Why couldn't our required tax dollars pay for health insurance?

yeah a few years ago i need an urgent operation, and i had to wait 8mths for a spot to becomme avaliable! The waiting times for appointments is rediculous, i have known people to wait up to 3 yrs for a hip replacement.

 

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This arguement assumes that we are not paying health care costs today..it is a false argument. We are paying health care costs today and we have the most expensive health care system in the WORLD and the quality of our health is declining just as rapidly as health care costs are rising.
Today the insured and the government pay the costs for those that are not insured. Under a universal coverage system, all folks pay. And that seems fair to me. By the grace of God, I have always had healthcare insurance. But I know many who have not. Who go without medicine until they need a hospital visit. A simple condition that could be managed with medication ends up not being well managed and expensive treatment. Who do you think pays for the hospititalization of non insureds...government and the insured.
We also need to take a look at the healthcare industry...is there a better way of delivering services? Indeed there is. Our healthcare industry is riddled with monopolies. We need to break up some of those very powerful monopolies. Is our way of educating MDs the best, most efficient? I think not. Take a look at how many foriegn doctors are practicing in the United States...their education took a lot less time than our MDs and they are just as good if not better.

 

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As this debate heats up there will be lots of scare tactics sponsored by the healtcare industry. Be prepared! And question why so much money is being spent to scare you.

 

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You are correct, capitalism is a failure with respect to healthcare because if it were not I could readily buy my medications from the lowest cost provider (anywhere outside the United States). The healthcare industry at all levels in the United States has very successfully lobbied for and received legislation that limits and restricts their markets... legislation protects their markets from competition. Pharmaceutical companies for example spend their research dollars not on new drugs, but on extending existing patents. Eliminating insurance companies would do nothing as long as the industry players are permitted to act as monopolies...by law. What we need is to make healthcare markets competitive through capitalism. What we need is to drop arbitrary barriers to entry into markets and professions...then free markets can work. Virtually any industrialized and developing country can train medical professionals, including MDs, more effectively and efficiently than we can in the United States. But we also need to make sure that every one pays their fair share as well.

 

No, it's not. The government is broke. It can not afford to take on a huge new expense like healthcare.

Wisconsin is trying to pass a univeral healthcare package for their state right now. It will cost more way more than the entire budget in Wisconsin does now and require a monumental increase in taxes.

I hope this package passes there so the rest of the country can see what a disaster it will be. People and companies will flee Wisconson as fast as they can to avoid paying those taxes. "Free" healthcare is the most expensive kind.

 

This document is also available as a printable .pdf file.
Health Insurance Cost
Facts on the Cost of Health Care

Introduction
By several measures, health care spending continues to rise at the fastest rate in our history.
In 2005 (the latest year data are available), total national health expenditures rose 6.9 percent -- two times the rate of inflation (1). Total spending was $2 TRILLION in 2005, or $6,700 per person (1). Total health care spending represented 16 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).
U.S. health care spending is expected to increase at similar levels for the next decade reaching $4 TRILLION in 2015, or 20 percent of GDP (2).
In 2006, employer health insurance premiums increased by 7.7 percent – two times the rate of inflation. The annual premium for an employer health plan covering a family of four averaged nearly $11,500. The annual premium for single coverage averaged over $4,200 (3).
Experts agree that our health care system is riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management, and inappropriate care, waste and fraud. These problems significantly increase the cost of medical care and health insurance for employers and workers and affect the security of families.
The National Coalition
on Health Care
1200 G Street, NW,
Suite 750
Washington, DC 20005
Let me try to be more clear MAD, nothing is for free including health care. We have a healthcare system today, and it is extremely expensive and getting more so each and every day. In our system, providers are obligated to treat life threatening conditions in an emergency room environment. And life threatening conditions tend to be expensive to treat. And if one has a medical condition that is not treated…say hypertension, it will likely lead to a life threatening event. Who pays for that cost when the indigent goes to the hospital? The hospitals pay for that cost, and how do the hospitals recover that cost…let me think, they add the cost of indigent care to the bill that is paid by those who can afford to pay for the care…those with insurance. So everyone today is getting healthcare in some form, but it is not quality care. It is expensive care and you and I are paying for it now…you just don’t know it. The people who do not have insurance are not paying for it.
Currently employees and employers are paying about sixteen percent of income on health care. That is absurd and the cost is growing at multiples of inflation. If left unchecked it will soon be at 25 percent of your income. The answer is two fold: break up the monopolies in health care and let old supply and demand take the driver seat. And two; make everyone pay their fair share.
Personally, you should be mad. We all should be mad. But we need to make sure we are mad about the right things…this “universal healthcare’’ scare is just a distraction intended to scare people and preserve the monopolies. Guess what, who is paying the bill to day for those without health care…you and I!

