2022 Health insurance vent

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trekrok

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There is a medical business in Witchita Ks that I think is the way the industry should look at. They post their prices, have a published price list for treatment, and negotiate directly with the drug companies to offer significantly lower drug prices.


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As I understand it, this clinic has dozens across the country following this new method of medical care.
You still need catastrophic coverage from what I understand.
The rub is in your last sentence re catastrophic. The Wichita setup sounds similar to what we do with our doctor. Problem is on top of that you need catastrophic coverage that isn't available after Obama care dictated what coverage had to include.
 

dennishoddy

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The rub is in your last sentence re catastrophic. The Wichita setup sounds similar to what we do with our doctor. Problem is on top of that you need catastrophic coverage that isn't available after Obama care dictated what coverage had to include.
Well, it's catastrophic because the $1200 per month payment for obummer care the wife had required a 10K deductible, so basically we were on our own to pay what ever the medical facility wanted to charge.
The clinic in Witchita has set fees. Like em or go hunting for something cheaper.
 

trekrok

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Well, it's catastrophic because the $1200 per month payment for obummer care the wife had required a 10K deductible, so basically we were on our own to pay what ever the medical facility wanted to charge.
The clinic in Witchita has set fees. Like em or go hunting for something cheaper.
Yeah, I like the idea of it. There's an outpatient surgery place in OKC that does something similar for a lot of normal surgeries. The problem for is that none of the options get rid of the need for an insurance plan as a backstop. And with obamacare, there aren't any options that really work. Similar to the policy on your wife, for us, an $8700 deductible feels like a catastrophic plan, but at $1350 month it's priced like it's actual medical insurance.
 

Raido Free America

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I have a very good Swedish friend. He has an AR15, hunting rifles and a Glock 19. He had to take classes, get a background check and has to keep them in a real safe in his home (no RSC). He buys his suppressors off the shelf at the hardware store just like a box of glue, no paperwork.

Now that that’s out of the way…

He makes around $100k a year as a robotics engineer. He pays 40% in taxes all in. For that 40% he gets:

100% medical with a $60 per year copay. Break a femur? $60. Get liver cancer? $60.

100% college tuition room and board included through masters degree. You must keep satisfactory grades or you are booted.

Heavily subsidized fiber internet (he pays $14 a month for tb speed). Heavily subsidized NUCLEAR power (he pays $30 ish a month in dead of winter) total electric homes.

Heavily subsidized dental insurance. He pays around $10 a month for dental. It’s Europe so a lot of people don’t carry dental lol.

Is that worth 40% taxes? I’m thinking maybe. As a father of 3 self employed my two big cost concerns are healthcare and college.

As our system stands now I’m on the hook for $37k out of pocket right premiums and copay for a bad Illness in my family. Thank God it hasn’t happened. We’ve been uninsured for 6 years. Then let’s talk college costs.

If $40k in taxes all in could cover all that? Yeah, I’m in!

Im not saying Sweden is a paradise they have their own problems but what I am saying is Americans are being bamboozled on healthcare by crooked politicians raiding the treasury and insurance execs!
Sweden has a BOOMING free market ecionomy, so they are a capitalist society, with many Socialist type programs. It takes a BOOMIG free market economy to pay for all these expensive socialist programs. The 40% taxes you mention is that just income taxes, or all taxes? I suspect we in the U.S. pay more than 40% total taxes, income, sales, road use taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, standing on my lawn taxes, etc. I think if you would investigate further you would find that total taxes is much more than that? I agree our healthcare/ health insurance system should be looked at closely, and has a lot of room for improvement. Finding politicians that don't like BRIBES from big health related Corpirations, and will do what is best for the American People, is not going to be easy! We have spent conciderable time in Canada, a great country, and people, that have many social programs, including socialized medine, They also have what is called value added taxes on EVERYTHING! The taxes are added at the source, kinda like our fuel taxes are here. EVERYTHING except Rx drugs, is at least twice as expensive in Canada as the US. Canadians that live close enough to the border, come to the U.S. and buy everything but Rx drugs, Americans cross the border to buy Rx. drugs. Many Canadians, that can afford to, come to the U.S. for medical treatment, I suspect they carry U.S. health Insurance even though they already paying for socialized medicine through taxes! Health care, drugs, hospitals personal, etc. COST MONEY, no matter how it is handled, the only choice we have is, do we allow the government to handle this ,or do we the people do it?
 

tiasman

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I Skyped with my Swedish buddy today and over some beers he gave me more detail on their tax. ONLY 5% pays for universal healthcare.

1. They have a capital gains tax of zero. Yes zero.
2. Corporate tax rate is 1.5%. Write offs are very limited.
3. Workers up to $100k pay 8.1% income tax, flat. It goes into the general fund. It goes up from there.
4. Employers pay 31.9% tax on salaries. 5% healthcare, 10% pension of which the employee controls 2.5%, the other 16% pays for the college, subsidized energy and internet, high speed rail, yada yada yada.
5. They have a VAT tax and VERY high gasoline taxes.

