Author Topic: ACA challenged again  (Read 25568 times)

Mr. Green

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Re: ACA challenged again
« Reply #100 on: September 16, 2015, 02:43:26 PM »

So first let's look at the fact that 35% of health care costs (17% instead of 11% of GPD) is spent on this crazy for-profit bureauracy.  All our premiums and healthcare expenses could be 35% cheaper if we had a sane system.

1) I don't believe there is 35% going to shareholders.     
You're right. It's more like 10-15% going to shareholders and 20-25% going into "infrastructure and technology" to hide that fact that their real profit margin is 30-35%.

forummm

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Re: ACA challenged again
« Reply #101 on: September 16, 2015, 03:41:54 PM »

So first let's look at the fact that 35% of health care costs (17% instead of 11% of GPD) is spent on this crazy for-profit bureauracy.  All our premiums and healthcare expenses could be 35% cheaper if we had a sane system.

1) I don't believe there is 35% going to shareholders.     
You're right. It's more like 10-15% going to shareholders and 20-25% going into "infrastructure and technology" to hide that fact that their real profit margin is 30-35%.
The amount going to shareholders is much smaller than that. The amount going to "overhead" is high. Much higher than Medicare. The medical loss ratio on private plans is 15-20%. It's about 3% for Medicare.
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/09/20/medicare-is-more-efficient-than-private-insurance/
http://www.urban.org/publications/411762.html
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-132R
« Last Edit: September 16, 2015, 03:44:01 PM by forummm »

forummm

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Re: ACA challenged again
« Reply #102 on: September 16, 2015, 04:05:41 PM »
This just in, number of uninsured in America drops by 8.8 million:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/us/politics/census-bureau-poverty-rate-uninsured.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

I went to grad school (health policy) back in 1994 and the uninsured was somewhere around 36 million at the time.  Despite all the hand wringing, Hillary's health care council (under Pres. Clinton), and political discourse the needle never moved in a positive direction and, in fact, just continued getting worse -- until now.

I think the gains for society will accrue, steadily, over time.  The ship doesn't turn quickly, but I have to say that this is an impressive step.
  It is just in, but from what I gleen from it, it is all 2013 and 2014 data written up and released Sept. 2015.
I did see it, so I wonder if the data included those that went on Medicaid.

The number is actually about 20 million overall with coverage because of the ACA including early 2015 numbers and the young adults in 2010. It's mostly from private insurance. I'm not sure why this Census report made so much news using older data.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur201508.pdf