You think the increase in costs of health care is due to *educational* costs? How the hell does that work?
Oh, the bulk of increase is from other factors, but the increase in educational costs is an excellent example of the sprawling bureaucracies we're creating.
I lumped it in there because all costs of the system are passed on to it's consumers (both patients and tax payers). We've increased the cost to create a doctor from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands or a million dollars. Somehow that cost gets passed onto us, just like the cost of every bar of soap used in a hospital.
Yes, which sucks for smaller companies, but what you failed to notice is: There is no indication that this would result in cheaper drugs, or cheaper healthcare in general.
All costs get passed on, including and especially overhead. And yes, I know, the gov does not 'black letter' insist that big companies have huge levels of overhead, that's just a side effect.
If you are actually concerned about competition in drug development, you’d be a lot better off stopping these *insane* mergers going on, and breaking up the giants, so we have a dozen or so *medium* sized companies, instead of tiny tiny companies trying to compete with four (*Is* it still four, or is it down to three?) giants.
I'm all in favor of breaking up monopolies and quasi-monopolies and encouraging competition.
The reason the health care system is so expensive is that it is totally disconnected from the market…and it’s not the *government* doing that.
The health care system is one of the most regulated we have, there's heavy gov involvement left right and center at every stage. You can argue that various segments of the industry have captured their regulators (or even Congress), but it's appropriate to blame the guy who has a gun to the head of everyone else for what they're doing.
Probably the best example of the gov running around creating/expanding bureaucracies is the ACA. We just had a massive reform of the system and the gov's idea of what to do was create thousands of pages of law and tens of thousands of pages of regulation. Of course as a 'side effect' (or more likely a direct effect desired by it's authors) it's increased the size of the bureaucracies implementing this, and everyone dealing with it has also needed to increase in complexity. When you need to have a huge team of lawyers just to read the law, much less the regulations, that's a clue it's increasing bureaucracies.
If the ACA had managed to decrease costs you'd be able to argue the gov was reducing costs. That, after the ACA, costs are going up means the opposite. The gov deserves the blame just like it would be able to claim credit.
Tax returns were a disaster for Romney, not because he'd done anything wrong, but because normal people can't relate to upper 1% financing.
Trumps would be worse, there's no possible way it can help him, somewhere in those tens of thousands of pages of stuff there's something to claim is *wrong*... and that's actually *best* case for him. Worse is he's nowhere near as rich as he claims or whatever.
He needs to learn how to deliver babies, because society expects that if he is stuck in a plane with a woman in labour, he can help.
If we cut his training by two years, we'd have significantly more doctors. That's one heck of a trade off to handle a 'movie' situation... especially when normally they'd declare an emergency and land the plane.
If this is a serious societal concern, then we should be giving taxi drivers 'birthing' training because it's a lot more common there.
No one has any idea what you mean about ‘government bureaucracies and regulation’ ‘in the education of the various medical personal’,
The increase in college costs is mostly a story about the increase in the number of administrators per teacher, changing from 3 or 4 to 1 into 1:1 (or more admins than teachers). So, yes, "bureaucracies" is the right word. Yes, the bulk of these are either outright gov institutions (most schools at that level are) or dance to the beat the gov sets.
If you think that’s a problem, you need to stop hiding behind indirect comments about ‘bureaucracies’ and just flatly say ‘I think a medical license should not be required to practice medicine’, or whatever variant of that you’re talking about.
Because clearly every aspect of the entire massive bureaucracy is totally needed and if it were cut back by even one dollar, we'd have an anarchy.
I went to a lecture by a world class specialist surgeon the other day, the subject was (basically) "how to make his life better", so he talked about the ergonomics of surgery (everyone in the audience was an engineer)... and some of the insanities of medical training.
There are 7 surgeries he does, in his professional career he's never delivered a baby and he never will, but in order to get his degree he had to be fully trained in doing that. Total waste of his time. Basically he thought medical training could be shortened by somewhere between many months and several years without impacting *anything*.
Notice that shorting the training time for doctors would massively speed up the pipeline for creating them, also notice that it's basically impossible right now.
if there’s any bureaucracy there, it’s by private corporations.
