u/Dry-Temperature-4536

A routine MRI might cost $500 in cash at an independent imaging center, but cost instead $2000 when billed through insurance.

This example is why cash prices are usually cheaper than insurance billing, and this is exactly the problem with The Affordable Care Act mandating everyone be grouped into a single risk pool inside insurance plans.

Insurance would be much cheaper for the majority of people, and especially younger people, if we were all not forced to buy health plans we aren't using or don't need. Insurers are LEGALLY BLOCKED under the affordable care act from separating healthy people into low-cost plans.

With all of the population growth, this has put a huge strain on states like California and made middle class premiums sky rocket because of the huge demand in poorer communities.

The affordable care act (ACA) just passed issue to the middle class, who is subsidizing the poor and the sick. In a single risk pool, the top 5% of chronically ill patients consume about 50% of all healthcare spending and so everyone else who is healthy is charged more to cover it.

If the government allowed healthy people to freely leave the single pool and buy cheaper hospital plans, and pay cash to doctors directly, the remaining pool would collapse.

Under the ACA, the maximum income you can make in order to receive a subsidy is $63,840 gross before taxes. Even if you make less than that and make about $40,000 per yr before taxes, the government does subsidize 50% of the cost. However if the single risk pool was eliminated, by changing the current law, the healthcare cost overall would dramatically drop if you are younger and healthy, even if your plan is currently 50% subsidized.

There is a fundamental problem with insurance because doctors are billing insurance more than they bill with the cash price. And that extra cost to insurance further puts pressure on everyone's premiums because it's a single risk pool. In other words, insurance billing practices artificially inflate the base cost of medicine that puts financial pressure on everyone.

Medicare-for-all is also the same concept, which is having one unified risk pool. The problem with this is that everyone's taxes will go up considerably. A medicare-for-all system will cost 30 to 34 trillion dollars over the first 10 years.

Medicare-for-all would lower the billing costs by doctors but doctors could still upgrade patient severity codes known as "upcoding" to bill the government more. Tort reform is also needed because doctors over-practice defensive medicine to prevent the constant stream of lawsuits. Lawsuits are raising the premiums of everyone in the risk pool regardless if the single risk pool is through insurance companies or through the government.

Hospitals also survive because they overcharge private insurance companies to make up for their losses on medicare patients. So if you implement a medicare-for-all type system instead of insurance, hospitals will lobby to raise direct medicare payout rates and other costs. The federal government will have to subsidize the hospitals instead of the insurance companies doing so.

If a government does price controls, the result will be that hospitals and doctors will merge to form massive regional corporate monopolies. The only doctors that will benefit will be big corporations. Price controls also mean means that the only option to increase revenue will be to further shorten doctor visits to make up for the lack of revenue. Ultimately this is maximizing patient volume over quality of care....However maybe it doesn't matter because a lot of people do their own research these days. Thats why we have prescription pill commercials on tv, so you can tell your doctor about it.

In order to truly have a free market, it would be better for the government to assume the risk pool for just the chronically ill or people with pre-existing conditions and for healthier people to buy their own plans from non-profits.

If healthcare companies were non-profit but used excess cash to invest in the stock market/fixed income then the returns could be used to lower premiums. This model was actually being done in California by the non-profit Blue Shield CA, that has non-exchange plans, until the government saw it as a threat to their model and stripped them of their no-tax status after they hit 4 billion in cash. The more cash they built up the more income they had coming in to lower premiums.

There is a fundamental problem too because state regulators see it as problem if non-profits make too much money, because then people in their government exchange would leave for lower premiums in the non-exchange. Even though the non-exchange plans share the same risk pool as exchange plans in CA, if they were allowed to grow the money their plans would have become much cheaper than the exchange plans.

Also, it would be wise to stop spending so much on military spending because we are effectively providing for the defense of Europe. Europe is free to spend much more on healthcare because of our military protection.

