated art for example. It might have been produced by subhumans but also by "normal", "aryan" germans. That being said there is certainly a better way to avoid having people either completely ruin themselves at the cost of socienty and yet also having people die in the streets because they were deemed too risky to insure. In countries where health care insurance is mandatory the monthly payments are dependent on many risk factors: A middle aged rich guy with a long history of obesity and alcoholism related treatments will have to pay much, much more per months and per "incident" than some young, poor healthy guy. Incident here meaning the stuff you still have to pay yourself for treatment or medecine. This can go from nothing to quite a lot for stuff that is not deemed essential for survival like teeth. On top of that some insurances incentivize good behaviour by subsidizing it or by directly lowering their cost. Some will pay a part of your gym membership for example. To be sure your will always have some complete degenerates that will not care one bit and just do whatever gives them the greatest endorphine rush right now. Like shooting meth into their eyeballs. But those are a minority and tend to not live all that long, making their drain on the system tolerable or even negligible.

>>15187 You're fantasizing too much. I don't care how you live your live. I'm just not willing to fund your hedonism. If your livestyle increases risk and the system isn't adequately letting you pay more to amortize the risk then you're offloading it onto me. I believe in personal responsibility. If you can't afford your bullshit then croak. It shouldn't be my problem. Private health insurance is optional. Don't like it don't join them. The entire point is to have a choice. And you're delusional if you think public health care doesn't line their pockets. Their ceo's are the exact same kind of people. This year newspaper reported they increased their own salaries significantly after reporting a nice supplus in the fund. And of course they continue to provide only minimal care. Friends mom got a stroke and they didn't even bother giving a frequent enough rehab to help her regain walking. Minimum prescribed as legally obligated and that's it. The whole system is fleecing people either way. Some are just gullible enough to think it works for them and not it's owner. >>15192 I'm getting almost nothing out of being fit as fuarrrk. It's less than 10% difference. Honestly if i wasn't obliged to pay, stopping and paying private if necessary would have been cheaper. Real prices here aren't rigged skyhigh like US. It's ~€50 to pay private for a doctor visit. And you get preferred treatment. Literally asked when can i get it - next month, what if i pay myself private? This week. This is the reality of it. If you want to target something target price inflation / rigged markets. Because regardless of insurance or not that cost is the underlying cause that comes back to bite you.

>>14930 couldn't have said it better myself.

>>15196 You still seem to think that most healthcare expenses are caused by hedonism and debauchery instead of just the fact that people get old and sick. In fact, high-risk individuals usually take themselves out of the system early and end up supporting others more than people who live long lives. You're the one who is fantasizing. You think you have a choice to not purchase health care, but eventually even you are going to get sick and fall upon safety nets and become a burden to society. You're just being incredibly short-sighted and selfish. You'll change your tune when you get sick for no real reason. It will happen. I'm guessing you're still pretty young. I've got an auto-immune disease. Never did anything crazy with my health; I take really good care of myself. Especially now. But I've got internal bleeding all over the place and most of the time my joints feel like somebody's jamming a knife between the bones and prying around. It can happen to you. If you live long enough, something like that is guaranteed. I'm also an independent contractor, basically making my own business. You have no idea how terrible this is. Your system doesn't work unless we callously leave huge swaths of people to die or suffer in the street due to no fault of their own, which is of course totally acceptable to punishment-obsessed psychopaths like you. But you'll change your tune when you're the one suffering. People always make exceptions for themselves when they're the ones dying. So self-centered and chillingly stupid. Typical libertarian views. Private health insurance necessarily must take extra money for the amount of care it provides. They have to profit versus not existing; it's the only way. True, if they just don't care for like half the population then that cost will be proportionally cheaper--but it'll still be way more expensive than, say, caring for only half the population with single payer. There's no scenario where private health insurance is more cost-effective. The math doesn't work, period. It's not hypothetical, it's demonstrated by our current system today. We pay astronomically more for far worse care, and our life expectancy and other metrics are dismal for a first-world country. The data is already in, you're totally in denial.

