Posted on 03/18/2017 7:21:28 AM PDT by NYer
SNIP
As a result of this thinking, most of us have become part of a large system that is so complex that we don’t have any idea how much something costs or why it costs that much—and often don’t even bother to ask! So many things occur to me to ask, but there are few good answers. Should an ankle x-ray cost $700? Why? I know the machine is initially expensive, but so is my car. After driving my car for ten years, the three years of payments are a distant memory. Surely after the 10,000th x-ray the machine should be paid for!
And why do we expect our health insurance to pay for every little thing? I don’t expect my auto insurance to pay for the cost of new tires or an oil change. Medical insurance used to be to protect against financial ruin in the event of catastrophic expenses. Now it covers the annual check-up and even the most elective of drugs such as Viagra. Why?
Obviously we consumers are part of the problem. We can’t just pin this all on insurance companies or “big pharma.” We now expect the smallest incidental expenses to be covered. Further, we sue doctors and hospitals over a tiny scar or a minor oversight. We can barely abide the least inconvenience or suffering related to our health.
I suspect that part of the problem is that we have handed everything over to someone else to pay; as a result, we don’t consider the shared cost we are all now carrying. It’s all just too remote to us. Having now removed most of the economic impact, cost is no longer a consideration. Someone else is paying; who cares what it costs? Just try to pay cash for an x-ray
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
Some of us are old enough to remember how healthcare was once handled. You visited a doctor when you were sick. Now you are expected to go for an annual checkup that often results in being sent for additional tests to ensure you are healthy. Worse still are the growing number of people who use the ER as a doctor's office. Local hospitals are being crushed under the burden.
Here is a visual image of the complexity of Obamacare.
It’s insane.
Look at Europe. Do they have head nurses who make $135K? Do they have hospital administrators who make $400K? Do they have knee surgeons who make $800K? Do they have salesmen for drug companies who make $250K? If you walk into a hospital in Europe, do you see a marble floor, designer furniture, free wi-fi, and a receptionist who looks like a fashion model?
Only government ‘officials’ could invent such a convoluted system!
The percent Drs and nurses has dropped
from 97% to ~6% thanks to the liars in DC
who kept THEMSELVEs EXEMPT (of course).
How could the costs not rise?
Why would the EXEMPT ever tell the truth and
just remove THEIR control as they PROMISED.
I posted this as a way of showing what was thought to be enormously complex and convoluted (to the point it was ridiculed even by Democrats) when it was proposed in 1993, now looks simple in comparison to Obamacare.
That's not "part of the problem" at all. It IS the problem, as I've been saying for years.
Spent a lot of time in Europe back in the 70s and 80s. Italy has nationalized healthcare. A doctor may have a private practice but must devote at least 1 day per week, ,working in a clinic. The population, of course, is much smaller than here. When my mil was diagnosed with stomach cancer, she was put on a list for surgery. She would have been dead by the time her number was reached. The solution? "Tip" a doctor (in this case, her bil), to have her number bumped up higher. The "tip", back then, was $5,000.
No system is perfect but the author makes an excellent point.
Once the government enters into the fray, things get even murkier. Our unlimited sense of entitlement combined with politicians’ desire to curry favor with voters creates a perfect storm of escalating costs, distant oversight, arbitrary decisions, and the demand for perfect solutions. Few market forces are in play to keep costs in check and to maintain supply/demand equilibrium.
Yes, but could you “keep your doctor and your plan”? Did we have to pass the bill to find out what was in it? /sarc
What is a mess is health care insurance and the mess it creates when you use it.
We did nothing (but praise the system) when health insurance was State sponsored monopolies.
Not that it’s a Federal sponsored monopoly we get upset.
We should have been busy taking down ALL monopolies.
I lived in England in the 1980s, and they had these big, long wards of patients in beds. Had the feel of Dickensian times. Second world, at best.
How? - Government got involved in ‘fixing’ it.... they saw $$$ in that.
Overall healthcare costs are also a mess—largely driven by our insurance catastrophe.
As systems become larger they require decentralized control.
If that does not happen, the centralized control will limit the amount of the activity to a level that they can control, which is never satisfactory.
See Soviet Union, Venezuela, North Korea etc. Ad nauseum.
Politicians, insurance, companies, illegal aliens and welfare peoples would be relegated to their previous capitalistic policies and lose their money and power. And they will cry like the monsters they are and hate all who know that obamacare is benefiting the worst people of
America and they do not intend to let that money and power go away. DC is corrupt and the leftist liberal snowflakes are corrupt and so it can only get worse as time goes by as government grows and the citizen decreases.
Overall healthcare costs are also a mess—largely driven by our insurance catastrophe.
My wife had to see the doctor a couple of weeks ago. $50.
And the stories I’ve gotten from personal friends, acquaintances and many freepers would curl your toes:
$7800 bill negotiated to $3200.
$46,000 quote for hernia surgery and hospital recovery stay reduced to $4,800.
Stage 4 breast cancer cured with the Gerson Method and a $2,800 juicer (yes, this one is REAL and she is now six years cancer free)
Etc.
Fact is, not only is health care reasonably priced, but often the solution is not the standard “AMA approved” treatments, e.g. chemo.
If you watch your diet, exercise, and take simple and cheap preventative steps, health care is actually very reasonably priced and there is little need for insurance, other than some of the catastrophic stuff that VERY rarely happens to people that take responsibility for their health. you know, stuff like adult onset diabetes. ;-)
I’d really like to see the government just wipe out a lot of un-necessary regulations and get out of the whole thing. It would save everyone a TON of money and effort.
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