Like it or not, having a job is a luxury now post covid-19. The difficult truth is that there are not enough jobs for everyone, and definitely not enough that can support a family. I won’t be surprised if homelessness starts dramatically increasing soon, especially for neurodivergent people.

My work quality has been great, but Ive been fired from 2 jobs this year alone due to corporate office politics aka “cultural fit”. You have to make it through all these interviews only to deal with more BS when actually getting hired…Proceed at your own caution through this recruiting hellscape. Good luck. I’m definitely changing industries and getting out of the corporate world.

PS: Do not work at companies with peer policing. It’s a lazy form of management that should be illegal.

Episode 1: Count dooku leads the trade federation in the episode 1 trade dispute. He is disillusioned with the Jedi. Qui-gon is not allowed on the Jedi Council because his master is leading the huge trade dispute with Naboo. Master Sifo-Dyas orders the creation of the clone army with permission from Yoda. Yoda is the one who hid the kamino system in the Jedi archives after Qui-gon is assassinated by the mysterious Darth Maul. The Jedi blame Count Dooku (but Maul wasn't controlled by Dooku) but Obi-wan questions why Dooku would do this to his former master. Palpatine manipulates Anakin to blame Dooku. Obi-wan leaves to talk to dooku in person to find the truth. Dooku tells Obi-wan that he could have used Qui-gons help.

Episode 2: Jango fett attempts to assassinate Count Dooku and fails, and Dooku blames (assumes) the Jedi for going too far this time for hiring an assassin. Obi-wan eventually confronts Yoda and wonders why he didn't tell him about the clone army earlier. Yoda says that it was secret Army since Jedi are just "Peace Keepers". Dooku blames the Jedi for exceeding their political mandate. Jar Jar Binks grants emergency powers to the chancellor Palpatine to control the clone army that Syfo-Dyas and Yoda created because they are also for the republic, and not just the Jedi. Chancellor Palpatine secretly orders Darth Maul to wipe out the remaining Jedi in the Jedi temple when the Jedi council leaves to investigate geonosis.

Episode 3: Darth Maul stages the capture of Palpatine while he is in coruscant. When the Jedi return they believe Dooku was the one who ordered the assault on the Jedi temple and kidnapped the chancellor. Anakin executes Count Dooku believing he is guilty of killing Quigon and ordering Maul to kill the Jedi in the temple...and Obiwan and Anakin fight with Maul to the death, killing Maul too. They think the fight is over...but they are wrong because Jar Jar Binks is actually a Sith Minion under the control of Master sidious. Based on a whirlwind of lies eventually Anakin starts distrusting obi-wan and the jedi's motives and he falls to the dark side.

These plot points are in-addition or substitution to existing plot structures in the movies.

1. Depressed Ash Dreaming

Back when naming every Pokemon wasn't much of an achievement, the first movie was supposed to be the end. Shudo wanted the first movie to have a time skip to an adult Ash that reminisces about the past and his journey full of Pokemon, Team Rocket, and his friends, the happiness, all of which he no longer has now as an adult. He then goes to sleep hearing his mother's voice, and the next morning he is a kid again, waking up to go on a journey, not to be a Pokemon master, but to find meaning in his life. Basically, what we see in the OG series, is just Ash reliving the better days when life was better.

2. Pokemon Rebellion

Pokemon start to rebel against the people because they believe it's just slavery, and Pokemon trainers, especially, are the one's that suffer. This gives us a situation in which Pikachu fights Ash, and Team Rocket only makes the conflict even worse. That's as far as Shudo got with this concept, before also being rejected for attempting to end the series in the first place, and making it ridiculously dark.

Just to let you know, Takeshi Shudo didn't want to end the Pokemon Anime, just end Ash's character. He wanted the anime to grow up with it's viewers as well as it's time and have an anime that both adults and kids could watch. An anime that grew with it's audience so much that kids will watch the anime, not because of an ad, but because their parents wanted them to.

RIP Takeshi Shudo