Well, there you go

 

With Congressional Republicans home on indefinite vacation and millions of people about to be cut off from food assistance and unable to afford their health insurance, Trump is totally focused on building monuments to himself.

No FEMA, No Insurance, No Mortgage

 

What health care crisis?

 

Big Beautiful Bill

Bloomberg: “The CBO says that approximately 7,600,000 people will lose coverage as a result of the bill’s Medicaid cuts. An additional 1,800,000 will lose ACA exchange coverage due to cuts there. Failure to extend subsidy enhancements costs another 4,200,000 their insurance coverage.”

[...]

[Senator Chris] Murphy was also asked about Trump’s new crypto bill: "The problem is the existing version of that bill exempts the president from the ethics requirements. It says it's unethical for me to issue or market a stablecoin, but it's okay for the president to do it. That's not something any Democrat should vote for."

  Meidas Touch

Stop electing Republicans

 Oh, wait.  It's too late.

Who gets the advantage from Medicare Advantage policies?

I don't want to excerpt the whole thing, but the whole thing is worth a read.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Welcome to MAGAworld

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/05/2024:

For now.

WTF is WRONG with these people?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Insurance companies are ghouls

Ship insurers are cancelling war-risk coverage across Russia, Ukraine and Belarus from January, leaving cargo and freight companies liable for major losses linked to the ongoing conflict.

At least 12 of the 13 Protection and Indemnity (P&I) clubs - which cover 90% of the world’s ocean-going ships, including those from the UK and the US - said they would no longer be able to provide coverage to clients because reinsurers were exiting the region as a result of financial losses.

[...]

The UK club notice explained there would no longer be coverage for loss or damage arising from the war in Ukraine, or in any territory where Russian forces are engaged in conflict across Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova.

[...]

It is the first time reinsurers have had an opportunity to cancel coverage for clients since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, given that most contracts run on a 12-month basis and renew on 1 January.

  Guardian

Typical insurance company move. Stop coverage when they start having to pay out in large sums, when it's needed most.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Yet another reason to get vaccinated

And this one may work.

Large insurance companies waived cost-sharing for coronavirus care in 2020, but it has sprung back in 2021.

[...]

U.S. health insurance companies declared they would cover 100 percent of the costs for covid treatment, waiving co-pays and expensive deductibles for hospital stays that frequently range into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But this year, most insurers have reinstated co-pays and deductibles for covid patients, in many cases even before vaccines became widely available. The companies imposed the costs as industry profits remained strong or grew in 2020, with insurers paying out less to cover elective procedures that hospitals suspended during the crisis.

Now the financial burden of covid is falling unevenly on patients across the country, varying widely by health-care plan and geography.

[...]

If you’re fortunate enough to live in Vermont or New Mexico, for instance, state mandates require insurance companies to cover 100 percent of treatment. But most Americans with covid are now exposed to the uncertainty, confusion and expense of business-as-usual medical billing and insurance practices — joining those with cancer, diabetes and other serious, costly illnesses.

(Insurers continue to waive costs associated with vaccinations and testing, a pandemic benefit the federal government requires.)

[...]

“There was no federal mandate for insurers to cover all the costs for covid treatment. Insurers were doing it voluntarily,” said Krutika Amin, a Kaiser Family Foundation associate director who researchers health insurance practices.

  WaPo

I'm actually surprised they even did that much.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

This will probably raise the vaccination rate...

Inching toward single payer, universal health care

(You can always click the graphics in YWA posts that have a link notation to read the articles.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Remdesivir discouraged by WHO

On Thursday, a WHO review panel issued new guidelines recommending against the use of remdesivir for COVID-19 — even though the medicine is one of the few to win regulatory approval as a treatment for the disease.

After a clinical trial in April showed that remdesivir sped up the recovery of people with severe cases of the disease, the U.S. snapped up millions of vials of the drug from its manufacturer Gilead Sciences. Over the summer, European regulators rapidly signed off on the product, leading to nations around the world signing purchase agreements for the drug. And last month, the U.S. Food and Drug administration also signed off.

Now the WHO says remdesivir doesn't do much of anything to improve the health of people hospitalized with COVID-19.

[...]

Remdesivir gained even more prominence in October when it was given to President Donald Trump as part of his treatment after he contracted the virus.

The WHO panel says it's possible there may be some benefit from the drug. But its relatively high cost along with the risks posed by giving it intravenously led them to recommend against using it.

  NPR

But, hey...we've got the world's supply.

The retail price of remdesivir in the U.S. was set by Gilead at $520 a dose. A typical treatment course requiring six or more doses costs thousands of dollars per patient.

[...]

On Thursday, Gilead issued a statement saying it was disappointed in the WHO's decision. The pharmaceutical company and other advocates of remdesivir point to a National Institutes of Health study from April that showed the drug cut the recovery time for patients with severe cases of the disease by five days.

