Health Insurance

[Ned Miller]

I get my coverage through my teacher wife’s union and we were just informed that mine will go up 6% next school year so I will then pay $1000 per month just for myself for a BCBS PPO plan. Growing up they were the gold standard but now I see them as evil.

Personally I don’t know how you do it Todd. I am anti-overhead and I see having staff as overhead.The inability to contract when things get slow. Insurance is just going to keep on going up and now they have tricks, even on Obamacare, that the premiums look reasonable but you get killed on the deductibles, copays and something called co-insurance. We sadly found this out lately with various close relatives having some major medical issues.

Why did I dodge the draft? I could be on the VA’s dime now!

Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com

[Nick Griffin]

For younger employees you might want to look into establishing Health Savings Accounts, supplemented by a high deductible catastrophic policy. That’s a much less expensive approach that still meets the legal requirements.

But, as we always say, I’m not a lawyer (or a licensed insurance agent) so seek outside advice from a professional.

[Bob Zelin]

ah ha ha ha –
I have no answers here, I just want to complain. I love when people want things done for free. When I got back from NAB 2016, I received my health insurance bill from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. I have been a loyal member in Florida since 1999, and am never sick. Never hospitalized. Then Obamacare came along, and the plans changed, but because I have been with BCBS for so long, I have been grandfathtered in, to my existing plan (I can see whatever doctor I want). It’s jut me and my wife – no kids, and again, I am never sick.

My bill was (sit down for this) – $21,408, and we each have a $6000 deductible. I don’t have any other expenses that even come close to this expense. I (we) are paying for the folks that are not as fortunate as we are, and the only people who are NOT paying are the executives at Blue Cross Blue Shield. Of course, it’s not fair to yell at them, because Atena, United Healthcare, and all the others are just as guilty. Those insurance exec’s need their new Lear Jet’s (just like we need our new video gear), and someone has to pay for it.

And you want exactly WHAT for free ?

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Todd Terry]

I personally want nothing for free (you get what you pay for, ya know), nor was I asking for it. I do want a good and fair value, though… was interested in what others are doing.

I’m all for decent health coverage available to everyone… but I also don’t like people abusing the system. I know someone, roughly middle aged like me, who never “believed” in health insurance (well, he believed in it, as in acknowledging that it exists). This, despite his father being a life-long insurance guy. Instead he preferred to put aside money for himself and his wife in a little “health fund” and paying out of pocket, with enough left to hopefully cover emergencies. Well, he finds himself in his mid-50s and suddenly needing two knee replacements, a very expensive surgery that he can’t even remotely afford. But now, under new pre-existing condition rules, he was able to sign up for insurance despite having two bum knees and immediately get his surgery paid for (despite having never paid a penny in premiums in the past, and becoming what I’m sure was a huge loss to the insurance company). That is abusing the system, because basically I (and everyone else) paid for it, by dutifully paying our own premiums though the years. That’s one situation that rubbed me the wrong way.

But again… I wasn’t asking for anything for free, or looking for a handout. I think it behooves all of us as businessmen to look closely at any vendor that year after year charges us fees with multiple zeros in the number.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Bob Zelin]

I will drag this completely OT (and I apologize for it). So who are you blaming – the doctors ? When my mother in law kicked the bucket, she was hospitalized for 3 weeks (some intestinal thing) – she was old. We got her Medicare bills in the mail (which was paid for by her pension/insurance – thank God). The hospital (not the doctors) billed her $350,000 for 3 weeks. Now you tell me, exactly who can get away with billing an individual for anything for over $100,000 per week, and still kill them and get the money. If you give me your broken (camera, edit system, etc.) and I bill you $1000, and it still doesn’t work when you get it back, will you pay the bill ? Do you think the doctors make $100,000 on this ?
This is no different to me than the independent sports players, that see the team owners making countless millions, and they want some of the money. It’s the fans that suffer from the insane ticket prices, because the owners are not going to take less money – the players want more, the fans will pay for it, not them. With that said, even the super bowl is cheap compared to anyone’s health insurance.

Bob

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Rich Rubasch]

Ha! I just canceled my health insurance and bought a Superbowl ticket!

Go Packers!

