Sachs Support Occupy Wall Street Movement; Goldman Pissed

[Tupac Shakur]

Please call it "Obamacare." Even the acronym for "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)" is unwieldy.

[Lorizael]

Where do lifestyle changes fit into the scheme of preventive healthcare? Take my father, for example. He's 62, he's had 2 heart attacks and open heart surgery, and he takes a ****ton of pills every single day. This costs approximately 1 ****load of money. But if when he was 22 a doctor had told him he should stop eating bacon, start exercising, and bla bla bla, he may have avoided heart disease all together. And it would have been significantly cheaper. Does this count as preventive healthcare? After all (in this scenario), it was a doctor who told him to change his ways.

[Lorizael]

Please call it "Obamacare." Even the acronym for "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)" is unwieldy.

I prefer the term Romneycare. Or Hillarycare.

[Tupac Shakur]

I prefer "Obamacare", which has a good rhythm to it, but you can't go wrong with most "-care" constructions. Certainly better than all the annoying "-gate" constructions for scandals, which really need to go away.

[Kuciwalker]

Please call it "Obamacare." Even the acronym for "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)" is unwieldy.

Work habit.

[Kuciwalker]

Where do lifestyle changes fit into the scheme of preventive healthcare? Take my father, for example. He's 62, he's had 2 heart attacks and open heart surgery, and he takes a ****ton of pills every single day. This costs approximately 1 ****load of money. But if when he was 22 a doctor had told him he should stop eating bacon, start exercising, and bla bla bla, he may have avoided heart disease all together. And it would have been significantly cheaper. Does this count as preventive healthcare? After all (in this scenario), it was a doctor who told him to change his ways.

As I've mentioned, many of the better lifestyles result in MORE lifetime spending on healthcare, because everyone dies sometime and the people who make poor choices die sooner.

Again, healthier lifestyles can certainly be worth it, you just have to acknowledge that they'll increase, not reduce costs.

[Lorizael]

As I've mentioned, many of the better lifestyles result in MORE lifetime spending on healthcare, because everyone dies sometime and the people who make poor choices die sooner.

That's a very cynical, if correct, view. What this suggests to me is that more research dollars need to go into figuring out how to be old and healthy, rather than just old.

[Kuciwalker]

Oh, you have no idea. The tobacco industry tried to use it as a defense; you might imagine how well that went over.

[Hauldren Collider]

[Elok]

Please call it "Obamacare." Even the acronym for "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)" is unwieldy.

How about "American Lifestyle [or Lives] Protection and Affordable Care Act (ALPACA)?" Would that do?

[Fake Boris]

Kuci, one of the studies you linked is BS.

It says that non-smokers and non-obese are less expensive, though it doesn't say anything about how much could be saved on the "healthy" group as such.

EDIT: obviously, I meant to say that smokers and obese are less expensive. I am keeping the original so that Kuci's post after this one remains meaningful.

[Kuciwalker]

Um, no, it says precisely the opposite. Why do you think it's BS? This is not only a well-established point (it's not just one study, there have been many independent confirmations), it's also one that makes perfect sense.

[Fake Boris]

Um, no. It compares three groups: smokers, the obese, and "the rest".

[Jon Miller]

Employers choose insurance based on cost and quality, insurers choose what treatments they provide based on cost and effectiveness. It is in many ways a decentralized version of the FDA model. Why doesn't it work?

As far as I can see, what cost of treatment is not a factor at all for me in the US. The doctor just did all tests that he imagined might be useful, there was no 'oh, that is really expensive... let's wait on that and just do this other (cheaper) one'. There is no 'shopping' around based on price, because insurance doesn't really focus on the cost effectiveness of the health care provided.

The biggest factor I have seen on different insurances is on how much freedom I get in choosing a doctor. This choice is never done based on price.

Cost of treatment is heavily a factor for my girlfriend in South Africa. Probably the biggest factor.

Note I have never had a huge cost for treatment in the US, I think. It might be different when we talk about things costing over 10k dollars.

Note that when the government is the consumer (like you get in Sweden), the individual is also not the customer. What happens then is that cases which they think is bad gets delayed treatments/just treatments of symptoms/etc. Additionally, treatment isn't oriented towards the individual. For my case, I only went to the doctor once, he sent mail to me (in Swedish!) telling me to go into the lab for tests and giving me a prescript for drugs.

I have experience with US medical insurance, the Swedish more socialized health care, and the South African more capitalist health care market. The differences are obvious, and it is apparent to me why the US system is so much more costly (While not actually providing better health).

JM

[Jon Miller]

By the way, the reason I favor the socialized Swedish system over all others, is because only in the Swedish system is the customer (the government) really interested in cost effective health care.

In South Africa it is like 'you need treatment, but you aren't dying and we are poor, you get treatment later even if it costs 100 times more because we just don't have the money right now'. This is very inefficient. (Yes, often if you stay poor you spend your money for years on treating the symptoms and die early never actually getting the treatment you needed which would have been quite cheap initially)

In the US I can't even pick cost effective health care if I want to. The insurance companies just OK small things even if they could be skipped (for those wanting to save money), and fight all big things just because they are big. The actually cost effectiveness is not a factor.

JM