joether
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Joined: 7/24/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: RottenJohnny
Well, if we can just through around impossible ideas, Ken, then here's a few things I'd like to suggest:
How about we throw around practical ideas?
Oh wait, you would have to read the ACA in order to know why those practical ideas are needed or useful on the context of the ACA.
quote:
ORIGINAL: RottenJohnny
1) Outlaw health insurance altogether. Make the entire medical industry work with the cash people have in their pockets instead of feeding from gigantic pools of insurance money. Hopefully, this would have the effect of crashing prices across all sectors.
Firearms will be outlawed long before health insurance in this nation. If the entire medical industry operated solely on a 'cash on hand' practice, most of them would fail within a few years. The others would become over loaded by the sheer weight of people. To say this would be in the opposite direction of current law would be an understatement. Would be like the US Government ignoring the 8th amendment because it was more convenient.
Yes, I agree the industry would crash, taking a few other industries with it. In a few months, many other industries crash. Then the nation's economy crashes like the Great Depression.
Yeah 'great idea' you have here. I'll put it on the list of 'Things to do for the nation' just after 'Nuking It to see the glow'.....
quote:
ORIGINAL: RottenJohnny
2) Restructure the banking system so that any type of individual account automatically comes with a tax free health savings account that cannot be accessed by any creditor to pay other debts. Put a limit of $100,000 or so and allow it only to be used for medical expenditures.
So all accounts become tax free health saving accounts? Gosh, how quickly could the 1% abuse this one......
This $100,000 assumes one has $100,000 in their bank account. Most Americans do not have even $15,000 in their bank accounts at any one time. The minority may have that or more, but its used for several purposes and not just for healthcare related expenses.
Finally, before the ACA, the leading cause of bankruptcy was due to medical bills. And what happens after that medical bankruptcy? You are nearly penniless, STILL, suffering what created all the medical bills, and now you have to pay for seven years (metaphorically over a barrel) or be totally destroyed financially for the rest of your life! Your REALLY not solving problems here....
quote:
ORIGINAL: RottenJohnny
3) Allow people to finance the costs of more expensive medical procedures. Let banks compete for financing or create an entirely different financing industry. Allow payments to be based on a person's income instead of some corporate calculation.
People already do this, insurance or not. Your not really suggesting something new or useful here....
quote:
ORIGINAL: RottenJohnny
4) Change the patent laws for pharmaceutical companies so they get a longer period to recoup costs for drug development. Set drug prices based on poverty level income numbers and adjust patent lengths to compensate.
A drug company states that a drug cost them $9 Billion over ten years to create. That's $900 million per year, right? Yet, the company makes $14 billion grossing each year. That means over the same time period they collected $140 Billion in gross earners. Depending on its expenses, that is still a hefty amount of money left over for investors. The drug companies right now, want tighter controls so they can 'recoup' their 'loses' on the backs of Americans whom make quite a bit less than even $1 million a year! That is what your 'arguing without realizing' in your first sentence. Are you REALLY going to assume the company incurred a realistic hardship of an expense that cost them $9 Billion and they gained $140 billion from?
Wish I had financial problems like that....
Drug prices are set accounting to the market. And if there is a generic that does the same thing for less money....
Of course that is misleading, since the company sets the price according to how much they think people will shell out for the drug. In micro economics, one learns the 'Supply Curve of Illegal Drugs'. The supply is simply a vertical line while the demand is a curve. Meaning if you need it, they can charge whatever they want. This concept applies to legal drugs as well! Because if your taking a medication for a heart condition; you'll pay seven times the price, if the company raises the price, otherwise you'll die painfully.
To say the door is open to unscrupulous prices should regulations ever be loosen or removed by the GOP/TP, is an epic understatement!
quote:
ORIGINAL: RottenJohnny
That's just some quick thoughts on the subject. I didn't really bother to flush them all out. But at this point, given how screwed up the system is, it seems to me any idea is worth consideration. 
I'll give you an 'A' for effort if that helps? But your ideas need...ALOT...of work just to be feasible. The ACA was not designed to solve every problem currently facing the nation. It was created to help many major problems from a logistics stand point. From the common consumer, to insurance companies, and into the judicial branch of government. And there are major problems existing in the nation that the ACA could not realistically cover.
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