Health care
Gotta love Ritter's "Blue Ribbon'" Commission's annual $26 billion proposed solution to "fix" Colorado's healthcare "problem." That's almost $5,500 for every man, woman and child in the state, nearly $22,000 for a family of 4, owed by you and yours each and every year. It won't be long before Big Brother/Big Tax liberals like Ritter, make us all dependent on those who maintain our bridges, run the post office, defend our borders and engineer our energy policies for our healthcare. If you think that health care is expensive now, then just wait until its free! Wait for the income tax increase that the blue ribbon commission will not tell you that for this to happen your income tax willl increase by 35% to cover this brain drain solution. Maybe we should stop paying the governor and the state legislation, then we would have more than enough money to pay for it. I'll just start using the emergency room as my HMO, claim indegent and make the citizens pay for my care,much like illegal aliens do. You go right ahead and do that 01:10, let us know how well it worked out for you. Dave Schallert is right in his comparison of an oil change for your car and the way insurance companies pay medical claims. I can give you specific examples where Secure Horizons Insurance select providers that over charge for their products and services. One good example is when I have to replace a light bulb on my motorized wheelchair. I purchased the bulb from AAA Medical out of my own pocket rather than jumping through all the hoops to get an approval from Secure Horizons. The bulb cost me $4.50 and they installed it for me. On another occasion, additional repairs were needed so I followed the procedures to file a claim with Secure Horizons. They sent me to Rocky Mountain Medical where the same bulb was $14.72 – over three times the cost that I paid. This was not an isolated incident. The same repair order included a seat cushion. Secure Horizons paid Rocky Mountain Medical $309.61 for a cushion that I could have purchased over the Internet for $281.25. The real kicker, however, was the $62 RMM charged to lay the cushion in the chair. Rather thanSecure Horizons listening to my suggestions for alternative providers, they simply raise their rates. If we want real health care reform, it’s the consumers who need to be involved in setting health care policy. We are the ones who see the flaws in our health care system first hand. We are not motivated by a bottom line – providers and insurance companies are. We only care about receiving quality health care and that’s what we expect from the premiums we pay. Instead, we are charged inflated co-pays because insurance companies hand pick the providers, routinely issue denials, delays and caps on benefits. As long as insurance companies are involved in health care we are going to pay more. Consider the savings we would have if we did not have to pay the million dollar salaries to the corporate executive of the insurance companies or the dividends to stockholders whose only interest is the bottom line. A single payer system with consumer involvement appears to be a logical direction to go to solve our healthcare problems.
Once again all of the options take an “insurance-centric” approach. .
When are you going to dig for a story? When are you going to interview or talk to experts that aren’t part of some association or interest group with a stake in the game? Is there no interest on RMN’s part or any reporter in this city to ask hard questions to people with the experience and inside knowledge of the health care “game” for unique insider information?
By example, haven’t you ever wondered why you rarely hear from doctors, hospitals, or other providers on these insurance proposals? Have you ever asked yourself why the American Medical Association would formally come out in a statement (as they did a few weeks ago) and condemn the flat-rate care structure on common procedures at being offered at Wal-Mart clinics when it’s such a good deal for consumers?
All this Colorado health care reform and its various proposals ignore (and actually accept as unchanging fact) the cost side of the equation. .
The real story is elsewhere. Don’t believe me? Let me provide a simple example that illustrates the primary problem in the health care system today and relate it to today’s newspaper story.
What if you went to your local Grease Monkey or Jiffy-Lube for a common oil change? And they wouldn’t tell you how much it would cost for the oil change. As a matter of fact what if they had no prices posted at all for any of their services? And then they charged you $200 for that oil change.
But instead of billing you, they billed your car insurance company who was responsible for payment.
Would you still be writing stories about how to fix Colorado’s auto insurance system to make sure everyone could have their auto insurance pay for $200 oil changes and the “rising cost of car care?” Or would you be asking why they were charging (and getting) $200 for such a simple procedure?
I rest my case.
This letter has not been edited.