Posted on 10/06/2018 8:33:36 PM PDT by TBP
Whenever one segment of an economy exhibits, year after year, inflation above the general rate, and when there is no constraint on supply, then either a cartel is in operation or there is a lack of price transparency—or both, as is the case with American medical care.
So it is clear that there is something terribly wrong with how health care is financed in our country. And a consensus on how to fix the problem—how to provide Americans the best medicine money can buy for the least amount of money that will buy it—has proved elusive. But the history of American medical care, considered in the light of some simple but ineluctable economic laws, can help point the way. For it turns out that the engines of medical inflation were deeply, and innocently, inserted into the health care system just as the medical revolution began.
Previously, insurance had always been used to protect only against large, unforeseeable losses, and came with a deductible. But the first hospital plans didn’t work that way. Instead of protecting against catastrophe, they paid all costs up to a certain limit. The reason, of course, is that they were instituted not by insurance companies, but by hospitals, and were primarily designed to generate steady demand for hospital services and guarantee a regular cash flow.
The most important thing to do, by far, is to require medical service providers to make public their inclusive prices for all procedures. Most hospitals keep their prices hidden in order to charge more when they can, such as with the uninsured. But some facilities do post their prices. The Surgery Center of Oklahoma, for instance, does so on its website. A knee replacement there will cost you $15,499, a mastectomy $6,505, a rotator cuff repair $8,260.
(Excerpt) Read more at imprimis.hillsdale.edu ...
FYIFWIW
The Surgery Center of Oklahoma. All prices posted ahead of time. Any complications are covered at the Center’s expense. Which is why they have such a low rate of them.
Finally, we need to get the practitioners of modern medicine to recognize an age-old reality: there is no cure for old age itself. Maybe someday we’ll be able to 3-D print a new body and have the data in our brain downloaded to it. But for the time being, when the body begins to break down systemically, we should let nature take its course.
The rate guide for hours to perform a job is how they get paid. Even under/over what it took to do the job.
Just saying...
Author should do some basic reading of the works of those he cites.
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I think the blues started in texas.
“But for the time being, when the body begins to break down systemically, we should let nature take its course.”
Easy to say when it’s someone else. I bet the author would demand “do everything you can. I want the best” if it were him.
???
I’m old enough to remember People saying that when you have Surgery to remove Cancer it spreads because the Air hits it.
He didn't trust his Wife (my S-I-L) to make sure that happened. He was sure she would pull the Plug. LOL
He survived the gruesome Surgery and lasted another five years.
It is a personal peeve of mine how difficult it is to find out what a hospital charges for services. When I ask them, they answer with a question "Who's your insurance provider?" It shouldn't be a game, or cryptic. The irony of this system is that the self-insured pay the most. There shouldn't be ten different secret prices for the same service— Capitalism dies in darkness.
Sacramento in 1932, according to the article. 1929 according to the Wikipedia.
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Much easier said than done, because it conflicts with our Judaeo-Christian values. But I do see where you're coming from. My mother, for example, is 91 years old and suffers from senile dementia, but not to the point where she isn't cognizant of herself, her family and her surroundings. The problem is that her condition prevents her doing anything that could give meaning to her continued existence. It's not for me to say that she would be better off removed from life, and to even think it causes me incredible feelings of selfishness and guilt. Meanwhile, the medical profession goes to every extremity to keep her alive, and I do not think it within the strictures of my moral beliefs to keep them from doing so.
It's a quandary. There are no simple answers.
I remember that as well. I'm not sure where they get that idea, but it seems to me that if you're given surgery as an option then the cancer hasn't spread, so you're much more likely to survive.
I'd be more leery of chemotherapy, because it hits the immune system hard.
I’ve been through Chemo four times in the last 13 years to treat my Chronic Leukemia (CLL).
The last time I finished Chemo my Immune System weakened and I ended up with Pneumonia, four other Lung Infections and a Mass in my Left Lung. I was given five different Antibiotics over three Months that did nothing.
I ended up receiving Plasma Infusion Therapy. It was pretty much a last resort at the time and it did the trick.
I’ve been in Remission for two Years now.
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