Anger at Health Insurance Prompts the Public to Fund a 9-Year-Old's Bionic Arm (yahoo.com)
- Reference: 0175781811
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/12/29/0213248/anger-at-health-insurance-prompts-the-public-to-fund-a-9-year-olds-bionic-arm
- Source link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/anger-health-insurance-prompts-public-170049831.html
> The bionic arms are manufactured in Britain and cost about $24,000, but the Batemans were hopeful that their health insurance company, [3]Select Health , would pay for one for [their 9-year-old daughter] Remi. Remi said she tried using one of the robotic arms for a few days in Colorado and was thrilled to cut her food with a knife and fork for the first time and carry plates with two hands. "I loved it so much — I could function like a full human," she said. "I was able to steal my dad's hat. When they fit me for my arm, I told them I wanted it to be pink."
>
> On Oct. 1, the Batemans sent a prescription for the robotic arm and office notes from Remi's pediatrician to Select Health for approval. One week later, their request was denied, Jami Bateman said. "They sent us a letter saying it was not medically necessary for Remi to have a Hero Arm and that it was for cosmetic use only," she said. "We appealed twice and were again denied."
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> "It was very upsetting, and Remi cried when I told her, because we'd all been so hopeful," Bateman added. "It broke our hearts." In mid-December, a frustrated Jami Bateman tried an approach she'd seen other people use when their health insurance failed them: She started [4]a GoFundMe for her daughter, hoping to purchase a robotic arm through the kindness of strangers.... Bateman was stunned when friends and strangers chipped in more than $30,000 in just a few days, surpassing the family's $24,000 goal. People who donated understood the Batemans' predicament, and many were furious on their behalf.
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> As donations poured in, the Batemans received a call from somebody else who wanted to help. Andy Schoonover is the CEO of [5]CrowdHealth , a subscriber-based resource that helps people negotiate lower costs for medical bills. He told the family on Dec. 16 that his company wanted to pay the entire cost of Remi's bionic arm. "We were looking for some ways to help people during the holiday season, and I stumbled upon Remi's story on social media," Schoonover said. "We were honored to help her out...."
>
> Remi quickly came up with an idea. "She came to me and said, 'Mom, I know how it feels to have one hand. Is there someone else we can help?" Bateman recalled. She said she contacted Open Bionics and learned there was a long list of children who had been turned down for Hero Arms by their health insurance companies for the same reason Remi was denied...
Somewhere in Maryland, the mother of a 9-year-old boy born without a left hand suddenly got a surprise phone call explaining Remi's decision. "I was so proud of Remi that I immediately started crying," she said. "She wanted to give my son an opportunity that I was unable to give him. It just touched my heart."
They had been trying to raise money by running a lemonade stand. But yesterday [6]Remi's GoFundMe page posted an update . The 9-year-old boy's arm had now been paid for.
"And maybe, if more donations roll in we can help a third child!"
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/anger-health-insurance-prompts-public-170049831.html
[2] https://openbionics.com/hero-arm-overview/
[3] https://selecthealth.org/
[4] https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-remi-get-her-hero-arm
[5] https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/
[6] https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-remi-get-her-hero-arm
GoFundMe is magical thinking, not a cure (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like a random lottery windfall by happenstance than care for all of the desperation of millions of people who don't win big on social media pity/outrage. That isn't fair, good, ethical, or moral and a shame that more isn't done consistently for those in need. It's a sign that the over $50 trillion stolen by the billionaires needs to be returned and reinvested in the needs of the people so they aren't left homeless or impoverished to where they have to beg for help from strangers who also don't have much wealth either.
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Sorry to get in the way of your screed, but the ACA mandates that a percentage of premiums be spend on medical care (this is referred to as the Medical Loss Ratio within the law) so any approval made and paid is money that doesn't go towards some other approval. If this girl received her arm then there would only be someone (or even multiple people) who would be in the same situation.
I am not aware of the particulars beyond the summary, but perhaps I could try to reason out why this claim was denied. One
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but the ACA mandates that a percentage of premiums be spend on medical care (this is referred to as the Medical Loss Ratio within the law) so any approval made and paid is money that doesn't go towards some other approval.
