US healthcare under siege: Got good insurance? US healthcare organisations, including hospitals, are increasingly vulnerable to medical device hijacks as well as the growing ransomware threat, according to a new study by security vendor TrapX. A total of 93 major attacks occurred during 2016. Hackers were responsible for almost a third (31.42 per cent) of all major HIPAA ( …
Obamacare is set to implode on it's own. Trump doesn't have to touch it. Saddling people who can't get employer based insurance with the highest risk patients was never a bright idea. It's the ultimate regressive tax but liberals everywhere insist on pretending that it's a good thing.
Americans are less concerned by the security of their healthcare information than by its skyrocketing cost. The net effect of Obamacare was to raise the premiums of nearly everyone 20-120%. On top of that insurances are finding way to avoid covering costs that had been covering before. When Obamacare first kicked in, my insurance put in a $250 deductible on lab work for each person that had not been in place before. And it is now incurred even for preventative care. You'd think not because Obamacare promised 100% coverage for preventative care. But its guidelines ignore what doctors actually do at a checkup, like check blood for CBC, vitamin D, thryoid function, diabetes, etc. Those are knocked off Obamacare's "preventative care" list which gives priority to screening for STDs, something that has never been part of a standard checkup. Consequently, you can go to your doctor for your checkup, expecting no out of pocket costs only to discover a bill of $500-$900 coming to you from a lab for tests you assumed were covered because the doctors routinely order them as preventative care.
Interesting that everything is "Obamacare's" fault and not the fault of profiteering insurance companies that are able to screw the entire population of the USA and the Federal budget without a peep from the Republicans yet when someone tries to do something to benefit the people rather than the instuance corporations, its branded evil, traitorous and Socialist!
Unbelievable!
"Interesting that everything is "Obamacare's" fault and not the fault of profiteering insurance companies..."
I am no fan of insurance companies, but that is simply not the case. Insurance companies dropped out of the Obamacare market in droves for 2017. Many places in the US are down to one company still in the market. If it were so profitable for them, then why did they drop out?
You can't add a bunch of under served sick people to the rolls without it costing money. Insurance companies aren't going to do that for free. Do you work for free? Why do you expect anyone else to?
As far as our public options go... those suck. They don't pay well enough to keep hospitals in business.
Americans in general think they can get something for nothing. Democrats are just right of Tories when it comes to this stuff. Don't be taken in by their rhetoric. They would run the NHS on one third of it's current budget.
when you can't get your Doctor to write you a script for a non addictive steroid that costs $15 to fill without a 30 minute appointment when he did give you the very same script 6 months ago and he knows full well that your condition comes back every 6 months or so. Naturally the next 30 minute appointment is in mid january.
Your only solution is to go to the ER when your breathing gets bad but not fatally restricted an get the $15 script from the ER room. Your insurer then gets a bill for $4000 minimum rather than $40.
So you premium goes up another $250/month.
The ONLY winners in the US are the Lawyers and Healthcare Insurance Companies.
And we think the NHS is F****d up?
I call bullshit, not on your experience but where you're apportioning the blame, your insurance company took the opportunity to screw you, they're the ones at fault here.
Any premium increase you had when the ACA came into effect will be dwarfed by the ones your insurance company will introduce if it's repealed.
It's a big swamp with room for all: hospitals, nursing homes, specialists, IT, med-tech, pharmaceuticals, insurance, government, media, lobbyists, etc. A veritable circle-jerk of inflation.
Insurance is the water flowing into the swamp, bureaucrats are the busy beavers building dams to expand the swamp, the rest are the vile creatures which dwell therein, and patients are the little fish they feast upon. ACA diverted a river from a fertile valley to this swamp.
ACA was a last-ditch effort to save an ecosystem on the brink of collapse. Costs can only come down when the conservatives allow the collapse to proceed. Then the trick is to keep the corporate beavers from building new swamps in our backyards...
"Any premium increase you had when the ACA came into effect will be dwarfed by the ones your insurance company will introduce if it's repealed."
that is SO wrong on SO many levels, it's hard to find a starting point.
