A White House plan could help end decades of whack-a-mole between regulators and insurance companies over covering mental health and addiction treatment.
It might if y’all get your asses up and create some mutuals.
Historically speaking the German public insurance system started out with union-associated mutual funds, Bismarck didn’t so much create the system but brought it under state control and made having insurance mandatory because it was macroeconomically sound and otherwise beneficial for his conservative (as in Monarchist) ass: Result was less votes for the Socdems which Bismarck liked, more state control which he also liked, and less people emigrating to the US where you had more chances, but also no safety net whatsoever, which he also liked.
To this day German insurers are practically mutuals – as they’re public-law corporations we don’t own them (noone does) but we’re not customers but members, vote for their boards, and noone is siphoning off profit. They’re essentially like municipalities in a sense: Providing service and you’re a “citizen” of at least one (all German territory is covered by municipalities so you don’t get around that if you want to live somewhere), you get to vote in how they’re run. One thing you’ll want to also copy is to have a mutual for those mutuals so to speak, to transfer funds from insurers who insure lots of rich healthy people to insurers who insure lots of poor ill people.
But on the legal side more importantly you have to severely limit co-pays. One thing that absolutely must happen is that all kinds of preventive checkup and care that avoids worse is covered by the policy no questions asked. That’s literally saving the insurers money.
Over here co-pays are very limited and more of the “yeah we don’t want you to go to a doctor to get a prescription to get 1.50 over the counter drugs for free” kind, as well as some modest contributions to hospital stays, on the order of 5 Euro a day “you’d otherwise have spent it on food which you’re getting here”. All that has yearly caps, affordable ones. Generally speaking if people are paying for stuff out of pocket then it’s to get services that insurance doesn’t cover, like single rooms, or fancy treatments, where you’ll only pay the price difference to what’s medically necessary. In a nutshell if you want gold teeth you’ll have to buy the gold, but the insurer is still going to cover the work.
Am I the only person who keeps meeting medical professionals and support staff who don’t realize that insurance is unhelpful in some situations? The only insurance with premiums my family can afford has deductibles and co-pays/etc so high that we only ever paid premiums when we had it, we literally never once were able to also afford to go get care. Once the mandate dropped and we didn’t have to pay premiums anymore, we could use that money to self-pay our appointments.
Sure, yes, if I get cancer or my husband is hit by a truck, we are fucked. But also, if we go bankrupt paying for insurance we can’t afford to use, I’m gonna be pretty fucked for that cancer anyway because I can’t afford the co-pays etc. Idk what part of “I can’t afford to pay premiums and co-pays until I potentially reach a $1.5k out of pocket maximum,” is so hard to understand.
I helped host a local protest to raise awareness about Single-Payer (anybody else remember SPAN, the Single-Payer Action Network?) back in 2004, and holy fucking shit that was almost 20 years ago.
Big hospital near me removed the only mental health floor in theicounty this year. Mental healthcare just isn’t profitable. The big hospital in my county has a 6 month waiting list to see someone.
The private practice guys don’t take most insurance.
Can confirm about private practice. My insurers mental health website was severely out of date so I had to spend hours upon hours on hold with every private practice in a 20 mile radius to find one that took my insurance. Still ended up on a 3 months long wait-list before I was finally seen.
They still have to remain somewhat competitive though. Yes, you probably have to have health care but you don’t have to get health care from a specific company. In my state, Washington, we have a great public healthcare marketplace where a ton of companies compete. On top of that, you have private health care options through employers. On top of that, we have a push from https://wholewashington.org/ to make all of the state’s health care free. We also have had a lot of push into AppleHealth which is supposed to be free for people if they are a certain number under the FPL but I keep telling them I make 6 figures and they keep providing health insurance to my kids. So I guess the kids get free healthcare.
Mental healthcare gets held back by people like you who think their ignorance is more valid than the knowledge of people that actually study these phenomenon from the goal of understanding it.
I hope you have enough self awareness to realize you’re allowing conservatives to sabotage your principles through wedge issue scapegoats that are misrepresented.
Yeah, I’d say stress due to financial hardship and dread due to climate change are primary causes poor mental health, but I don’t see politicians doing anything meaningful for these.
Nice, though if I lose my job and insurance due to the paralyzing anxiety I have regarding losing my job and insurance, this doesn’t really make a difference
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It might if y’all get your asses up and create some mutuals.
Historically speaking the German public insurance system started out with union-associated mutual funds, Bismarck didn’t so much create the system but brought it under state control and made having insurance mandatory because it was macroeconomically sound and otherwise beneficial for his conservative (as in Monarchist) ass: Result was less votes for the Socdems which Bismarck liked, more state control which he also liked, and less people emigrating to the US where you had more chances, but also no safety net whatsoever, which he also liked.
To this day German insurers are practically mutuals – as they’re public-law corporations we don’t own them (noone does) but we’re not customers but members, vote for their boards, and noone is siphoning off profit. They’re essentially like municipalities in a sense: Providing service and you’re a “citizen” of at least one (all German territory is covered by municipalities so you don’t get around that if you want to live somewhere), you get to vote in how they’re run. One thing you’ll want to also copy is to have a mutual for those mutuals so to speak, to transfer funds from insurers who insure lots of rich healthy people to insurers who insure lots of poor ill people.
