| Tuesday, August 13th, 2013 | | | | |  | | | Why You Should Take Your "Health" Into Your Own Hands | | | - The shocking truth about Obamacare straight out of Harry Reid's mouth...
- To figure out how to purchase Obamacare, simply follow the arrow... all 50 of them...
- Plus, Addison Wiggin on what your health care really costs, why dentists are now extracting children and plenty more...
|
| | | | | | | External Advertisement
Breaking Video: "12% of the World's Oil Reserves Are Hidden Underneath This Tiny, Australian Town"
| | | | | | | | Addison Wiggin, amazed at readers who criticize our health care research without having actually read it...
 We begin today by checking our premises: In order to imagine something working forever, it must begin to work in the first place.
When asked last Friday about what the future holds for the Affordable Care Act, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, "What we've done with Obamacare is a step in the right direction, but we're far from having something that's going to work forever."
The law takes full effect Jan. 1, 2014, and the online exchanges launch on Oct. 1, 2013. But lofty expectations are being played down as logistical problems become worse and worse.
"It's only prudent to not assume everything is going to work perfectly on day one," said Gary Cohen, Obama's health insurance czar, according to a CQ Roll Call Report back in April. He was hedging the launch of the online insurance exchanges. Turns out that was a good bet. Something tells us it will turn out to be the understatement of the decade.
"The time for debating about the size of text on the screen, or the color, or is it a world-class user experience -- that's what we used to talk about two years ago," said Cohen's colleague, Harry Chao. "Now the philosophy is: 'Let's just make sure it's not a third-world experience.'"
There are a lot of opportunities for good, low-cost health care in the Third World. But we're sure Mr. Chao is imaging something along these lines (in which case, he couldn't set the bar much lower)...
 Quality Control: As long as it's better than this...
In recent months, implementing Obamacare has been hairier than its proponents seemed to realize. The biggest delay so far was the employer mandate. That's been pushed back one year, adding $10 billion to the program's price tag.
But the online exchanges are the life force of Obamacare. There will be consequences to winging it. What's so hard about rolling these exchanges out on time, anyways? Here's the organizational chart. Just follow the arrow... errr...
 How to not have a "third-world experience": Create a complex flow chart
OK. We'll be honest... We don't have a clue what's going on in that chart.
What we do know is that green box labeled "Federal Data Services HUB" is the communication hub we discussed yesterday. It was supposed to be ready by Sept. 4... and now it's slated for Sept. 30, just one day before the online exchanges launch. A functioning hub is crucial so agencies can verify if individuals are eligible for the subsidies they're claiming.
Those subsidies include the refundable tax credits for the poor. Those subsidies are capped at an income equal to 400% of the federal poverty level. If a household's income is just $1 higher than that, they don't get a subsidy. Depending on age and things like whether or not the enrollees smoke -- that $1 in extra income could increase the household's premium payments by as much as $9,355. If you also started smoking, your premium could go up even more.
But don't worry. The government has a solution for Obamacare's back-end problems. They're simply waiving the verification process for claimed subsidies until the kinks are ironed out. It's called "the honor system" -- because that works so well on college campuses.
If we didn't know any better, we'd think the government built the damn thing to fail. Heck, the transcript from Harry Reid's above-mentioned interview bluntly blurts out as much. The interview asked him if Obamacare was a stepping stone to a single-payer system.
Reid's answer? "Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes."
"Congratulations!" writes one derisive reader about our research on Obamacare. "A perfect example of 'big lie' propaganda. Misleading, mean-spirited and factually wrong. A new low in junk journalism."
"The problem with health care in America," writes another reader, "is the obscene profits the insurance companies are raking in. Period! Your BS about government meddling is just more propaganda by another corporate tool, YOU!"
Funny you should write that... our research, should you take the time to actually read it, helps you steer clear of insurance companies. As this ecstatic (actual) reader discovered:
"I was putting off a lipid panel since I had lost my insurance last year," he writes. "A walk-in clinic wanted $75 for an office visit plus another $75 for the test. I read your research and followed your advice. I was able to buy the full panel on Monday. Drew blood at a lab five minutes from my house on Tuesday. Got the results Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Total cost: $43.19!"
The bottom line is that there are cheaper and higher-quality health care options available to you than you're lead to believe. We've spent five months researching them all for you -- we're happy to see you putting it to good use! If you haven't viewed our research yet, you can do so completely free of any charge, right here. (And please, if you're going to look at the title, scoff and then email us about it... don't expect much of a response.)
We wrestled with the health care issue a little over a year ago in our Apogee Advisory. In researching surging medical costs, we walked in on government, hospitals and insurance companies cozying up in bed together. It turns out there's a little-known and shady scam known as "PPO re-pricing" you're not supposed to be privy to.
