humble3d Posted March 28, 2014 Share Posted March 28, 2014 Hospitals Plot the End of Insurance CompaniesThe problems with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act may be masking another major change in the way health care is delivered to U.S. consumers, experts believe.At The Atlantic's Health Care Forum in Washington on Thursday, health care and business professionals said that there’s an increasing trend in the industry toward cutting insurance companies out of the process entirely, as large, regional hospital systems move into the insurance business.Dr. Kenneth L. Davis, CEO and president of Mount Sinai Health System, the largest health care provider in the state of New York, said that starting next year, Mt. Sinai will begin offering its own Medicare Advantage plan. It will look for other opportunities to bring premium payments directly into the hospital system, rather than filtering them through insurance companies.Davis said he expects organizations similar to his to move in the same direction. “Inevitably the large systems are going to move to take part of the premium dollar,” he said.Americans in most states who tried to apply for medical coverage under President Barack Obama's healthcare law by a March 31 deadline but were met with technical difficulties will get an automatic extension to enroll, officials said on Wednesday. The new federal guidelines apply to consumers in the 36 states served by the federal health insurance marketplace and its website, HealthCare.gov. Monday is the cut-off date for choosing a health plan in 2014. People who tried to enroll by the March 31 deadline for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, will be allowed in during a grace period in April.For both non-profit systems like Mt. Sinai and for-profit systems, he said, retaining more and more of the health care premiums paid by consumers is essential to providing a full spectrum of care. He said that his system’s St. Luke’s Hospital in New York runs a psychiatric program that loses $14 million per year.It’s “not sustainable,” he said, so the system needs to cross-subsidize the money-losing services that it nonetheless must continue to provide, with income from more profitable services, such as orthopedic surgery.The industry, he said, is facing “an entire reformulation of how we pay for services.” The point is not to squeeze more profit out of the system, but to preserve the system’s ability to provide care. “If we don’t put those dollars back into the underpaid discipline, you just end up with underpaid disciplines that can’t be cross-subsidized.”Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, agreed, saying that we’re beginning to see what he called the “Kaiserification” of our health care system.He was referring to the Kaiser Permanente health care consortium, which combines a health insurance company with subsidiary hospitals and medical practices to create a fully integrated health care delivery system. He noted that large insurer Wellpoint recently completed the acquisition of a health care company in California, apparently with an eye toward replicating the Kaiser model in some form.Emanuel said we’re witnessing “the end of insurance companies as we know them” and that if they want to survive, they “will have to get into the business of providing care.”He predicted that in the world of health care, “the wave of the future is integrated delivery systems – integrating insurance with delivery function.”_http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/03/27/Hospitals-Plot-End-Insurance-Companies Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dMog Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 WHY do americans feel that health , life and death, is a for profit industry and that if you cos your insurance company too much $$$ or you do not have $$$ and get an otherwise curable disease or other curable health problem you will die.... all other western nations have free health care ...but in america free health care is looked upon as a communist plot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CODYQX4 Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 (edited) . Edited April 28, 2019 by CODYQX4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dMog Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 WHY do americans feel that health , life and death, is a for profit industry and that if you cos your insurance company too much $$$ or you do not have $$$ and get an otherwise curable disease or other curable health problem you will die.... all other western nations have free health care ...but in america free health care is looked upon as a communist plotBecause some scumbags say us using our own tax dollars to take care our ourselves instead of killing ourselves and others, while squandering shit tons of money, is socialism. Also they spent our SS on Iraq and Afghanistan and NSA so that we have just enough money to let the older people die and all of us currently under 50 will be told to get bent and die in the streets and that we are entitled leeches for wanting the money we paid in.Also shit wouldn't be so expensive if we didn't let the big pharma companies patent and slightly change the recipes and not test them, and extort money out of thin air.as i said heath care for profit first and foremost is is not the model to run your health system on...i think you kind of misunderstand what i was getting at s you gave the best arguments in your answer as to why it is wrong Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davmil Posted March 31, 2014 Share Posted March 31, 2014 WHY do americans feel that health , life and death, is a for profit industry and that if you cos your insurance company too much $$$ or you do not have $$$ and get an otherwise curable disease or other curable health problem you will die.... all other western nations have free health care ...but in america free health care is looked upon as a communist plotThe system here is f$^$'d-up beyond belief. We can afford a world-wide occupation army but can't afford education and healthcare? WTF is that? I don't expect everything - I'd just like the same level of benefits prisioners and congressmen have. Obamacare under the weakest/least expensive plan available cost more monthly than my house payment. Obamacare's nothing but a way to sell more insurance while paying out fewer healthcare dollars. Meanwhile, doctors, hospitals & insurance rates have skyrocketed over the last 3 years since no one in the entire healthcare system cares the very least about controlling costs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CODYQX4 Posted March 31, 2014 Share Posted March 31, 2014 (edited) . Edited April 28, 2019 by CODYQX4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dMog Posted March 31, 2014 Share Posted March 31, 2014 the health care system in canada ids no perfect either but long term illness and critical care does not bankrupt a family either.... my daughter was living in the USA for some time... when she was 16 she hospitalized for medical problem... not life threatening mind you but the pain was making pass out... the doctor i the ER gave her one shot of injectable pain killer and told her it had to cash up front for any more as her mothers health insurance only covered the cost on one injection.... also the required operation was not covered and as she was 16 she was also responsible to pay the 15 thousand dollars to cover the cost....needless to say i had to get her back to canada for this where the cost was zero....my out of pocket expense was only for the private room..and yet some across the border see this as ok and i am wrong to say otherwise Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davmil Posted April 1, 2014 Share Posted April 1, 2014 You're lucky you had the option to return to Canada. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dMog Posted April 1, 2014 Share Posted April 1, 2014 (edited) she still owes a boat load of $$$ to that hospital as it is. Edited April 1, 2014 by dMog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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