Posted on 03/03/2013 9:25:19 AM PST by TurboZamboni
Time magazine has done our nation a service by publishing Steven Brill's long article on medical care costs. There isn't much in the article that people who follow the issue closely didn't already know piecemeal, but Brill puts things together in an articulate package for the average reader.
Brill makes several points: Per-unit medical costs are substantially higher in the United States than in nearly every other nation. We charge the highest prices to the self-insured or uninsured people who have the least bargaining power. Compensation levels for some doctors and many managers are high, as are profits for hospitals and technology suppliers. Where the government does regulate price, it buys treatments cheaper than private insurers and at only a fraction of the list prices charged to the uninsured or underinsured. All of these assertions are generally correct.
Brill argues the solution is greater government regulation of health care, largely following one of the European models. But some other commentators, particularly those to right of the political center, argue the opposite, that the way to solve the problem is less government involvement in health care provision and financing. Who is right?
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
“In order to receive minimal attention by doctors and nursing personnel, patients had to pay bribes.”
You want to increase corruption? All you got to do is centralize power. Market forces are so strong that even in a system with total control, and where everything is “free”, scarce products will always go to the highest bidder. In this case the “owner” of the product or service is the one that controls access to it and he will use all his creative power to make the most of his “ownership”. You want to decrease corruption? Diffuse power as much as possible. That is why capitalistic countries under the rule of law will always have less corruption than authoritarian countries.
I think the writer leaves out the fact that our costs for insured people are higher in the U.S. is BECAUSE of government. Doctors and hospitals make up what they don’t make from Medicare/Medicaid by gouging insurance companies...making the costs rise for EVERYONE!
Report on health care spending shows government with 44% share
The market that Democrats argue is the most broken is the one in which government meddles most. By its own account, the government already accounts for nearly half of the nation’s health care spending, even before ObamaCare takes effect. With that much government intervention, is it any wonder why the healthcare system seems in need of repair? All of that meddling has crowded out market forces and mucked-up this sector like no other in our economy. But what are the Democrats prescribing? An even bigger dose of what’s ailing us.
Look at the UK’s national Health Service for how socialized medicine becomes bureaucratically bloated as well as literally deciding who lives and who dies. The NHS has 1.7 million employees to provide health care to a population of 65 million people. The National Health Service also has its own death panels in the form of an acronym NICE. NICE “guidelines” routinely deny patients life saving medications and treatments and its new Liverpool protocols are a death sentence for any patient unfortunate enough to fall under them. The US health care system isn’t perfect, but provides the highest standard of care in the world.
* Betrayal of 20,000 cancer patients: Rationing body rejects ten drugs that could have extended lives *
Up to 20,000 people have died needlessly early after being denied cancer drugs on the NHS, it was revealed yesterday. The rationing body NICE has failed to keep a promise to make more life-extending drugs available. Treatments used widely in the U.S. and Europe have been rejected on grounds of cost-effectiveness, yet patients and their loved ones have seen the NHS waste astronomical sums.
NHS the 3rd largest employer on the PLANET...
to cover a lousy 50 million people...talk about bloated bureaucracy!
(#1 is the Chinese Army,# 2 is the India Railway system)
...comparing Euopean countries the size of Minnesota to the entire US is just silly,but that’s Ed for ya.
Also left out is the high cost due to malpractice insurance. I’ve heard that in lawsuit happy areas, such as Miami, medical malpractice insurance for an OB-GYN can be close to $200,000 annually.
Also due to the threat of lawsuits tests that may not be necessary are done.
Obamacare does nothing to curtail med-mal lawsuits, since civil trial lawyers are 1) big donors to BHO and 2) many of the 535 elites in DC are lawyers.
Plus with someone else picking up the tab via insurance, medicaid/medicare et al patients have no incentive to ask if they really need all the fancy testing done nor curtail their visits to the DR or ER for that hang nail.
Just look at the explosion on cable TV for advertising of medical products such as motorized wheelchairs, motorized chairs for stairs, catheters, sleep apnea devices, diabetic supplies, low testerone products, et al. Notice how they say “...and it all may be covered by medicare/medicaid/insurance with little or no money out of your pocket...”
And this doesn’t even include the medicare fraud side of the equation.
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free. -- P. J. O'Rourke
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