Captain Zombie of Woodstock wrote:
On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:49:36 -0400, H the K
wrote:

RLM wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:59:18 -0500, thunder wrote:

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:40:49 -0700, Jack wrote:


Sounds like you need to get a job with some benefits, and rescue your
wife from having to support you and from providing you with your own
health care.
Yeah, but ... tying health care to business is the wrong approach, IMO.
Besides the anti-competitive costs to business in the world market, if
you get sick with a long-term illness, you are SOL. A dirty little
secret, most employee health insurance policies end when you aren't
collecting a pay check. Try paying for CORBA with just a disability
check, if you even get a disability check.
This is usually the point when the insurance carrier declairs that it was
a pre-existing condition and refuse to pay anything.

Been there for that approach.
There are lots of dirty little secrets in connection with our current
health care insurance fiasco, and some of them are not so little and not
so secretive. There are all sorts of horror stories, for example,
relating to denials of needed service, making patients and their
providers jump through hoops, reimbursement horrors, et cetera.

It's sort of humorous that those who oppose the modernizations being
discussed think everything will get "worse" when the government steps
in. I suspect the percentage of those satisfied with the way social
security and medicare are run is higher than those who are satisified
with the way medical insurance is run.

" An evaluation was performed to determine the effects of managed care
on patient satisfaction, medical outcomes (as measured by functional
status), employer satisfaction, and medical and disability costs.
Approximately 7,000 employees at 120 firms were enrolled in the pilot.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Workers treated under managed care reported lower
levels of satisfaction at both six weeks and six months."

http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAb...102234416.html

And then there's this - which, as it happens, I knew about.

"No significant difference in overall satisfaction was found between
HMO enrollees and fee-for-service beneficiaries. However, HMO
enrollees expressed less satisfaction compared with fee-for-service
beneficiaries regarding the professional competence of their health
care providers and the willingness of the HMO staff to discuss
problems. On the other hand, HMO enrollees were more satisfied than
fee-for-service beneficiaries with waiting times and claims
processing. Approximately half of the disenrollment from an HMO within
1 year was attributed to misunderstanding the terms of enrollment."

I's kind of a damned if you do,damned if you don't. :)


Yeah, well, insurance company HMOs are on their way out, as they should
be. Most HMO's are private sector managed no-care options.

We're in a PPO. It's great. Whatever care you need, and fast.