Small companies simply can't afford to deal with the FDA. When they have to, they typically end up selling themselves to one of the big companies because the big companies have the experts in regulation/bureaucracy.
Assuming you actually mean there are too many lawsuits, period, you sure have an interesting way of getting rid of them by making things *less* regulated.
Tort reform is a different (off topic) subject.
Lack of Regulation costs lives (you understand that); But do you understand that Regulation also costs lives?
There are useful drugs which aren't cost effective to "prove" that they work, the Zeka-virus' mosquito has a nasty counter which is still awaiting regulator approval (creating and releasing lots of sterile males), and so forth.
DavidTC: Oh, and I totally ignored this, but you do realize that blaming a bunch of costs on insurance-required bureaucracy and then asserting that insurance could cover things is nonsensical.
It is trivially possible to get rid of the insurance bureaucracy if we'd just use insurance the way it's supposed to be used, i.e. to spread risk, as opposed to cover costs (and yes, the gov forces them to cover costs by regulating what types they can and can not sell and by making them cover things which everyone will run into).
Home Insurance is cheap, if you want to make it seriously expensive then force it to cover the cost of every changed lightbulb, you'll instantly have people checking to see if you bought the lightbulb, or have to hire people to install it for you. Then we'll have the insurance company making deals with the installers and so forth.
Similarly Home Fire Insurance would be murderously expensive and complex if you could buy it after your house has already burned down (i.e. no 'preexisting conditions').
If it's something that I have a 100% chance of needing (vaccinations), then insurance shouldn't be covering it. Either I should pay for it out of my own pocket (btw I'm strongly pro-vac), or, if we as a society decide we want to force everyone to do this (probably a good idea), then it's a good use for gov dollars.
Insurance is for things you *don't* run into every month, year, or even decade which break your bank if you do (and our example here was cancer so it qualifies).
The illusion that a 3rd party pays is one of the roots of how medicine has gotten so expensive, probably the best way to deal with that is Health Savings Accounts with insurance limited to just major medical.
Don Zeko:
Isn’t “using the power of the government to force other people to do something they otherwise wouldn’t” what every government everywhere does? Enforcing criminal law means forcing people not to rob and murder their neighbors.
Enforcement of any law can result in an agent of the state putting a gun to someone's head. There are times where that is the best solution, but there are few instances which have that moral clarity.
Lots of laws are passed in the effort to make people live their lives differently, but the gov is a gun, not a magic wand.
Having said that, I think it's possible, but we're not in enough pain. When the budget breaks we'll have to clean house, then we might see big time reform which priorities growth and sharply reduces gov meddling.
In practice, Parliamentary systems don’t overreach to the extent you are thinking.
How many European Parliamentary governments spend more of their GDP than we do? I think all but Switzerland, and that's without subtracting the GDP we spend on the military.
Granted it's not "one election", more like "one new massive entitlement per election", but also keep in mind the Dems were willing to put in place the ACA thinking it'd be popular no matter how unpopular it was... and because they knew (or believed) it'd be impossible to remove.
From that point forward, anyone trying to get control of ACA spending, no matter how budget breaking it is, is going to be accused of literally killing little old ladies. And, to be fair, that will be correct.
RE: Defense spending being 4% of GDP.
In 1960 it was more like 10%, basically it's been a linear line down with blips up for the wars.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending
the current medical American system is so massively cost-inefficient in comparison that they could probably afford that pretty easily without that much strain to the tax base.
When we've tried this at a state level, the result has been costs explode until the budget breaks. What we got with the ACA was insurance reform, what we needed was cost of medicine reform.
The thing about a Parliamentary system is winning one election is enough to put into place whatever plan you want, there's no gridlock built into the system.
Se we would have followed Europe's lead in the 60's and 70's and built up these huge growth choking entitlement systems which are impossible to remove. Thus our average income would be a lot lower than it is now, and we probably would have dismantled the army a while ago.
To be fair, we're basically there now, it just took 40 years longer.
So... ouch. No 'super-power' army means lots more regional battles. No clue what that would mean for the middle East, or the countries bordering Russia, but probably bad things.
