Health Insurance Eye Opener

I am not a fan of big government. I am also not a fan of the idea that everyone should be forced to have health insurance. I am especially do not have faith that our current system of government can be trusted to do what is right for the people and not the health insurance industry.

With all that said, this program has opened my eyes. I especially like the approach that Taiwan has taken to determining their own system based on research of other free countries.

The whole 1 hour program is available online. If you ever need health insurance, I would suggest watching the whole thing.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

And something to keep in mind. I really like a lot of these ideas, but from a personal financial standpoint, it will hurt my family as my wife is an RN and I work for a company that may only survive in a free market health system. Yet, I would still support a system that actually does what these other countries has done, even if it means we have to find other means of employement.

A few points from the show.

Germany has an administrative cost of 5.5%. The US has an administrative cost of 22%. That means 1/5 of every dollar spent in healthcare is used for non-health related issues. Billing comes to mind.

It also talks about how long it takes to see a doctor and how costs are controlled in each country.

great example... up here half the state in in danger of having to pay for out of network doctors this week. In other words Blue Shield (I think) is the exclusive insurance carrier of one of the hospitals. They can't settle into an agreement with the doctors, so they are going to make all the Doctors 'out of network' unless they settle before the end of the week. This would mean many many many residents won't have coverage unless they pay out of their pocket.

Did anyone watch the video?

I'm curious as too what you thought?

Atomm wrote:Did anyone watch the video?

I'm curious as too what you thought?

I'm sorry, I just never got around to it yet. This isn't a concern to me at the moment. Just getting back from the PA primary has given me a bad taste in the mouth.

Whats buggin' me at the moment is the price of gas. Maybe I should give up listening to radio during the day tho. Beck was going on about how it takes a years worth of corn to feed one man to make one tank of fake fuel. No wonder my grocery bill has almost doubled in the last couple of months, and it takes $80 to almost fill up my tank.

The crap doesn't burn as well, I'm down to 300mpt vs 350mpt last year. When is the US going to wakeup and take the lead again and quit pandering to the special interest groups.

Lead? It's all coming together now..... 😛

Lexx, I was all for ethanol. It was a mistake that I regret. Did anyone notice how the price of corn shot up when the government mandated ethanol production?

I'll take the rest of my comment to a new post.....

An interesting headline here. . .

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...286,print.story

I can tell you this happened with my sister. Her husband left her for awhile last year, and screwed around on her for the second time in 10 years. She got a divorce, but married him again a month later just because of the insurance.

He was career Army (my sister put in ~4years, minus a few months due to pregnancy), but he got out a couple years early during the Clinton administration. They offered him good bonuses to retire early when they were downsizing. One of the few downsides of this was that, instead of my sister getting lifetime coverage regardless of any divorce that may occur, her coverage ended when the marriage did. They didn't find this out until after the divorce, and this played a major role in her taking him back. She works 30+ hours as a teacher's aide, and is taking online classes to become a teacher, but has no insurance until she graduates.