Why Healthcare Is Killing America

The Casey Report ^ | 6/12/2009 | Bud Conrad

[h20skier66]

Healthcare is the biggest segment of our economy. In the debate over who should pay for what or, increasingly, for whom, most people don't stop to understand just how large a portion of our society's money is dedicated to healthcare.

For some perspective, as a share of GDP, the U.S. spends about twice that of other advanced nations. This is an important reason why the U.S. is increasingly uncompetitive in global manufacturing. It is, for instance, the most important factor (besides poor management) that General Motors and Chrysler are going bankrupt.

http://www.commoditynewscenter.com/articles/Insight/Why_Healthcare_Is_Killing_America

[Snowyman]

And it's already out of control. I recently spent one day in the hospital due to a broken arm, which cost on the order of $100,000. Remarkably, that eye-opening amount still doesn't include the ambulance, the doctors, the x-rays, the CT scans, or the anesthesiologist. I'm still getting bills.

Anyone have any idea if there is truth to this figure ?

[caddie]

Health care in this country is a bargain.

Life expectancy in 1900 was 40 years, now it is almost 80 years in the USA.

You get one or more whole generations of life now than back then, and usually pain-free life.

And that increase in longevity doesn't even take into account the coming advance due to the statin drugs, which will be tremendous.

And you sure as hell can bet that the increase in longevity is not because Americans are taking better care of themselves by exercising or eating right.

It is all due to market-driven medicine and technological health care advancement.

People griping about this are either Rats looking for power, or ingrates who would bitch if we lived to be 200 years old, or, they are just dumb and too lazy to think about the issue.

[expatpat]

In my opinion, the solution to high health-care costs lies in less coverage, not more --- plus, of course, clipping the ambulance-chaser wings. If we all had to pay, say, 50% out of our own pockets for the first $4000 and the legal vultures were gone, treatment would be more cost effective and the cost would be much lower.

The problems would be (i) how to treat poor people (use the existing govt. program), (ii) to get adequate people to use preventive medicine (education).

[DonaldC]

“Anyone have any idea if there is truth to this figure ? “

Must be some broken arm. My wife recently broke her’s just below the shoulder and total bills before insurance so far are around $1,100. We still have one more followup appointment before we’re done. I think that is too much but we were able to get where she needed to be with almost no waiting at all even for x-rays, so I ain’t complaining. Never spent time at the actual hospital though.

[BluH2o]

Anyone have any idea if there is truth to this figure?

Re: Broken arm costing $100,000.
No way ... unless surgery was performed & pins used to stabilize the fracture. Even then $100,000 would be high. This person needs one of those medical auditors that work on a percentage of any money they save a patient after examining the hospital bills.

[Snowyman]

Thanks. I’m thinking at that price I’d hate to break a leg . Average Joe Lunchpail could barely afford to break a little finger...

[drc43]

Real food, good COQ10, and many other supplements like this. Control sugar... Yes.

[Hoffer Rand]

I’m not buying this. Comparatively, think how expensive giving birth would be. And nobody is paying 6 figures for a labor and delivery, unless something was very unusual about the birth.

[franky8]

For what its worth.

When you get to my age you don’t equate costs to death.

If I were under national insurance I would not be here now, Two years ago when I had the brain surgery the MD told me if it was under nationalized insurance either his quota would have forced him and the hospital to schedule a later date or transfer me. He said the outcome would be death or paralysis.

The hospital was part of a university. The small hospitals would not be effected as much as university and major hospitals. The overall effect would be to cut research and very intricate treatment.

Last week there was a story about a Canadian who had been having headaches and an MD recommended a MRI and a Scan but they could not do it for 4 months. He decided to come to Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The work was done in four days.

Unless one has had experience with the system one cannot judge the merits. I judge because I lived through it.

[franky8]

I think the price is too high. For my surgery and 6 weeks in the hospital and rehab hospital Medicare and my Medigap paid them their prevailing rates which were less than the cost of $300,000. And that included a helicopter ride and assorted ambulances.

I’m sure his broken arm cost was less than my brain surgery,

[EVO X]

No way ... unless surgery was performed & pins used to stabilize the fracture. Even then $100,000 would be high

The link to the 100K medical bill wasn't available. It would seem to me it would take a complex break with complications to have that kind of bill. Therapy isn't cheap. I had a shoulder problem a while back. MSRP for therapy was $400 an hour. Insurance company paid it all at $300 an hour.

[ga medic]

“Life expectancy in 1900 was 40 years, now it is almost 80 years in the USA.

You get one or more whole generations of life now than back then, and usually pain-free life.”

The difference in life expectancy is mostly attributable to a large decrease in child mortality, and the fact that mothers do not die in childbirth very often. The length of time people live isn’t really much longer now than it was back then.

[caddie]

Sure, of course.

That is how life expectancy of populations increases initially.

Then, as the society is more advanced, advances in adult chronic diseases start to make more of a difference, as it did especially in the 1960s until the present day.

Who started keeping the babies from dying in infancy? Who started keeping the mothers alive in childbirth?

Any way you cut it, it is advances in one or another branch of (mostly American) medicine, or (mostly American) medical science and technology, plus the efforts of (mostly American) health care workers.

All of which operated in the context of the American free enterprise system.