How to pay less for health care

I worked in the hospital setting for 24 yrs and in a large family medicine office for nearly 2 years. I have been permanently disabled with two main health issues since 13 years.

I was unable to work as a nurse in 1993, went back to school to work at a sit down position in a doctors office which offered no health insurance. The knee blew after many up and downs in the office due to pulling charts during a flu outbreak. I could not get the total knee replacement and was on no wearing bearing for a year – the knee locked up which caused a pain level of 10 until it popped badk in. I was told I could not have the TKA becaue I was too young. I was 56, and would have to wait until I was 70. I finally got a refferal for a second opinion at Beaumont hospital – that doctor said the knee was 85 yrs old and he would do it the next week. In the meantime I developed a ruptured diverticulum and had to have surgery. They said it was due to severe limitied activity and the pain medication I was on. I contacted congressman Dave Camp and he helped me to at least get my social security disability which I could not get on my own. He found my records in a Judges office in Chicago who on LOA for a death in his family. The atorney I hired did nothing but I still had to pay him. I had to pay the state back assistance as well. Finally Senator Schutte's office helped me to get the surgery for the knee. It took me a year and a half to be able to walk again with one crutch. There is much about out health care delivery system. the family doctors cannot know all ther is to know about all the systems in the human body, and one needs to get to a specialist who studies that one area. If I had not gotten the second opinion – I may not be here today. I had a recent experience in which I had a blocked ureteral pelvic junction obstruction and my family doctor took 8 months to get me to a urologist. I could not get into one without my family doctor's referral.

I ended up at the U Of M in Ann Arbor had the tube resected last november – I am starting to have some symptoms again – I pray I do not have that same touble again. I do not want to see sick folks lose their freedom to call a specialist on their own. I would have been in to one in April of 2008, I would have been spared 3 bouts per day of a number 10 level stabing pain, and perhaps less damage to the kidney.

I am sorry for all the type o's – but I am very frustrated with this situation. Thank you for your time.

S L Ratell – Midland, Michigan

I spent $1,000 of my own money for therapy on both hands because it wasn't covered on my insurance! Didin't work and my hands are still just as bad. There goes $1,000 dwon the drain!!!!!

I pay almost $800 a month for my husband's health insurance. Besides that, we are making payments to various hospitals and clinics in the amount of $400 – $500. Combine these costs, and I pay about $1300 a month even with having insurance!
We definitely have to rein in health care costs. I don't know how much longer I can continue to pay these kinds of insurance bills.

People refuse to keep their eye on the ball in this and similar issues !

The problem we face is NOT how to PAY for health care under the present system (THAT is becoming virtually impossible), but rather how to control and reduce costs while improving quality and availability !

Paying attention to previous outcomes (as Obama is suggesting) is a very, VERY good first step.

The eventual solution is to EXTRACT MOST HUMAN LABOR OUT OF THE PROCESS. Thus, we need to develop automated medicne, starting with automated comprehensive medical record keeping. The machine should have a pretty good handle on the problem and the solution before the patient ever sees high-cost staff, IF EVER.

I know — fantastic, sci-fi, impractical, etc, etc. However, just wait around : It is inevitable ! Please stop and think : Do you want to scmooze with the doc and have your wallet emptied — OR do you want to get your problem RECOGNIZED and remediated NOW and yet remain SOLVENT ? ? Can there be any question ?
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My husband and I pay $1255 per month. Then we need to meet a $7200 annual deductible and another 30% up to the next $5000. It does not cover office visits and only when we have met our deductible is anything paid. You see we are self employed and have only major medical. Our booklet is not about what it takes care of it is a 1" thick book on what it does not cover and if you go out of network they pay nothing. So if you don't like the doctors your stuck. A surgery for my husband on his knee last year…cost us over $30,000 and I am still making payments. We are afraid to go to the doctor because they raise our rates every year without offering any better coverage and taking away coverage each year.

Someone is getting very rich out there Blueshield and Blue Cross being one of them. It's not that they pay much in coverage…its that they contract for reduced rates that you as the consumer pay for.

On top of it…so many other states are less for hte same benefits and coverage than California…they charge these outragous amounts of money because they can.

Then on top of it hte DEmocrats want to tax our benefits when we already pay taxes on the money that pays the premiums? Congress is crazy but why should they are they get great benefits while the rest of us suffer.

The majority answering the poll pay less than $5,000 a month on healthcare, that's probably the same or less that most people pay to insure their vehicles and I don't hear or read about changing the car insurance industry because it's too high. Also, most mechanics charge a high labor rate per hour and they didn't go to nearly the same amount of school as a Dr. and they don't have to deal with he pressures of working on living beings. Most folks don't question a mechanic when they tell you your car needs something either like they question doctors because they read online….. I value my life/body far more than my car, so why shouldn't I be willing to pay the same or more to take care of it. I'm not in the healthcare industry, but I think we need to put things in perspective and put the priority of our lives higher than that of our vehicles or other possessions. The best way to lower the healthcare for most people (I say most, because I know there are cases where people have conditions that get expensive and are not brought on by themselves) is to eat right and do a little exercise, which is what they don't want to hear from their doctors. Come on America, we're smarter than this, use common sense and quit relying on the government to do everything for us (dummying us down).

