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Re: I'm curious....$$$....£££....$$$.....trigger.. » ronaldo

Posted by yxibow on December 19, 2006, at 20:57:00

In reply to I'm curious....$$$....£££....$$$.....trigger.., posted by ronaldo on December 19, 2006, at 13:25:14

You would not want to know how much my health costs are. For obvious reasons I will not mention the name of the company and I don't think anyone should mention either.

I am lucky that Clinton (however you like or hate what he does with his willy) passed HIPAA because as I exhausted COBRA and am now on what we will refer to as Company X PPO under HIPAA.

Company X PPO allows me to go to any doctor I want to but their tier doctors pay more. Company X pays a paltry amount for certain tests done during a physical and even worse outside of.

PPO -- payer provider organization is different from an HMO in that you have higher upfront costs but you can waltz into anywhere and get some coverage. They love their own choice clinics because they pay most for emergency clinics

Company X costs many thousands a year in deductibles and expenses.

Drug Y can cost as much as 100+ for a copay.
Generic Drug Z may only cost 15 to 30.


Basically the insurance is there if someone runs me down because then Company X will pay for most of a hospital visit especially at whatever hospital they don't have a p*ing contest with (that goes for HMOs and PPOs in the US, contract costs from the bean counters at all companies, not just company X). But that's what it is most important for, stopgap disastrous intensive care coverage with N million lifetime cap.


NHS is more like an HMO and has from what I know cranky doctors who hate benzodiazepines. Other than that, England regulates drug costs like Canada and I think some other Commonwealth nations so you will get drug Z at 7 quid unless its something esoteric/private.


Its remarkable the system even partially works and politically I wish we had some sort of a system -- it could be public-private, but more regulations on medical care, especially mental health care which with some HMOs is contracted out to other organizations and have nasty small caps placed on the amount they will pay out for mental hospitalization.


I like the way Canada manages their health care, though I know very much about triage, I used to have a relative in Canada, and I know it wasn't perfect and had to take out American insurance to do certain waitlist procedures.


Now from this I'm sure we'll get donkey and elephant arguments, but I think its neither, its the dignity of people with the stigma of mental health care somehow put on a different tier even though the vast majority of all of it are biological, born causalities, just like diabetes I, or MS, or any life illness. [end soapbox]

-- tidings

 

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Psycho-Babble Medication | Framed

poster:yxibow thread:715014
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061217/msgs/715122.html