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As someone said below, we should be embarassed we live in a society where someone needs to raise funds or go broke for medical treatment. I'm starting my own b

As someone said below, we should be embarassed we live in a society where someone needs to raise funds or go broke for medical treatment. I'm starting my own business and the cost of health insurance is absolutely insane. If we come to the conclusion that we want our fellow countrymen to die or go broke versus live healthy, I think we should just shut it all down and call it a day.

hippich 9y ago
Cost of insurance is just a reflection of cost of medical care. Nothing current government does affect cost of medical care. If anything, they suppress flow of cheap money to medical providers which only inflates its costs even more.
- bdamm 9y ago
  Not true; the government has an enormous impact on the cost of health care. The American health care system is enormously inefficient, costing almost twice as much for less effective care than most other developed nations. How can this be other than because of the government? One source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_systems_in_Canada_and_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_s...
  - hippich 9y ago
    Higher expenditure can be due less efficiency (btw, what we are going to do with all the inefficient people, pay them welfare?) or due more money spent on more procedures. Is it bad or good - I am not going to say.
- sp332 9y ago
  Cost of insurance is so unrelated to the cost of healthcare, that when my grandfather recently went in for a procedure, no one at the hospital could tell him how much it would cost. They just take the amount that was negotiated with his particular insurance company. Different people get charged different amounts, and there is no way to get a "quote" ahead of time!
- jrowley 9y ago
  Ignoring state specific insurance programs like medi-cal, medicare funded care for over 50 million Americans in 2015. To say the government doesn't affect cost of is care is a bold claim.
- criley2 9y ago
  "Nothing current government does affect cost of medical care" This is a shockingly ignorant statement, the kind of cheap criticism that comes from someone very far away. Did you know that CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) is the largest American healthcare payer? In 2015, private insurance total healthcare expenditure was $1,072.1 billion ($1.072T). But Medicare and Medicaid spent $1,191.3 billion ($1.191T). The federal government's ability to act a single healthcare purchaser larger than the entire private market has a dramatically large effect on the cost of medical care -- it suppresses as the rock-bottom CMS rates are significantly below private reimbursement. Of course, this only examines the impact of the federal government directly on the market as its largest participant -- it does not BEGIN to examine the massive statutory/regulatory influence the government has on the price of health care. >If anything, they suppress flow of cheap money to medical providers which only inflates its costs even more. It's the exact opposite. CMS/federal healthcare spending is the ultra-low cost one, flowing an enormous sum of cheap-per-person money to any service provider that will take them. It's the massively-inflated private reimbursements which service providers love. >The largest shares of total health spending were sponsored by the federal government (28.7 percent) and the households (27.7 percent). The private business share of health spending accounted for 19.9 percent of total health care spending, state and local governments accounted for 17.1 percent, and other private revenues accounted for 6.7 percent. https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta... The more you know.
  - tonyhb 9y ago
    It costs the UK £123.7b to run the NHS for a year: http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs America spends more than 7 times that for private health insurance. Something's wrong.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - hippich 9y ago
- thephyber 9y ago
  > Nothing current government does affect cost of medical care. Off the top of my head: * 68% of all medical costs in the US are borne by governments (MediCare, Medicaid, VA, public-sector employee programs). They aren't allowed to negotiate drug prices in effective ways, driving up their costs * Most health insurance in the US is employer-sponsored specifically because of Congress-created tax law. Without it, the individual market would probably be much healthier and more competitive. * Congress is responsible for legislation that forces all emergency rooms in the US to provide life-saving care to any person, regardless of their ability to pay. @see EMTALA [1] * "COBRA" [2] (pricy emergency health insurance coverage option after you leave an employer) was created by Congress. * Governments set laws which define how and when litigation can be applied to medical workers + hospitals. Legislators could decide to enact tort reform, should they choose to. * Governments control the medical licensing requirements and how graduates of medical institutions from other countries can work in US health care (they currently can't, for the most part). * FDA and other government regulators control how fast new drugs come to market (and can effectively price some potential drug makers out of the market). * Congress controls patent regulation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Omnibus_Budget_Reconciliation_Act_of_1985 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Omnibus_Budget_Re...
  - hippich 9y ago
    "current government does" i mean literally does right now. Everything you mentioned is either not going be significantly affected, or not affected at all by current government. In general I agree that removing taxation completely out of the picture as a way to to pay for medical care will make health market healthier. There are very little reasons to pay for routine family doctor visit, or x-ray via insurance.
mdorazio 9y ago
Exactly this. A big reason preventing me from quitting my day job and working on my side business full-time is cost of healthcare. When you have to pay the insurance premiums yourself and still end up with multi-thousand dollar deductibles, the prospect of losing employer-subsidized care is really hard to swallow. If Americans really want to support growth of small businesses, we need to seriously consider single payer.
- xenihn 9y ago
  >A big reason preventing me from quitting my day job and working on my side business full-time is cost of healthcare. Working as intended.
- virmundi 9y ago
  I did just that. You can quality for up to 700 in the ACA markets as long as you "make" 35k. If you make less than that, it shouldn't matter. Just pay your rates.
- fpgaminer 9y ago
  As far as I know * , you can write off your personal health insurance premiums as expenses on your taxes when you're filing as a sole proprietor or an SMLLC (and I assume something similar under S and C corps). So ... at least that's a ~30% discount. * Based on a little research I did; I'll find out for sure next April :P P.S. Another nice thing about going solo is your 401k. You can set up a Solo 401k, which has a MUCH higher contribution limit. 401k through employer is limited to ~14k, while a solo 401k is up to something like 50k. Plus, you get to pick your 401k provider, and as far as I could tell Solo 401k through Vanguard was _significantly_ better than the criminal fees I was subjected to under my previous company's 401k. This is all assuming your side business is successful enough to fill that extra 50k bucket :P
grondilu 9y ago
> I'm starting my own business and the cost of health insurance is absolutely insane. Why do you think that is? Why is medicine so expensive? Don't we live in a highly-technological society? Shouldn't the price of medical treatment follow the downward path taken by other technical domains, like computer devices?
- bitJericho 9y ago
  Because computers have made it easier for the rich to steal.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  In medical it's the other way.
- michaelchisari 9y ago
  Because medicine (and medical care) is considered truly inelastic. When you need it, you need it. There's no comparison shopping or waiting until you can afford it. The free market rules that work for consumer goods start to really break down for inelastic goods.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  You're paying for others using very cutting edge and expensive drugs, procedures, equipment, EOL treatments, etc. You're also paying for dramatically increased litigation risk faced by care providers, which is being passed onto you. You're also paying for intermediaries at each step in the care chain who believe they are entitled to healthy margins. If we want to make healthcare cheaper, we need to start by deciding who we want to take away from, whether it be EOL life extension (which tends to be way overdone), pharma profits, or taxpayer funds from whatever bracket you feel is right to take from.
- davidf18 9y ago
  Most of the healthcare costs come from lifestyle choices of smoking, overeating and lack of exercise, alcohol and drug abuse, guns. Other costs are from air pollution (asthma) and depression. Interestingly, people complain when CDC tries to implement public health programs that help to reduce unhealthy lifestyle choices (some call it nanny-state). But you can't complain about high healthcare costs and then not support the public health efforts meant to prevent it. Specifically, to lower health care costs from tobacco use, tax tobacco (which has over half the effect to get people to quit), ban smoking in public places, spend $1 or $2 per capita for hard-hitting, scary anti-smoking ads. Yet, the Federal Govt. has a roughly $1 tobacco tax. Many states have very low tobacco taxes. > Why is medicine so expensive? Medicine for most people with chronic hypertension and most people with high cholesterol is generic in the $100 per year cost range.