Now my buddy knows that Swedes make less because of the high taxation on salaries, thats why he says he’s taxed at 40%. Danes, Finns, and others make more but pay their own health costs and have more college loans.

He said that the horror stories about long queues for care, etc are anomalies. His mom got cancer 3 years ago and had surgery within 10 days of diagnosis and chemo for 8 months. She made a full recovery and paid a total of $120, $60 for each calendar year treatment took place in.

To me, these are interesting things to think about. And no they are not commies, they have free and fair elections with not only photo ID REQUIRED but also thumbprints. No mail in nonsense either. You can get your ballot by mail but if you do you have to take it to the courthouse to turn it in where you are thumb printed and ID checked.

We both agree that the population size of the USA would be the biggest obstacle to single payer here, but we also have the largest economy in the world per capita so the money is there to do it right.

Oh so European like EVERYONE gets 6 weeks PAID vacation a year by law and they are guaranteed to take 30 days a year in one block if they please, by law.

No I don’t want to move there it’s just a conversation.
 

Shadowrider

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snipped... they have free and fair elections with not only photo ID REQUIRED but also thumbprints. No mail in nonsense either. You can get your ballot by mail but if you do you have to take it to the courthouse to turn it in where you are thumb printed and ID checked.

Now I could get 100% behind this. How do they control their borders?
 

1shott

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It sounds great until you're 25 making 100k and then only making 60k, close to poverty in some states, because you have to subsidize Grandpa down the street with stage 4 cancer, and grandpa's 9 grandkids are going to college, which you didn't need because you are a farmer or a web designer, or a robotics engineer (hint hint), or some other field that you can teach yourself.

Some more fun facts:

Grandpa can't get in to an appointment for his cancer for 4 months because government is always fast like that, imagine in a country the size of ours instead of sweet little tiny Sweeden...In Canada it can be over a year before you see a doctor.
Grandpa has no teeth because under government rules it's cheaper to pull them than to fix them.
Grandpa can't view websites he wants because his internet is government controlled and "he shouldn't be looking at that".
Grandpa must follow every government rule and whim that would make the sheeple feel better, such as mandated vaccines.

And for that same 40 thousand dollars here? You can put your own kid through a very expensive college (most in Oklahoma are around 20k/year or less), you can pay for insurance, which is paid by the government if you have a business making a profit, you can pay your 2800.00 deductible, get a full mouth of teeth put in and drink as much cappuccinos in the dentist's office all day, hire hookers and snort blow like a madman for a month, and still have enough left over to take your kids and the neighbor's kids to Disneyland for a month.

Every year.

Even with things being horrible right now, America is still the best place on the planet to live. We just have to make sure we get our butts to the ballot box and fight hard to keep it that way.

If you have ever paid medicare and social security taxes, you are already subsidizing grandpa down the street with stage 4 cancer, you are also paying for collage for illegal border jumpers, as well as their free health care, housing, food, clothing and free transportation to all points in the country, as well as all of the "muh disability" scooter riders you see at walmart and other places.

Not everyone has great medical and dental insurance, mine is decent but the copays and deductibles are higher than I like but the next plan up my employer offers has only 10% less in copays and deductibles but at double my out of pocket.
My vision insurance is awesome tho, even my doc is impressed with the 0 cost to me for glasses and the exam.

Dentist are just golfers with a hobby.

I laugh at the ballot box statement, after the 2020 presidential election, anyone who thinks we can still make a difference at the ballot box has their head in the sand, IMO. The left openly committed massive voting fraud and the courts and media openly supported

Its going to take more than casting votes to get us out of this mess, and it wont be pretty if it happens.
 

1shott

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That’s fine. You are whining on the internet about not being able to support your family, I am not. If you cannot afford something there are 2 options. Don’t buy it or increase your income. Pretty simple. Asking someone to charge less for the service is an option, but just because they don’t want to cut their fee is no reason to get upset.

I happen to know tiasman. I do not see him whining about not being able to take care of his family at all.

He supports his family on one income, his. His wife is a full time homemaker and has home schooled their 3 children for a few years.

So he must pull in a very good income to afford the house they live in, the vehicles they drive and the lifestyle they chose to live.

He is also a USN vet and his oldest son is in the US Army.
 

JD8

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I knew when I posted the Swedish example I’d get a “why don’t you move there” B.S. response.

And the whole “this is the best country” lecture. I’m a USN vet that visited 5 continents including some of the worst shitholes on earth. You win the lottery of life when you are born in America.

Just because I want to talk about our problems and possible solutions does not make a commie America hating demon.

I happen to be a patriot that thinks the USA can do things better than anyone anywhere.

Maybe the few govt options for healthcare that we have are junk because we are doing it half ass?

There has to be a better way.

There has to be a better way for sure, it's just fully trusting the government with our healthcare ain't it. THEY are the ones that screwed it up.

The Swedish example is a retarded comparison because we don't compare with Sweeden considering all sorts of metrics.
 

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