Dan J

How can a health insurance company cut medical costs?

Can your car insurance company reduce the cost of your car?

Can your homeowners insurance company reduce your mortgage costs?

Think about it for a second.

The same way Walmart forces vendors to cut costs.

According to their list I am already using a good bank. Its not exactly small, just a medium-sized regional bank.

It has everything to do with it. Many people hate soldiers and will go to any lengths to defile their names. The videos was not in secret. It was there but was encrypted. They were being sued and decided to wait till the courts ruled to unencrypt it. The jackals have gotten it now and are doing what they always do. Reuters is being sued along with the military by the family for a lot of money. Reuters is covering their #### and hoping to not pay out and throw the burden onto the military and government. It was known at the military sites I am a member of.

As long as the public cannot access it, it is secret.

At the same time, there are people who see that the military can do no wrong, and any incident showing otherwise is a conspiracy against the military.

There speaks a liberal with no faith in the intelligence of the people. Sad, yet predictable.

What part of the majority's objection to the "healthcare" Bill do you not get? As liberals here are so eager to point out, the majority of the electorate are in favour of healthcare reform. What liberals don't understand is that most people get the concept that this Bill is f***-all to do with real reform, which is why it is disliked by the majority. It does nothing to address why America pays 50% more than other Western nations, as a portion of GDP, yet has a healthcare system ranked far below European nations. All it does it put a Band-Aid on the problem and allow Democrats to say "We won - we got healthcare reform passed," then sit back and rake in the money being paid out by insurance companies and the big pharmaceuticals, all the while letting them get away with our money.

It makes me sick.

I never said the current bill was good. It doesn't go far enough. Its not really healthcare reform as much as it is health insurance reform as most of the measures only apply to the health insurance side of the issue.

Most people are very disconnected from the issue of healthcare, if you have never been without employer provided insurance or been denied insurance due to a pre-existing condition, you never really see the cost of the care you received when you visit a hospital or doctors office. This works for a lot of people, even though the cost increases in the system are unsustainable.

If you have this kind of disconnection on the issue, any change ( or perceived change) to that relationship will be seen as negative.

Now I was am always a soldier and will damn any bad seeds that defile our name but I will never persecute any that are doing their job and a damn good one at that. I hated this war and wished we never went in.

I don't think this issue has anything to do with whether or not the soldiers were right to fire (Although relying on a grainy video camera is probably not the best thing to do). It has to do with the fact that this was covered up and the only way the video got out was that it was leaked.

The military is in a very precarious position. After the abuses of power at the prison and other incidents, continued secrecy in incidents like this is not helping improve the transparency of the military. As long as they continue, they will always be viewed with suspicion.

Of course transparency has never been part of the military culture and that has served some people quite well.

Anxiety? You're kidding me, right?

It has little to do with anxiety and a lot to do with plain, old-fashioned money.

It does for some, but most of the protesters are not really profiting from the way the current system works. (They are encouraged by those who do) Instead, they would rather stick to the devil they know rather than deal with something they don't. Health care/insurance is very personal for some people, and changing it is like telling them to go to another church.

We don't have an example of single payer system that people can relate to.

Again, I have to agree. No-one in Washington has the courage to do what is right, and very soon the Electorate will let the incumbents there know just what they think.

I like the polls which show that a majority of the electorate think that there needs to be wholesale change in Congress. It might show that they are finally waking up to what's so corrupt about government here.

Switching to single payer is only possible in certain states. Not on a nationwide basis. The anxiety that conservatives and a number of independents would have to such a large change would kill any bill before it got to the floor. These people would rather get raped and pillaged by insurance companies than to do something major to fix it.

It is the medicos that have to cut costs. The insurance has to pay for all the mandating and is being forced to eat the rising costs. If they want to mandate coverage then start mandating the costs of the medical procedures. Start mandating the professionals salaries.

They will, if insurance companies can't pay them as much. Insurance companies have a lot of power when it comes to provider prices. But they would rather do mutual back scratching as long as they can get away with it. Its a win-win for the provider and insurance company.

It could be because shooting some innocent looking civilians doesn't look good after the fact. You want cause a few more riots and get more people killed?