hippich 9y ago

Cost of insurance is just a reflection of cost of medical care. Nothing current government does affect cost of medical care. If anything, they suppress flow of cheap money to medical providers which only inflates its costs even more.

bdamm 9y ago
Not true; the government has an enormous impact on the cost of health care. The American health care system is enormously inefficient, costing almost twice as much for less effective care than most other developed nations. How can this be other than because of the government? One source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_systems_in_Canada_and_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_s...
- hippich 9y ago
  Higher expenditure can be due less efficiency (btw, what we are going to do with all the inefficient people, pay them welfare?) or due more money spent on more procedures. Is it bad or good - I am not going to say.
sp332 9y ago
Cost of insurance is so unrelated to the cost of healthcare, that when my grandfather recently went in for a procedure, no one at the hospital could tell him how much it would cost. They just take the amount that was negotiated with his particular insurance company. Different people get charged different amounts, and there is no way to get a "quote" ahead of time!
jrowley 9y ago
Ignoring state specific insurance programs like medi-cal, medicare funded care for over 50 million Americans in 2015. To say the government doesn't affect cost of is care is a bold claim.
criley2 9y ago
"Nothing current government does affect cost of medical care" This is a shockingly ignorant statement, the kind of cheap criticism that comes from someone very far away. Did you know that CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) is the largest American healthcare payer? In 2015, private insurance total healthcare expenditure was $1,072.1 billion ($1.072T). But Medicare and Medicaid spent $1,191.3 billion ($1.191T). The federal government's ability to act a single healthcare purchaser larger than the entire private market has a dramatically large effect on the cost of medical care -- it suppresses as the rock-bottom CMS rates are significantly below private reimbursement. Of course, this only examines the impact of the federal government directly on the market as its largest participant -- it does not BEGIN to examine the massive statutory/regulatory influence the government has on the price of health care. >If anything, they suppress flow of cheap money to medical providers which only inflates its costs even more. It's the exact opposite. CMS/federal healthcare spending is the ultra-low cost one, flowing an enormous sum of cheap-per-person money to any service provider that will take them. It's the massively-inflated private reimbursements which service providers love. >The largest shares of total health spending were sponsored by the federal government (28.7 percent) and the households (27.7 percent). The private business share of health spending accounted for 19.9 percent of total health care spending, state and local governments accounted for 17.1 percent, and other private revenues accounted for 6.7 percent. https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta... The more you know.
- tonyhb 9y ago
  It costs the UK £123.7b to run the NHS for a year: http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs America spends more than 7 times that for private health insurance. Something's wrong.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - hippich 9y ago
thephyber 9y ago
> Nothing current government does affect cost of medical care. Off the top of my head: * 68% of all medical costs in the US are borne by governments (MediCare, Medicaid, VA, public-sector employee programs). They aren't allowed to negotiate drug prices in effective ways, driving up their costs * Most health insurance in the US is employer-sponsored specifically because of Congress-created tax law. Without it, the individual market would probably be much healthier and more competitive. * Congress is responsible for legislation that forces all emergency rooms in the US to provide life-saving care to any person, regardless of their ability to pay. @see EMTALA [1] * "COBRA" [2] (pricy emergency health insurance coverage option after you leave an employer) was created by Congress. * Governments set laws which define how and when litigation can be applied to medical workers + hospitals. Legislators could decide to enact tort reform, should they choose to. * Governments control the medical licensing requirements and how graduates of medical institutions from other countries can work in US health care (they currently can't, for the most part). * FDA and other government regulators control how fast new drugs come to market (and can effectively price some potential drug makers out of the market). * Congress controls patent regulation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Omnibus_Budget_Reconciliation_Act_of_1985 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Omnibus_Budget_Re...
- hippich 9y ago
  "current government does" i mean literally does right now. Everything you mentioned is either not going be significantly affected, or not affected at all by current government. In general I agree that removing taxation completely out of the picture as a way to to pay for medical care will make health market healthier. There are very little reasons to pay for routine family doctor visit, or x-ray via insurance.

