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Spinhirne's comments:

on Million Dollar Ideas?

With all the things Oregon needs -- jobs, medical care, education, regulated banks -- using that much time on the guy who wants to buy his fantasy car was inexcusable.

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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on Rx: Role of Employers

Ginsburg is wrong.

Health care is already heavily subsidized. The goverment pays for over half of our heallth care. A big portion of this is income for private insurance companies who protect this system.

Can anyone trace where the dollars in Ginsberg's paycheck come from?

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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on Rx: Role of Employers

Coops are not a solution. This is simply a government supported market place for unworkable, wrong-mindied inefficient businesses, health insurers.

Joel Spinhirne

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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on Rx: Role of Employers

No. Ginsburg is wrong.

The profit motive is the root cause of the U.S. Health Care diaster.

Simply, health care is not a societial area where there should be any knd of profit based, market model.

Joel Spinhirne

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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on Rx: Role of Employers

Here is why employer-provided insurance is a bad idea:

1. It costs 30 to 50% more for the service provided.

2. Medical decisions are made by insurance company employees dedicated to maximizing profit.

3. Health insurers are nearly monopolistic. They manage nearly nothing except their revenue stream. They invest resources in denying benefits, keeping seemingly bad risk people off their policies, and analyzing how much they can raise their rates without having mass, dramatic exodus of customers.

Until at a minimum, everyone can buy into Mediare, their is no practical alternative.

4. There is no transparency. Employees cannot tell what is covered until they get sick or injured. Medical decisions are made behind closed doors by health insurance employees. Employers have no idea how much their premiums will go up next year.

We should all be planning a graceful death or transformation of the U.S. healh insurance industry.

Joel Spinhirne

The Serano Group

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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on Rx: Role of Employers

The discussion should be reframed.

First, why are we not just adopting one of the health delivery systems the rest of the civilized world uses? The only problem seems to be health insurance corporations would lose their profitable, ineffective, dysfunctional businesses.

This is not raidal. Doing the wrong thing for 60 years is radical.

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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on Rx: Role of Employers

Hello,

I understand that employer involvement in health insurance began during WWII when wages were froze and employers, not able to attract the employees they wanted by offering a helath insurance benefit to circumvent a wage freeze.

It seems like it was a bad idea that we have lived with for the last 60 years.

Wouldn't any employer want to get out of the private health insurance business? Particularly when we pay doulbe what the rest of the developed world does with the worst results.

Medicare for all would be a simple deductin like FICA, cost society at least 30% less, not create employees distressed when they lose their job that their family loses health care.

Shouldn't every employer be pressing for Medicare for All?

Joel Spinhirne

The Serano Group

A nonprofit analyzing persisting health conditions

Hood River, OR

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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