Incorrect. The ACA sets a MINIMUM of 80% of premiums must be spent on care not a maximum. If they aren't meeting that ratio they would be forced to lower premiums or find a way to spend more money on their policyholders' care. The mandated ratio is nothing more than a cap on their maxi
Re: GoFundMe is magical thinking, not a cure (Score:2)
I am going to blow your mind. Insurance companies get to use the pre-discount amount when they claim their government regulated medical loss ratio is within 80% to 85%. And yes, those discounts are dynamically chosen every quarter or so so they exactly meet this rate.
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[1]GoFundMe "CEO": We Could Use A Few Fun One - College Humor / Dropout [youtube.com]
Some quotes from the video:
> I am the CEO of a popularity contest, where if you lose, you die
> How to make your cancer more marketable
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIsXEkR5OVs
Mental Health (Score:2)
Insurance Companies: "Yeah, screw your mental health"
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> Insurance Companies: "Yeah, screw your mental health"
And when those who have been handed a death sentence by insurance have nothing to lose, that can become “Yeah, screw your CEO.” Which was unfortunately confirmed for UHC.
Quite frankly, I don’t know how this many CEOs of insurance companies have survived this long given the average approval level. There is nothing more dangerous on this planet than a person with nothing to lose. Insurance companies pour fire on that problem damn near every day.
Re: Mental Health (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a bit mind boggling that insurance is required by law to cover gender affirming care, but not limb affirming care? I identity as wanting to have hands and feet.
Not heartwarming (Score:1, Insightful)
It produces RAGE. Billion of dollars per year paid in taxes and premiums to these insurance companies who spend all their energy figuring out how to make profit off peopleâ(TM)s suffering.
Re:Not heartwarming (Score:5, Interesting)
> It produces RAGE. Billion of dollars per year paid in taxes and premiums to these insurance companies who spend all their energy figuring out how to make profit off peopleâ(TM)s suffering.
What is ironic about this problem, is finding most offices accepting a reasonable cash price as an alternative. Now I don’t know if they technically take a loss from a business perspective or not, but the point is insurance can and has been made irrelevant by this alternative payment option before.
Perhaps we need to work with doctors offices and try and pay cash for everything. Doctors office sure as shit don’t want to deal with insurance any more than we do, so should be a win-win a lot of the time. Force insurance companies to do what they should be doing all along; compete for the best price.
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Do you know how GoodRX works? Its aligned with a pharmacy insurance company in order to tske advantage of contract pricing on drugs. Without paying anything you benefit from the same pricing that the pharmacy already accepts as fair payment from these companies. Obamacare was a fucking disaster. The first step should have been a 1 page law that prevented medical providers from charging uninsured any higher amount than they contractually agreed an insurance company as fair payment for that procedure. Would h
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You are hitting one of the realities.
People with modern insurance generally have no or little care or knowledge for what anything actually costs, nor any direct rewards for shopping around. It breaks the free market completely, so there are no inherent cost controls through competition. It is even worse when the only affordable insurance you have is your employer's. You have no real choice in the matter.
Insurance was never meant to pay for general health maintenance. It was designed, originally, to cove
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"Insurance was never meant to pay for general health maintenance. It was designed, originally, to cover catastrophic illness/accident."
Except most health care really is for random events, where you can't actually meet the criteria for a free market. Much of the rest is cases where the insurance company has an incentive to reduce future costs.
"Insurance companies *do* negotiate rates with providers. But they can't possibly do it as well as informed consumers."
That is completely implausible, since an insuranc
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> What is ironic about this problem, is finding most offices accepting a reasonable cash price as an alternative. Now I don’t know if they technically take a loss from a business perspective or not, but the point is insurance can and has been made irrelevant by this alternative payment option before.
> Perhaps we need to work with doctors offices and try and pay cash for everything. Doctors office sure as shit don’t want to deal with insurance any more than we do, so should be a win-win a lot of the time. Force insurance companies to do what they should be doing all along; compete for the best price.
