reputable homebirth info/stats needed

"emilymr" emily@xxxxxx wrote in message alkaboutparenting.com...
on the other hand, one of the reasons why health care is
so expensive in the US is because people get more medicine/operations/etc.
than strictly necessary (that's one of the reasons why GWB is pushing
these health savings accounts, by the way -- if individuals have to pay
for things with their own money, they'll not get as much done and health
care won't be as expensive!).

Plus, although some of us could easily save $$ by "paying for routine
healthcare out of pocket, and pay insurance for the more catestrophic
stuff",

Well, that's certainly the *theory*, but I'm not sure it will actually
work that way in practice. Keep in mind that what an insurance company
pays for a service from a contracted provider and what that contracted
provider actually *bills* for are generally quite different. The
insurer almost always pays a discounted amount. For example, I just
got the insurance statement from a visit to the doctor with Vernon for
an ear infection a couple of weeks ago. The billed amount for the
visit was $160. I paid a $15 office visit copay. The insurance company
paid a discounted rate on the visit of $69. But if I were trying to
pay for my routine care OOP, I'd be paying the $160 rate, not the
insurance company's rate of more than 50% less! And my husband had a
physical done earlier this year to the tune of mroe than $700 in
billed charges, of which the insurer paid about $300 after discounts.

That's craziness and it's one of the reasons I don't buy for a minute
the argument that paying for routine health care OOP makes any sense
in the current healthcare market--individuals wind up paying as much
as double (or even more than double) what their insurers pay for the
same services.

Basically, what it boils down to is that HSAs are only useful to
people who can *already* afford healthcare. They don't do much of
anything to help people who can't. The people who can't afford it
don't have the money to set aside in an HSA in the first place and/or
the amount they can set aside could well not be anywhere near enough
to cover the cost of routine care on annual basis. (Ten office visits
per year--which wouldn't be excessive at all for a family of
four--could cost $1,600, and that's before doing any tests or
procedures that might be needed, paying for any vaccines or
prescriptions, etc. If I paid for my Advair OOP, it would cost me over
$1,000 per year. Frankly, a large proportion of families that can't
afford to pay for insurance couldn't afford to put aside enough in an
HSA to ensure that they get all the routine care they need, either.)

there are *lots* of people with chronic conditions (like asthma!)
or pre-existing conditions (like pregnancy!!!) who can't afford to do
that. If you take all the healthy people out of the insurance pool, then
the rest of the people really are screwed. For me, that's the biggest
appeal of nationalized health -- it doesn't discriminate against people
who aren't as healthy.

Absolutely!

But the other reason single-payer healthcare makes sense is that the
costs actually go down when you have a system in which people can get
regular preventive care without having to worry about where they're
going to get the money to pay for it. And HSAs just don't come close
to solving that problem, although they *are* helpful to a limited
segment of the population.
--
Be well, Barbara

Circe wrote:

But health care is plainly *more* expensive and, in some ways, less
efficient when it is left to the free market. Part of the reason
health care costs in the US have skyrocketed is that the
capitalist/free market model doesn't really work very well for health
care. Why doesn't it? Because in a capitalist model, the provider of
good/services makes money by selling those goods or services to as
many people as many times as possible at as high a price as the market
will bear.

More than that, in the current US system, health care
costs are too high to be borne by the vast majority of people
without insurance, but once you add for-profit insurers to the
mix, the *insurer* is also taking a profit. First quarter
this year life and health insurers saw a *213* percent increase
in profits. This has nothing to do with high tech research,
availability of care, patient choice, or anything like that.
This is simply money paid in order to get health care providers
*paid*.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Sue wrote:



I only paid $15 dollars for the first pregnancy and zero for the subsequent
pregnancies and delivery. Not bad for our horrible health system (rolls
eyes).

So how much did you pay in insurance premiums?


For Allison's transplant, I haven't paid anything including any of her
medications.

But again you must pay insurance to get that so you are paying out of
pocket.

Andrea

wrote:


shrug your system sounds nice - possibly better than ours, but who
knows. I'm sure there must be SOME downside (because there usually
is).

Of course, I could give you a list a mile long of things that are crap
with our system, but the point was access to services and quality of
services is not any less in our countries because we don't pay out of
pocket for them, than it is in the US where you do. A few of you US seem
to be under the false assumption anything outside your shores is third
world and not as good as what you an have, I mean there's at least 3 or
4 of you in this thread alone who though you had more access to services
and better technology than us. It's that sort of attitude that the US is
the **** and better than everyone else that ****es the rest of the world
off. It's arrogant.

Andrea

Andrea

Sue wrote:

I never said that I believed everything I read or saw. Quite contrary. I
take everything with a grain of salt and always have.

Really so where do the notion come from, the discovery channel?
"And I would not want to birth in your country. I feel that the medical
society in other countries are not as well versed in the technology that
we seem to have here."

