U.S. passes "historic" healthcare bill

[NineOneFour]

And, the $2500 deductible is great! I love it. I pay a low premium, and if I'm really sick (health care costs can easily exceed $5500 if something serious happens) then I know I can't be saddled under a lifetime of debt to get well. If I need to go to the hospital for a week and get surgery - the most I pay is $5500. If I don't have the $5500 I can make payments. If I am smart, I stick $10 here and $10 there away into a safety account for that purpose.

NEWS FLASH: it'll tale a lot more than $10 here or $10 there to pay off $5,500 bill.

This is akin to the libertarian financial wizards that tell people they can save for a rainy day by just cutting out going to Starbucks once a week.

[NineOneFour]

In the US I pay less than $200 a month for my policy now, and I'm not in an employment based group plan.

What is your deductible?

$2500 - United Health One
Annual out of pocket limit $5500 (including deductible).
$35 copay for annual exam.

I thought so.

What's wrong with that?

There will be copays with national healthcare too, my friend. Bank on it.

And, the $2500 deductible is great! I love it. I pay a low premium, and if I'm really sick (health care costs can easily exceed $5500 if something serious happens) then I know I can't be saddled under a lifetime of debt to get well. If I need to go to the hospital for a week and get surgery - the most I pay is $5500. If I don't have the $5500 I can make payments. If I am smart, I stick $10 here and $10 there away into a safety account for that purpose.

I don't see why I should be prohibited from buying a plan like this, and the new law does prohibit that, when it goes into effect.

That's a lie.

[Coito ergo sum]

They are absolutely not left to go without treatment. There are walk-in clinics almost everywhere. People can travel to them and get a check up anytime they want to. They can go the emergency room directly, and they can not, as a matter of law, be denied care.

Who pays the bill?

An ER visit could run $2,000 or more.

An ambulance is about $2,000 also.

The insurance company pays - except the deductible. How does it work with auto insurance? You get into an accident, you pay the deductible. Why not?

If there isn't a deductible then there is no reason NOT to call an ambulance every time for everything. Why would anyone not? However, if your total annual max is $5500, then that can be paid back over time if you don't happen to have $5500 to pay right away. Hospitals and all their staff and equipment are expensive. The user should pay no cost?

[Coito ergo sum]

5 freedoms you'd lose in health care reform
If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you'll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.
EMAIL | PRINT | SHARE | RSS
By Shawn Tully, editor at large
July 24, 2009: 10:17 AM ET

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.

A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.

If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:

1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan

The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.


Today, many states require these "standard benefits packages" -- and they're a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.

The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.

Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.

Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.

Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that's understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That's hardly a formula for lower costs. It's as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That's what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.

Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan -- say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.

The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. "The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. "And they could do it after the bills are passed."

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.

The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.

The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.

But read on.

The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.

The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.

The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges -- and as we've seen, that will soon be most Americans -- must get their care through something called "medical home." Medical home is similar to an HMO. You're assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.

Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America's health-care cost explosion.

The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans -- if they exist -- would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they're healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. "That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry," says Goodman.

In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year "grace period" that's barely being discussed.

Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren't covered by their employers. It won't happen right away -- large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.

The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that's strictly taboo in the bills). I'll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/ec ... 2009072410

[Surendra Darathy]

The insurance company pays - except the deductible. How does it work with auto insurance? You get into an accident, you pay the deductible. Why not?

If there isn't a deductible then there is no reason NOT to call an ambulance every time for everything. Why would anyone not? However, if your total annual max is $5500, then that can be paid back over time if you don't happen to have $5500 to pay right away. Hospitals and all their staff and equipment are expensive. The user should pay no cost?

Oh, forget it.

[Coito ergo sum]

The insurance company pays - except the deductible. How does it work with auto insurance? You get into an accident, you pay the deductible. Why not?

If there isn't a deductible then there is no reason NOT to call an ambulance every time for everything. Why would anyone not? However, if your total annual max is $5500, then that can be paid back over time if you don't happen to have $5500 to pay right away. Hospitals and all their staff and equipment are expensive. The user should pay no cost?

I don't think you really understand the concept of "deductible".

It means that you don't go to the ER because you are sneezing. 'Mkay?

Of course I understand that. That was my point exactly. Eliminating deductibles is what would eliminate the cost to the consumer almost entirely. That's when people would go for small things. The deductible - we agree here - helps to make use of the insurance not cost free.

It works this way with car insurance, too. If you're an asshole and somebody keys your car, you get it fixed on your own dime. At least, after about the fourth occasion.

Yes - so the question becomes - what are you bitching about then? You agree that deductibles serve a valid purpose. So what are you on about? Do you want there to be no deductibles?

[Surendra Darathy]

Yes - so the question becomes - what are you bitching about then? You agree that deductibles serve a valid purpose. So what are you on about? Do you want there to be no deductibles?

You're right.

Of course, the bill may bear no relation to the deductible, especially if there is collusion. That's how costs rise.

[Coito ergo sum]

Yes - so the question becomes - what are you bitching about then? You agree that deductibles serve a valid purpose. So what are you on about? Do you want there to be no deductibles?

You're right.

Of course, the bill may bear no relation to the deductible, especially if there is collusion. That's how costs rise.

Yes, right. We are in agreement. The bill does bear no relationship to the deductible. Once the deductible is exceeded, then the insurance company pays, and that's that, basically (except some policies have different provisions than others).