If you've never heard of it... you're not alone. But once you know about it you'll never make the same medical mistakes you might have innocently made.
Below, we give you the full scoop, plus a simple way to take your health care into your own hands starting today...
[Ed. Note: Yesterday we asked you to share your dream retirement number (if you haven't shared your number, you can do so right here).
More than 2,657 readers have shocked us with their replies...
On average, you've told us that you need $4,514,076 to fund your dream retirement. But studies show that the average "near-retirement" family has just $12,000 saved. The big discrepancy in the numbers got us thinking...
What if we could show you a simple way to quickly get to your dream retirement number? No 30-year plan required. Just a fast and easy way to play a little "catch up."
Keep your eyes peeled on this space tomorrow for more details...]
| | | | | | | How to Insure Your Wealth Against Bad Financial Policy...
It's no secret that every single day, the dollar that is in your pocket today could be worth less tomorrow. A brand-new report shows you two specific ways to free yourself from the Federal Reserve's "print and promise" policies, even while the dollar continues to shrink in value. Want a copy? It's FREE along with 3 other reports. Click here to learn how to get access now... | | | | | | | | The Daily Reckoning Presents
| | | | Why You Should Take Your "Health" Into Your Own Hands | | | | by Addison Wiggin | | | It's come to this: A typical family's health insurance costs as much as a typical family car.
If you're a typical American family, your "health" will set you back $20,728 every year. That figure comes gratis of Milliman, a benefits consulting group. A base-model Toyota Camry... the typical family's most-popular make? It costs $22,055.
Milliman's numbers account for only the premiums and out-of-pocket costs. Heaven forbid you actually get sick.
Back in 2006-07 while researching and filming our documentary I.O.U.S.A., we made the intimate discovery that health care for an aging society... not just, but mostly in the United States... is by far the biggest driver of deficits, debt and default -- for families... and businesses... corporations... and the entire nation.
"In America," wrote an expatriate in an email, "workers are held hostage to jobs they hate because working independently or taking early retirement means no access to health care unless you are willing to pay $1,000 a month for insurance. International health insurance costs me less than $100 a month."
Last July, the Supreme Court decided that the Frankenstein piece of legislation known as "Obamacare" jibes with the vision of the Founding Fathers. We all know the end result. The federal government can now force you to buy health insurance from a private company.
The trouble for you... and me, frankly.... is more profound. Let's say you don't give two proverbial defecates about the politics of the situation. Let's also say you're trying to figure out how to deal with the rising cost of education, food, gas, heat etc., all while your stock investments and house "value" decline... what are you supposed to do?
Unfortunately, the only thing up for debate in 2009-10 when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was being hashed out in closed-door committee hearings was by what means the government would enable insurance and pharmaceutical companies to fleece patients and taxpayers. So now we're left to our own devices.
The good news? You don't have to expatriate to take your health care into your own hands. While we can't possibly address every issue on our plate at the moment -- the Fed, Goldman Sachs, two-party electoral charades, spoiled milk -- we can address one critical item.
We'll expose the scams that make U.S. health care the costliest in the world.
New Yorker Beverly Weintraub is one of the "lucky" ones. She has employer-provided insurance.
Last year, her teenage son choked on a piece of turkey. He spent four hours in the emergency room -- a physical exam, sedation, endoscopy and removal of the offending poultry.
For these services, the hospital billed her insurance company, Aetna, $22,214.92.
Aetna agreed to pay only $2,885.67. And the hospital cheerfully settled for that amount. Ms. Weintraub was out of pocket about $800.
"How could those numbers possibly be reconciled?" she wrote. Being employed as a reporter for the New York Daily News, she set out to find answers.
What she found first is that her story is commonplace. "There are the sky-high costs that a hospital will claim reflect its expenses, and the much-lower fees it accepts under contract with insurance companies."
"What's missing from this complex web," Weintraub writes, "is any hint of what the services a patient received actually cost."
That's by design. For the U.S. health care system is yet another mechanism of "extraction." "Washington's empire," economist Paul Craig Roberts reminds us, "extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America."
The health care complex is surely one of the most powerful... and the utter lack of "price transparency" is what allows them to retain that power.
"The rates that insurance companies pay," Weintraub writes, "are negotiated based on what they believe a hospital's true costs are. But then those rates are jacked up an average of 30-50% to make up for money that hospitals lose in treating patients who don't have private insurance -- which is the majority of them. So to make up the difference, they overcharge patients who are insured. This practice is called cost-shifting."
Ms. Weintraub tells a good yarn... but it's incomplete. Cost-shifting takes place in the form of two insidious scams, patiently described to us by Dr. G. Keith Smith, an Oklahoma City MD who's doing his level best to undermine the practice.
| | | | | | | America's oil boom... almost didn't happen!