Chip Daniels: Markets do some things very well, but most often they do them well by excluding nonpaying customers from the market.
Yes, agreed.
Chip Daniels: Healthcare is rather unique in that we declare, as a matter of principle, that there are no exclusions to health care based on price.
That's an idea we need to stare down and get rid of. First, because it's not true anywhere, every society and system puts an upper limit on total health care dollars and society itself doesn't even have an infinite amount of resources.
Second because the cost of making us all equal means getting rid of future lifesaving medical treatments. New medical treatments become cheaper over time, normally much cheaper.
And, if we stare down the concept that we're going to give everyone in society a blank check, then we can have a sensible discussion about how to maximize health, including future-health.
Dark Matter: What they’re missing is the multiple massive bureaucracies which only exist to deal with other massive bureaucracies, all created because of the government’s “help” and mandates.
DavidTC: I have no idea what you’re talking about. There *are* multiple massive bureaucracies in healthcare sucking up all the money. I agree entirely. The problem is…these don’t exist because of the government.
We have massive government bureaucracies and regulation in creating all of the tools any medical personal use, in the drugs, in the education of the various medical personal, in the regulation of everyone involved, and yes, in the various lawsuits which spring up as lawyers look for billiables.
And yes, on top of that we have insurance companies, hospitals themselves, and any company over a certain size which has it's own bureaucracy. Anything which has anything to do with 'compliance', regulation, the law, or protecting yourself from a lawsuit ultimately goes back to the gov.
Dark Matter: Here’s another example: Dolly’s care cost around $10,000 for all tests, surgeries, radiation therapy treatments, and medication.
DavidTC: You do realize that most Americans cannot afford a random $10,000 expense, right?
Even with Credit Cards, bank loans, & insurance? Better question, how much do you pay for insurance right this moment? If you have a family, it's probably more. Even if it's through your employer, it being hidden doesn't mean it's less.
Great! So what gov program do you plan to cut to pay for that? Nothing? Every dollar the gov currently spends is absolutely critical? What about all the money that was supposed to be saved from the ACA? Or from ending the wars? Or how about the stimulus? Isn't the economy just humming along now and pumping up revenues?
There's always a good reason to raise taxes and get something. Similarly whenever there are local cuts, it's always either law enforcement or the football program which is held for ransom.
If pre-K is actually important, then evaluate everything the gov does and decide where the fat is (actually that's a good idea anyway)... except that never happens. Every program gains defenders and then it's written in stone, and as the gov consumes more and more of the GDP, our growth rate goes down.
We never eliminate programs, the gov and it's bureaucracy just grow and need more money.
And btw each of my kids had two years of pre-k for less than a fifth of what the gov supplies per pupil in elementary school.
In an emergency people need medical help immediately and other times they aren’t going to go to many different doctors to determine the best course of action.
Even ignoring the growth in 'immediate care' facilities (which might be local). How much of medical expenses are because of "emergencies"?
Further, one of the big problems with "comparison shopping" currently is it's basically impossible. The numbers are buried, difficult or impossible to find, and so forth. Imagine going to a food store where none of the products were labeled and the bill was sent to some 3rd party and not itemized.
This sounds like an invitation to being ripped off, but instead of dealing with that we object to the idea of making comparisons.
If we valued dog lives the way we value human lives then the market would indeed research and develop medical care for dogs that would be both highly efficacious and highly expensive. We don’t, so it hasn’t.
This is claiming that expensive cancer drugs don't exist (which is fine), but their radiology treatments were pretty in line with everything else.
The majority of our healthcare money is being spent on care for elderly upper middle income people (not rich people necessarily though they’re in there too- there’s just not numerically enough of them). Oh and we’re spending a vast amount of it on elderly people.
Agreed, if memory serves something like half your lifetime expenditure of HC happens in the last 18 months of life.
Which is why I think, if we're going to have gov supplied HC which we clearly are, we desperately need death panels or something similar.
But Congress, by whatever name we want to call them (UHC, ACA, etc) is amazingly ill suited to do anything to control these costs.
greginak:
Or we could look at the many examples of other countries that provide universal care and have good outcomes.
