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What US Health Care Needs
Medical doctor and writer Atul Gawande gave the commencement address recently at Stanford's School of Medicine. In it he lays out very precisely and in a nonpartisan way what is wrong with the institution of medical care in the US — why it is both so expensive and so ineffective at delivering quality care uniformly across the board. "Half a century ago, medicine was neither costly nor effective. Since then, however, science has... enumerated and identified... more than 13,600 diagnoses — 13,600 different ways our bodies can fail. And for each one we've discovered beneficial remedies... But those remedies now include more than six thousand drugs and four thousand medical and surgical procedures. Our job in medicine is to make sure that all of this capability is deployed, town by town, in the right way at the right time, without harm or waste of resources, for every person alive. And we're struggling. There is no industry in the world with 13,600 different service lines to deliver. ... And then there is the frightening federal debt we will face. By 2025, we will owe more money than our economy produces. One side says war spending is the problem, the other says it's the economic bailout plan. But take both away and you've made almost no difference. Our deficit problem — far and away — is the soaring and seemingly unstoppable cost of health care. ... Like politics, all medicine is local. Medicine requires the successful function of systems — of people and of technologies. Among our most profound difficulties is making them work together. If I want to give my patients the best care possible, not only must I do a good job, but a whole collection of diverse components must somehow mesh effectively. ... This will take science. It will take art. It will take innovation. It will take ambition. And it will take humility. But the fantastic thing is: This is what you get to do."
In US 50 years ago a family of 4 could have actual health insurance (covering of up to $50,000 of expenses, which was enough for everything) for a year for $25 dollars (payment for an entire year!) with a $500 deductible.
Multiple attacks on this happened since that time, especially during Nixon administration. Government got into the business of doling out money to medical workers and just like with government giving out loans for education this lead to rising costs for everybody, just like it leads for universities raising their costs.
Basic problem is the government giving out public funding for any sort of endeavor. This leads to very rapid price increases. Before Nixon, a day in a hospital could cost $100, today it could cost up to 100 times that much. Obviously this has nothing to do with inflation. Costs to treat cancer could go as high as up to 20,000 dollars before then, now it could easily reach between 500,000 to a cool million.
Any time a government is involved in giving out money, the costs for any services/products go up because .... because they can go up, because there is a government guarantee that no matter what the costs are to the public coffers they will be covered.
In the infamous words of Nixon himself: "it will cost no American more than he can afford to pay". Then he yapped something about how no new taxes would be used, only existing public money (so as always, this includes your social security money).
AFAIC all government behavior that touches economy leads to pyramid scheme being created.
As long as government gives out money through laws for certain items/services and collects this money through taxes+borrows it+prints it, there is nothing that can stop the prices for the items/services to skyrocket way above what markets can bear.
Government is an anti-competitive, monopoly creating machine that destroys economy by causing massive inflation and kills productivity by regulations and tax laws that kill small business. All of this is obviously done under the guise of doing some form of good.
Get government out of economy, take government's ability to screw with market prices out of the equation, take away government's ability to kill off small business through regulations and various taxes, take away government's ability to create/maintain monopolies through giving out money/special privileges and take away government's ability to cause inflation through printing money/borrowing, take away government's affinity to corrupting everything around it through income taxes, switch to a sales tax + allow people who are poor to file for tax refunds, take government power out of economy and you will see the return of SANE prices on things, sane prices on sane insurance plans.
Of-course there is a matter of shortage of doctors - this is about the collusion that prevents the necessary number of medical professionals to enter the business, this also needs to be addressed, this creates monopolies just as well as free money.
You can't handle the truth.
I'll tell you what, I'll let you answer that. You could probably save thousands of lives by liquidating all your belongings that aren't essential to your existence and giving the proceeds to people who are starving to death all over the world.
You could be out saving lives right now, so apparently you value posting nonsense on the Internet more than you value human life.
I really should copy that reply and save it, it's so tiresome replying to people who just open themselves up for scorn by being so sanctimonious.
Bad things happen to everyone, bad and good people alike. However, using human ability to reason, we can lessen their likelihood and impact. Unfortunately, some people substitute adherence to ideological purity for reason, leading to perversions like Libertarianism, Soviet Union, Greenpeace, etc.
You with the mod points, do you consider membership in some politically oriented group to be part of your identity? Do you always vote Republican/Democrat/whatever, because you are a Republican/Democrat/whatever? If so, then you are part of the problem. Mod accordingly.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
There is another part of the problem. If you had insurance, not only would you not have to pay $32k, but neither would the insurance company. The insurance company would probably end up paying $4-5k for the procedure and you would probably pay $500. Doctor's bill ridiculous amounts, and then the insurance companies adjudicate it down. If you have no insurance, you have to pay the ridiculous amount. That is why I choose to have catastrophic insurance. I went from paying $800 a month for a complicated comprehensive health plan with all kinds of copays and percentages that made me end up spending probably $12,000 a year for insurance plus service. Now I pay $3,000 a year for insurance plus service. I am responsible for the first $5,000 (and I would have got higher if available). I pay about $200 a month in premiums, and average about $50 a month for doctor's services. The doctor's bill me huge amounts of money, and the insurance adjudicates it down, and that is the amount I pay.
This is what insurance is all about. Unfortunately, it appears that Obamacare hopes to take away this kind of care because it makes more sense to the consumer and is not as profitable for the insurance companies, which is what Obamacare is really all about. Helping the poor struggling insurance companies that can hardly afford to keep their solid gold parking lots in good repair.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Who gets to put a price tag on a life?
When you find him, you found a worthless life.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.