Accountable Care Organizations - A Solution?

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Would my mod/lib graphologist care to define, and then justify, what he considers "fair" for insurance profits?

This is usually where we end up with budding economic/social engineers reporting all kinds of data and then making a completely subjective judgment on what is "fair".

I have no objection to innovation in health care delivery, although rewarding outcome is not exactly innovative. When hospitals work hard to ratchet down average lengh of stay for specific procedures for example, liberals quickly assail them for heartless, profit-centered initiatives and then personal injury lawyers sue. One notes that Obamacare didn't address the lawyer issue, the TLA being a favored interest group, which is what public payment of health care is based on - satisfying various constituencies, which is why people who can buy health insurance and don't get gummit largess in doing so will pay more for services they do not need. Sorry for the run-on sentence.

Latest Obamacare consequence is the demand of health care providers for more up-front payment for services, since deductibles are higher and it is harder to collect after service, many people having the attitude that someone else should pay for their health care.

Still looking for one person on BaptistLife who has successfully signed up for obamacare.

[Haruo]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Sorry, your fair is not innate to me. Since I didn't attempt to condemn any profit as unfair, I feel no need to express my views on that since you raised the matter of fairness, you should define it.

[KeithE]

[Haruo]

Yes, I must say it's strange, William, how quick you are to disapprove of the patently unfair payday loan industry's pricing practices and so unwilling to apply what looks to me and I gather to Keith like the same standard of "fairness" to other industries, be it health insurance, Walmart or whatever. Not to say that I think you should approve of injurious usury... But seriously, "what the market will bear" should apply, should it not, to all not just some?

[William Thornton]

Here's what I see in this. You make some very good points about outcome based ACOs, ones on which we could find much agreement. But then you cannot resist interjecting the usual slap at corporate profits at which you moralistically sniff, "unfair," based on nothing other than your subjective views of such things. Any who fail to acknowledge that Keith's view of fairness is innate are said to have blinders and judged to be heartless and uncaring. Unsaid but presumed is that such people are not the proper Christians as are those who have better developed spiritual lives which exhibit such innateness relative to forcing doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and other private actors in health care delivery to accept price controls and/or deliver services at prices acceptable to the highly developed innateness of some citizens.

When you declare 20% "profit" to be acceptable, are you meaning profit margin? If so then you have discarded your earlier argument.

You declare a "factor of 2 overcharge" to be unfair, meaning that a medical device retailer who pays $50 for a walker would be unfair in selling it for $101? Please, go into retailing and learn something, then come back.

See my reply to Haruo on fairness in predatory lenders.

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

[Haruo]

Doesn't look locked to me...

[ET]

[Haruo]

Looks like math is on a collision course with data.

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Glad you educated yourself. It will prove quite profitable to you in the future in these discussions.

You focus on hospitals. Good. Find out how much of their revenue depends on gummit payments.

The original topic here, the ACOs, is a good one. Leave out your subjective anti-corporate attitude and we will find much to agree upon.

I presume that we agree on the need for gummit to haul under control PI lawyers' the dems favorite big money interest group (next to unions). The former is one of the high profit margin sectors.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

What? No quotes from Amos or Isaiah on this?

[Haruo]

William, when is the last time you saw any part of the United States government (or any of the several states' governments, or even constituent county/parish/borough/municipal governments) put a gun to anyone's head in order to collect taxes?

Whether they thought they had a biblical mandate to do so or not...

Amos never once mentions Christians.

[William Thornton]