I laugh every time it airs.

This caused me to look into why it's a scam. I've seen this commercial plenty of times, but never thought much into them. What a racket. It seems that they're try to keep people addicted in order to drain their insurance and wallets until they're dry.
I'm starting to think insurance is the whole reason why our healthcare system is fucked. When I was a civillian I went to a large chain of dental clinics called Coast Dental. I didn't think much of it, I was like, It's near by and dentists are dentists right? On my check up they gave me a bunch of tests I didn't need and said I had a gum disease that required thousands of dollars in treatment. Went to another dentist later who assured me it was all bullshit. Seems as long as insurance is the way we pay, the more scammers who will be out to milk it all the while our costs go up.

Japans successful universal healthcare program works because all hospitals are non-profit and the government decides the prices it will pay for treatments.

It's basically the complete opposite of the American system.

"I'm starting to think insurance is the whole reason why our healthcare system is fucked."

It has been popular over the past few years to blame everything on insurance companies, but they're just one of the for-profit entities in the health care system ... and since Obamacare came about, they're one of the best regulated.

Until we address medical COSTS directly -- hospitals, doctors, medical suppliers, pharmaceutical companies, etc. -- there's only so much we can do to keep insurance premiums and copayments down. Insurance companies are still going to have to collect enough money to cover those inflated out-of-control costs, and even a perfectly efficient insurance system would still be expensive as hell.

Just ask Vermont's failed Green Mountain Single Payer system -- it would have required a 9% income tax increase and an 11% payroll tax increase just to cover it. Probably a little cheaper than private insurance, but even so, it was still prohibitively expensive.

Yeah, I just haven't been thinking about healthcare costs much. While the nation was embroiled in Obamacare debates, I was snug as a bug in my military care, where I never worry about shit. Not that it's perfect. I once had an awful bout of bronchitus and the damn Navy docs pretty much told me to fuck off cause it wasn't the flu.

American healthcare will forever be fucked.

This country will never accept anything other than absolute worship of the golden capitalist god, which decrees strong market control a sin.

Yet this Trumpism walks a strange line where people want both unfettered capitalism and economic protectionism, however, I think they'll just get the first thing. The protectionism will be just another broken promise.

Nah that's other countries capitalism.

just like in the old religious rags, it's okay to do the things your religion forbids to people that follow other religions

"I'm starting to think insurance is the whole reason why our healthcare system is fucked."


It mostly is.

So, basically, let's start mimicking the Japanese and Canadian healthcare systems.

Yes we should. AND AT THIS POINT THE NEXT STEP IS TO CONTROL MEDICAL COSTS DIRECTLY AND QUIT PRETENDING THAT SINGLE PAYER WILL FIX IT ALL.

I've been saying this for a couple years now, I still remain exactly right.

Yes Bort, and the way you control prices is though a single payer negotiating pricing with the hospitals, rather than the Balkanized mess of payers we have today. You have another way to get the hospitals to comply?

Yes I do, it will require regulating each step of the process, not just the insurance companies. Just as insurance companies have to devote 80%-85% of premium dollars to paying medical claims, we need to regulate hospitals so that most of what they charge goes to patient care, we need to regulate pharmaceutical company profits, we need to cap doctor salaries while also doing something about their expenses (student loans, medical malpractice insurance, etc), and so on. It would be a complex process I'm sorry to say, but that's what we get for having a complex system.

The "single payer will fix everything!!!1!!1!" wishful thinking relies upon the assumption that all the profit and bloat in our medical system is localized to insurance companies and hospitals, so if we just pay hospitals less, everything will work out fine. Because it's not like hospitals and doctors have bills to pay too, and would be forced to compromise patient care to cope with with drastically-reduced income.