Sh*t happens, especially in war, deal with it.

They could have had people on the ground, rather than relying on a grainy video camera.

Who said it was being covered up? The website that was partisan against the military? Reuters who have a lawsuit against the military?

Apparently you haven't heard the entire story. There were FoIA requests for the video and calls for an investigation of the incident, all if which was denied.

Even before the video was released, the wikileaks editor who had the video was followed, photographed and monitored by the CIA.

If nothing was being covered up, why go to such lengths to keep it secret?

Agreed. The tape showed the guys on the ground who looked like they were carrying slinged weapons or RPGs according to the pilots. It's happened before where guys carrying cameras that look like weapons in hot area. Of course the tape doesn't mention that at all.

The title alone "collateral murder" tells you it's a propaganda piece and an old one at that.

If there is nothing to hide, then why was it covered up?

Like the part about them being mandated to pay for procedures and having to accept preexisting conditions but they are not allowed to recover the costs this entails. I would sue them also.

Massachusetts already has mandatory health coverage, the costs from pre-existing conditions is already covered by a larger pool. This is about exploiting a de facto monopoly to protect excessive margins instead of doing what other companies have to do in tough market. Figure out how to cut costs.

So instead of working to cut costs, or put pressure on providers, they turn around and put spend money on lawyers and a lawsuit.

I am living with my fiance in the Netherlands; she is Indonesian. We are registered here as "living together" (which requires that we both prove we are not otherwise married) but we are not a "registered couple" since that involves a whole different set of cumbersome paperwork.

Therefore, we want to go back to the US to get married, but we will continue to live here, and will probably move to another country in southeast Asia sometime in the next six months. Are we able to go back to get married without setting up residence in the US?

Or do we need to stay there for some fixed amount of time? How long is that? How soon could we move to another country?

If we are able to do this, what forms do we need to use, and where can we file? How long will it take?

You would think this would be a common situation, but we can't find much info on it.

Thanks.

Mr. Mitchell

Citizens of Indonesia need a visitor visa to enter the US on a temporary basis. She should be able to apply through the local US Embassy or Consulate.

This doctor is a great American partisan hack.

Usually when money has been spent on tries to recover from downturns it has prolonged recoveries.

Economic recovery depends on people and companies spending money. Consumers and companies tend to save or cut spending as much as possible during a downturn. How do you think the private markets are going to on their own break the savings paradox when doing so is might be very risky?

Defense matters aren't the same as economic policies. No one claimed the Iraq War was going to boost our economy or make it more effective at least that wasn't major rationale I heard.

The money Obama is spending is increasingly loaned at interest from countries like China which will have ramifications long after our troops leave Iraq.

The Iraq war was suppose to cost $150 billion. A trillion dollars later, we are still there. Now that we have a situation that requires it, it would be nice to have had that money.

I think this chart puts things a little more into perspective:

Job growth is meaningless when its built in vapour. Eventually it will disappear. Which actually accounts for a large amount of the job growth under Bush. There were in industries that were overcharged by credit and an asset bubble.

Yeah, I honestly wish temporary jobs all around were a separate statistic. It's erroneous to count them as actual jobs in the economic market if they are going to disappear in a couple of months.

Any job can end at any time, how long does it have to exist to not be considered temporary?

It would be kind of our president to grant Tea Party patriots a town hall meeting. He would see we are not enemies of the state. Having been accused of racism, we ask a chance to clear our name. Also, the treason this president commits (destroying a free society) is worthy of a town hall meeting.

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, of New Jersey's 12th District, could mediate since he is so close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama. We would drive to Washington, D.C., and would provide the questions in advance to the president. He would have ample time to research factual, documented responses. There would be no fainting in the audience, no staged adoring crowds and no teleprompter. Considering Obama meets with ACORN, SEIU, Van Jones, Mark Lloyd, anti-capitalists and other Marxists and communists, why can't he meet with veterans, farmers, accountants, parents, grandmothers and pet owners?

