That is a gross exaggeration. How much of it is malpractice insurance?
It’s not. Administrative costs in the US are generated both by the insurance sector (insurance companies, self-insured employers, and public programs like Medicare) and the provider sector (clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, etc.). Health insurer overhead is around 15 to 20 percent while the overhead of self-insured employers is 8 to 10 percent.
Malpractice, or defensive medicine, is only about 2.4% of total costs.
Anyone who believes any country’s medical care is better than US care regardless of what lists telling people otherwise, are deceived and falling for a lie.
That said, USA medical care is still a huge mess and this is because of politicians, greed, bureaucracy, the AMA promoting foreign doctors and limiting American doctors. And medical equipment companies and big pharma are con-men that triple, quadruple, costs routinely and in many times cost 800% higher. STOP it swine!
The key is training millions more, American doctors, Nurses and ancillary care and stop bringing in foreigners that grease corporate palms.
Medicare is a terrible bureaucracy that makes people sick just having to deal with them . It’s worse than the CA DMV. It needs fixing.
Leftists promoting illegal immigration are insane and makes things far more difficult for low income, real Americans.
Americans should have nursing training as part of all 4 yrs of high school. Take care of you own elderly at home. Selfishness is only going to bite you later. We have to get rid of the leftist mentality that poisons the well.
I live in Italy, we have a better overall health care system.
In terms of nursing training, people cannot provide full-time care their elderly parents. It’s a full-time job, not a hobby. I had a family member many years ago that took a leave absence to care for a dying parent. Even being there every day, 24/7, they had to hire a nurse at some point, once he really started to decline. We all cannot be P/T medical professions.
Start by banning surprise bills. If a hospital is covered by your insurance than every provider at that hospital should be
A couple of years ago I had a colonoscopy. The day before the hospital called and said that while they took my insurance no anesthesiologists at the hospital took my insurance. If I wanted th procedure I had to pay 2k out of pocket. Thankfully they let me know in advance but in a lot of cases te hospital doesn’t and you get a surprise bill for thousands
Community doctors, nurses and hospitals, Family based homecare needs to be the standard with strict restrictions on attorney and bureaucratic meddling and skimming money by middlemen, banks and leeches needs to stop.
Malpractice will stop with proper training and the right mindset of medical professionals. Costs of medical training need to stop being ridiculous. Attorneys too need to stop getting rich AND have a different mindset. Predatory occupations today, need to be abolished and convert to a mindset appropriate for helping professions, not scam artists.
It can take months in Italy to get appointments.
Yes. people CAN do it. With proper training,starting in High School, everyone can learn nursing.
24/7 care can by done at home, when family mindset changes. Yes EVERYONE can be made capable of taking care of their own elderly IF they are trained starting in High School.
Pervasive fear of the unknown and sheer selfishness can stop. It’s just ignorance, habit and rote behavior and greed, that blocks it.
There is nothing more important than taking care of your own elderly…at home. It requires a different mindset from the pervasive selfishness, fear and ignorance.
Um, that’s not true, nobody in my family waits months to get appointments. You’re being propagandized.
Some places, in the South, have had issues with wait times for non-critical tests. But that’s an issue of a lack of resources.
No, not EVERYONE has the inclination/desire/aptitude to learn 4 years of nursing in high schools. Taking care of mom and dad is one thing, being an RN is something compete different.
Everyone can be an RN, stop believing a lie. Start training first yr of High School including clinical hours. Imbed this into the culture. Even future MDs should learn nursing way before Medical school. Make them better doctors.
For anyone that deals with this, COPY AND PASTE THIS TO A WORD FILE>>>>
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Call the insurance company or Medicare and tell them you want to speak with the HIPAA compliance/Privacy officer.
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Ask for the names as well as credentials of every person accessing your record to make this decision of denial. You have a right to this.
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They will almost always reverse the decision at this point because most people accessing the records are not MDs or even knowledgeable about that field of medicine. They are just mining for code words for the most part, which is illegal.
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Any further refusal should be reported to the US Office of Civil Rights (OCR.gov) as a HIPAA violation.
Hope this helps.
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Excellent advice! Thanks for sharing Torey!!
Because profits. Insurance companies aren’t in business to help people. They’re in business to make money. Can’t make money if they’re always paying everyone’s medical bills, now can they? Even the government trough has limits, despite what you may have heard on this very forum.
Besides having a background in finance and economics, I never really knew how a single payer system operated until I packed up and made the move to Italy. I sort of knew the benefits of single payer from a theoretical and economics standpoint, but I never experienced it. I never talked about it with my family when I used to visit as a kid and teenager.
We have a card that is attached to the Italian equivalent of an SS #. You register with a local GP and that’s it. No phone calls with claims or confusing fine print. Or arguing with claims adjusters.
I’m pretty well-to-do here, not rich, but very comfortable. I own two bed and breakfasts, and a small hotel in Mestre (by Venice), but back in the US, with the wife and five kids, I would have been paying over 5K per month. We also have private coverage through my S.p.A. (Italian versions of an LLC) but we’ve used it twice in six years for dental. And this enables us to save more $$$ too.
Italy is not as wealthy as the US, we’re like the 7th/8th largest economy in the world. Not too shabby, but not in the same universe as the US. If we can marshal the resources for universal coverage, the US can do what we do and better, since you guys have an ABSURD amount of resources.
We could. There simply isn’t any money in it for Big Pharma and the insurance industry. Have to remember, if we were to implement single payer, there would be tons of jobs lost in administration alone. Can’t have that.
Medicare and Medicaid have the highest turn down rates of all “Health Insurance” and you can damned well be dead before an appeal is even reviewed.
Well…you could just hire those key people into HHS.
If the health insurers were put out of business, that would also be deflationary. 1 trillion would be removed from the economy and taxes would probably need to lowered. lol.
We only care about lowering taxes for the upper class now. Government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy.
That’s a problem. At some point the current system in the US will become politically untenable. One would think.
Not sure how. Our entire economy is based on debt these days. The wealthy are hoarding their cash while the poor are getting more and more credit. There are ads here about getting sidegigs to pay for housing in my area. Clearly, working full time at a decent wage isn’t enough anymore. I’m sure greed has nothing to do with it though.
85% of Americans shared in the Trump tax cuts, get some new material.