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

[Mark Suszko]

One reason hospitals charge so much is, they are bound by law to serve everyone that walks into the emergency room, regardless of ability to pay. Those folks who never had insurance before and thus never did annual checkups or wellness visits or got their shots and whatever – when they came down with something bad, it was usually an even worse case because lack of preventive care let it fester and degrade. What could have been solved for pennies with preventative care vists and diagnosis turns into expensive surgeries and meds for life. They don’t have a regular doctor, so they just go to the nearest hospital E.R. and demand to be seen.

E.R. staff and their gear is the most expensive area of a hospital, and it’s tied up by a lot of those “walk-ins” that use the E.R. like it was a family G.P.’s clinic. But the folks must still be served. So Hospitals overcharge those of us who DO have an ability to pay, thru insurance. Which is why a 3-cent pill of Ibuprofen from Walgreen’s suddenly costs ten dollars a dose at the hospital, after all the handling fees and administrative costs have been attached to it.

Fixing this aspect was a major goal of the ACA (alias, “Obamacare”). The theory being if you make EVERYBODY pay SOMETHING into a system,. it has more capacity to absorb and level-out the ones that cost extra.

The savings from reducing that flow of unqualified cases into emergency rooms was supposed to be used to offset expenses in other areas. What we’re finding, though, is a lot of Insurance companies are just keeping that savings to themselves. Same thing with reform of Workman’s Compensation – after reforms that trimmed millions in cost to businesses paying those premiums, the premiums never went down as expected. The insurance companies pocketed the savings and passed them on to shareholders.

Insurance company executives will be among the first up against the wall, come the revolution.

[Nick Griffin]

[Mark Suszko] “Insurance company executives will be among the first up against the wall, come the revolution”

And, if you’ve read the cover story in this week’s Bloomberg Business Week, you know that the pharma companies should be standing right there beside them. Or should the lobbyists who got and keep us in this ridiculous situation go first?

Sorry fellow Americans to be part of sharing so much of our dirty laundry in an international public forum. Our European friends have to be wondering how we ever could have let this happen.

[Ned Miller]

Due to the fact I live in the northern burbs of Chicago, surrounded by Pharma HQs and often shooting and producing for their hospital, medical devices and medical society allies and enemies, I can assure all the uninitiated that: EVERYTHING is controlled, killed and promoted by their lobbyists, so nothing will ever improve. All legislative proposals are re-written by them. Former government regulators are hired by them. I know this for a fact since I do their talking heads. To me, Obama, and Hillary before him, were Don Quixotes charging windmills. Nothing will change. Seen it first hand. My wife loves House of Cards but I can’t watch it because I know it’s real. They all drink their organization’s Kool Aid so they each, on a personal level, don’t see themselves doing harm. They will spin it, and have the videos promote, that they are actually doing some good. Go figure. Their salaries are so astronomical that they are impervious to the pain of increased premiums, their families will always be on the Gold Plan.

Sorry.

Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com

[Tim Wilson]

[Ned Miller] “Nothing will change. “

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, 16 million people have insurance now that didn’t 3 years ago. We’re now down to single digits of uninsured. I’m one of the ones who couldn’t be insured based on pre-existing conditions. Now I am. I’d say that’s a pretty big change. Certainly for me. LOL

I certainly agree that insurance companies are out of control. THEY’re the ones pushing prices higher than they need to be…although, again, the price increases under the ACA are the lowest since we’ve been keeping track of this.

(Ironically enough, Romneycare comes much closer to getting it right. One of my favorite parts about living in Massachusetts, which I left only when I was able to find a high-risk health pool in Oregon, which cost a fortune for profoundly poor care — but those were the only two states I could get ANY insurance in at the time.)

ACA notwithstanding, I don’t think that bringing them to heel is quixotic. We did it with meatpacking. (Although it’s getting worse again, it’s nowhere near as bad as it used to be.) We did it with car safety. (Again with some notable slip-ups, the difference in safety between cars in 1966 and 2016 is night and day.)

It’s certainly never going to happen in a corporate kleptocracy where we encourage companies to ride roughshod over us, but hey. We grew up in the 60s convinced that the Berlin Wall would never come down. We just have to decide that we want better health insurance as badly as we want safer cars.

Heck, it’s enough of a goal to have as many choices for health insurance as we do for car and homeowner insurance. It’s not beyond our reach any more than those were.

No question though, those are some heinous people. I’m glad they’re paying you, though. SOMEBODY should benefit directly from them.