Posted on 01/13/2012 7:26:16 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The crisis in health care is manageable - without the radical, extreme measures passed in the Affordable Care Act.
USA Today reports that just 5% of patients account for 50% of health care spending. And just 1% account for 22% of the spending.
That's about $90,000 per person, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. U.S. residents spent $1.26 trillion that year on health care.
Five percent accounted for 50% of health care costs, about $36,000 each, the report said.
The report's findings can be used to predict which consumers are most likely to drive up health care costs and determine the best ways to save money, said Steven Cohen, the report's lead author.
While the report showed how a tiny segment of the population can drive health care spending, the findings included good news. In 1996, the top 1% of the population accounted for 28% of health care spending.
"The actual concentration has dropped," Cohen said. "That's a big change."
About one in five health care consumers remained in the top 1% of spenders for at least two consecutive years, the report showed. They tended to be white, non-Hispanic women in poor health; the elderly; and users of publicly funded health care.
Other studies have shown that most of this spending is on "end of life" care - that is, patients who have very little chance of recovery but who have numerous hospital stays and even surgeries that don't extend life, but deal with unrelated symptoms to their primary disease. Someone dying of heart disease getting a kidney transplant, for instance.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Obamacare can “work” if it identifies when your end-of-life starts, and limits that spending sharply. Why do an MRI on a late-stage Alzheimer’s patient? Why do heart surgery on someone who is over 70? Diagnosed with something Obamacare decides is terminal no matter what? Don’t spend much on it but provide hospice care. Screening for cancers? Cut that way back because it’s only positive a few percent of the time.
Obama alluded to this in a speech, sometimes you have to tell grandmaw that she does not get the operation, but gets pain pills instead.
Bookmark
Dad is old, he doesn’t need that pacemaker. Aunt Sally is overweight, let her die. Uncle Harry is an alcoholic, he’s getting what he deserves.
Cousin Bruce has AIDS, open your wallet.
We must control what people eat and drink and how much they exercise. After all, it impacts the bottom line for all, and reduces health care availability for everyone.
Things like overeating or food hoarding are crimes against public health and will be dealt with.
On the other end of the spectrum King Herod (Obama) is ordering the killing of the unborn and defective infants. What a world. I'm beginning to pray that the Mayans had the insight.
A longtime friend died a few days ago. She had been in the intensive care unit of a local hospital since October. Her care must have cost a fortune, yet it only served to prolong her final suffering. But, of course, there was initially at least a slim possiiblity that she might get well enough to leave the hospital and live a few years longer.
There must be a better alternative for end-of-life care, an alternative that rejects both “death panels” and the increasingly popular idea of euthanasia. I certainly would much rather die at home than go like my friend did, but I would also like a potentially fatal condition to be treated if it were possible I might have more time with family and friends.
They really want to get rid of the baby boomers.
-——the report showed how a tiny segment of the population-—
A tiny segment....... those who are about to die. The actual fact is that there is a large segment, almost all. All will die eventually and will run up the unpayable bills
So long as health care providers are held hostage to malpractice lawsuits by an ignorant but irrational fanatical grand daughter insisting “you could have saved granma but killed her” there is no solution.
The grand daughter lives elsewhere but rushes to the hospital and is horrified by the relatives who have decided that granma must be allowed to end her suffering and die in peace. The grand daughter throws a hissy fit and insists everything possible must be done.TIhe things are done and the money is spent, tons and tons of money. Granma lives. The grand daughter goes home, smugly content she saved granma.
Three or six weeks later, granma dies any way.
Some variation of this story is being played out in virtually ever hospital in America in several simultaneous incidents. The health care providers know the story well. They spend the money on procedures that are ultimately ineffective because they must. The out of control health care costs do not buy what is hoped for. Death prevails.
There was a better way in America ethically and culturally at one time. That way of life and it’s ethics have been cleansed away by humanists. Now humans are widgets in an amoral socialist machine.
There is some abuse, though. Doctors in south Florida are still ordering mammograms and colonoscopies for my 95-year-old step-mother-in-law. She would never survive chemo or an operation. Ten years ago, they did carpal tunnel surgery on her as well as shoulder surgery, which nearly killed her. She goes to doctors a minimum of four days a week, and they do not let her leave until she schedules another appointment. It is a disgrace.
Of course ObamaCare (tm) can’t work. It attempts to socialize about 1/3 of the total economy.
The economist Ludwig von Mises showed in 1920 [1,2] that since a socialist economy destroys price information via government intrusion, the myriad of participants in the economy are unable to make a fully rational calculation about true profit and loss. Any economic activity that operates at a loss cannot be “sustainable”, a concept the left loves to scold us about, yet cannot really grasp.
Taking another approach, the Nobel economist F.A. Hayek showed that a national economy had such an immense myriad of dynamic economic relationships that no single committee or bureaurcracy, no matter how smart or how well staffed, could possibly know enough to direct prices or production levels. His Nobel Lecture [3] was entitled The Pretence of Knowledge. Hayek had previously used this idea as the basis for a very thorough article [4] on the subject, “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”
When these two different withering critiques of socialism are combined, it is easy to see that not only is it dangrously foolish to think that economic decisions can successfully be made by government, but that competing bureaucracies will invariably react to the consequences of intrusions in the marketplace by each other. It would be like trying to control the height of waves on a lake by measuring them from the back of a boat circling in its own wake.
[1] Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Ludwig von Mises
http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf
[2] Why a Socialist Economy is “Impossible” by Joseph T. Salerno
http://mises.org/econcalc/POST.asp
[3] The Pretense of Knowledge
http://mises.org/daily/3229
[4] “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review, XXXV, No. 4; September, 1945, pp. 519–30.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=92
There is some abuse, though. Doctors in south Florida are still ordering mammograms and colonoscopies for my 95-year-old step-mother-in-law. She would never survive chemo or an operation. Ten years ago, they did carpal tunnel surgery on her as well as shoulder surgery, which nearly killed her. She goes to doctors a minimum of four days a week, and they do not let her leave until she schedules another appointment. It is a disgrace.
Simple really, if the Unit is over 70 and has a neurological event such as a stroke or hemorrhage the Unit will receive comfort care only.
Note patients are no longer persons, they are Units.
Any fool knows the cheapest health care is none.
It surely does, so why wait, you are just using resources that someone younger than you needs.
After all humans are no different than cockroaches. In fact some cockroaches are protected species, so I guess that isn't even true, some cockroaches have more value to the planet than humans.
Well, just smother the old bag with a pillow when you take her home, then you can save all that time and trouble.
You are not posting truth........ there are no protected cockroach species
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