 

I'm all for market reforms, I'm totally opposed to government sponsored "univeral healthcare". I personally just switched over to a high deductable insurance ($5000) and a health savings account. The amount I save in premiums will more than make up for the deductable within one year.

 

Are you interested in having the best healthcare system possible, or merely the most profitable?

 

The best, baby. And there's no way a government run one is the best. The government sucks. Everything it does sucks. And you think they're the ones to provide the best healthcare? What are you smoking?

 

So if it were proven that state-run healthcare is better than privately-run healthcare, you would begin advocating it?

 

Let me tell you about our quality healthcare system. Earlier this year, I had a pulmonary thrombosis…a blood clot in the lung and was taken to a trauma center in a major metropolitan area. This hospital also serves as a training hospital for medical students. I had classic symptoms of pulmonary thrombosis. I know this because thirty years ago I was trained as a hospital corpsman in the Navy. As I laid gasping for air, I could tell my doctors were totally clueless as to the pulmonary thrombosis. It took them 36 hours to figure it out. And it was a doctor who was trained in India who, after he came on the case, figured it out rather quickly and he initiated treatment. He did not need legions of specialists and diagnostics to tell him the problem. I could have died in the hospital waiting for treatment…and there for a while I seriously thought I would have to call 911 because I was not being treated….36 hours for a correct diagnosis and treatment of a life threatening event. Yea, real quality there! And I have first class health insurance.

 

Well, as it is, there are generally two market forces influencing the cost of US healthcare: Drs. & Insurance. Of course you have the Medicaid/Medicare people (noting that many Drs. do not take such recipients) and those w/ enough $$ to pay w/o insurance.

As for toys, tires, food, etc., these are all commodities, and the "spurious" market forces which promote recalls is actually a positive thing for our consumers. Drs. provide services, which are not subject to recalls. Besides, capitalism would dictate that the better the Dr., the more he could foreseeably charge.

 

Learned Hand, I might add that there are more than two; hospitals, pharma companies, medical device companies, and of course all of the ancillary services. In a free market, with perfect information, good doctors could drive better prices. But we do not have free markets and we do not have perfect information...we don't even track it because the industry has successuly fought it. In Britian they have a system that rewards good performance by MDs....not a bad system.

 

Well, I kinda grouped hospitals, medicines, nurses, physicians, and all related services under Drs. Perhaps I should have just said "medical providers." Nevertheless, it's generally a two-way bargain that consumers generally have no control over. How often has anyone tried to negotiate a fee for open heart surgery? If the medical provider says no, do you have time to seek out another physician? Do we have the tools available to determine the best medical provider for the price? No. If we have insurance, which tries to bring down the cost of that $300 wheelchair ride from our bed to the door, we the consumer generally don't care. Thus, the free market system does not interact sufficiently enough to make healthcare more reasonably affordable. If Uncle Sam gets involved, we give up way too many freedoms. What can be more personal and American than seeking your own doctor, second opinion, and decision from whom you feel the greatest trust and assurance from? If more free market interactions occur, insurance premiums would (hopefully) drop, and you wouldn't have to pay up the whazoo for the risk insured.

 

The US system is broken beyond repair. It's a giant trough. All the idolatry of the free market in the world isn't going to change that.

 

Pricing is dificult for this industry especially if you are in a critical condition. It is hard to put out a competitve bid for services when you could be dead in a few minutes or hours without immediate medical care. Additionally, providers do not publish rates for goods and services. Those rates are only known to the provider and the insurance companies. In my recent hospitalization, the gross price for a little less than a week of care was 53k for the hospital only, the net rate negotatited by insurance provider was 30k...big difference. In many cases patients are just happy to have an MD accept them as a patient...again the supply demand curve is tilted in favor of the suppliers of healthcare services and has been for half a century. And when you get hospitalized, you get bills for everbody and everybodys brother, sister, cousin and uncles because of the way the industry is structured. Under the current system the patieint is just a slab of meat...no need to consult or inform...just bill.