It's called the concierge model, and it's been out there for years. I had a specialist who converted to that only. Pay him a monthly fee, and have unlimited access to his services. (He'd still bill your insurance company, but with a lot less concern about them ever paying). Unfortunately, that means paying the actual cost of services you need, no pooled with lots and lots of other people who don't need that same level of service at the moment. His monthly fee was about 50% of my take home pay.
The original i
Re: Not heartwarming (Score:2)
Most doctors do not take a loss when accepting cash versus insurance. Insurance requires accepting a dynamically allocated discount so that way insurance companies can meet their government mandated Medical Loss ratio of 80% to 85%. That's also if an insurance company decides to pay out.
Wipe out the Health Insurance Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
The welfare of the people is tasked specifically to the Government, not private entities.
End this scam and hang every healthcare C*O, every major shareholder, the lawyers behind it all, the lobbyists making it happen, and maybe we'll start seeing real change in this country.
Oh, and if you have Kaiser Permanente as your insurance provider - they're blatantly committing prescription billing fraud, and I have financial documentation via my bank to prove it.
Kill 'em all.
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> Kill 'em all.
I'm not sure that's a precedent you want to set. First it's insurance CEOs. Next it's people that work in oil and energy. Next it's people that sell pesticides or operate LLMs or high frequency traders or right wingers or that guy that threw you under the bus in workplace politics. And certainly OB/GYNs, leaders of the wrong religion, vocal atheists, etc.
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>> Kill 'em all.
> I'm not sure that's a precedent you want to set. First it's insurance CEOs. Next it's people that work in oil and energy. Next it's people that sell pesticides or operate LLMs or high frequency traders or right wingers or that guy that threw you under the bus in workplace politics. And certainly OB/GYNs, leaders of the wrong religion, vocal atheists, etc.
The problem is, that is the precedent he wants to set.
True, he doesn't think he'll be in any of the targeted groups.
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> True, he doesn't think he'll be in any of the targeted groups.
You have eight too many words at the end of that sentence.
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The ACTUAL problem, is not realizing the desire to hang CEOs in the middle of Town Square, is a SYMPTOM.
Try and realize that before CEOs start getting shot in the stree, oh. That’s right. My point has already been proven.
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Thank you for limiting that to 'major' shareholders. I have a fair amount of evil in my portfolio, on the grounds that "if I don't, someone else will, and I like making money". A variation of the tragedy of the commons, I suppose.
Anyway, I'd be happy to have those investments disappear as options (I'll simultaneously vote for politicians who promise legislation that counters my personal financial interest), but as long as they exist and are among the better investments, I'm going to keep investing in evi
Does nobody see the problem here? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a lot of problems in the American health care system, but this story exemplifies a particularly important one: everyone gets to move the goalposts.
Companies invent a new medical device (Goalpost gets moved). Insurance company denies claim for treatment (Goalpost gets moved). Groundswell of parent and public complaints [potentially] pressures company to approve payment (Goalpost gets moved).
But we have to do it, because "think of the children", right?
And all the while, insurance gets more expensive for everyone. Because, who really pays when we give bionic arms to everyone who has a need for one? Everybody, because everybody pays for insurance.
Ladies and gentlemen, America's health care system is the Titanic, and we all know where it's headed. I started negotiating with a union 20 years ago, and our biggest concern at the time was back-to-back 15% increases in health insurance premium rates. Back in 2004, our premium was $300 a month. Doing some quick math, I predicted a continued 15% increases in premiums set against 2.5% increases in salaries would lead to premium costs that were half our salary in 2037 and our whole salary in 2044. If a fresh-out-of-college math teacher could see that catastrophe on the horizon, I thought, surely someone would fix the problem before it's too late. Nope.
Unlimited exponential growth is unsustainable. Eventually, people will be priced out of paradise.
Until we have strict controls that put limits on what medical devices will be covered by insurance, and limit industries from setting ridiculous profit margins on devices because those costs are covered by insurance, industries will keep inventing more of them, and we'll all have to keep paying for them, and costs will keep going up.
