Posted on 10/19/2013 10:37:13 AM PDT by Java4Jay
One percent consumed 21 percent of the nearly $1.3 trillion Americans spent on health care. Five percent of patients accounted for 50 percent of all health-care expenditures. By contrast, the bottom 50 percent of patients accounted for just 2.8 percent of spending.
(Excerpt) Read more at minnpost.com ...
I’m so torn on this whole subject.
A friend just lost her husband. He had a bad heart and she confided in me that his pump, then transplant and all that came after cost upwards of $1 MILLION dollars. The past 6 months of his life had been pretty good, but he died in his sleep of natural causes; nothing related to his heart at all.
How do you tell someone that her husband of 39 years wasn’t worth that kind of cash?
How do you tell someone what the life of their CHILD is worth?
And then there’s my own Dad who is a raging alcoholic and has ruined his health through his own choices. Everything he worked so hard for is going to be sucked up into the healthcare system and I KNOW he’ll keep limping along until he’s 100 just to spite me. ;)
And then there are the 3K abortions in our country every damn day.
It boggles the mind. We are SO FAR from God it just sickens me. And yet we feel qualified to PLAY God?
*SHRUG*
You do realize most of the modern techniques were developed on patients in this age group.
They’re the only group willing to risk it for an entirely experimental therapy.
You need to read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/100-000-Hearts-Surgeons-Memoir/dp/0976669773
http://www.texasheart.org/AboutUs/Support/index.cfm
“Because the Texas Heart Institute receives no patient care revenues, philanthropy plays an important role in maintaining our contributions to society and health throughout the world.”
Ping to Post 41.
Would you deny a severly autistic child necessary but expensive medical care?
What about a down’s syndrome child?
Would you forcibly prescreen pregnant women for this and mandate they abort the child? Downs kids can be costly what with heart issues and the like.
If you agree that 95yr olds aren’t worthy of medical care, who else would you deem unworthy?
Just for example?
Just a supposition here and I’ve read through the comments here - mostly about how costly old people are. But I really haven’t seen anything that jumps out at me that says GAY AIDS and HIV. Likewise, I didn’t see anything about exotic illnesses of illegal aliens and some of the outright ridiculous - like gender reassignment...
At one point in the company I worked where there were thousands of employees, it was a common knowledge that nearly every increase in premiums were due to three employees - all gay with aids.
One doctor’s reaction to these statistics: But they’re the ones who need it!
Read further down.
I give two distinct examples where these death panels would have deprived real live human beings of at least 10% of their lives.
It's one of the the situational ethics scenarios from the black heart of madman Joseph Fletcher:
“I dropped in on a patient at the hospital who explained that he only had a set time to live. The doctors could give him some pills (that would cost $40 every three days) that would keep him alive for the next three years, but if he didn't take the pills, he’d be dead within six months. Now he was insured for $100,000, double indemnity and that was all the insurance he had. But if he took the pills and lived past next October when the insurance was up for renewal, they were bound to refuse the renewal, and his insurance would be canceled. So he told me that he was thinking that if he didn't take the pills, then his family would get left with some security, and asked my advice on the situation.”
I don't give a damn about any propaganda coming out of England.
Just look around and you'll see who is using up our health resources. It's the millions of illegals, the obese overeaters who are likely to get diabetes and not take their meds or change their lifestyle, the welfare queens popping out babies (and overeating),the drug addicts, the non-citizens and prisoners on the transplant list.
We have one of the best health care systems in the world and it's being destroyed.
The article indicates that the costliest patients are not necessarily those with a single, very complex and serious disease, but a collection of chronic conditions including in most cases some psychiatric issues combined with poverty.
A logical approach to solving the real problem would be to devise a new method of care for the people that make up the top 1% of patients. Cutting the cost of their care by one half would reduce the nation's total health spending by ten percent if the data reported in the article is correct. That is a staggering amount of money.
The article is full of examples of how simple techniques, like making sure the patient gets to the doctor's appointment, or takes the right medicine, can make a large difference in the cost of their treatment.
Instead of tangling up the entire nation in a giant, expensive, and ultimately futile effort the government should have focused on solving the actual problem. It would be far cheaper and better for everyone to simply devise treatment plans, clinics, doctors and nurses who travel to these patients, and so on to address the problems of the top consumers of medical care.
Considering that they average almost $88,000 in medical expenses per year, assigning a nurse to visit each of a group of ten of the patients once or more per week would actually save money.
Which were removed with Obamacare
The doctors could give him some pills...
From what I’ve witnessed with the passing of my grandparents and parents, the health system sucked most their financial resources before passing. For the most part their final time on this earth was with extended misery and pain. I won’t let that happen to me.
Wilfredo Pareto lives. 80 percent or more of anything will exist in 20 percent or less of the population. No law, no regulation, no amount of spending will change this natural law.
Stopping people from smoking was supposed to save huge amounts of money treating people. Instead it's been replaced with obesity, with all of the expensive diabetes and other medications that involves. If the medical community wanted to cut down on our expenses, there would be a "least expensive option" for all diseases, and that would be the only one with low deductables for cures. JMHO
Conversely, England doesn't give a damn what you think the real problem is. They have had death panels for ages and they are just looking at ways to save money so the study showed what things were eating into their budget.
AND it is spent by the indigent seeking expensive ER care for bullsqueeze like colds and minor aches and pains.
I see it everyday as well and I work at and inner city hospital in the North East.A Major University Hospital.I see the same Alcohol abusers and Narcotic abusers coming in on a daily Basis.Sometimes Multiple times in a day.The resources that are spent on these people are incredible.
Before the Hospitals went to electronic record keeping you could actually see how large the volume a record file could be for the individual patient.Those Volumes were huge.
As for HIV Patients,You don’t see a lot of them like I used to see them in the 1980’s
As for the elderly patients,the Government is causing these doctors to over medicate because if they discharge these patients home to early and the patient gets readmitted the hospital is penalized.
And probably 1$ of home owners receive 21% of fire insurance and the 99% are glad they didn’t need to.
Amen
Try this on for size: the patient bears no responsibility to communicate their co-morbid conditions and current medications to their physicians.
This is precisely why all medical records are going electronic, and thus public.
“Try this on for size: the patient bears no responsibility to communicate their co-morbid conditions and current medications to their physicians. This is precisely why all medical records are going electronic, and thus public.”
Every doctor I’ve had has insisted on knowing what I’m taking. There’s no way I would not tell them for fear of dueling medicines. As to public records: The requirement for HIPA happened because people with ongoing expensive conditions, like Type 9 Hemophilia were going from employer to employer using the 1 million dollar cap. Then they’d move onto another employer. The insurance companies started sharing information to prevent that. The government passed a law so they couldn’t share information. Then they made all patients sign away all rights. But your husband can’t call and find out your condition if you’re hospitalized. (My sister had a special power of attorney for our Dad and still had to go in person to get information.) It’s the law of unintended consequences.
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