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SternSkipper -> RE: GOP braces for Medicare blowback (5/28/2011 7:48:53 PM)
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quote:
Is it? Do you know how much it cost to provide? Do you know what services run up bills over $1 million in one year? (Lifetime max's under most policies had a provision to reset after a year of recovery) Do you know how most employer and union plans have dealt with the elimination of lifetime max's? (Assuming you don't know think "unintended consequences")
Well, if the medical insurance companies couldn't reign in their mushrooming costs, and health insurance reform is going to implode the system, why should the people paying premiums let you prosper. Dude, I'm from the Boston area. Partners, Harvard Pilgrim, Tufts, Fallon, Blue Cross, just to name a few... We have more stock symbols for healthcare corporations registered out of this state than anywhere else I have ever heard of. Even the grotesquely red Boston Herald throws the quarterly profits in our face 4 times a year and they are obscene when you compare them to a corporation operating at 100% profit. I must now about 30 or 40 people employed by health carriers and the lowliest of them, an assistant office administrator, has decent home in a nice neighborhood. And frankly, when I press em for details they won't come out and say anything devastating but they sure as hell don't act like they are practically a non-profit, like you're making out. So why not skip the part where we're supposed to believe the folks who've taken away a larger increase of our income than any of our other creditors have for the last 10 - 12 years (going buy when they when IBM started cutting bennies and blaming your industry).
There seems to be some kind of impression on the part of the people from the industry I hear bitching that we should hold the industry in some higher regard than say, the electric or gas or oil companies. Never gonna happen, not ever. Your company makes hefty profits just like all the rest of them. And do't get me wrong. I think you know from our conversations that I consider you a friend in this place and HONESTLY, I am neither picking on you personally, nor ever plan to start. But this was a HUGE problem for consumers when George "Leave the market to it's own devices and dodge any questions about it" Bushwas at the wheel for 8 years, and though I can't rememember being squeezed in the 90s, I also have to say that I worked for a 1300 employee company with a share price of $137 a share (so you KNOW they were taking good care of us during Shiva's)... And even then, the Clinton Admin saw there was reason enough for concern. The health care industry has survived rather well during this recession. I was told by a lady who is my former neighbor, whom I got tight with cause we were both single parents. And in fact she was a very helpful friend as I went through a big layoff, starting a consulting company, and even having to short sell my house. And she used to say "I am so blessed that there isn't much going on at my company other than them culling undesirables". And she had maybe 20 people in some kind of claims unit reporting to her. Lemme tell you, she did alright and still does... and if anybody wants to see where I lived before I had to start my own business and cut everything the fuck back. Load up google earth and PM me. I'll show you to within a 1/4 mile where my house was. I don't think there's many that lived in as pretty a spot as I did. And it wasn't free by any stretch of the imagination.
But health care companies really need to GET that it's either on their shoulders or on the Govt's because you CAN'T say that for the last decade the consumer isn't paying every penny they can afford. And if all the BS passed around by the so-called " free markets" blowhards is even vaguely true. It's clearly the responsibility of the medical industry to make their product affordable, or suffer the same rejection any other vendor in this economy faces.
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