Because "think of the children". And think of the insurance bills we'll be burdening them all with by continuing this unsustainable game of moving the goalposts.
Agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
I know the last time the government tried to tackle this problem, they got shamed into oblivion under chants of "Death Panels" from the public.
Yet Death Panels already exist. They're just called [1]"claims examiners" [bls.gov].
But until we put a limit on the price of a life, life will remain priceless. And so will wrongful death payouts.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/claims-adjusters-appraisers-examiners-and-investigators.htm
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> "There's a lot of problems in the American health care system, but this story exemplifies a particularly important one: everyone gets to move the goalposts." [...] "Unlimited exponential growth is unsustainable."
This.
I was going to post something similar, to get downmodded to oblivion. It is SO easy for everyone to spend every else's money. The reality, is that this child was born that way, never had a hand, and doesn't know any different. The insurance company is correct that it isn't medically nece
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>> "There's a lot of problems in the American health care system, but this story exemplifies a particularly important one: everyone gets to move the goalposts." [...] "Unlimited exponential growth is unsustainable."
> This.
> I was going to post something similar, to get downmodded to oblivion. It is SO easy for everyone to spend every else's money.
We have adequately proven that it is impossible to provide universal healthcare. No one can do it. It is simply not possible.
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> "We have adequately proven that it is impossible to provide universal healthcare. No one can do it. It is simply not possible."
Being possible isn't the question. Being affordable AND having innovation AND preventing over-rationing AND crazy waits.... that is something else.
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>> "We have adequately proven that it is impossible to provide universal healthcare. No one can do it. It is simply not possible."
> Being possible isn't the question. Being affordable AND having innovation AND preventing over-rationing AND crazy waits.... that is something else.
Whish is just impossible with more steps. The USA is not capable of insuring everyone. Universal healthcare is beyond our ability.
I could be proven wrong of course - hut our history says otherwise.
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Oh no, it could be done. But it would be a system with severely rationed/limited and price-controlled care. Most innovation would be lost, most new drug development and advanced treatments would stop, and the care would be very basic and take forever. Unless outlawed, anyone with any means would then have to pay for real care or real insurance. Many other countries have that model, and they have been benefiting from the USA's research, innovation, and products... once that stops here, they will suffer e
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Everything else was paid out-of pocket by consumers with lots of choices/alternatives, feedback, and transparency about what they are buying and what it costs; so they shopped around carefully and kept prices lower.
That's the way things still are in many parts of the world. In the Philippines, there are private health care systems where everything is charged up front. I was taken to one about a decade ago, and I paid $12 to enter and meet with a doctor. My doctor ordered a chest x-ray. I was directed to
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And all the while, insurance gets more expensive for everyone. Because, who really pays when we give bionic arms to everyone who has a need for one?
This is not why insurance is expensive. Bionic arms are not new, and 30K is not a high priced medical procedure. $30,000 is about equivalent in cost to a one-day hospital stay with any common surgical procedure.
It is why insurance is expensive (Score:2)
It's expensive, because nobody sets any limits.
$30,000 is not expensive for one person. But we're not limiting this to one person, nor are we limiting the cost. Why not add more features and options and raise the cost to $300,000, or three million?
With no limits to prices, prices know no limits.
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You seem to be arguing that [1]if something doesn't exist, it isn't needed. [wikipedia.org]
I think the real problem is that the increased productivity from innovation mainly benefits the people at the top and doesn't trickle down. In other words, health insurance isn't good enough, we need something non-regressive like Single Payer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Luddism
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> And all the while, insurance gets more expensive for everyone. Because, who really pays when we give bionic arms to everyone who has a need for one? Everybody, because everybody pays for insurance.
What a crock of shit. [1]https://www.macrotrends.net/st... [macrotrends.net]
They could pay for a 100,000 bionic arms and still turn a profit. Hell at that rate you'd get a better volume discount.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UNH/unitedhealth-group/net-income
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People hate the heartless math, but you sit down and figure out what an average human life is worth, then you figure out the costs of having them continue without help. Medical care up should be funded up to that calculated cost without question. It's just sound financial planning at the society level.