Say that AGAIN, 6 months from now. See how "smart" you look.
On a related note, having everyone's medical records in a national [crackable] database isn't a good thing, either. I don't care HOW damn convenient it is for medical pros to get your records "that way". It's also possible for those who have NO DAMN BUSINESS knowing ANYTHING about you or your medical history to get information that COULD be used against you [including perhaps knowing what kind of pacemaker you have... so it can be *cracked* and ransomware loaded, let's say... and would you DARE *NOT* pay it?]
@bombastic bob wrote: On a related note, having everyone's medical records in a national [crackable] database isn't a good thing, either.
A few years back I wanted to take out a sizable insurance policy on myself. It required a blood test and a form "acknowledging" that my test results would be sent to a federal database.
Read that again - I wasn't giving permission, they weren't asking for permission, my test results were going to be sent to a federal database and I was just acknowledging I was informed it would be sent! I was told that if, I took the blood test, the results would be sent whether I signed the form or not.
I did not take out the policy. It was too scary that intimate details of my health were now required by law to be sent up to the U.S. government.
@bombastic bob wrote: On a related note, having everyone's medical records in a national [crackable] database isn't a good thing, either.
A few years back I wanted to take out a sizable insurance policy on myself. It required a blood test and a form I had to sign "acknowledging" that my test results would be sent to a federal database.
Read that again - I wasn't signing away permission, they weren't asking for permission, my test results were going to be sent to a federal database and I was just acknowledging I was informed it would be sent! I was told that if, I took the blood test, the results would be sent whether I signed the form or not.
I did not take out the policy. It was too scary that intimate details of my health were now required by law to be sent up to the U.S. government.
"that is SO wrong on SO many levels, it's hard to find a starting point."
So you've not even going to try and justify your position, that's your choice.
So far the Republicans have announced the intention to keep all of the parts people like about the ACA and remove all the parts they don't like (that pay for the parts they do) so, how exactly do you think premiums aren't going to go up?
On a related note, there is NO government run EMR, try consulting actual valid sources for your (dis)information.
I am more concerned about data security than device hacks. Personal data thefts almost always involve getting data on a large number of people (millions). Looking at the numbers at the worst ~1/3 of all American's health/account data is wandering around the internet. Depending on the number of duplicate records it's more likely 1/4 of all Americans are affected. IoT device hacks can have serious consequences like death are not likely to target large numbers of patients at any one time, more like onesy, twosy at a time. Also, hacking an IoT devices is not likely to get the financial data which is what most hackers are after. Now, if you wanted to kill a specific person hacking the IoT device might create some interesting investigative problems for the local donut eaters.
High cost and low security go hand in hand. Healthcare is a cesspool of proprietary shitware. Old, unmaintained, unsecured, barely functional software is running multi-million-dollar imaging machines. Insurance billing software is a total clusterfuck. They're mainly on Windows, even some unsupported XP boxes no doubt. Non-IT people give unsupervised remote access to random vendor support techs on a daily basis. Even the best hospitals don't have nearly enough IT people to support all the tech they're using. Smaller practices are way over their heads. Absolute trainwreck.
> So why does healthcare in the US cost so much? Could it be that someone is being ripped off?
It doesn't really. The media just have a certain narrative they like to push.
My "big procedure" cost the same as it would have in London. The number that the news media would give you for that procedure is a fiction.
Is starting to fail as an excuse. Sure, back when a lot less was known, you could justify the "let's try everything we can think of" and no holds barred approaches. But now quite a number of things are no more complex or difficult than they were for me as a lad in the "Stereo/TV repair business".
We never got away with that crap, ever. Heck, in most cases, one had to produce an estimate (which takes ~ 80% of the work of a repair - the finding out what it is part so as to be sure in your estimate) and stick to it, and in general, eat that cost if the customer said, nope, not worth it. And then - guarantee your work, and give at last money back if you didn't really fix the thing.