>>15229 All insurance forms take extra money. As mentioned before the public ones also pay themselves very well. In addition they also can make money on contracts such as which pharma their insurance covers and which not. Medical sector is in general just as riddled with corruption as anything else sadly. Priv could be cheaper than public by simply rejecting high risk patients -public doesn't have that luxury. But they aren't and that's not their goal. It's meant to be the gold membership - pay more get premium treatment. You can't even get into priv insurance if you don't earn enough. Funny thing is once in you can't get out easy either. Know a guy who dropped from cancer and was still stuck unable to go back to public insurance even after turning unemployed. Guess they figured people who drop back into public are generally sick so better not let them in. Gotta save those bucks.

>>15192 May I just say that the phrase "degenerate art" bothers me to no end? It's fuarrrking art. If anything, the very act of creating art that isn't bauhaus style functionalist architecture is "degenerate" because it has no practical application. When Hitler called art "degenerate" he really just meant art that was made in a style he personally found to be distasteful

Hi just wanted to drop in and say that the primary cause of inefficiency in health care is the relationship between provider and patient. Because the patient and provider have a principle-agent relationship, there emerges a conflict of interest which causes the provider to exploit the patient. Fraud of providers is another big money drainer. (see above posted article) Corruption of suppliers is another big problem. Payers are not necessarily the biggest money drainers, but they are in a position to defraud the system. Patients contribute the least to corruption, mostly by under reporting income. The bad health of patients- a demand side variable- contributes only marginally to the expenditure gap between US and other developed nations. (see attachment)

>>15235 Also, the conflict of interest between patient and provider is made worse by the fact that if the patient isn't paying out of pocket he doesn't fight for more efficient service, so the inefficiency is transferred to payers, which is then felt by the population in terms of increased insurance premiums and taxes for public health programs.

>>15230 >Priv could be cheaper than public by simply rejecting high risk patients In other words they could save money by not really providing healthcare to their customers in the most need. Basically defrauding people after collecting premiums from them all their lives. I guess that would be superficially cheaper, but at that point it's not a real healthcare system. And there are still huge social costs when you do that--they are informally offloaded onto society as a kind of regressive tax, where those without means end up paying proportionately more. Just because you don't have a formal printed receipt for something doesn't mean it doesn't cost you. Imagine the brain drain on society when everyone has to constantly fret about their insurance, is afraid to take risks, is stuck at jobs for benefits alone instead of doing their best. This kind of society-wide wasting is profoundly worse than mere taxes. And I have to stress yet again--the majority of healthcare costs aren't high-risk individuals. It's people who live to be really old. Some guy having a coronary in his forties and keeling over is going to be way cheaper than somebody who has to have multiple cancer surgeries and sit around on dialysis or whatever for years in old age. Also, it's already been tried unsuccessfully, at least in some configuration. Before ACA and all that stuff insurers routinely denied people with preexisting conditions. Didn't matter, our healthcare was still worse and more costly than countries with proper civilized systems in place.

>>15231 Degenerate is just a word for cryptofascists. It's always some form of dog whistle. Deep down they all know it's true.

>>15243 High-risk for insurance means high risk of costing a fortune - in simpler terms anyone who is supposed to be net negative is undesirable. Old people are notorious as you say and fall into it. That's why laws exist for public health care forcing them to take everyone in even if they are a liability but as mentioned it's not perfect and there are holes where they can deny it. >our healthcare was still worse and more costly That's cause your prices as said are inflated as fuarrrk. I pay 1/100 here while wages are only 1/2. You really need to tackle your rigged market not insurance. If you force insurance you just continue getting exploited by the rigged market collectively. Fixing the market would do in comparison everyone good outside those exploiting you.

>>15258 Privatization, insurance, and ineffective government / regulatory capture is a huge part of why the market is rigged. The obfuscation of the insurance model is what has allowed prices to inflate out of control. And your first sentence represents pretty succinctly why healthcare is non-insurable. It can't be cost-effective unless you basically contrive some way that it doesn't cover sick people. If companies constantly lobby and push for some way to only cover the healthy, why are we paying premiums? We're just mandated by law to enrich a private industry for nothing in return. I think I'd rather just have taxes and have one single, accountable entity that would be easier to understand and required to disclose all their operations to the taxpaying public. Of course it would be more complicated than that in reality, but it's a big step in the right direction.