Sure, sometimes you're spending money on somebody who will never be productive enough to make it back, but you'll also be spending money on people who would have made it back regardless. It evens out.
Now, o
Anger directed at healthcare CEOs is justified (Score:5, Interesting)
Healthcare insurance in US no longer operates as insurance - where risk is distributed across a large pool of people. Instead, it is aimed at minimizing payouts by all means possible and in doing so clearly crosses moral red lines and likely legal red lines. Personal risks to decision makers is one way to reintroduce accountability into the system. If I were on Luigi Mangione jury, I would push for [1]jury nullification. [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
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And why is health care system the *"insurance"* in USA? Health is not something I can (decide to) live without like my crashed car or burned house. I do not pay for Police Department insurance or Fire Department use insurance or "need to use public road" insurance.
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I've never heard of a place where the cops are optional, but fire I have. Don't pay your insurance, fire will respond only to protect your insured neighbors if your fire spreads too far.
Since fire doesn't care about property lines, I consider that absolutely insane, but it is the reality in some places.
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> If I were on Luigi Mangione jury, I would push for [1]jury nullification. [wikipedia.org]
If I were his lawyer, I certainly would. Not the right answer, but the jury may decide it's less wrong than any other option.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
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> If I were on Luigi Mangione jury, I would push for jury nullification.
The problem is that Luigi didn't have insurance issues, and even if he had, he didn't go after the CEO of the company that he did business with. He just got angry about his medical outcome (which sucked, medicine is not magic) and picked a target.
Now... he picked a good target. I shed not a single tear over that guy's death, he was an amoral bastard presiding over a company causing a lot of harm well over the acceptable line for a
Cheaper (Score:5, Funny)
"The bionic arms are manufactured in Britain and cost about $24,000"
The cost of bionics have come down a lot since Steve Austin's day.
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And for that price they only get a shitty looking plastic toy. As if for chemo hair loss they'd market anime or clown wigs. Now these customers still need to get medical silicone products to cover the prothesis ( [1]https://realfacemasks.co.uk/sh... [realfacemasks.co.uk] )
[1] https://realfacemasks.co.uk/shop/ols/categories/body--medical-silicon-products
Orphan Crushing Machine (Score:1)
Orphan-Crushing Machine is a metaphor for "heartwarming" news stories about someone remedying the immediate effects of a sociopolitical issue that ignore the root cause of said issue. The catchphrase and metaphor satirize these stories by comparing them to a story of a person raising money to keep 200 orphans from being crushed where nobody questions why an orphan-crushing machine exists in the first place.
Already seen the commercial (Score:2)
Not sure about the funding, but wasn't this bionic arm created by a high school kid with help from Meta's LLama 3 AI? I saw it on the TV commercial: a fully functional exo-skeletal prosthetic arm and hand, sort of a web of lit-up smart material, perfectly articulated and controlled by your natural brainwaves (picked up and read at the the stump attach point). Just stick it on a stump and you're good to go! It looks like fucking sci-fi and is about 60-100 years more advanced than what we had before Meta ca
You can keep collecting money like that â (Score:1)
⦠or, better yet, you fix your dysfunctional health insurance system in USA.
Itâ(TM)s truly perplexing why Democrats are not constantly smacking Republicans heads with it, just as much as Americans putting up with such a system failure.
Re:You can keep collecting money like that â (Score:4, Insightful)
Read the posts in this discussion. It is guaranteed you'll have at least a couple of posts arguing that this is the only way it can be, that it's the best method, etc. And if you tell them just to look at other countries who are doing it better, they'll deny or tell you that system just couldn't be implemented in the US.
Too many people in the US are indoctrinated into blind faith in a free market, imagining themselves to be temporarily embarrassed billionaires. Too many have Pavlovian training to react to anything 'socialist' as if that's the most evil thing in existence.
Americans put up with their healthcare system because it's what they want.
Wow (Score:2)
"...but the Batemans were hopeful that their health insurance company, Select Health, would pay for one for [their 9-year-old daughter] Remi."