There are issues.
1) As far as I can tell, UHC doesn't make things cheaper, they control things via rationing (which is fine... if we can reasonably expect Congress to kill little old ladies by withholding care).
2) UHC somewhat decently holds prices in check, but it's never been known to reduce prices. If we're going to reduce prices then we need a lot more disruption than that.
3) Most UHC comparisons include "equality" and parts of our population don't (or at least didn't) have access to HC (maybe the ACA changed that).
4) UHC comparisons never adjust for our population being fatter and more murderous.
5) I talk with a lot of immigrants who grew up under UHC, and needing to bribe the doctor so you can see him is maybe an experience I can skip.
He already announced his judge pick list, that's going to make it hard to back out. The Right made WBush back down on his choice and go with their guy.
Having said that, if the GOP loses the Senate then all bets are off. Mr. Make-a-deal will make a deal with whoever is in charge.
...the general public’s unwillingness to let the poor die of treatable illnesses.
Resources are not unlimited, this is health care, people are going to die. If you want to call $100k a year a "treatable" illness then you're killing the ones who need $500k. If you call $500k treatable then we can take it to $5Million.
“Cash on the barrelhead or die” is, indeed, the free market approach to healthcare.
Charities have always existed, if healthcare were cheap it wouldn't be as big a deal.
People are going to die, no matter what system we use. The real question is whether we could save more people (and if they'd be better off) in a free market where the costs were 20x lower.
If the dog comparison is accurate, we're spending more than 90% of our healthcare dollar on overhead. Bureaucrats dealing with other bureaucrats. IMHO this is not value added, and that money would be much better spent on healthcare.
Republicans, according to Dark Matter, appear to have some sort of ADD or memory-based disability, and literally cannot remember basic economic concepts presented by the Republican party until someone reminds them!
It's a lot easier to remember the last 6 times you bought a "wonderful" used car from that salesman it turned out to be a lemon (and 'free isn't free') than to become a mechanic.
I expect most people (of either party) can't balance their checkbook and basic econ is way beyond them.
Bern's followers were mostly young, because if they were older they'd know better. 'If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.' (Falsely attributed to Churchill)
Do you mean the system where, when a quarter of the population inevitably gets cancer, we let almost all of them just die instead of trying to treat it?
Cost to treat cancer in a dog via Chemo: Between $6k and $10k (and that's the entire cost).
https://www.petcarerx.com/article/managing-costs-of-cancer-treatment-for-dogs/1232
Here's another example: Dolly’s care cost around $10,000 for all tests, surgeries, radiation therapy treatments, and medication. http://www.dogster.com/lifestyle/10-things-dog-cancer
What they're missing is the multiple massive bureaucracies which only exist to deal with other massive bureaucracies, all created because of the government's "help" and mandates.
Reduce the cost of health care by 10x or 20x and suddenly far more people can afford it, and we as a society can afford to treat most people if not everyone.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “This Party Cannot Be Saved”
Oh, the bulk of increase is from other factors, but the increase in educational costs is an excellent example of the sprawling bureaucracies we're creating.
I lumped it in there because all costs of the system are passed on to it's consumers (both patients and tax payers). We've increased the cost to create a doctor from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands or a million dollars. Somehow that cost gets passed onto us, just like the cost of every bar of soap used in a hospital.
All costs get passed on, including and especially overhead. And yes, I know, the gov does not 'black letter' insist that big companies have huge levels of overhead, that's just a side effect.
I'm all in favor of breaking up monopolies and quasi-monopolies and encouraging competition.
The health care system is one of the most regulated we have, there's heavy gov involvement left right and center at every stage. You can argue that various segments of the industry have captured their regulators (or even Congress), but it's appropriate to blame the guy who has a gun to the head of everyone else for what they're doing.
Probably the best example of the gov running around creating/expanding bureaucracies is the ACA. We just had a massive reform of the system and the gov's idea of what to do was create thousands of pages of law and tens of thousands of pages of regulation. Of course as a 'side effect' (or more likely a direct effect desired by it's authors) it's increased the size of the bureaucracies implementing this, and everyone dealing with it has also needed to increase in complexity. When you need to have a huge team of lawyers just to read the law, much less the regulations, that's a clue it's increasing bureaucracies.