mdorazio 9y ago

Exactly this. A big reason preventing me from quitting my day job and working on my side business full-time is cost of healthcare. When you have to pay the insurance premiums yourself and still end up with multi-thousand dollar deductibles, the prospect of losing employer-subsidized care is really hard to swallow. If Americans really want to support growth of small businesses, we need to seriously consider single payer.

xenihn 9y ago
>A big reason preventing me from quitting my day job and working on my side business full-time is cost of healthcare. Working as intended.
virmundi 9y ago
I did just that. You can quality for up to 700 in the ACA markets as long as you "make" 35k. If you make less than that, it shouldn't matter. Just pay your rates.
fpgaminer 9y ago
As far as I know * , you can write off your personal health insurance premiums as expenses on your taxes when you're filing as a sole proprietor or an SMLLC (and I assume something similar under S and C corps). So ... at least that's a ~30% discount. * Based on a little research I did; I'll find out for sure next April :P P.S. Another nice thing about going solo is your 401k. You can set up a Solo 401k, which has a MUCH higher contribution limit. 401k through employer is limited to ~14k, while a solo 401k is up to something like 50k. Plus, you get to pick your 401k provider, and as far as I could tell Solo 401k through Vanguard was _significantly_ better than the criminal fees I was subjected to under my previous company's 401k. This is all assuming your side business is successful enough to fill that extra 50k bucket :P

grondilu 9y ago

> I'm starting my own business and the cost of health insurance is absolutely insane. Why do you think that is? Why is medicine so expensive? Don't we live in a highly-technological society? Shouldn't the price of medical treatment follow the downward path taken by other technical domains, like computer devices?

bitJericho 9y ago
Because computers have made it easier for the rich to steal.
maxxxxx 9y ago
In medical it's the other way.
michaelchisari 9y ago
Because medicine (and medical care) is considered truly inelastic. When you need it, you need it. There's no comparison shopping or waiting until you can afford it. The free market rules that work for consumer goods start to really break down for inelastic goods.
hkmurakami 9y ago
You're paying for others using very cutting edge and expensive drugs, procedures, equipment, EOL treatments, etc. You're also paying for dramatically increased litigation risk faced by care providers, which is being passed onto you. You're also paying for intermediaries at each step in the care chain who believe they are entitled to healthy margins. If we want to make healthcare cheaper, we need to start by deciding who we want to take away from, whether it be EOL life extension (which tends to be way overdone), pharma profits, or taxpayer funds from whatever bracket you feel is right to take from.
davidf18 9y ago
Most of the healthcare costs come from lifestyle choices of smoking, overeating and lack of exercise, alcohol and drug abuse, guns. Other costs are from air pollution (asthma) and depression. Interestingly, people complain when CDC tries to implement public health programs that help to reduce unhealthy lifestyle choices (some call it nanny-state). But you can't complain about high healthcare costs and then not support the public health efforts meant to prevent it. Specifically, to lower health care costs from tobacco use, tax tobacco (which has over half the effect to get people to quit), ban smoking in public places, spend $1 or $2 per capita for hard-hitting, scary anti-smoking ads. Yet, the Federal Govt. has a roughly $1 tobacco tax. Many states have very low tobacco taxes. > Why is medicine so expensive? Medicine for most people with chronic hypertension and most people with high cholesterol is generic in the $100 per year cost range.