Wow, the Batemans were dumb as fuck. They actually thought insurance would pay for this without a fight to the death.
There is no "health" or "care" in this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Please put these CEOs, COOs, and CFOs out of the collective misery.
The US has the worst healthcare of any industrialized nation, but worse than that, there's no HEALTH and no CARE in healthcare.
It's about maximizing the profit of the shareholders.
You know what? How about healthcare companies not being allowed to be a public shareholder owned company. Make [legislate]
them all to be public trusts... like utilities.
Revoke the publicly traded company status.
Remove the shareholders.
Kill the C-suite leeches.
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In other words healthcare in the USA has been shitty for ages. We pay top dollar and get bottom tier service relative to the rest of the developed word. Literally every other country with a functioning government has this figured out.
3D-printed -- OSS DiY (Score:2)
Would it be not cheaper to create GoFound to open source this and have it been build-able on demand? There would be tons of people wanted to help beyond money.
In related news ... (Score:2)
... SeectHealth board of directors approved the allocation of $10 million to cover the costs of a security detail needed to protect the company officers.
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Yeah, terrorism has worked out so well in the past, for everyone who has ever tried it.
And the CEOâ(TM)s heart swelled up three time (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they still donâ(TM)t have to pay for the damn arms.
We need to raise GoFundMe funds to lobby Congress to pass universal healthcare.
Re: And the CEOâ(TM)s heart swelled up three (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, we need employers to stop forcing us into crappy plans. The government can play a role here. Make the market for health insurance work better and give people better options for using those employer funds to save up money tax free in health savings accounts. Don't require minimum withdrawals under a certain age so people can save up while they are healthier.
The employer's HR benefits administrators choosing the cheapest plan or the one with the best sales team isn't a free market and doesn't put the decision making into the hands of the people actually using the health insurance.
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Already Universally Mandatory thanks to OsamaUncare...
Re: And the CEOâ(TM)s heart swelled up three (Score:5, Informative)
> Already Universally Mandatory thanks to OsamaUncare...
For all intents and purposes, it is not mandatory. It's a mandate with no penalties for noncompliance. Have you forgotten that Trump's Congress from his first term defanged it? The penalties from the personal mandate were eliminated, turning it into a personal choice. If you have a policy solely because of the ACA, you are doing so by choice.
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OsamaUncare
And that, right there, is why nobody cares about you shit-eating Crossburning Inbred Klan Fuckboys.
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FREE CLUE:
If it require someone ELSE'S LABOR: It is NOT a right.
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Let's try some sanity on you: the way socialized medicine (Medicare and Medicaid are both socialized medicine) works is I pay in for you when you get sick or injured and you pay in for when I get sick or injured. his is also how private insurance works, except you're also paying for executive's yachts and multiple mansions all over the place. I'm not sure why you think I need, or you need, to pay for executives to have these things. You also don't have some degree of control over who gets elected to oversee
Re: And the CEOâ(TM)s heart swelled up three (Score:4, Informative)
> Slavery, KKK, Jim Crow
I love when people say shit like this while completely forgetting that both parties have done a 180. Democrats of back then are now republicans. The republicans of back then are now democrats. You do not get to pin political party wins or losses of 80+ years ago on the party today. Especially when those parties no longer stand for any of what they did back then.
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No, they have not. You fell for a line of BS no bovine has the capacity to excrete.
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You seem to be dropping cow pies just fine though.
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Yes, both the ideologies and geographic concentrations of both parties flipped. It wasn't a quick flip or anything - it took decades.
The Southern Strategy. Republicans wanted to seize control of the South. To do it, and to get the then racist democrats that supported slavery, they had to allow the racism in their party. Meanwhile, democrats were pushing those people out and moving more north. Check out a 1920s electoral map - red in the north, blue in the south. Current day is red south, blue north.