[...]

"When WHO guidelines are made, it involves different values that are much broader than the things considered by the FDA, which weighs very heavily the clinical outcome data."

Those broader considerations that the WHO is considering include the cost of remdesivir, the complexity of administering it in a medical setting, the potential risks giving it as an infusion — and weighing that against the potential benefits. Smith says the FDA, on the other hand, is looking primarily at clinical improvement from using the drug: whether patients' symptoms improve, whether fewer people die, for example.

"This is really consistent with how we think about health care in the U.S.," she says, "which is that we're willing to spend a lot of money on health care for a very small improvement. And that is not the model everywhere in the world."

Here, we're more than willing to enrich insurance companies.

More half measures that point up the failure of America's health care system

The Trump administration said late Saturday it will require health insurers to provide free antibody tests that could provide better insight into the scale of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.

Health experts agree that widespread antibody testing, which can detect who has developed immunity against the virus, is essential for being able to ease social distancing measures and allow healthy people to return to work.

  Politico

How many millions of Americans don't have health insurance? And those are the people most at risk of contracting the virus - people without homes or support systems, people with menial but essential jobs, people who live in crowded conditions.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Also...

Because of COURSE they are

Story

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

America is failing

A California teenager who died last week, possibly from coronavirus, was turned away from an urgent care because he lacked health insurance.

Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said in a video that the 17-year-old had no previous health conditions and was healthy Friday, socializing with friends, before he passed away Wednesday.

"Wednesday, he had gone to an urgent care," he said. "He didn't have insurance, so they did not treat him."

Parris said the teen was sent to the hospital but went into cardiac arrest on the way and died. He was briefly revived, but ultimately passed away.

[...]

The teen's death was reported Tuesday. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health initially said the cause was COVID-19, but later walked the comment back, saying further analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was needed to confirm the cause of death.

"Though early tests indicated a positive result for COVID-19, the case is complex and there may be an alternate explanation for this fatality," the statement said. "Patient privacy prevents our offering further details at this time."

  The Hill

Whatever. That is not the problem here. The problem is that someone died because he didn't have insurance.

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently released a study predicting the average cost of coronavirus treatment for someone with insurance and without health complications would total around $9,763, and treatment for someone with complications could top $20,000. The amount someone with insurance would pay out-of-pocket varies depending on their plan, but the study estimates it could exceed $1,300.

A bill signed by President Trump last week offers free diagnostics testing for coronavirus, and on Friday he signed a third coronavirus relief bill that gives stimulus checks to Americans to help those who are out of work or have medical costs associated with the pandemic.

Twelve hundred dollars is not going to cover those costs.

Medicare for all.

UPDATE:

Trump/Fox Standing in the way of coronavirus containment

Despite mounting pleas from California and other states, the Trump administration isn’t allowing states to use Medicaid more freely to respond to the coronavirus crisis by expanding medical services.

In previous emergencies, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the H1N1 flu outbreak, both Republican and Democratic administrations loosened Medicaid rules to empower states to meet surging needs.

But months into the current global disease outbreak, the White House and senior federal health officials haven’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic.

That’s making it harder for states to quickly sign up poor patients for coverage so they can get necessary testing or treatment if they are exposed to coronavirus.

And it threatens to slow efforts by states to bring on new medical providers, set up emergency clinics or begin quarantining and caring for homeless Americans at high risk from the virus.

[...]

One reason federal health officials have not acted appears to be President Trump’s reluctance to declare a national emergency. That’s a key step that would clear the way for states to get Medicaid waivers to more nimbly tackle coronavirus, but it would conflict with Trump’s repeated efforts to downplay the seriousness of the epidemic.

Another element may be ideological: The administration official who oversees Medicaid, Seema Verma, head of the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has been a champion of efforts by conservative states to trim the number of people enrolled in Medicaid.

[...]

“Medicaid could be the nation’s biggest public health responder, but it’s such an object of ire in this administration,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a Medicaid expert at George Washington University. “Their ideology is clouding their response to a crisis.”

[...]

On Thursday, the American Medical Assn., the American Hospital Assn. and the American Nurses Assn. sent a joint letter to Vice President Mike Pence calling for the president to issue a declaration.

But the White House hasn’t indicated whether Trump will make such a move.

State leaders are wary of criticizing the president directly, fearing that he may attack them personally or retaliate against their states.

Last week, Trump called Washington Gov. Jay Inslee a “snake” after the governor, a Democrat, criticized the administration’s slow coronavirus response.

  LA Times

Also the plan:  run out the clock when interviewed.

You want to keep your private insurance

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A major problem with the debates

Maybe the Dem nominee will take advantage of the idea when they go up against Trump on the stage.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Just how good is your insurance?