If the ACA had managed to decrease costs you'd be able to argue the gov was reducing costs. That, after the ACA, costs are going up means the opposite. The gov deserves the blame just like it would be able to claim credit.
On “Does It Really Matter That Trump Won’t Release His Tax Returns?”
Tax returns were a disaster for Romney, not because he'd done anything wrong, but because normal people can't relate to upper 1% financing.
Trumps would be worse, there's no possible way it can help him, somewhere in those tens of thousands of pages of stuff there's something to claim is *wrong*... and that's actually *best* case for him. Worse is he's nowhere near as rich as he claims or whatever.
On “This Party Cannot Be Saved”
If we cut his training by two years, we'd have significantly more doctors. That's one heck of a trade off to handle a 'movie' situation... especially when normally they'd declare an emergency and land the plane.
If this is a serious societal concern, then we should be giving taxi drivers 'birthing' training because it's a lot more common there.
"
@davidtc
The increase in college costs is mostly a story about the increase in the number of administrators per teacher, changing from 3 or 4 to 1 into 1:1 (or more admins than teachers). So, yes, "bureaucracies" is the right word. Yes, the bulk of these are either outright gov institutions (most schools at that level are) or dance to the beat the gov sets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-college-tuition-costs-so-much.html
Because clearly every aspect of the entire massive bureaucracy is totally needed and if it were cut back by even one dollar, we'd have an anarchy.
I went to a lecture by a world class specialist surgeon the other day, the subject was (basically) "how to make his life better", so he talked about the ergonomics of surgery (everyone in the audience was an engineer)... and some of the insanities of medical training.
There are 7 surgeries he does, in his professional career he's never delivered a baby and he never will, but in order to get his degree he had to be fully trained in doing that. Total waste of his time. Basically he thought medical training could be shortened by somewhere between many months and several years without impacting *anything*.
Notice that shorting the training time for doctors would massively speed up the pipeline for creating them, also notice that it's basically impossible right now.
Small companies simply can't afford to deal with the FDA. When they have to, they typically end up selling themselves to one of the big companies because the big companies have the experts in regulation/bureaucracy.
Tort reform is a different (off topic) subject.
Lack of Regulation costs lives (you understand that); But do you understand that Regulation also costs lives?
There are useful drugs which aren't cost effective to "prove" that they work, the Zeka-virus' mosquito has a nasty counter which is still awaiting regulator approval (creating and releasing lots of sterile males), and so forth.
On “The Catwalk to Citizenship”
"“Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”"
- Lavrentiy Beria, head of Joseph Stalin’s secret police
http://quozio.com/quote/50853188#!t=1015
On “Will Wilkison: How political idealism leads us astray”
Seriously sounds like a Philosophy major... almost no practical words in there in terms of what to do.
Looking him up.... yep. Philosophy major
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wilkinson
On “This Party Cannot Be Saved”
@davidtc
It is trivially possible to get rid of the insurance bureaucracy if we'd just use insurance the way it's supposed to be used, i.e. to spread risk, as opposed to cover costs (and yes, the gov forces them to cover costs by regulating what types they can and can not sell and by making them cover things which everyone will run into).
Home Insurance is cheap, if you want to make it seriously expensive then force it to cover the cost of every changed lightbulb, you'll instantly have people checking to see if you bought the lightbulb, or have to hire people to install it for you. Then we'll have the insurance company making deals with the installers and so forth.
Similarly Home Fire Insurance would be murderously expensive and complex if you could buy it after your house has already burned down (i.e. no 'preexisting conditions').
If it's something that I have a 100% chance of needing (vaccinations), then insurance shouldn't be covering it. Either I should pay for it out of my own pocket (btw I'm strongly pro-vac), or, if we as a society decide we want to force everyone to do this (probably a good idea), then it's a good use for gov dollars.
Insurance is for things you *don't* run into every month, year, or even decade which break your bank if you do (and our example here was cancer so it qualifies).