Andrea

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 09:01:42 -0500, "Sue"
wrote:

"Daye" wrote in message
My DH and I paid for my births through our taxes. I can handle that.
The government took X% over many, many months. Because we can't
afford private insurance, I didn't have to come up with several
thousand dollars to have my children. In fact, for #2, I walked out
without paying anything.

I only paid $15 dollars for the first pregnancy and zero for the subsequent
pregnancies and delivery. Not bad for our horrible health system (rolls
eyes).

Did you just ignore the part where I said that I have lived under BOTH
systems? I have lived in the US with and without insurance. I am
assuming that you have insurance, yes? Have you ever lived without
insurance in the US? I have. It is HORRIBLE. I used to pray that
nothing serious happened to me because I couldn't afford to pay for
the hospital. I used to save up so I could see a doctor, and that was
about 10 years ago.

My mother (who lives in Texas) doesn't have health insurance at the
moment. If she gets sick, her doctor charges about US$120 a visit.
Yep, she has to pay that every time she needs to see a doctor. I
asked if she could find a cheaper doctor and she told me she tried,
but they all charge about the same. She said that if she had to have
blood work, the charges were so high that she usually just didn't go
to the doctor.

Now before I was eligible for Medicare (our socialized health system)
in Australia, I had to pay in full for my doctor's visits. The most I
ever paid was about AU$50. Now that I am eligible, I sometimes have
to pay a gap (or think of it as a co-pay), but it is usually around
AU$10.

I checked into how much it would cost to give birth if you had to pay
for it all. It was about AU$4000 (I think that was c-section
included, but I could be wrong). I have heard figures 3X times that
for parts of the US.

I understand that you are happy with the US system. However, I have
lived under both -- the US and the socialized health care of
Australia. I am telling you *from experience* that the
Australia/UK/NZ model is *a lot* better.

--
Daye

In ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

* Well, exactly, that's the same thing. They do it at 20 weeks unless
* someone says "no, I don't want you to do it," and prevents it from being
* done. It's routine. That's exactly what I meant.
*
* Hmmm...I guess because you were arguing that circ. isn't
*routine by your definition, I wasn't making that connection. In

Oh. Well I was arguing that it is routine to ASK if you want the baby
circumcised, but not routine to just DO it. You see the difference, I'm
sure

*In other words, if you just signed off on what they routinely handed
*you, your baby boy would be circ'ed. To me, that's routine circ.

Well, I don't know what your routine paperwork looked like. Mine, well,
the subject came up several times. First during prenatal care at some
point my OB asked "if it's a boy, do you want him circed?" and I said "if
I said yes, who would do it?" and he said "me or my partner unless you
specified otherwise" and I said "oh, I was just wondering. In any case no,
thanks." He noted that in my chart so he and his partners would be aware.
Then the hospital gave me an "infant care release form" which had things
on it like "rooming in: yes or no" and "method of feeding: breast or
formula" and "circumcision: yes or no" and you had to fill out the form
and sign it. You couldn't just sign it without choosing an option, and you
had to either opt in or opt out of circumcision! so to me that doesn't
count as a routine procedure. if it were routine, you'd have to
specifically put a stop to it. As it is, they don't do it unless they have
your signed yes form on file, and to get a signed yes form, you have to
actively choose yes and not choose no.

--
Hillary Israeli, VMD
Lafayette Hill/PA/USA/Earth
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is
too dark to read." --Groucho Marx

On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 14:59:35 GMT, Buzzy Bee
wrote:

On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 10:24:58 +1100, Daye wrote:

Sure, I paid for it with my taxes, but I really believe
that Australia's is a MUCH, MUCH better system.

We also tend to pay far less for it. For example, in the UK the
average c-section delivery costs the NHS about £2500 (US$4000),
including ante- and post-natal care. I've heard figures several times
that quoted for US deliveries alone.

I think it was about AU$4000 for that in Australia. I don't know what
you do if you don't have insurance and you are pregnant in the US.

--
Daye

Hillary Israeli wrote:


if it were routine, you'd have to
specifically put a stop to it.

By that definition, I don't think there *are* any routine
medical procedures, as you have to authorize virtually *every*
procedure. They can't draw your blood or do an u/s or anything
without asking you, but I would categorize those things as
routine nevertheless.

Best wishes,
Ericka

On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 21:09:21 GMT,
(Elfanie) wrote:

On Fri, 05 Nov 2004 08:02:21 +1100, Daye wrote:

Have you ever lived without
insurance in the US? I have. It is HORRIBLE.

we lived and had a baby in the US without health insurance 9 years
ago. Got AHCCCS - which stands for Arizona Health Care Cost
Containment System....in other words, public health care.

I am not trying to be argumentative, but you had insurance. I am
talking about no insurance at all. I made too much money to be
eligible for the insurance that was offered to lower income people,
and I didn't make enough to afford to take out my own. My job didn't
provide it. So I have absolutely no insurance.

--
Daye