 

Hear is an article summarizing a study of healthcare costs from the John Hopkins School of Health. We are paying more than twice what our eurpoean brothers are paying for healthcare. And our european brothers are covering everyone one in their society and getting similar results. How do you explain it....can you say goverment created monopolies?

July 12, 2005

U.S. Still Spends More on Health Care than Any Other Country

Researchers Rule out Supply Constraints and Litigation as Cause


Gerard Anderson, PhD
The United States continues to spend significantly more on health care than any country in the world. In 2002, Americans spent 53 percent per capita more than the next highest country, Switzerland, and 140 percent above the median industrialized country, according to new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study authors analyzed whether two possible reasons—supply constraints and malpractice litigation—could explain the difference in health care costs. They found that neither factor accounted for a large portion of the U.S. spending differential. The study is featured in the July/August 2005 issue of the journal Health Affairs.

“It is commonly believed that waiting lists in other countries and malpractice litigation in the United States are major reasons why the United States spends so much more on health care than other countries. We found that they only explain a small part of the difference,” said Gerard Anderson, PhD, lead author of the study and a professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management.

The study authors reviewed health care spending data on 30 countries from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for the year 2002. U.S. citizens spent $5,267 per capita on health care. The country with the next highest per capita expenditure, Switzerland, spent $3,446 per capita. The median OECD country spent $2,193 per capita.

For more information: "It's the Prices Stupid" --Q & A with Gerard Anderson
One of the commonly cited reasons why U.S. citizens spend more on health care than other countries is that these other countries have waiting lists, especially for elective surgery.The procedures with waiting lists in these other countries, however, represent only 3 percent of spending and therefore cannot explain much of the cost differential.

Another perceived cause of higher health care costs in the United States is that malpractice suits increase the prices charged by doctors and cause them to practice defensive medicine, which occurs when doctors order extra tests or procedures to reduce their risk of being sued. The researchers compared the number of malpractice claims and awards in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom and found that while U.S. citizens sue more often, the actual settlements from all four countries were comparable.

According to the study authors, defensive medicine probably contributes more to higher health spending than malpractice premiums, but determining which tests and second opinions should be defined as defensive medicine is less clear. The highest estimate for costs of defensive medicine in the United States is only 9 percent and many experts believe this number is too high.

“We can’t blame the United States’ higher health care costs on limiting procedures in other countries or the elevated number of law suits filed in the United States,” said Peter S. Hussey, PhD, co-author of the study and a recent graduate of the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management.

“As in previous years, it comes back to the fact that we are paying much higher prices for health care goods and services in the United States. Paying more is okay if our outcomes were better than other countries. But we are paying more for comparable outcomes,” said Anderson, who is also the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management.

In 2004, Anderson and Hussey also co-authored, along with Uwe E. Reinhardt, PhD, of Princeton University, a similar comparison for Heath Affairs. It was the most-viewed study in the journal’s end-of-year review.

“Health Spending in the United States and the Rest of the Industrialized World” was supported by a grant from the Commonwealth Fund.

Additional authors of the study were Bianca K. Frogner and Hugh R. Waters.

Public Affairs media contacts for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Kenna Lowe or Tim Parsons at 410-955-6878 or paffairs@jhsph.edu.

 

I already pay for Medicare that I'm not allowed to use until 65..

- N

 

So assuming we could implement a healthcare system (universal healthcare) similar to other industrialized countries with similar outcomes, we would be paying 5 percent of income on health care versus 16 percent. And Mad, I have one more suprise for you, you already have a healthcare system managed by the government. The difference is that not all of the payments to providers come directly from the government. Imagine what we could do if we could do it better? So Mad, what do you think?

 

That's because, like all government programs, it's a pyrimid scheme. You need lots of people paying and just a few collecting for the whole thing to work.

I don't trust the government enough to put both my livelyhood and my health in it's (in)capable hands.