You've probably heard a thing or two about the surge in American oil production... The oil boom was almost dead in the water because of a simple miscalculation America has made over the last 40 years. However, the boom IS happening... but because of this "error," it spawned a second, even larger SUPER-BOOM! And many could make huge profits because of it -- with exceptional gains as high as 598% within the next 12 months. | | | | | |
The first scam is called "uncompensated care." To understand how it works, it helps to know a rough breakdown of who is treated in a typical hospital:
- About 50% are covered by either Medicare or Medicaid... which don't pay for the full cost of treatment
- About 10% have no insurance at all. For obvious reasons, they too typically don't pay full freight
- About 40% have private insurance. They carry the burden for the other 60%.
At the end of each year, many hospitals collect money from an "uncompensated care pool" -- funded by federal and state taxes and typically administered by a state government. "That creates the perverse incentive for hospitals to issue fictitiously insane bills," says Dr. Smith.
"Let's say they charge $100 for an aspirin for which they pay a penny. They collect $5 [from insurance], and claim they lost $95. That $95 goes into the 'uncompensated care' pool and helps them get this rebate at the end of the year." It also, Smith explains, helps many hospitals maintain the fiction of not-for-profit status.
If you're a taxpayer, you pay for this.
The second scam involves the insurance scheme known as preferred provider organizations, and is called "PPO re-pricing." Here too there are perverse incentives: Insurance companies, contrary to popular belief, have zero desire to keep costs to a minimum. "The bigger the bill the insurance company receives, the more money they make," says Dr. Smith.
"If a large hospital submits a bill to an insurance company for, say, $100,000, and the insurance company pays $22,000 of it, the insurance company then goes back to the employer who provides this insurance product to the employee and says, 'Look what we did for you; we saved you $78,000.' The employer, as part of his contract, pays the insurance company a percentage of that fictitious savings."
If you have employer-provided health insurance, you pay for this. Were it not for the insurance company's cut, you'd have a bigger paycheck.
We ran across one recent instance in which the "extraction" carried out by the healthcare industry is literal.
"Dental management-services companies," many of them backed by private equity, are cashing in on Medicaid spending for dentistry -- which exploded by 63% between 2007-10.
Result: Medicaid-eligible kids are pulled out of classrooms and undergo dental procedures without their parents' knowledge or permission. "I was absolutely horrified," Stacy Gagnon told Bloomberg. The Camp Verde, Ariz., mother was shocked when her 4-year-old son came home from school, having undergone two baby root canals, received two crowns and 10 X-rays -- none of which she says he needed.
This practice is so blatant -- and costly -- that in some cases, the bureaucrats are intervening. "Management companies are at the center of a U.S. Senate inquiry," Bloomberg reports, "and audits, investigations and civil actions in six states."
Meanwhile, "the only people who are actually billed such astronomical sums are the uninsured," says reporter Weintraub, citing figures from Medical Billing Advocates of America.
"If an uninsured patient can pay even a fraction, it will still far exceed the cost of treatment. So hospitals will gladly settle for a lesser amount -- and may even helpfully offer a payment plan or high-interest loan."
If you have no insurance, you pay through the nose. Little wonder that medical bills are the catalyst for 60% of personal bankruptcies, according to a 2009 study in The American Journal of Medicine.
Which gets us back to this question: What is the actual cost of that "$100,000" procedure? About $7,000-8,000. For everything. Including the facility, surgeon and anesthesia charges.
That's what Smith would charge you at his outpatient surgery center in Oklahoma City... a lone outpost of "price transparency" within U.S. borders.
Smith and his facility are one possible solution if you want to break free of the whole sordid cost-shifting system. But if you need a procedure that requires more than a one-night stay, you're out of luck. No open-heart surgery or major abdominal procedures there.
So it won't solve all our problems, but at least it's a start.
Sincerely,
Addison Wiggin
for The Daily Reckoning
P.S. President Obama misled you about his health care strategy. (Gasp!) This deception goes back 10 years, but on Jan. 1, 2014, the lie will be obvious... and it will affect everyone you love.
We reveal the president's true motive right here and suggest ways you can prepare for the certain upheaval that follows. Before you do anything else today, take a moment to view our research, completely free of charge, right here.
| | | | | | |  Addison Wiggin is a three-time New York Times bestselling author and the cofounder of the Daily Reckoning. | | | | | | | | | BE SURE TO ADD dr@dailyreckoning.com to your address book.
| | | | | | | Additional Articles & Commentary:
| | | | | | | | | |
© 2013 Agora Financial, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. A lthough our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized investment advice. 
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.