But, yea
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LEARN:
[1]https://accordingtohoyt.com/20... [accordingtohoyt.com]
[1] https://accordingtohoyt.com/2016/02/11/that-time-the-parties-agreed-to-switch-sides-by-matthew-bowman/
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When you look at the numbers it's all red states signing up for the affordable care act. [1]https://www.kff.org/affordable... [kff.org]
[1] https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/press-release/states-with-the-fastest-recent-growth-in-aca-marketplace-coverage-started-with-high-uninsured-rates/
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Well, you have a simple choice:
You can pay as little as $0/month for Medicaid or $25/month for private insurance, both of which you can afford. We then all pitch in and help you pay your medical bills when you get sick and you chip in when we need it. Minus Medicaid, this is largely how private insurance works. Again, you pay for me and I pay for you.
Pay $250,000 or more for that hospital stay when you need one. I doubt you have the cash on hand to do that.
Pick one. Meanwhile I have health insurance b
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Yes, we need employers to stop forcing us into crappy plans.
Or not pay at all if we don't want to. That money could be used elsewhere for something useful such as housing or food or retirment funding. Or, it could be invested and used as an emergency fund if needed.
Re: And the CEOâ(TM)s heart swelled up three (Score:2)
I am ok with an option out model for health like you can opt out of a 401k. But some minimum being required is probably more preferable overall. Most people need retirement savings beyond Social Security and will get sick before Medicare. Health Savings accounts should absolutely be an option to get whatever money the employer would have spent subsidizing the insurance plan.
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I see you have $250k to burn in the even of the need for a major hospitalization. Most people don't.
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Its the only insurance thats tied to your job. Its practically a shackle. When I go from one job to another my homeowner insurance doesnt change. My life insurance usually doesn’t change. My car insurance doesn’t change. Yet I have to weigh the health insurance in my decision to take a job. This had been the case since the 60s when health insurance started to be a thing. Congress, both parties, thinks its good to make the employer pay for it. This is a disaster. The easy button is pretax deducti
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Government provided health care has been found to work the world over in first world countries. No it's not perfect, but everyone gets a basic, decent, level of health care regardless of income and doesn't have to worry about the cost of it.
Private health care has failed.
Let's try the solution that's proven to work. It is extraordinarily dumb to keep trying the same failed "solution" over and over again simply because you want to keep voting for politicians that you secretly know are morons who hate you but
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> No it's not perfect, but everyone gets a basic, decent, level of health care regardless of income and doesn't have to worry about the cost of it.
Honest question, would a 9-year-old in Britain or Canada get a $24,000 bionic arm, or a cheaper alternative?
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> Because they still donâ(TM)t have to pay for the damn arms.
> We need to raise GoFundMe funds to lobby Congress to pass universal healthcare.
I’d rather raise funds to force Congress to vote for their own term limits. Starting to think that is how we will get universal healthcare. By getting the inside traders out of the fucking way, and providing the Medical Industrial Complex a lot less reasons to waste millions lobbying.
Congress. You’re there to serve, not make a fucking career out of it.
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> I’d rather raise funds to force Congress to vote for their own term limits. Starting to think that is how we will get universal healthcare.
California has term limits. It led to elected officials who aren't around long enough to learn the basic mechanisms of the state government, and cannot do anything without relying on nameless, faceless professional bureaucrats who are not accountable to anyone for anything. We also have the highest energy costs, especially gasoline (in a state where you either drive a car, or live in a cardboard box - literally), highest unemployment rates, highest housing costs, highest homeless rates, and worst business c
Growing pains (Score:3)
Hmm, children grow very fast. These prosthetics will be too small pretty soon.
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That's why you give them the cheapest, most generic prosthetics that are still useful to them. Maybe with expandable bits, maybe able to hand 'em down to the next kid when the current owner outgrows them.
Of course, "useful" is already an almost impossible barrier to overcome. A natural healthy human arm is a damn amazing tool, and can't really be replaced by strapping on a dead weight with a slow grasping device triggered by a muscle twitch sensor on a stump.
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They will need to be replaced with larger ones, eventually. Once the kid grows to a point where they are less effective than a new set would be or cannot be used.
They are in fact medically necessary to provide high-quality care for their condition.
And no you don't restrict them to generic inexpensive prosthetics, because that is a low quality of care.
