CABL Forum - Re: Pelosi: Dems close on health care agreement

First off, I am a contractor all of my adult life, biggest plan I have been a part of was 2 families. I have been covered by Aetna and the local Blue Cross. Have never had a problem keeping coverage as long as premiums were paid and never had huge singled out premium hikes either. And by the way the 700k was for hospital care only. The prescriptions I have been on are close to 6k per month, just one of them is 4k per 30 days itself. Other than the usual preauthorizations that are needed, they are renewed every month like clock work.

Beacuse of the amount of time I spend with people in the medical field, I get to spend long periods of time with them individually. While I freely admit they truly do want reforms, few very few, want more government intervention in their field. All they see this leading to is more patients for less money and doing nothing to reel in some of the biggest problems. Malpractice reform first and foremost.

They practice defensive medicine to cover their own behinds because heaven forbid any error is even perceived, the lawyers are 3 deep at the patients bedside making promises of million dollar settlements. This practice only adds many additional procedures and tests that aren't needed, which also adds the possiblity of another mistake, and adds cost to the overall system.

Someone has to pay for those malpractice settlements and doctors use insurance for most of it and most states have catastrophic insurance to cover really large verdicts. Who pays for those premiums? The doctor does initally, and passes those costs on to us in the end.

If you dont think that doctors pass those costs on to the insurance companies when negotiating their rates you are naive or don't want to know the truth. Someone pays for everything somehow. All of those suits end up being paid for by all of us, just like the tobacco settlements. Do you really think RJR Nabisco really only increased the price of ciggarettes to pay for that or did they raise the price of evrything a few pennys to cover it all and not hurt their market share as much as those not involved in anything but cigarettes.

And creating purchasing pools and allowing insurers to cross state lines is a great place to start. And neither require this massive trillion dollar boondoggle currently in congress as we speak.

This is why I say there major points that can be addressed without remaking one sixth of the economy into another government behemouth and they should be explored before the feds are so involved in any more of my life than absolutly necessary.

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Re: Pelosi: Dems close on health care agreement