Let's discuss lack of eligibility documentation, immigration, regulation of CO2, fraud in the health care bill, control of college loans and a misplaced Constitution. We must challenge the statement of Obama crony Rep. John Dingell, D-Michigan. He boasts the health care bill will "control the people." George Washington and James Madison would not have ignored this comment.

Obama has scared Americans. Is Obama up to the challenge of defending what he is doing or are these just the actions of a schoolyard bully who steals kids' lunch money and runs away?

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/opinion/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1270008462126760.xml&coll=3

More like they are trying to get the president to do something that will further support their delusions.

actually, this is true in principle, but the statement ignores the fact that experiments with controlled variables have been done, and are ongoing as restrictions are lifted across the country. removing concealed carry prohibitions and allowing people to arm themselves legally can be seen as an independent variable. lower crime rates in the same areas can be seen as a dependent variable.

the iconic experiment in regard to the question of whether an armed populace will reduce criminal assault occured in south florida in teh early 80's the year after cuba emptied it's jails into boats with maps to America. the rape rate went up 800% in dade county in one year, and was reduced below the pre-incident levels the following year by the county sherrif's widely publicised invitation to county women to come to the sherrif's range for free training and ammunition, and an installment purchase plan on a service revolver. raping became a dangerous profession in dade county, so the rapists moved elsewhere, or began to pay for services rendered with professionals.

hard to find a cert on this, as it predates google, but those of us who were adults and interested in such topics remember reading about it in the American Rifleman and Shooting Times, and seeing reports of this series of events on the national news.

So in this "controlled experiment" what is the control group?

@Big Dog:

Here's another source.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121074988

I could do this all day long. Google makes debate so easy.

It doesn't help you think, it only helps you show what other people think.

I've mentioned this before, businesses will charge whatever they the customer will pay for a product or service, not cost + a set margin. In most industries, competition helps reduce or keep the margin low. To make money, companies find ways to increase efficiency and use that as an edge over their competitors.

The health care industry doesn't have much competition for a few reasons. Medical products and drugs are patented, which limits the competition for quite a few years on that. Consumers of healthcare are insulated for the cost through insurance that is often paid in part by an employer who only offers its employees a choice of one, maybe two insurance plans. People don't usually comparison shop in a medical emergency, they need care and need it now. In part due to the complexity of insurance rembirsment, Its pretty much impossible to comparison shop anything except for procedures like lasik which are often not covered by insurance.

Medicare is essentially the largest single insurance provider in the US. It has quite a bit of power in forcing providers to become more efficient. Providers can try to avoid efficiency by pushing costs to other insurance providers, but there is only so much that they will take.

Why not do the K-1 visa, get married in a civil ceremony here and once you've applied for advanced parole or she gets her green card, go back to Indonesia and do the ceremony there? That's (sort of) what my fiancee and I are doing.

In respect to Indonesian culture, its better to have a ceremony before leaving if possible. But yes that is an option too.

The last time I looked it was leftists who light fires, bash in storefront windows torch cars, throw rock at police..... all because Corporate big wigs are meeting in town.

Get real dude.

Its often anarchists, which probably have more in common with the right wing anti-government types than not.

Let me get this straight...if I can get a fiancee visa secured early, we can marry and have the ceremoney in Indonesia (but not register the marriage in Indonesia). She can then come to the US and we can have a civil ceremony to register our marriage in the US?

Thanks everyone for your responses!

-G

Yes, that is correct. That is what my wife and I did.

All you have to do is make sure that the person officiating the ceremony is aware not to do anything on your behalf to register the marriage (I don't think they can, but its good to cover that side). If asked at the port of entry about your marriage status, you are not yet married. The reason for bringing this up, is that some people consider themselves married once they have a ceremony and might make the mistake of saying they are married if they come in on a K-1 Visa.

I thought we were not to engage in racial profiling!

Demographics include much more than just race.

Brain fail. Correlation implies just that. The elements are related to each other.

Of course, since the Gun Control Lobby warned that allowing more and more people to arm themselves had to cause more gun violence, you much be implying they were talking out of their collective buttholes.

The article is implying that guns control is the only reason for the difference in statistics and completly ignoring all the other demographic differences between Utah and Washington DC.