There’s a weird way some form of nationalized healthcare could happen. This will clearly (and justifiably) cause outrage. Frontline staff will not only demand (and should get) back pay, they should probably get hazard pay too. This will most likely come from bailout funds...
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The terms of this bailout are crucial. The PE firms that own these assets will likely try to score no-strings free money. Best case, they’ll probably get easy loan terms with requirement that it be used for back pay and not laying off/furloughing staff, either frontline or admin.
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But this is bad. The PE firms should NOT get to socialize the costs of their profiteering in better times with no consequences during public service periods. I think the government should get equity for bailout even if the owners lose control. Indirect partial nationalization.
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Not saying you necessarily want state run healthcare. But a transient public ownership phase might be the perfect condition under which to pass much needed reform laws and get a better healthcare for all type deal done, with infrastructural skin in the game.
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Caveat: I just learned about all this via reading public news coverage in the last week or so. I’m sure my naive layperson gloss on this is the tip of a very deep iceberg, and that there’s already an invisible war underway for control of the future of the hospital system.
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If I got anything badly wrong please correct me. If you have good deeper links on this, please share. I’m not linking anything I’ve read so far because... they’re not particularly good links/sources.
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Saccharomyces
Yep. I haven’t dug into this deeply. I suspect it’s not the ER doctors who choose this but facility owners. https://twitter.com/oddcopter/status/1246850161483091968?s=21 …https://twitter.com/oddcopter/status/1246850161483091968 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
Saccharomyces @oddcopterReplying to @vgrFor many emergency room doctors, the practice is evidently an intentional strategy: Stay outside insurer networks, and bill patients directly at extraordinary rates. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-13/surprise-medical-expenses-and-the-scandal-of-balance-billing …2 replies 0 retweets 11 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @vgr
Nope. In this case, I side with the insurance companies, Medicare and the hospitals. I recently was balanced billed for an ER visit. The doctor, who I saw for about 2 minutes, billed separately for more than the entire hospital bill.
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Replying to @oddcopter
I wouldn’t overfit that one data point without tracing the entire stack of systemic incentives. I’m sure some ER doctors are in it for profiteering, but I’d bet the median doctor of any kind is in the game to save lives more than the admin orgs are.
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Replying to @vgr
It's not one data point. I have researched it well. Spend some time researching it yourself. These docs bill whatever they wish. Many even fly from state to state doing shifts where there are no docs on staff. And no, it is not all ER docs. Luckily, legislation is stopping it.
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Ok fair, I’ll weigh that point accordingly
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