That is what I mean when I say that costs are guaranteed to go up with this new law:

1. They are mandating that insurance carriers cover preexisting conditions. That costs a lot of money.
2. They are eliminating aggregate maximums;
3. They are eliminating, effectively, high deductible policies;

So, we are covering 30,000,000 more people and covering them for more stuff than people are generally covered for now. We are told that the way we will save money is because of two main things: (a) preventative care is going to be included, and (b) fraud prevention will save hundreds of billions.

However, all the studies I have seen is that covering preventative care actually causes the overall costs to go up, because you pay out way more in the preventative care than you save in early detection of bigger problems. It may well be laudable to cover preventative care, but that's because it saves lives (good thing), and not because it saves money (because it doesn't). Further, I can't believe anyone believes the government's line on "fraud prevention" in the health care system. Why? Because they could just implement those fraud prevention measure now - and could have a year ago - and started saving money. what's the hold up? Why wait? Get those measures going now and we'll save money out the ass now. So, ask yourself, if they can do it, and don't - what is that? Dereliction of duty? Or, isn't it more likely that it's a convenient, very fluffy and fuzzy, way for them to simply fudge a number that makes it look like they save money?

I realize some people have a lot invested in being pro-health insurance reform, and no matter what anyone says against it, they will always come riding in on a white horse and give every benefit of the doubt to the administration. However, isn't it going a little too far when it comes to benefits of doubts to suggest that we could save $500 billion (or even half that) due to fraud prevention - but that we're not doing now, we are only going to do it after the new law goes into effect?

[NineOneFour]

They are absolutely not left to go without treatment. There are walk-in clinics almost everywhere. People can travel to them and get a check up anytime they want to. They can go the emergency room directly, and they can not, as a matter of law, be denied care.

Who pays the bill?

An ER visit could run $2,000 or more.

An ambulance is about $2,000 also.

The insurance company pays - except the deductible. How does it work with auto insurance? You get into an accident, you pay the deductible. Why not?

If there isn't a deductible then there is no reason NOT to call an ambulance every time for everything. Why would anyone not? However, if your total annual max is $5500, then that can be paid back over time if you don't happen to have $5500 to pay right away. Hospitals and all their staff and equipment are expensive. The user should pay no cost?

Fail.

Your car insurance gets cancelled, you don't die.

Not a good metaphor. Maybe you should try arguing reality without using inconsequential metaphors that don't work.

[NineOneFour]

5 freedoms you'd lose in health care reform
If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you'll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.
EMAIL | PRINT | SHARE | RSS
By Shawn Tully, editor at large
July 24, 2009: 10:17 AM ET

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.

A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.

If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:

1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan

The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.


Today, many states require these "standard benefits packages" -- and they're a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.

The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.

Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.

Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.

Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that's understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That's hardly a formula for lower costs. It's as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That's what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.

Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan -- say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.

The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. "The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. "And they could do it after the bills are passed."

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.

The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.

The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.

But read on.

The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.

The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.

The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges -- and as we've seen, that will soon be most Americans -- must get their care through something called "medical home." Medical home is similar to an HMO. You're assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.

Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America's health-care cost explosion.

The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans -- if they exist -- would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they're healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. "That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry," says Goodman.

In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year "grace period" that's barely being discussed.

Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren't covered by their employers. It won't happen right away -- large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.

The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that's strictly taboo in the bills). I'll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/ec ... 2009072410

Stupid.

Check the date. None of this has crap to do with what actually passed.

He thinks Americans "cherish" employer-based health care?

The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.

You think that doesn't apply to insurance companies NOW?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Nineonefour, stop with the ad homs.

[NineOneFour]

The insurance company pays - except the deductible. How does it work with auto insurance? You get into an accident, you pay the deductible. Why not?

If there isn't a deductible then there is no reason NOT to call an ambulance every time for everything. Why would anyone not? However, if your total annual max is $5500, then that can be paid back over time if you don't happen to have $5500 to pay right away. Hospitals and all their staff and equipment are expensive. The user should pay no cost?

I don't think you really understand the concept of "deductible".

It means that you don't go to the ER because you are sneezing. 'Mkay?

Of course I understand that. That was my point exactly. Eliminating deductibles is what would eliminate the cost to the consumer almost entirely. That's when people would go for small things. The deductible - we agree here - helps to make use of the insurance not cost free.

It works this way with car insurance, too. If you're an asshole and somebody keys your car, you get it fixed on your own dime. At least, after about the fourth occasion.

Yes - so the question becomes - what are you bitching about then? You agree that deductibles serve a valid purpose. So what are you on about? Do you want there to be no deductibles?

That's fine with me. As long as there's a co-pay so hypocondriacs and timewasters don't constantly show up.

What you apparently are incapable of realizing is that all industrialized nations BUT the US make this work extraordinarily well.

[NineOneFour]

Nineonefour, stop with the ad homs.

Gawdzilla, perhaps you could direct me to where I used an ad hom, please.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Nineonefour, stop with the ad homs.

Gawdzilla, perhaps you could direct me to where I used an ad hom, please.

The word "Stupid" in the post above mine. Play nice or go home.

[Surendra Darathy]

Of course, the bill may bear no relation to the deductible, especially if there is collusion. That's how costs rise.

Yes, right. We are in agreement. The bill does bear no relationship to the deductible. Once the deductible is exceeded, then the insurance company pays, and that's that, basically (except some policies have different provisions than others).

I think what you know is that they figured out a way to cap the billing, and that "price controls" is like red flag to a libertarian boi. If they did not implement price controls, then we are all living in a pipe dream, regardless of whether we live in your universe or mine.