Posted on 09/09/2014 9:26:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
The bill is coming due for ObamaCare and it’s a whopper. According to Medicare Care’s own actuaries U.S. health care spending is about to rocket.
Federal meddling in what was once the finest and cost-effective health care system on the planet is nothing new.
Back in the 1960s, many Americans paid for doctor and hospital services out of pocket or through modestly priced private insurance. Health care spending was about 6 percent of GDP.
Enter President Johnson and Medicare. He bought millions of votes by giving seniors free health care that they never paid for through payroll taxes during their working years. As insidious, he helped lay the foundations for the entitlement state with Medicaid. The latter, first conceived to help poor children, has been gradually expanded to include many working families.
Today health care spending is more than 17 percent of GDP. Life extending treatments are part of the jump, but Germany and Holland spend about 12 percent and have those. The extra US costs are federally mandated giveaways, inefficiencies and abuse—about $850 billion and much more than spent on defense.
Federal programs set reimbursements for providers and limit use of many drugs and procedures. Those rules are intended to mirror market prices and informed private decisions but often do not.
No bureaucratic rule or computer program can even capture all the judgments we put into purchasing decisions to maximize what we squeeze from our incomes to meet our family’s needs. Those decisions build up to become what economists call the invisible hand of the marketplace that guides businesses to make what we need.
Just as Soviet central planning failed to put enough TVs and beef on store shelves, federally managed health care creates long waits to see doctors and lots of opportunities for soft fraud—activities by health care providers that game federal rules—and outright stealing.
For example, Medicaid pays doctors a small fee for drawing blood but labs pay doctors handling fees up to six times as large to get their business. Doctors prescribe questionable, expensive treatments that may be administered in their offices and push up Medicare reimbursements into the millions for each practice.
Before ObamaCare, federal and state governments were already financing about half of all health care spending. At that level, federal reimbursement rates and rules no longer mirror the market—those become the market. The decisions of private insurers—each much smaller by dollars spent than federal outlays—fit in around those policies.
It was already Soviet health care but without the benefit of free access, as private premiums, deductions and co-pays soared.
Now ObamaCare is throwing new sand into the gears by fining individuals who lack employer provided insurance and fail to purchase a plan from the government marketplace.
No surprise, next year those policies are expected to jump in cost by as much as 30 percent. Medicare actuaries are forecasting health spending will rise at 6 percent a year over the next decade and are on pace to reach 20 percent of GDP by 2025.
The Administration has obfuscated the issue. Government numbers show Medicare expenditures growing more slowly—but that’s because the new law raises premiums, cuts benefits and slices reimbursements to doctors and uses the cash saved to subsidize the federal and state insurance exchanges.
Small businesses are shedding employees and larger ones are scrambling to find machines to replace lower paid workers—or leave the country altogether to escape the burdens of health insurance.
Good jobs are scarce, and America is losing its brand.
The United States, once the home of free markets, is no longer the most vibrant economy on earth. It’s China, where bureaucrats are better at imposing the tyranny of a state managed economy.
The problem is, a lot of people think the waythat you do until they get an expensive diagnosis, like cancer. Then, all of a sudden, they cry big baby tears, and want the hospital to find a solution to their problem.
I call it “tough love”. Actions need to have consequences.
And I very much see this life as a very “real” video game. It is, after all, almost all empty space. It is not as real as the true reality of the afterlife would be. It simply makes no sense to prolong the “game” as long as possibe unless you don’t think you will make it to the “real” world.
—not that any one class of American’s is more important than another ;) Seriously, Obamacare is harming America; we had a chance to end it back in Nov. 12 but conservatives failed to act. I do hope ‘14 is different.
We need to return to that.
Now, hospitals have to find housing for their patients, arrange transportation and interpreters, assist in post hospital financial planning for patients, be a cop to prevent them from getting admitted to the hospital in 30 days..
And there is a major part of the problem.
A fractured arm is not acute leukemia. They do not compare.
I thought the catastrophic health plans were good, and it was horrible that Zerocare took them away. I did, however, see patients take advantage of those plans with private practice physicians. A patient would go to the ER with a fractured arm. They would get referred to an orthopedist who was on call ( a requirement to have hospital privileges). The orthopedist was then required to treat the patient, even if the patient did not have money on hand. If they did not treat that patient, (because they could not pay their deductible), the physician could lose their license due to patient abandonment.
More people used this tactic then those who were honest and actually paid their bill.
So, when I hear someone say they do not have health insurance by choice, I also do not want those people crying big baby tears to me. Be responsible for your decision. Be willing to lose your home if you have a catastrophic illness. No one else should have to pay for it.
