Michael Moore's Latest Target: Your HMO

Sammy Baugh Fan

Subject matter aside that guy makes me sick. He's a jerk.
My Humble opinion.

You may now continue OnTopic.

peace

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Mattyk

What's worse though... him or the sad state of our nation's health care?

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BDBohnzie

That's thing catch-22 about Michael Moore. You don't want to like the man, but you end up respecting what he does to open your eyes to the world without the rose-colored glasses. I can't stand Moore, but because of his controversy, you tend to see things a little bit differently.

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dmek25

why? he may go about his business alittle unusual, but i like how he mixes truths and half truths

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Southpaw

I can't stand Michael Moore because he twists facts and flat out lies to make his point, but I would love to see him to take a shot at the healthcare system because for whatever reason, he ruffles the feathers of the decision makes.

I have a friend who has to take Rhemicade for a condition. Rhemicade is an intravenous drug that he gets every eight weeks and basically allows him to live his life normally(lift weights, rock climb, etc). Without it, he'd be in extreme pain and his joints would lock up. The cost of this wonder drug is $20,000 per treatment, for 32oz of liquid that is very easy to synthesize and mass produce. Fortunately, he has very good insurance that covers it, but what about people with poor or no health insurance? I'd be willing to bet that if you don't have health insurance, you can't afford 60k-120k per year to be able to live like everyone else.

Schneed10

Ugh. I'd love to go toe to toe with this douchebag in a healthcare debate.

First I gotta say that the American healthcare system is pretty busted up. But you can't blame the HMOs or the drug companies for that as Moore does in his film. The HMOs don't pull mad profits from their business. It's a low-margin business.

I can see an argument against pharmaceutical companies to some extent, because they pull in massive profits. But you can't get all up in arms about one particular drug costing an insane amount of money. People like to say oh well that drug only costs $10 to make and they're charging $100 for it. Well that's because they spent $80 researching other possible drugs and vaccines that were deemed either ineffective or unsafe by the FDA. Pharmeceutical R&D is a huge expense and has to be factored into the equation for the drugs that do actually make it to the market.

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Beemnseven

What's "sad" about our health care system?

Schneed10

The fact that if you come to my hospital for an emergency appendectomy and you have a PPO or HMO with Aetna, we'll get paid about $3500 by your insurance company.

If you come in with Cigna, your insurer pays us $6000.

If you don't have insurance and you come in for the same emergency appendectomy, we'll charge you $150,000. You probably won't pay it, but we'll probably force you to give us at least $20,000 and call it a day.

All for the same procedure. So the worse your coverage is, the more your insurance company pays us. Then the crappy insurance companies have to pass the cost on to the people. In the end, only white collar employees with PPOs end up with affordable healthcare premiums.

I'm not kidding. It's common for hospitals to do; it seems unscrupulous but you can't even blame them because of the way the system is set up. If the hospitals don't get paid that well by just a few insurance companies, the cost of treating Medicaid patients would put us out of business.

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Schneed10

PS I work in hospital financial administration.

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Beemnseven

OK, I'm no expert in this field, so I'm genuinely confused by people who say that our health care system is broken.

In your example, is this a complaint by the hospitals and doctors that they should get $150,000 for such a procedure whether an individual is covered or not? Or do they honestly feel bad for the uninsured who have to come up with this cost?

Would the situation improve if the federal government allowed for individuals to deduct the cost of their health care coverage off their income taxes? Why don't we ever hear of an offer like this if the politicians are as concerned about the uninsured as they say they are?

Schneed10

No it's definitely not a complaint, it's a necessity for financial survival.

No, because the federal government would lose way too much revenue. They'd have to enact some sort of other tax to make up for it, lest we end up in an even bigger federal deficit than the one Bush has already pushed us into.

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Southpaw

For the record, the vast majority of drugs are insanely marked up. I understand that the research and development side is expensive, but look at cancer treatments, which have been basically the same for 20+ years. My father has been on aggressive chemo and radiation for several months now. He was getting one of each treatment almost weekly for a while, and racking up around $10,000 in bills per week. It's friggin ridiculous that people are being charged insane amounts of money for drugs that are easily mass produced and haven't changed dramatically for over two decades.

Mattyk

Plenty, where should we start?

Let me answer with a question, what's good about our health care system?

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