Denny, Denny. That article says the net cost of healthcare regulation is $169 billion. Even if we were to accept that as fact (which it probably isn't since it was written by Cato), that's less than 10% of the cost of healthcare overall. So at best you've contradicted your own point - government isn't the biggest (much less the sole) reason for the increase in the cost of healthcare. barfo
FIFY. And the "total cost" of health care doesn't really mean that much. If govt. didn't pay for any of it, the "total cost" would be significantly (1/3 less, $523B in medicare spending alone in 2010). It's economics 101 that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand): 1. If demand increases and supply remains unchanged, then it leads to higher equilibrium price and higher quantity. 2. If demand decreases and supply remains unchanged, then it leads to lower equilibrium price and lower quantity. Government for medicare and medicaid alone are creating a lot of increased demand, eh? So they're interfering in the market and it's screwed things up royally.
An interesting read on WebMD. http://blogs.webmd.com/all-ears/2012/04/why-is-medical-care-so-expensive.html I grew up in the 1950’s. Even adjusted for inflation and the fact that I was in a rural Appalachian town, our office visits were $3. A house call was $5, and that included any medications (usually a painful penicillin shot). That was sixty years ago, when a house cost about $14,000, a car cost $1500, and gasoline was a whopping 18-25 cents per gallon (including complimentary windshield washing, and checking oil/tire pressures). My family, like many families that I care for in my practice, did not have health insurance. Of course, at those bargain prices, they just paid for it. There were few, if any, health insurance companies in the 1950’s, but they were starting. The federal government had a commitment to care for the poor and elderly through welfare. Hospital prices doubled. By the 1960’s, there were 700 private insurance companies, and President Johnson signed the Medicare and Medicaid bills. Prices continued to climb. In 1969, I had my appendix removed. I suspect Medicaid paid for it, since our family income was around $5,000 a year at that time. America was in a health crisis, of sorts, but nothing like what was to come. The largest problem was doctor shortages, especially in primary care. Now that insurance companies were paying the bills, doctors migrated into the more lucrative specialty areas. Over 69% of the doctors at that time were specialists, so the federal government and private institutions funded grants and scholarships to train more general practitioners (renamed, family practice physician), and of course, PAs and nurse practitioners. I received one of the healthcare shortage grants from the Commonwealth Fund.
That's right. If all those old people, sick children, disabled, and poor people would just die at the rate nature intended, instead of being kept alive by the government, you and I could get the cheap healthcare we so richly deserve. It's a travesty, it is. barfo
S T R A W M A N In any case, a good read from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons: http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/article/medicare_myths_and_facts/ Myth #2: Medicare pays the reasonable cost of medical services. Government price controls have, in some cases, slashed Medicare fees to 10 cents on the dollar compared with the Medicare “allowed charge” 10 years ago. This has forced those who provide these services not only to work without payment, but actually to subsidize the cost. The harder they work, the more money they lose. Myth #3: Without Medicare, most seniors wouldn’t have medical care. The government used carefully doctored statistics to mislead the public into believing that nearly half of the senior population did not have medical insurance coverage prior to the passage of Medicare. These statistics, taken from a 1964 Department of Health, Education and Welfare report, didn’t count an enormous number of people who were covered by a variety of programs including: indemnity policies that paid cash benefits, existing government programs such as the Veterans Administration, and welfare. It also didn’t count those who could afford to pay their own way-i.e. lack of “insurance coverage” is not the same as lack of access to medical care. The fact was that 77% of seniors were eligible for the Kerr-Mills program (Medical Assistance for the Aged), which had been passed into law a full five years before Medicare. The remaining 23%-if they couldn’t afford to pay for their own care-could receive free care at their local hospital. Under the Hill-Burton Act, hospitals agreed to provide free care to anyone who needed it in return for government grants and loans. Thus, all seniors-and everybody else-had access to medical care whether they could afford it or not. Physicians also were able to provide a substantial amount of charity care to patients who needed it, unlike today, when the physician risks accusations of fraud with accompanying prison time and ruinous fines for failing to charge a Medicare patient what the government deems the patient should pay. Charging a Medicare patient $0.0 can get a physician into a world of trouble today because of government regulations. Myth #4: Seniors were in poorer health before Medicare. Not so, at least not according to the seniors themselves. In a 1960 survey conducted by Emory University (i.e. 5 years before Medicare was passed into law), 10% of seniors reported that they were in poor health. Today, after 36 years of compulsory, one-size-fits-all medical care under Medicare, 26.7% of seniors report that they are in poor health.