Yes, I realize there are medical conditions that go well beyond this, and I'm not talking about the rare stuff that people now live long enough (due to how easy most things have become!) to experience.
Recent experience. Went to a doctor for a non-profit (supposedly). Had height, weight, BP measured. BP was so high she threw me out - no patients allowed to die in my office. I was in, BTW, for a basal cell cancer on my face. On the way out, security force-frisked me due to having seen a CCW in my ID packet, thus I'm sure helping my BP...and forced me to go to the emergency room.
Bill arrived - $1392 - for no treatment whatever. They can speak with my legal team. They can screw up my credit rating, which I don't have, if they like. I've been responsible with money, and all this is non-insurance.
I complained to some neighbors retired from the biz. They said "don't you know about this place that is for doctors and their friends, for profit, and fair? Let us hook you up.". They did. I've been treated.
Cancer cut off for ~ $850. Rest of treatment for BP etc - about $1200, and I'm healthy again now.
I discussed this with the "good guys" in the latter office. We all agree insurance and lack of ability to run a business as we ran our repair business is the bigger issue. (for most things, like my BP, generic drugs costing - get this - $4 a month, do fine). They don't know how to run a business and manage risk (tort doesn't help here). So they bill insurance companies (90+% of their patients) about triple what they think it costs them to run the place (which they don't know, doctors etc stink at this kind of thing), and insurance pays them about 1/3 (and late), and somehow they get by. Maybe they bill 4x and get paid 3x, I don't see cheap cars in the lot, or a lack of available labor in the office, nor is there a lack of cool tools.
But they had to make real adjustments for a self-insured guy who pays right on time, right there. They didn't even know how to hand me an accurate bill for this visit, though they wanted it paid now! I am helping them learn...
We need to be able to shop for health care. They need to give estimates that are reasonably accurate. It's not the black art it was, and yes that's hard to do, as I learned myself, but still, if you care at all about a customer, you do it.
Yes, you can charge me for that estimate, but barring totally unforeseeable stuff, you should be able to stick to it at $x per issue. We see a revolution in quality care per unit of currency overnight.
So, when one speaks of "the medical care business" - I think the issue is more "which one?". Let's get the business part working instead of just a "you might owe me unlimited for my poor skills application" setup.
FWIW, during this trek to the various offices of various outfits, I took along a bog standard android tablet, since I get bored waiting. On it, there is an app that came with my home WAP that looks at the spectrum of wireless, and calls out stations, what they are secured with, if anything, and so on, as an aid to setting up one's access point.
There was 100% correlation between security in the "good and fair" medical outfits - their stuff was all "airtight" to a casual browse, and the "horrible cheater high priced non profits" who had endless wifi unsecured.
I was amazed, but in retrospect, maybe not. The competent didn't get that way by accident - they value competence. So when they set up their stuff, they found someone in our (computer) biz who knew their stuff and got it right. The "I don't care, insurance guarantees fat C-suite paychecks" outfits were a sieve.
Even their laser printers were on wifi with names like "default setup" and unsecured. I could have had quite a bit of fun, but declined as I don't like the greybar hotel.
I used to build servers for medical companies. Their guidelines were as strict as rejecting entire pallets because an interior cable was not secured "just so" and other ridiculous quibbles of the same magnitude.
What this means is that they will not upgrade security without much pain, handwaving theatrics and bureaucracy.
Take a guess how long that will take.
"Despite having the most expensive health care system in the world, the U.S. ranks last overall among 11 industrialized countries on measures of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthy lives" !
About time the colonies got proper socialist health care system like every other industrialised nation already has....
I file this under "fake news". Numbers meant to create a result and further an agenda.
The funny thing here is that you're citing numbers that also put the UK on the bottom.
You shouldn't be snickering. According to that propaganda, you're in the basement with us Yanks.
"Those same metrics put the NHS just above the US."
Nope, the UK ranks first overall in most aspects - at less than half the cost per person. See http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror
"There are also more than 11 industrialized countries."
"the 11 nations studied in this report—Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States"
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