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HarryHacker42 t1_je844j9 wrote

Reply to comment by blipsman in ELI5: What is Universal Healthcare by Thegreatcornholio459

Having health insurance not tied to your job means you can quit your job if they screw you over and still have healthcare. In the USA, many people are stuck at their job for their healthcare. Also, the average country similar to the USA pays HALF of what the USA pays per person for healthcare. It would save us trillions of dollars per year to switch to Canada's system, or Australia, or UK, or Europe, or pretty much anything.

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djamp42 t1_je86b33 wrote

It would be one thing if the current system actually worked well. But it's fucking horrible. I'm disputing a charge right now.

Insurance is saying the doctor needed prior authorization. My wife is actively having a heart attack in the ER on vacation at Disney world with my 2 kids. The insurance company couldn't even pronounce the name of the procedure that needed authorization. Like I'm not going to know that, I don't know if the Dr knows that, and it's against the law to deny me coverage for prior authorization in an emergency.. but they still did it.

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HarryHacker42 t1_je86tqp wrote

The whole USA system is designed to make it hard and charge you more, that's why we need to discard it and start over with another country's model as the goal.

They've found numerous insurance companies that had the policy of "reject every [nth] claim" such as "toss every 5th claim" so you get a rejection and either pay it or go complain, and if you complain, they'll usually pay it, but it is just to hassle you. And hospitals *LOVE* to have an out-of-network doctor visit and charge everybody huge rates the insurance doesn't cover. Its so bad they're making it illegal. There is nothing to fix, it needs to be replaced.

And worse, Christian hospital chains are buying up as many hospitals as they can get so they can deny abortions and contraception and anything they feel like.

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djamp42 t1_je877fn wrote

You might have something on that nth claim thing, because I had a bunch of other bills from that same event and they were all covered, even ones from the same doctor, but for whatever reason this one was denied.

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Superspudmonkey t1_je93wd4 wrote

Was that not what Obamacare was before it had to compromise to pass?

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roseumbra t1_je8xoan wrote

Sorry you have to deal with this. Honestly do what you can to tell the doctors office you Cannot pay them a dime before the claim is approved by insurance. They have staff designed to deal with this in ways you don’t have the years of training to. If you force them to tackle insurance with hard stops before they see a dime they will find a way…

It’s all about how the fucked up the coding when sending it. And this is why I hate the healthcare system.

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djamp42 t1_je97acq wrote

Yeah that coding shit is a disaster. The entire thing is a disaster.

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Unkindlake t1_je8olyp wrote

Why would anyone want the current system? Who could possibly have something to gain from tying healthcare to an employer?

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markroth69 t1_je8uf4x wrote

Employers who don't want to provide anything more than the lowest possible pay and some level of health insurance.

People who make money because of the current system.

And both groups can afford to buy Congressmen.

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Unkindlake t1_jebbn5l wrote

Of course they don't, but it is more sinister than that. They want healthcare to be tied to employment to limit your options in shopping for a better job and to leverage it to exploit their workers

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BlackEyedSceva t1_je8gb82 wrote

Do you know any sources I can look up and show people? I'm not sure where to look.

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HarryHacker42 t1_jeaa78s wrote

USA: 51st in life expectancy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

(Wikipedia has all the sources for the data at the bottom of the page)

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Per capita healthcare spending by country from 2021:

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#GDP%20per%20capita%20and%20health%20consumption%20spending%20per%20capita,%202021%20(U.S.%20dollars,%20PPP%20adjusted)

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1l536 t1_je98v0n wrote

The downside to that is I can see many hospitals closing because it would be regulated by the government and they would choose what hospitals could remain open.

You can not say it wouldn't happen because since when has the government ever walked away from an opportunity to screw the public over. I mean they are now trying to screw over veterans just like Canada.

They (elected officials) should have been forced to give up their healthcare when Obamacare passed, I think that they should be exempt from any laws they pass to us the citizens.

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HarryHacker42 t1_jea9glc wrote

I strongly agree that Congress should be in the muck with the rest of us, and their pensions and healthcare should be based on what the upper 50% of government workers get, so they have to lift up at least a huge chunk of people to elevate themselves.

The government has created the EPA, which helps the average American pretty often. The CFPB fights for citizens against banks every day. FEMA responds to disasters and does a pretty decent job of improving people's lives in hard situations. NOAA is so good at weather forecasting that private companies want to block it from publishing the data that they give away freely so those companies can publish it. California is guaranteeing school kids will have food. There is a lot of good government does. They're currently taking care of everybody over 65 years old for medical care, so extending that down to 55 or 45 would be a good test pattern, but in the end, insurance companies need to go away because they are what inflates the numbers, and we need to buy our drugs from countries who don't allow shameless profiting on drugs like the USA does.

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