WatchA little more than a year ago I graphed Blue Shield's outrageous price hikes:
All members of the California medical insurance cartel are doing this, so customers have no choice:
Then I was part of a protest with the nurses union that got the latest price hike delayed for a year.
But now Blue Shield is at it again! Blue Shield hiked the rates on individual plans like mine by 14.8%, which is WAY beyond inflation.
Some unknown fraction money is simply being forcibly transferred from individuals and families to Blue Shield executive bonuses.
Blue Shield claims that "If our annual net income exceeds 2% of revenue, we will return any excesss to our customers..."
But EXECUTIVE BONUSES DON'T COUNT TOWARD CORPORATE INCOME. This means that they can raise the rates to the moon, and still claim that they don't have any extra income, because they paid it all out in executive bonuses, which is an "expense" for them. Blue Shield's CEO got more than $4M last year, for what? His excellent performance in keeping rates down? Blue Shield is a NON-PROFIT by law, has no public shareholders, pays no dividend, and obviously has no accountability to anyone at all. No wonder we're being ripped off!
Please download, print, and get signatures on the following petition:
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How about a petition that demands an audit?
No we can't do that, then we'd figure out, that medical care in this country is 65% more than it needs to be, because we've got the whole countries 401K ridding on it. We've got a national retirement Ponzi healthcare. So if they didn't raise the rates every month, to show strong profits, and not just sustainability, then everyone would panic and pull their money out of bio meds, pharmaceuticals, hospital institutions, insurers ect. then we would have a bankrupt Healthcare system. I wonder if there's a provision in Obamacare for that eventuality. Every bubble comes to the end of the road. And if our healthcare isn't one, then RE was worth ever penny in 2006.
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Santa Cruz, CA
Health insurance companies raise their rates as a response to having to pay out higher and higher claims and costs.
You and the nurses are confused about the 1. cause of the problem 2. US Constitution.
If insurance company A raises its rates and it is gouging the customer, insurance company B can compete with them and take that customer's business away from A.
If ALL insurance companies are raising their rates because of 1. increased costs 2. increased expected costs caused by new Obamacare rules then there is nothing to protest.
Hospitals for example gouge private insurance companies because the hospital wants to give free medical care to everyone else. This is why you see a tylenol billed for $15 per pill.
The proper law would prohibit hospitals from treating people who 1. have no insurance 2. refuse to pay
Now, here where I live I know many many people who believe that medical care is a right and it should be free.
Specifically, I know many illegal aliens who feel they have a claim to this for free because they are "poor" compared to Americans. I have heard this very often.
What the dear reader may not know is that many illegal aliens have cash stashed in the tens of thousands of dollars. I know them personally, this is not an urban legend. They sometimes brag about their amazing good fortune.
Sometimes it backfires, like the time Carolina was robbed of the $10,000 she had stashed. Ooops.
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hehehehehe
TPB says
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TPB says
A very good idea.
We definitely have a huge decrease in productivity in Health Care.
Audits would identify the waste that cause that decrease.
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46 male
Menlo Park, CA
An audit would be a great idea. A lot of the cost of US healthcare is due to extremely high private administration costs, like the salary and bonus of "non-profit" Blue Shield's CEO.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/why-does-us-health-care-cost-so-much-part-ii-indefensible-administrative-costs/
Turns out that public health care administration is provably much cheaper.
clambo says
No, actually that's pretty obviously not true. Given the rest of your comment, it just sounds like yet more hate for the people who are doing the real work of picking your vegetables, mowing your lawn, etc.
A group that hates immigrants (http://www.fairus.org/) claims we're spending $10B per year on health care for illegal immigrants, so you can be fairly sure they're exaggerating.
The US spends about 2.5 TRILLION on health care (or did in 2009, probably higher now).
So total us health care spending on illegal immigrants is at most 10 / 2500 = 0.4% of spending.
0.4% extra is not going to raise the price of a Tylenol from 2 cents to $15.
But hate is very useful in distracting you from the real costs! That hate is a wet dream come true for the people who are actually taking your money.
clambo says
So why don't you turn them in?
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elliemae's website
clambo's argument is exactly why we need socialized medicine. Health care should never, ever be an option.
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First and foremost: nobody needs health insurance. They need good health. Good health comes from good food and good living. It does not come from money except in the U.S., where you need a certain amount of money to be able to afford the time to prepare your own food.
The "cost" of health care isn't the cost: it's the PRICE. The price is determined by speculation and manipulation.
The cost is determined by the health of the people. Most only need a little more time and access to vegetables and once in a while, a doctor to prescribe something for a fever or infection.
Most of the prices are manipulated by marketed health care, selling people "cures" for diseases that wouldn't exist in great numbers without the sugar and hormone and wheat-based diets that prevail in the U.S.
