Mental health benefits get boost in bailout bill
http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/article840443.ece
By Robert Pear, New York Times
In print: Monday, October 6, 2008

WASHINGTON — More than one-third of all Americans will soon get better insurance coverage of mental health treatments because of a new law that, for the first time, requires equal coverage of mental and physical illnesses.
The requirement, included in the economic bailout bill signed by President Bush on Friday, comes after 12 years of passionate advocacy by friends and relatives of people with mental illness and addiction disorders. They described the new law as a milestone in the quest for civil rights, an effort to end insurance discrimination and reduce the stigma of mental illness.
Most employers and group health plans provide less coverage for mental health care than for the treatment of physical conditions like cancer, heart disease or broken bones. They will need to redesign their benefits to comply with the law, which requires parity in the coverage of mental and physical illnesses.
For decades, insurers have set higher co-payments and deductibles and stricter limits on treatment for addiction and mental illnesses.
By wiping away such restrictions, doctors said, the new law will make it easier for people to obtain treatment for a wide range of conditions including depression, autism, schizophrenia, eating disorders, and alcohol and drug abuse.
Frank McArdle, a health policy expert at Hewitt Associates, a benefits consulting firm, said the law would force sweeping changes in the workplace.

Oh! hang on....just been told there is a segment on Libz TV.... www.libz.tv ...this is good, but does not include the relevant graphs and things I wanted to include in this thread...(but you can get the general idea)

http://www.nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/

Scott, you raise some excellent points...especially for people who are essentially 'healthy'.

Richard McGrath, Libertarianz health spokesman, put forward our excellent Health policy at the Conference back in May.

I have been trying to find a couple of things in particular he mentioned, hoping they were online somewhere, but am unable to...eekkk..(and do not want to misquote him inadvertantly)

Email him at richard.mcgrath@libertarianz.org.nz ....get him to contribute to this discussion.

http://www.nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/

"Anyone have a non-Socialist alternative they'd suggest and can explain WHY and HOW it will address the issues?"

Here is my solution. Medical insurance will pay not to the service providers (doctors, hospital, etc...) but to the patient himself. The amount of payment will depend on the monthly premium which will in turn depend on the patient's initial health condition (more healthy-less premium), habits and age. Right of admission should be reserved-government cannot force insurance companies to insure every-body, regardless his/her condition-for example terminaly ill patients. It also cannot determine premium. Such a policy will create: 1.healthy competition between insurance companies.2.healthy competition between service providers.3.will encourages healthy life style.4.will prevent abuse of medical services.5.will prevent the current altruist situation in which healthy and young subsidize old and sick. 6. Will encourage buying medical insurance early. 7. Will encourage personal responsibility. 8. Will drive prices of medical services and products down.
9. All payments to medical insurance companies together with any additional medical expenses should be fully tax-deductible,

Just the sort of contentless, snide, shitty post I'd expect from a retarded troll like yourself, "Mindy"

Scott DeSalvo

www.desalvolaw.com
FREE Injury Report and CD Reveal the Secrets You Need to Know to Protect Your RIGHTS!

Somebody explain it to Scott.

= Mindy

I tend towards "healthy as a bear" and I am not fragile or accident prone. I did the math and figured that a high deductible plan was a good move for me.

For about $150 per month, I have a 2800.00 deductible which must be paid out of my Health Savings account. My balance in the account is such that it can withstand over 3 years of deductibles, and further contributions to it are not strictly necessary--I still put money in there, though.

Two broken legs? Serious injury or illness? Covered, no worries.

Sniffles? Tummy ache? I do not run to the doctor.

That's how it should be.

Scott DeSalvo

www.desalvolaw.com
FREE Injury Report and CD Reveal the Secrets You Need to Know to Protect Your RIGHTS!

There are companies which offer emergency/catastrophic coverage only, but any I know of also offer the standard PPO or HMO negotiated rate, routine care plans too. I don't actually know if there are federal requirements mandating insurance providers offer the routine care plans or not.

There fortunately has been a slight move toward individuals using health insurance like we're talking about in the past few years. For all the bad things to be said about this administration - including with regard to healthcare - one good thing it has done is to create health savings accounts (HSAs).

Essentially what this is is a pre-tax account you can contribute about $3000/year to, and pay for healthcare expenses from it with pre-tax dollars (so essentially your healthcare expenditures this way don't get taxed). Money not spent in a year can remain in the account and, to a limited degree, be invested, and can be pulled out without penalty (though with taxes) after age 65. Essentially the savings/tax behavior of an HSA is like a traditional IRA in the US.

Most importantly, an HSA must be tied to a high-deductible (>=$1100) health insurance (HDHP, for high-deductible health plan), not a normal PPO or HMO. This encourages use of HDHP for catastrophic care that really warrants insurance, while using pre-tax dollars out of pocket for routine or more modest expenditures. I switched to this a couple years ago doing after doing the math and expecting it to mainly serve as another type of IRA for me. What was surprising even to me though was how much it changed my attitude when going to a doctor.

I began wanting to know how much something cost! I never had before, but now since it would come out of my pocket, I cared and had reason to shop around or negotiate (note that finding what a health procedure costs can be *very* hard, often they don't know at the office and you have to call a half dozen people - a major sign something's wrong with the system now)! Normal health insurance users wouldn't care, since the insurance company would foot the bill (minus some small fixed copay) anyway. Also, I began checking my bills for errors such as double charges or procedures I didn't have - and have found them far more often than I'd like. I don't know how much of this was due to error vs. something sneakier, but again this is something that would usually go unnoticed and simply increase costs to insurance companies.