The illusion that a 3rd party pays is one of the roots of how medicine has gotten so expensive, probably the best way to deal with that is Health Savings Accounts with insurance limited to just major medical.
And I'll answer your other post later.
On “What Would a Parliamentary System Look Like in the US?”
Enforcement of any law can result in an agent of the state putting a gun to someone's head. There are times where that is the best solution, but there are few instances which have that moral clarity.
Lots of laws are passed in the effort to make people live their lives differently, but the gov is a gun, not a magic wand.
On “This Party Cannot Be Saved”
:Amusement: That is the problem, well put.
Having said that, I think it's possible, but we're not in enough pain. When the budget breaks we'll have to clean house, then we might see big time reform which priorities growth and sharply reduces gov meddling.
On “What Would a Parliamentary System Look Like in the US?”
How many European Parliamentary governments spend more of their GDP than we do? I think all but Switzerland, and that's without subtracting the GDP we spend on the military.
Granted it's not "one election", more like "one new massive entitlement per election", but also keep in mind the Dems were willing to put in place the ACA thinking it'd be popular no matter how unpopular it was... and because they knew (or believed) it'd be impossible to remove.
From that point forward, anyone trying to get control of ACA spending, no matter how budget breaking it is, is going to be accused of literally killing little old ladies. And, to be fair, that will be correct.
RE: Defense spending being 4% of GDP.
In 1960 it was more like 10%, basically it's been a linear line down with blips up for the wars.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending
When we've tried this at a state level, the result has been costs explode until the budget breaks. What we got with the ACA was insurance reform, what we needed was cost of medicine reform.
On “This Party Cannot Be Saved”
I left out a few other sacred cows. "It's for the children" is another really popular one.
On “What Would a Parliamentary System Look Like in the US?”
Oh I wish. At this point it'd probably have to be his VP, but that would work.
Problem is I don't believe it short of him faking (or having) a heart attack.
"
The thing about a Parliamentary system is winning one election is enough to put into place whatever plan you want, there's no gridlock built into the system.
Se we would have followed Europe's lead in the 60's and 70's and built up these huge growth choking entitlement systems which are impossible to remove. Thus our average income would be a lot lower than it is now, and we probably would have dismantled the army a while ago.
To be fair, we're basically there now, it just took 40 years longer.
So... ouch. No 'super-power' army means lots more regional battles. No clue what that would mean for the middle East, or the countries bordering Russia, but probably bad things.
On “This Party Cannot Be Saved”
Very good. I think the formerly communist countries would be 2nd world.
In the 1st world, with total anti-corruption... they just wouldn't be able to see a doctor in anything like a reasonable amount of time.
"
Chip Daniels: Markets do some things very well, but most often they do them well by excluding nonpaying customers from the market.
Yes, agreed.
Chip Daniels: Healthcare is rather unique in that we declare, as a matter of principle, that there are no exclusions to health care based on price.
That's an idea we need to stare down and get rid of. First, because it's not true anywhere, every society and system puts an upper limit on total health care dollars and society itself doesn't even have an infinite amount of resources.
Second because the cost of making us all equal means getting rid of future lifesaving medical treatments. New medical treatments become cheaper over time, normally much cheaper.
And, if we stare down the concept that we're going to give everyone in society a blank check, then we can have a sensible discussion about how to maximize health, including future-health.
"
We have massive government bureaucracies and regulation in creating all of the tools any medical personal use, in the drugs, in the education of the various medical personal, in the regulation of everyone involved, and yes, in the various lawsuits which spring up as lawyers look for billiables.
And yes, on top of that we have insurance companies, hospitals themselves, and any company over a certain size which has it's own bureaucracy. Anything which has anything to do with 'compliance', regulation, the law, or protecting yourself from a lawsuit ultimately goes back to the gov.
Even with Credit Cards, bank loans, & insurance? Better question, how much do you pay for insurance right this moment? If you have a family, it's probably more. Even if it's through your employer, it being hidden doesn't mean it's less.
"
Great! So what gov program do you plan to cut to pay for that? Nothing? Every dollar the gov currently spends is absolutely critical? What about all the money that was supposed to be saved from the ACA? Or from ending the wars? Or how about the stimulus? Isn't the economy just humming along now and pumping up revenues?