And I would say the insurance company should have to pay for them -- that is their job.
The insurance company just doesn't want to pay money.
Skimping on necess
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Just because the US spends 2x as much on healthcare for similar outcomes as comparable countries doesn't mean the available money is infinite.
Somebody has to sit down and do the analysis to decide how the funds are best allocated based on cultural values, and ultimately nobody's going to get all the money to themselves. Somebody will be 'shortchanged', probably everybody to some degree.
Unless a prosthetic is 99.9% reusable and can serve multiple children in turn, it makes no sense to give a kid a top of th
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> Of course, "useful" is already an almost impossible barrier to overcome. A natural healthy human arm is a damn amazing tool, and can't really be replaced by strapping on a dead weight with a slow grasping device triggered by a muscle twitch sensor on a stump.
I know a guy (now in his 60s) who was born with no left hand. I knew him about a year before I realized it, because that was his natural state. He was so well adapted to it, that it wasn't obvious until he was trying to do something that really requires two sets of fingers (buttoning a shirt cuff, IIRC).
When he was young, he was fitted with what was then a state of the art artificial hand. He tried it, and it's been sitting in a drawer since. He told me once that the only thing he could imaging using it for
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> I agree that this rewards the insurance company for denying coverage.
I really don't get these 'GoFundMe' stories as 'feel-good' stories. Each and every one is about a massive failure. Sometimes it's a societal one, sometimes a personal one, but rarely is it just some random bad luck for which there were no reasonable financial precautions to be taken.
Every time you see a donation campaign for someone with a health issue, you should be ashamed of your healthcare system and angry at the people who keep
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> Hmm, children grow very fast. These prosthetics will be too small pretty soon.
I was thinking the same.
Was the insurance company wiling to buy a lower cost but less "cosmetic" prosthesis? If so then I can understand why a claim for a custom 3D printed prosthesis that cost $24,000 would get denied. There would likely be a claim like this every year until the patient matures in 10 years or so. That's a lot of money.
Wasn't there some news recently on hearing aids? The issue was that hearing aids cost a lot of money because they were regulated as medical devices versus something else.
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20,000 people paying into health insurance.
None of them ever sick.
And a little child needs a one time payment ... wow ....
The Awesome Country of gods Greatness.
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> If so then I can understand why a claim for a custom 3D printed prosthesis that cost $24,000 would get denied.
If it doesn't get denied, somebody will go into business making a $50,000 arm that's just a little bit better and then stir outrage when that is determined "not medically necessary." We simply haven't accepted any rational basis for what medical expenses are justified given cheaper alternatives etc.
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My god, how will a company like United Healthcare ever survive? [1]https://www.macrotrends.net/st... [macrotrends.net]
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UNH/unitedhealth-group/net-income
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Not universal healthcare.. We need a law that Penalizes all improper denials by insurance companies with Treble damages plus all litigation costs and additional penalties and sets the default legal presumption that all Denials by an insurer of procedures prescribed by qualified medical professionals are both improper + in bad faith, and if the denial was actually merited they can try to prove its legitimacy.
.
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Not that extreme, just when the doctors say it's a necessity, in general the insurance company pays for it.
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> Because they still donâ(TM)t have to pay for the damn arms.
> We need to raise GoFundMe funds to lobby Congress to pass universal healthcare.
I've said this for a long time. Given that the government runs on baksheesh, the people can band together and buy some politicians. Once you own enough politicians, they will obey.
Good luck raising half a trillion (Score:2)
That's how much the private insurance companies spent on lobbying The last time we did significant health care reform.
Universal healthcare would require a fundamental change in our culture. The idea that you shouldn't have to pay for somebody else to have something would need to go. The argument that universal healthcare makes doctors slaves would have to be seen as ridiculous by the majority of the population.
It's tough to do that because there's an animal instinct for fairness that can be exploite
Re: And the CEOâ(TM)s heart swelled up three (Score:2)
Can someone please explain what "Select Health" is? Did they mean "SelectHealth"? Yes, these sorts of things matter, they managed to get the spacing on that CrowdWhatever company correct...