But on the legal side more importantly you have to severely limit co-pays. One thing that absolutely must happen is that all kinds of preventive checkup and care that avoids worse is covered by the policy no questions asked. That’s literally saving the insurers money.
Over here co-pays are very limited and more of the “yeah we don’t want you to go to a doctor to get a prescription to get 1.50 over the counter drugs for free” kind, as well as some modest contributions to hospital stays, on the order of 5 Euro a day “you’d otherwise have spent it on food which you’re getting here”. All that has yearly caps, affordable ones. Generally speaking if people are paying for stuff out of pocket then it’s to get services that insurance doesn’t cover, like single rooms, or fancy treatments, where you’ll only pay the price difference to what’s medically necessary. In a nutshell if you want gold teeth you’ll have to buy the gold, but the insurer is still going to cover the work.
Am I the only person who keeps meeting medical professionals and support staff who don’t realize that insurance is unhelpful in some situations? The only insurance with premiums my family can afford has deductibles and co-pays/etc so high that we only ever paid premiums when we had it, we literally never once were able to also afford to go get care. Once the mandate dropped and we didn’t have to pay premiums anymore, we could use that money to self-pay our appointments.
Sure, yes, if I get cancer or my husband is hit by a truck, we are fucked. But also, if we go bankrupt paying for insurance we can’t afford to use, I’m gonna be pretty fucked for that cancer anyway because I can’t afford the co-pays etc. Idk what part of “I can’t afford to pay premiums and co-pays until I potentially reach a $1.5k out of pocket maximum,” is so hard to understand.
I helped host a local protest to raise awareness about Single-Payer (anybody else remember SPAN, the Single-Payer Action Network?) back in 2004, and holy fucking shit that was almost 20 years ago.
No, that can’t be, all those online commenters tell me that democrats are beholden to “big money” and this move would hurt insurance companies.
I’m confused, do you actually believe that Democrats are not beholden to big money?
Yes, I am. Because the democratic party base has chosen a guy to represent them and become president who, together with his party, mass pardoned Marihuana convicts and capped insulin prices to 35$ for private insurants and Medicare recipients and have increased the minimum wage every time it was increased and raised the federal minimum wage to 15$ in the first week of Biden in office and cancelled 66 billion in student loans already and cancelled 10k student loans for everybody and expanded gun safety laws for the first time in 30 years and banned oil and gas price gouging and provided millions for baby formula during the shortage and increased veterans benefits and gave Americans abortion rights in the first place and killed the Keystone XL pipeline and vetoed EPA regulation rollbacks and got you fuckers $1.400 COVID relief checks and expanded unemployment benefits for 9.7 million people and got the fucking Covid vaccine going and ended transgender discrimination in the goverment and protects abortion access and ended family separation
And a party that’s actually beholden to “big money” blocks and votes against all of that. Which Republicans did.
Big hospital near me removed the only mental health floor in theicounty this year. Mental healthcare just isn’t profitable. The big hospital in my county has a 6 month waiting list to see someone.
The private practice guys don’t take most insurance.
Can confirm about private practice. My insurers mental health website was severely out of date so I had to spend hours upon hours on hold with every private practice in a 20 mile radius to find one that took my insurance. Still ended up on a 3 months long wait-list before I was finally seen.
Not really. They’ll just raise their rates.
They still have to remain somewhat competitive though. Yes, you probably have to have health care but you don’t have to get health care from a specific company. In my state, Washington, we have a great public healthcare marketplace where a ton of companies compete. On top of that, you have private health care options through employers. On top of that, we have a push from https://wholewashington.org/ to make all of the state’s health care free. We also have had a lot of push into AppleHealth which is supposed to be free for people if they are a certain number under the FPL but I keep telling them I make 6 figures and they keep providing health insurance to my kids. So I guess the kids get free healthcare.
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Mental healthcare gets held back by people like you who think their ignorance is more valid than the knowledge of people that actually study these phenomenon from the goal of understanding it.
I hope you have enough self awareness to realize you’re allowing conservatives to sabotage your principles through wedge issue scapegoats that are misrepresented.
Lets not stoop to their level, no reason to strawman mental health coverage, which is much needed in this country.
Rabbits
You know what the data says would have a big impact on mental illness? Fixing the wealth inequality that’s destroying the country.
Yeah, I’d say stress due to financial hardship and dread due to climate change are primary causes poor mental health, but I don’t see politicians doing anything meaningful for these.
I’m sure Republicans will be very supportive of this since gun violence is all due to mental health issues.
Nice, though if I lose my job and insurance due to the paralyzing anxiety I have regarding losing my job and insurance, this doesn’t really make a difference
Wait, it isn’t in the USA? That’s nuts. I knew the American healthcare system was bad, but…
Sounds like a good thing but they’ll probably just raise our premiums 50%
Unfortunately, private insurance only makes money when it isn’t used.