Comment Re: Video latency (Score 1) 62
Alright. Looks like I need to drop the HTC Sense keyboard.. lol.
I'm sorry, but you clearly have no idea how taxes on small businesses work. There is no "loss" or any of that nonsense. You can do taxes in two different ways, either cash basis or accrual. Either way, you pay tax on what you actually earned. This is simpler with the cash basis. The thing you may be getting confused with is when business pay tax on accrual, which is where they pay tax based on "booked" revenue, rather than actual revenue. In this case, if the actual revenue doesn't match what the booked revenue was, they are able to make an adjustment so that they only pay tax on what they actually earn.
You seem to have a (fairly typical) liberalish distaste for business - based on your clearly uneducated portrayal of how business operate. If you think that there's some sort of incentive for a small business like a dental office to earn $116 instead of $167, you're very misguided.
Additionally, you also clearly have no idea how insurance billing and negotiation work. Insurance billing and rates are done typically off of ICD9 codes, and are based on UNC (Usual and Customary), which in turn is based of of a multiple of medicare reimbursement. The provider charges a multiple of UNC as a standard practice, and then will go through a fairly difficult and lengthy negotiation process with the insurance company in order to "settle" at an agreed upon reimbursement. In fact, this process is so lengthy and difficult, there is an entire industry in health care that's dedicated to doing nothing but this, and to handle these negotiations. Take a look at a company called NCN (Nation Care Network). They are an example.
Because of the difficulty getting reimbursed in a timely manner from the insurance companies, and the cost involved in these negotiations, the providers will frequently inflate the amount they are billing, with full knowledge that they will not be reimbursed for this amount. They do this as a negotiating tactic for the insurance companies. This is the high "inflated" bill you're referring to.
It is extremely rare that anyone would actually pay that inflated amount. In fact, the providers will normally give you a nice discount off of UNC if you pay directly because it saves them the expense and hassle of getting reimbursed from the insurance companies.
The problems with the healthcare system in this country are not a result of evil money grubbing providers, or even of evil money grubbing insurance companies. The problems with the cost of healthcare are directly attributable to the regulatory environment.
If you doubt this in any way, go do some research. Go look at the cost of healthcare prior to medicare/medicaid, and then the cost of healthcare afterwards. Even a trivial bit of research will show you the huge spikes in costs. These spikes in cost are a direct result of the command economy approach to price setting in healthcare, and the fact that these rate tables are used as a basic for UNC.
The notion that adding even more of a command economy and a harsher regulatory environment is going to somehow make things better is ludicrous. The idea that putting the same people who have demonstrated their willingness to systematically abuse power in almost every scenario where power has been granted... that these people are going to make all of our lives better... this is nonsense and everyone knows it.
This entire healthcare law is about one thing: power. Anyone who is intellectually honest will recognize that. The disagreement is with whether granting these sweeping powers to a bureaucracy will make things better or worse. I don't know for sure, but I have my suspicions. Or we could ask the flood of healthcare workers and doctors that are fleeing the profession what they think about it all.
I suspect we, as a country, are going to get yet another lesson in "the law of unintended consequences".
Pascal is not a high-level language. -- Steven Feiner