Why is it that a doctor's time is so much more valuable than my time or my husband's time? He attended 19 years of school to obtain a Master's degree in counseling psychology and has worked 24 years in the field; yet his time is worth about $20 an hour, while his doctor charges us $190 for a 15 minute appointment. And then if you have to see a specialist you can count on paying at least $1000 for a 20 minute visit. Why is there such a disparity in wages in this country. It's irrational and just perpetuates poverty and many other evils. This is not the case everywhere in the world. We lived in Greece for a while and I had a surgery that cost $700 at a state of the art facility (one that rivals the best in the U.S.) by competent physicians. The same surgery here would have cost around $7000 I discovered.

We need to socialize health care, the imsurance and drug companies are laughing all the way to the bank at us. And it doesn't help when people feed lies to americans about socialized health care. Then people are afraid of change. Think about it, Americans are the unhealthiest people in a deveolped country and we are the only ones with our kinda of health care system.

Here's a simple idea: Require that hospitals, physicians, and others send to the patient a copy of the same bill (in plain English) that they submit to the insurance company for payment. Everything should be itemized so the patient can understand it. Give the patient an opportunity to review the bill before the insurance company pays it. There MUST be mistakes/overbilling on some percentage of bills, but the patient never sees the bill so he can correct or dispute it. It was only by a fluke that I discovered that my outpatient physical therapist was charging $37 each time she put an ice pack on my injured knee. It never occured to me that this was an "extra charge." I was doing the same thing at home for free. So my insurance company paid over $700 for ice packs I didn't need. I'm sure there are more egregious examples than this. Insurance companies may be paying for medication, tests, even procedures that were "mistakenly" put on a patient's bill.

I also think that hospitals, doctors, etc. should be required to provide a cost estimate to the patient if patient requests it before care is administered. It's difficult to make cost effective decisions about your care if you are forced to do it after the fact.

Health care in US is a vicious circle..

All i knew before was that "doctors treating patients is called health care.." ..
but I was amazed to learn about the different stakeholders in the health care system here…
Why do we need to have have insurance companies, pharmacy benefit managers,
pharmacists, drug retailers, wholesalers etc. etc. other than the doctors and
patients…
(all these to manage 300 million American population.. )

Countries like China & India with more than 1 Billion population, have a simple health care system.. what i call "doctors treating patients".. i agree they are not efficient, but at least it costs only 1/100th of what it costs over here..

Finally, I feel its not the government spending which is going to save health care. Just cut the complexity, make it as close as doctor treating patients, then we can save the health care costs significantly..

I was laid off from my job the end of October. My unemployment after taxes is $720.00. My Cobra is $537.00 per month. Do the math. I also have a $3000.00 deductible and a $1000.00 copayment that comes straight off the top before payments are made to my providers. The Stimulus Act brought my Cobra down to $188.00 a month for 9 months. I'm thankful. I have many health issues. Through the help of friends and student loans, which I will be repaying back forever, I've started back to school into a nursing program. Your suggestion of jobs being out there as Health and Home Care Aides doesn't take into consideration that those jobs do not reimburse your gasoline or auto expenses. There is no health or life insurance attached with most. The Home Health Aid is considered self employed. Here locally the job pays approximately $12.00 and hour. By the time you pay out your travel expenses and health care costs at $600.00 or more depending on the size of your family, little is left. It burns me that those of you in the news assume the umemployed are sitting out here on our ass watching the world go by. Wow, I never would have thought about being a Home or Health Care Aid. Duh. Your ignorance is only preceded by your arrogance.

It's amazing that people will spend 5 dollars at starbucks or for a beer because it makes them feel good. 5 hundred dollars on a car payment beacause it makes them look good, but will complain about paying a 20 dollar co-pay at a doctors office or 200 a month for health insurance. I guess there priority is instant gratification. Grow Up!!

I find it funny how with the so called health care crisis, we are addressing cost cuts but not behavior. Nobody seems to be asking the "frontliners" such as ER physicians (I am one). We do not have a cost problem. We have a social problem. The new found American agression, people full of agression, rights but no responsibilities in site. You have a profession (ER physicians) that is expected to have 100% accuracy, be unreasonably fast, treated with incredible disrespect and now to top it off, talks of less reibursements by our president. That along with the constant threat of lawsuits that makes us walk on the edge and order far more tests than are needed to meet that unfair expectation of 100% accuracy, has made most physicians I know start looking for retirement or another profession. Now that we will have to pay more taxes if the new tax rates are approved, then there is even less of an incentive. To sum it up, the problem i social and if we keep treating good people such as most ER physcias this way, you will loose a good deal of us. Why would I want to subject myself to that. How would YOU feel if you had to be 100% correct ALL of the time. If you studyed 24 years to know have more of your money go to those who did not. I was not "fortunate" … I made myself fortunate from rock bottom and I help people for a living… now I am beng punished. If I was the American public, I would fear this health care crisis more…

Carol, I am 28 and my wife 26. To renew our health insurance for the same plan will now cost us 700 a month, or 8,400 annually. We are in perfect health in low-risk jobs at two large corporations. Last year we paid 325 a month. I think my number blows Kaiser's number out of the water.

How does a couple in their 20s with no children end up being forced to pay double the last year's cost for the same plan? I don't have the answer. Do you?

We can and we MUST take a harder look at the effectiveness of health care. We have the most inefficient and expensive health care system on the planet.

Costs can be reduced. That's for sure.

However, government getting involved in health care "effectiveness" is the first step down a slippery slope to governmental health care rationing.

The government has proven itself to be very bad at several jobs: mortgage broker, banker, automotive engineer, etc. Government won't be a good doctor either.