Not at all. You are advocating for withdrawing government from 'creating demand' for healthcare. Demand being reduced means less healthcare is provided. Less healthcare being provided by 1/3 (your number) certainly means more deaths. Edit: now that I look at it, I see that below you claim the government only pays 10 cents on the dollar for Medicare, yet in a previous post you say Medicare amounts to 1/3rd of all healthcare spending. That must mean that Medicare actually amounts to an astounding 5/6ths of all healthcare being provided. We are almost all the way to single-payer already! Either that or the numbers you are giving me are bogus. Hmm. Yes, I was just at Burgerville and the guy behind the counter was an MD, but he said "the money is better here". It's a crying shame how many doctors are living below the poverty line today. So to sum up, before Medicare there was government-paid coverage that all seniors could access, up until that was replaced by Medicare, which is government-paid coverage that all seniors can access. Yes, that sure tells us that Medicare was an outrageous expansion of government powers, all right. That's hardly very convincing. Did the seniors of 1960 define poor health in the same way that the seniors of 1996 did? barfo
The last time I went I was 16. I thought it was fantastic. I would take a Burgerville burger and shake over Mickey D's anytime. Maybe that's changed. And I've never heard of Killer Burger.
I agree it will need to be completely socialized to improve on the first and latter points, there's simply no other system that can reign in the greed. But ACA makes sweeping improvements in care provided and in helping the poor and the lower middle class actually being able to have healthcare at all. I'm older than you and I remember when pretty much everyone could afford healthcare. It wasn't a big deal.
Crawl out of your cave sometime. The world has changed in the last ten years. The government is taxing us into bankruptcy, health insurance companies are being eliminated, and our total unemployment rate is going to settle in at about 15% permanently. But we still have Killer Burger!
My wife is a part of the national team for the HMO "model" for ObamaCare, and her CEO was a key adviser in structuring parts of the law. Everybody in their organization hates it, and they've had to raise rates already, because of the hidden gems in it that nobody knew about until it was passed. Even the CEO says it isn't what they were told it would be.
Just wow. I've never seen so much drivel on your part, apart from the rest of your drivel. There's no link, whatsoever, between increased government spending on health care and the outcome (other than the skyrocketing prices). People live longer today than in 1960, but less people smoke cigarettes. And in spite of our massive spending (per person) on health care, we're not the healthiest of nations in the world. You're the one infatuated with % of overall spending (like the cost of regulations). Medicare is $500B, or 1/3 of all health care spending in the USA, no matter how you slice it. Have any more drivel to offer?
I accept your less-than-gracious surrender. So, if you have no money to pay for (some lifesaving treatment) and you die, that's not a different outcome than if the government pays for that lifesaving treatment and you live? Ok... Agreed on both of those statements, but are you trying to make some point, or just mentioning those things because they sound somewhat related to the topic? Yes, that must be why I claimed that the cost of birthing went up due to government. Oh wait, that was you. Then I guess your 10 cents on the dollar figure was, how do you say, "drivel"? barfo
This is only true if your definition of "demand" for healthcare is "sick or injured wealthy people" rather than "all sick or injured people". In the real world which I realize you don't visit very often, the demand for healthcare is fairly constant, but the "suppliers" have acted as a monopoly and manipulated the prices for obscene profits. Meanwhile, Real Americans are dying for lack of healthcare. HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!
LOL I told you that "liberals" don't get economics and then you go on to prove it with your post. See the words price controls in the paragraph above? What, exactly, do you think that cutting Medicare fees (you know, amounts paid to people providing health care) have to do with Medicare spending somehow being 5/6ths of all health care spending? LOL If it's such a good thing, how about your company pay you ten cents on the dollar for your paycheck? LOL indeed.
