Help! Can no longer get health insurance due to CPAP?!??!

[M.D.Hosehead]

Thanks, PST, for your on-topic post that neatly resolves TheBigHeavy's problem and provides information and links that will help some of us, as well as many of our family and friends.

[Janknitz]

Excellent response, PST!

On another note, wonder why some DME companies get a lot more money for your CPAP equipment and supplies than we pay online? This story http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20 ... SS/8251080 explains how hospitals and health systems do it, and it's pretty analogous to what DME's do. When you see little local DME's bought up by national companies, the bargaining structure changes and you and your insurance company are the losers.

[roster]

On another note, wonder why some DME companies get a lot more money for your CPAP equipment and supplies than we pay online? This story http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20 ... SS/8251080 explains how hospitals and health systems do it, and it's pretty analogous to what DME's do. When you see little local DME's bought up by national companies, the bargaining structure changes and you and your insurance company are the losers.

It is interesting that the article failed to point out that Sutter Davis is a "not for profit" and has been for 29 years.

[PST]

It is interesting that the article failed to point out that Sutter Davis is a "not for profit" and has been for 29 years.

There is mention in the third paragraph that Sutter is non-profit. It is a fact of life today that hospitals are big business, whether for profit or not. Seventy-five to a hundred years ago, hospitals were primarily dormitories where doctors could visit their patients and nursing was available around the clock. Now they have huge investments in equipment and many more kinds of employees. Even without paying dividends to investors, they have to act like businesses to break even, keep their doors open, and generate cash flow to fund investment in new space and equipment. The hospital nearest my office is non-profit, but it has revenues and expenses of about $1.3 billion each year. Here in Chicago I've watched many hospitals, most of them non-profits, close over the course of the last 25 years because revenues could not keep pace with costs. Non-profit or not, if you can't pay your suppliers you go out of business.

We recently lost the hospital on my block. I'd always figured that it was the place I could reach on the run if I ever cut my fingers off in a band saw or something. We would have lost more hospitals here if two faith-based chains hadn't done a public-spirited job of acquiring money losers in the city and keeping them afloat with the revenues from hospitals in the suburbs serving a higher percentage of people with good health insurance. Now, for the first time, I am starting to see faith-based hospitals being sold to for-profit chains, which is a pity. To a large degree it comes down to geography. Is the place the founders planted the hospital many years ago now surrounded by people who can pay or people who can't? It is another reason we need universal coverage.

[Kevin G.]

Not for profit does not mean that the organization can't be too expensive. They can be inefficient. They can still make a profit, it is called a surplus, they are just limited on what they do with it. One thing that they can do is spend it on management and employees. They can also use the surpluss to expand.

[neverbetter]

Now you have a preexisting condition and your insurance , if you can find it , will be sky high

[M.D.Hosehead]

Non-profit hospitals must make a profit on operation of the hospital itself. Most have to make monthly interest payments on bonds.

[So Well]

Socialism works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it and Hell where they already have it.