There's always a good reason to raise taxes and get something. Similarly whenever there are local cuts, it's always either law enforcement or the football program which is held for ransom.
If pre-K is actually important, then evaluate everything the gov does and decide where the fat is (actually that's a good idea anyway)... except that never happens. Every program gains defenders and then it's written in stone, and as the gov consumes more and more of the GDP, our growth rate goes down.
We never eliminate programs, the gov and it's bureaucracy just grow and need more money.
And btw each of my kids had two years of pre-k for less than a fifth of what the gov supplies per pupil in elementary school.
"
Even ignoring the growth in 'immediate care' facilities (which might be local). How much of medical expenses are because of "emergencies"?
Further, one of the big problems with "comparison shopping" currently is it's basically impossible. The numbers are buried, difficult or impossible to find, and so forth. Imagine going to a food store where none of the products were labeled and the bill was sent to some 3rd party and not itemized.
This sounds like an invitation to being ripped off, but instead of dealing with that we object to the idea of making comparisons.
"
This is claiming that expensive cancer drugs don't exist (which is fine), but their radiology treatments were pretty in line with everything else.
Agreed, if memory serves something like half your lifetime expenditure of HC happens in the last 18 months of life.
Which is why I think, if we're going to have gov supplied HC which we clearly are, we desperately need death panels or something similar.
But Congress, by whatever name we want to call them (UHC, ACA, etc) is amazingly ill suited to do anything to control these costs.
"
There are issues.
1) As far as I can tell, UHC doesn't make things cheaper, they control things via rationing (which is fine... if we can reasonably expect Congress to kill little old ladies by withholding care).
2) UHC somewhat decently holds prices in check, but it's never been known to reduce prices. If we're going to reduce prices then we need a lot more disruption than that.
3) Most UHC comparisons include "equality" and parts of our population don't (or at least didn't) have access to HC (maybe the ACA changed that).
4) UHC comparisons never adjust for our population being fatter and more murderous.
5) I talk with a lot of immigrants who grew up under UHC, and needing to bribe the doctor so you can see him is maybe an experience I can skip.
"
He already announced his judge pick list, that's going to make it hard to back out. The Right made WBush back down on his choice and go with their guy.
Having said that, if the GOP loses the Senate then all bets are off. Mr. Make-a-deal will make a deal with whoever is in charge.
"
@north
Hillary isn't going to put a hard pro-life judge on the Supreme Court, Trump will.
"
@morat20
Resources are not unlimited, this is health care, people are going to die. If you want to call $100k a year a "treatable" illness then you're killing the ones who need $500k. If you call $500k treatable then we can take it to $5Million.
Charities have always existed, if healthcare were cheap it wouldn't be as big a deal.
People are going to die, no matter what system we use. The real question is whether we could save more people (and if they'd be better off) in a free market where the costs were 20x lower.
If the dog comparison is accurate, we're spending more than 90% of our healthcare dollar on overhead. Bureaucrats dealing with other bureaucrats. IMHO this is not value added, and that money would be much better spent on healthcare.
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@davidtc
It's a lot easier to remember the last 6 times you bought a "wonderful" used car from that salesman it turned out to be a lemon (and 'free isn't free') than to become a mechanic.
I expect most people (of either party) can't balance their checkbook and basic econ is way beyond them.
Bern's followers were mostly young, because if they were older they'd know better. 'If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.' (Falsely attributed to Churchill)
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@davidtc
Cost to treat cancer in a dog via Chemo: Between $6k and $10k (and that's the entire cost).
https://www.petcarerx.com/article/managing-costs-of-cancer-treatment-for-dogs/1232
Here's another example: Dolly’s care cost around $10,000 for all tests, surgeries, radiation therapy treatments, and medication. http://www.dogster.com/lifestyle/10-things-dog-cancer
What they're missing is the multiple massive bureaucracies which only exist to deal with other massive bureaucracies, all created because of the government's "help" and mandates.
Reduce the cost of health care by 10x or 20x and suddenly far more people can afford it, and we as a society can afford to treat most people if not everyone.
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