Obviously, HSAs' pre-tax restrictions, penalties for withdrawal for non-health expenses before 65, contribution limits, etc. are complex, over-regulated restrictions that don't belong in the free market. However, in the context of a system already screwed up in many other ways, they are at least a good move in the direction of having people aware of what healthcare costs and personally interested in reducing it.

Aaron

Insurance is something you buy to cover you in case you have a disaster.

So I have a question: Does the US government stipulate what an insurance plan must offer? Are there any companies offering minimalist policies out there?

Scott-

Included in an overhaul of the health insurance system must be a significant change in most peoples' mindset towards what it means. Specifically, private or not, what most politicians or the public refer to as health 'insurance' is far broader than what should properly be insurance.

Catastrophic health insurance - high deductible insurance to cover you in case of major illness, accident, etc. - makes sense as insurance. It mitigates risk and softens the blow from unlikely but very costly events.

Most of what health 'insurance' is a system of hiding fees, negotiated/guaranteed rates between doctors and agencies, applied to routine or non-critical procedures. It just does not make sense that health insurance is used for visits for ingrown toenails, eye checkups, cold and flu, etc. If this mentality were applied to other forms of insurance, our home insurance would cover house painting and unclogging our toilets, and auto insurance would cover our oil changes and car washes - with similar spiraling insurance costs.

Aaron

...of a nationalized health system is currently a fierce point of debate in this country.

I assume your friend is not interested in discussing philosophy, but this illustrates exactly how the philosophy behind the NHS is in practice flawed.

Recently, new anti-cancer drugs have come on the market that extend the lives of patients considerably. However it takes a while for them to be approved by the NHS and they are expensive.

Not surprisingly many patients want to buy the drugs themselves. However, the Government has ruled that if you do that, then you must also fund the rest of your cancer treatment as well.

Now there are two opposing arguments for and against this policy:

For> If two patients are treated in the NHS and one can afford to pay for the drugs and one can't, then you have a two-tier state health system - 'that defies the whole point of universal state health care'. They worry that without this provision 'co-payments' will ultimately lead to a sort of internal 'discriminating' private health system.

Against> If you shut a patient out of the NHS, when they have paid their taxes for it like everyone else, 'that defies the whole point of universal state health care'. It seems particularly perverse when all they want to so is to save their own lives.

However, can't you see the fog both sides are in?

They just can't come to terms with the fact that a universal health-care system means that everyone has equally bad treatment (through rationing) and that it just as corrupt and unfair (by discriminating against those who have some money saved) as they believe the private system to be against those who have not saved any money or made some other provision.

...because one of the things he mentioned was that all other "Western nations" have nationalized healthcare.

I pointed out that healthcare is a trainwreck in those countries. An incredible expense and there is healthcare rationing. He flat denied that and said that these countries have great healthcare and there is no wait, blah blah, that they have the best hospitals in the world.

I ask then asked him that if this is the case, WHY do people from other countries come here for important health care and procedures? He denied that they do.

He lamented his having to pay $18,000 for health insurance for himself, wife and 2 kids. I asked him what he thought he'd be paying in increased taxes on his >$200k/yr. income when he was paying for EVERYONE's insurance, or how he would be able to afford paying for a premium plan. No real answer.

His only unanswered point was: I don't have an answer about how to transition to a system which works. It seems clear to me that the cost of healthcare is beyond the reach of the average wage earner. Insurance, with their contract-negotiated rates, pay rates for their insured that are often 50 to 60% of doctor's going rates (some times even less). Healthcare approaches affordability at these rates, but non-insured people cannot get them. Presumably, this is the free market at work--doctor's raise their prices, insurers use their bargaining power to get reduced contract rates, but John or Jane Q Public who are not insured pay the full rate and there is not much competition--and who can afford the time to shop around for emergency or time sensitive health care needs?

It's a really tough issue.

Scott DeSalvo

www.desalvolaw.com
FREE Injury Report and CD Reveal the Secrets You Need to Know to Protect Your RIGHTS!

I recall a 2004 poll that showed that people in France and Germany were dissatisified with their health care system's waiting times. Not sure how this has changed though. I don't belive the authorities measure these times either.

...in a nut-shell the UK system. It is in fact also a two-tiered system of both public and private although no one is allowed to opt-out of paying for the state system. And we all know how badly the UK system functions. To borrow that phrase the NZers use, it is a 'die while you wait' system.
It's amusing that in the UK the statistic is often offered up that in the US more is spent per person on healthcare than the UK, although they say that the 'survival rates' of cancer patients is the same.

All I can say is the 'best' systems are those that remove politicians and bureaucrats from the running, management and funding (decisions) of the health system.

Now admittedly, some of those types of systems are indeed state subsidized or funded, such as France, Germany and Austria. But the level of health-care in those countries is first-class (better than the UK).

One down-side of the state funding is that the Government always runs up large deficits to fund them. Another down-side is that because few people opt-out for fully privately paid care, the profit motive is reduced for drug companies and hospitals, and there are less medical advances that come out of those countries as a result.

Therefore, the best possible system is no interference from the state at all. Not likely to happen anytime soon though.