The health corporations and the FDA want nothing to do with food, and the Food corporations and USDA want nothing to do with health.
Draft all medical personnel into the military. If socialized medicine is good enough for the troops, it's good enough for everyone else, too.
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P.S. READ an EOB (Explanation Of Benefits) sometime from a major surgery: read it AFTER the insurance company pays the bill.
Most of the time, the insurance co will negotiate with the hospital to get the bill down to a fraction of the original bill, but an uninsured person is put on a "payment plan" to pay the full price.
We use insurance companies as our unions even as we let nutjobs decry the "socialism" of unions.
ALL shared risk is "socialism". Get over it and use it properly. That's what humans do: socialize: sharing risks and rewards.
The problem with the health industry is that it is not about health or industry: it's about profit: and their profit is at cross purposes to the profits of everyone else (sick people are a profit center for them, but a cost to everyone else's activities).
The "general welfare" clause of the constitution should apply here and remove the profit motive (Limited Liability should not be Limited Responsibility).
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I think this is a great idea! Another great way to get the petition/grassroots action going:
http://www.change.org/
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ktdid says
Yes that is the perfect place to start, so we can have 50% of the population supporting the idea, and the other 50% fighting it tooth and nail, convinced we'll only end up more fucked over somehow.
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treatmentreport's website
My family sent in these petitions about two weeks ago. As a small business owner, I can tell you that health insurance costs went from negligible 5-6 years ago to very worrisome right now. Anthem sent us a "justification of rates" letter based on data from 1997 to 2007. They specifically did not include numbers from 2008 till now showing the healthcare inflation slowed down dramatically. There is no way to justify the prices hikes that they've pulled for the last three years.
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treatmentreport's website
S&P should have healthcare inflation out in March. We will see inflation for 2011 which I bet was lower than 2010.
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What would the health of Americans look like if
1. The government wasn't force feeding the populace with misinformation about what should compose ones diet. Food pyramid = imminent sickness and death
2. The entire "healthcare" "insurance" complex was abducted by aliens and shot thru a wormhole to somewhere 15.6 trillion light years out in space
3. The ag markets were free of gov subsidies and meddling, so that it would be feasible to farm spinach, lettuce and animals and do so affordably without competing against all the soy and corn subsidies
Maybe then people would/could, affordably eat how we are supposed to eat,,,,,fruit and veggies and animal fats and proteins.
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People that think the fat people is the biggest problem America's over all health faces, is not only mental but freaking evil. Especially when you factor in all of the Ironies, that the policy permits in the name of inflating healthcare at the ridicule and expense of over weight people.
Most Obese people I ever knew, had a fucked up Metabolism, they didn't eat any less or any more than I do, yet they manage to gain weight, while I stayed constant or even loss weight. Then you have folks like my Mom, that was Obese and had an eating disorder, she had gastric bypass surgery. It was a success to the point, she did get smaller, but she never got thin. In fact she ate until it broke the mesh that bound her stomach. She's had over 5 operations to repair the damn thing. The last operation they had to actually remove her whole stomach. She's straight wired from her mouth to her ass, I joke with her. To date the insurance companies have laid out over 10 million dollars in operations for this woman. And guess what?
Her diet never changed, she's 70 years old and still eats and cooks, like Paula Dean. She now has no stomach, and still eats like that.
Now guess what? The insurance company could have saved 10,000,000 by never suggesting that fat cure all surgery over 20 years ago, my Mom would still be fat, still ate like a Carnival food taster, and she would probably be in better over all health today. Not that She still doesn't manage to get around and be a general PIA, but she would at least still have her stomach.
Our policy is doing everything to attack fat people invent and inject antidotes that fat people are fat because they ate butter, and because they ate butter, you and I are going to have to pay more in Insurance premiums. Meanwhile has anyone done a Body mass fat index measurement on the average patient in all of the Hospitals, or do we just take theses bastards word for it? We keep hearing we're the fattest country in the world... Yada yada yada...
Really, I probably see one in 100 people are obese in most places and settings. Now it could be they've been shamed and are home crying like Richard Simmons on Prom night, which is another outrage and disappointment I have with this country.
You heartless pricks, you've managed to do dickall to improve health, mental happiness, and physical awareness, but what we have now is a more mentally stressed out society. Even 5 year olds are stressed out, and we've probably got a whole population of overweight people afraid to even leave the house, less they get thrown off a plane or locked up for self endangerment.
It's all a fascinating show, to keep us entertained, while the Healthcare exec raise rates, fees, costs, and premiums.
"There's fatty let's get him!"
"Ha-ha Fat pat the water Rat!"
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errc says
Obligatory food pyramid from The Simpson's