Obamacare Exchange Exceeds 6 Million Projection Last Night

[Professor]

[The Comrade]

or or OR medicare pays providers the actual cost of services, as opposed to the inflated bullshit cost.

cost controls are necessary in healthcare. the last 50 years has taught us that.

[The Dude]

[exploited]

Wait... Is Prof arguing against medicare because they pay too little for goods and services?

[Professor]

[Professor]

[Saz]

Professor has been absolutely destroyed in this thread.

If providers are the middlmen and are just passing along costs from pharmaceutical and device suppliers, then isn't holding the line on how much you will pay providers the first step to driving down the suppliers price? Of course!

I'm quite certain we will get Medicare for all very soon. Or at least Medicare or all those who aren't relatively wealthy.

[Professor]

[Saz]

You didn't make any attempt at responding. I don't care if you are a lobbyist, that doesn't mean you are informed, it means you are good at advancing a certain agenda.

Capping what you will pay to providers will absolutely exert downward pressure on device and pharmaceutical prices. Of course you can't go after then directly. They are free to charge whatever the hell they want. But as a large buyer, which Medicare is, you can go after suppliers by limiting what you pay providers. Its not some complex unique idea, it's basic economics and EVERY supply chain works like this. If the consumer at the supermarket won't pay the supermarket a certain price for potatoes, then the supermarket will refuse to buy from the potato farmer until the prices are competitive.

I haven't read the complete law but I have read significant part of it for a class on this subject. Nothing you have said or implied so far though is particularly relevant or complex. So far you repeat the same basic flawed arguments I can read in the politico comments section. Please, of you really are as informed and close to this issue as you claim, give us some unique insight rather than blindly repeating that no one understands.

[Indy]

I think we can all agree that under Medicare certain suppliers are underpaid and for that reason don't want to take Medicare patients which of course is not good because then those who do will be overwhelmed and provide inferior care.

I think we can also agree that way too much money is lost on Medicare/Medicaid due to fraud. Although as those who would want to slay them both will tell you, it's allegedly the patients doing all that when in fact it's probably more the "providers" (and I use that term loosely).

Hey here's an idea: fix it. Fix the first problem, hire a crack staff to stomp out fraud and make the penalties for Medicare fraud hella scary.

We've become a nation of destroying each other's ideas or sabotaging them so the "other side" doesn't look good, rather than solving problems.