We’re living the “little house on the prarie” paradigm. But with satellite internet. Lots of good medical advice there. It’s where I found out that what my doctor diagnosed as a broken toe was really gout. ;-)
If what you say is true, I like your attitude. However, you are a very , very small minority.
Like I have said before, hospitals have become the defacto social safety net for society. As a result, they have to hire a huge amount of social workers and care managers. As a result, this increases costs.
A fractured arm is not acute leukemia. They do not compare.
As you can see, personal experiences are shaping my attitude about this.
We have my daughter’s arm, the friend cured of cancer and my wife’s first husband. And, of course, lots of other stuff.
I think health care should be like car insurance, except not required. It should not be connected to your employer, you should not be required to get it, and there should be plans designed for your particular needs. Why should a man and woman in their 70’s be covered for pregnancy?
As long as obamacare exists, we should bleed the system dry until it collapses of its own weight. Then we can go back to formula. Kinda like Microsoft Windows 7 removed all the crap that slowed down Vista.
Especially with that enterovirus-68 obviously, quickly spread in a narrow line from California through the Midwest and into the southeast.
However, you are a very , very small minority.
A person who is willing to leave his home of 45 years in one of the IT capitals of the US, as well as a good IT job, and move to a small farm in central KY, is willing to put his money where his mouth is and do things only a very small minority would do.
I’m a Christian so that tempers a great deal what I AM willing to do (strictly defensive measures regarding money, food, water, etc. I also see this world as utterly temporal.), but I am nervous about all the “non-Christian Timothy McVeigh’s” our government is creating at breakneck speed. It’s only a matter of time where one or more become more than talk. As Gerald Celente says, when peoople lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it.
The Bundy ranch thing, had shots been fired, could have made Waco look like a quilting bee. It could have gone national, and the Feds knew it.
So what do you do when you contract the drug resistant TB that the illegals are bringing across the border? Having no health insurance is like playing russian roulette with 5 rounds in the cylinder.
So what do you do when you contract the drug resistant TB that the illegals are bringing across the border? Having no health insurance is like playing russian roulette with 5 rounds in the cylinder.
I would suggest putting something aside each month for health expenses. And read some very good literature about nutrition, first aid, and natural and/or home remedies and prevention tactics.
Amazing how expensive health care ISN’T when you’re paying cash on the day of the visit.
I would suggest putting something aside each month for health expenses. And read some very good literature about nutrition, first aid, and natural and/or home remedies and prevention tactics.
We have a masticating juicer that we use for breakfast and other stuff. We grow our own beef, garden and have 15 laying hens.
Hopefully my fellow Americans will wise up and choose better reps.
Obama flat out said that the rich have more money than they need from businesses that they didn't build, but my take is that everyone's boat sinks when the tide goes out even while we hear the sound of our own boat hitting bottom the loudest.
I am in the process of reading an article about this. It's old but I missed it a few years back.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/can-the-middle-class-be-saved/308600/
Hey, did you trade in and out of Apple yesterday?
I don't have health insurance either, mainly because of the cost, but also because I believe that nothing in the Constitution authorizes this Bolshevist government to compel me to purchase a product.
I don't know if it qualifies as trauma or not, but one night in early April I went to sleep one night and woke up two days later in the hospital, having had for some unknown reason, a series grand mal seizures.
Since I was unconscious I was unable to authorize the hospital to treat me. My family authorized the treatment. I now have a hospital bill of about $26,000.00 plus doctor bills of about $6,000.00. I filled out a HOSPITAL financial aid form from (not from the government) and have begun to make payments on the debt. This particular hospital will accept partial payments. It may take the rest of my life to pay it off.
I am not complaining. I'm just telling you what happened. The federal government has no authority to compel me to purchase a product. John Roberts, et al can go to Hell.
On humorous thing happened in the hospital, though, which I don't remember, but was told to me by family members who were in my room when it happened.
They said the doctor came into the room and began to ask me questions such as what year is it, what city am I in, etc. I don't remember any of this, but my family reported that I said it was 1996, and that I was in Belleville, IL (not). Then the doctor asked me who was President and I reportedly replied, "That dammed communist, Barack Obama."
So, at least I got one thing right.
Cordially,
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/encore/2014/09/10/in-retirement-savings-the-poor-get-poorer/
lol! Wyatt & I were just talking about it. He asked me if I bot in at today's opening price and I told I did --but I'd made that purchase last month! Some people are good at reading minute by minute signs but I'm not one of them. I'm happy w/ week to week signals and a 2.9% gain in 3 weeks means a 67% annualized return.
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