Does you agree or disagree? Why?

Question

Insurances guarantee high prices for medical treatment and medicines, making it unaffordable for those who cannot afford insurance, in my opinion..
Also I think insurance brings up to cost of healthcare because highly educated people must be hired to figure out how to fill out insurance forms that can be 160 pages long (Medicaid and other social plans), more people hired to manage accounts, more time is spent on charting than actually care (special wording must be used to qualify for reimbursements, but can discredit professional if used/taken out of context in court), the cost of investigating insurance fraud and the profits insurance companies much make to pay all of its employees and owners. All of this seems to me to have little to do with actual health care. I think the huge problem (affecting this generation worse than previous ones) is that insurance companies have taken over healthcare and often non-medical professionals are writing protocols and rules that are detrimental to the publics health and financial welfare.
Your thoughts and opinion on this are appreciated.

Answer 1

Yeah, that's a pretty good summary of the situation, but it is also the drug companies that set the price for many treatments and medicines, so it's not all the insurance companies "fault".

Answer 2

Insurance companies have NOT taken over writing protocols and rules that have anything to do with how your doctor takes care of you. What I get when I read your comments is that you don't really understand how insurance works, and therefore you're making a lot of assumptions. Anyone who thinks health insurance is not important is gravely mistaken. Ask anyone who's had a loved one treated for cancer for months, or even years. Without health insurance, the family would be bankrupt.

Insurance is expensive because HEALTH CARE is expensive, NOT the other way around. Insurers have to charge a lot of money for coverage because they SPEND a lot of money to pay medical claims. Have you ever seen an itemized hospital bill? It's not an exaggeration to say that some hospitals charge $8 for 2 Tylenol tablets, just like the ones you have at home, that came in a bottle that only cost $4.00 for the entire bottle. Why do they do that, when in fact they get the Tylenol even cheaper than you do? They do it because they can - people need health care, regardless of the cost. Insurance companies are just doing what they can to get by - to be able to pay the claims and their employees, and still make a profit.

Answer 3

There is a lot of unnecessary work and expense associated with private insurance companies and private health care. Most still require paper claims to be filed, reviewed and checks sent, doctors still write prescriptions on paper and people have to take it to the pharmacy to get it filled etc. Each year employers try to save money so they revise the coverage and booklets and forms have to be produced. It is outdated and error prone. The alternative seems to be some sort of government sponsored system. No forms, no checks, no rx pads, one system. Should everyone be covered? Have several different kind of coverages? We need to look at other models and try something different and better. But don't blame it on the insurance companies if you have coverage from your employer - it is the employer that chooses the coverage, deductible, copay, etc. They pressure the insurance companies to keep expenses low or they will take their business elsewhere. Insurance companies then design plans and service to meet the company's demands.

Answer 4

Well, for sure, when people don't "pay" for services, they don't shop around, and there isn't any "free market" competition to bring down the prices for the services (health care is what I mean by services).

So because MOST people have health insurance through their employer, or the federal government (medicare/medicaid), they don't CARE how much it costs for that open MRI, that's what they WANT. They're ENTITLED to it.

If you WANT to bring down the actual cost of health care, one way to do it is do a mandatory $5,000 deductible on maintenance stuff, and HSA's. THEN people will start CARING about it, because they'll be spending their OWN MONEY, maybe not even going to the emergency room for a cold! Things that people spend their own money on, they tend to take care of better, and shop more carefully.

I do disagree about the "highly educated people filling out insurance forms". I just had to preregister for my upcoming birth, and the moron who was trying to "help" me fill out the forms had NO idea what the actual paragraph said . . .when I told her what it was, she said, no, that's not it . . .I said, yes, that's what it means!! And she didn't even bother to read it. Sigh. So either the quality of "highly educated" people has dropped dramatically, or they're taking any warm body to help fill out forms.

Answer 5

One of the biggest expenses in the medical profession is mal-practice insurance. This is not driven by the insurance companies but by the plaintiffs attorneys who are so eager to turn everything into a class action law suit. You want to reduce the cost of medical care, limit class action law suits. Get rid of this litigation minded society that thinks everyone is entitled to free/easy money just because something rotten happened. I hate to say it....but sometimes sh*t happens and you don't get paid a bucket of money for it.