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27% of Medicare's annual $327 billion budget goes to care for patients in their final year of life.
The question is can we still afford this kind of expense, and is it right to be spending this much for a hopeless causes when there are more productive ways to spend this money that would be in the better interest of the country and the general welfare of the people.
How could the system be improved.
We can certainly start by no longer covering drunks, drug addicts, people with all STDs (that cost us a fortune because they won't take 5 seconds to put a rubber on).
Why punish the people that worked all their lives, paid taxes and medicare, and never cost the system anything until the end of their lives....They contributed to our society all their lives and deserve care.
You want to save money...get rid of the high paid directors of the hospitals, tell doctors they don't really deserve to make millions, and get rid of the amenities that the health care industry enjoys.
If medicines are the problem, and we are financing much of the education and research already...nationalize it...It is a critical part of our lives, just the same as government runs the fire and police services.
I think there must be a way to limit very expensive treatment on very elderly patients......who are ALREADY in very poor health.
A 80 year old person who has very poor overall health, is obese and has lost a limb due to type 2 diabetes. Then that same person has a massive stroke and is comatose......how much effort and money should be used to keep this person alive??????????
WE? When someone says "WE are paying for it" I instantly know they have zero knowledge about how things actually work. That is nothing but a political con game designed by healthcare monopolies and the bureaucrats in their pockets.
I'll play along though. How much have YOU paid toward keeping an obese, type 2 diabetes, massive stroke and is comatose person alive? Don't say your rates go up from these people, because if you cared about rates you'd be against ACA, which is more than doubling rates for the average healthy Joe, while lowering rates for the sickest among us. It's a shell game, and the house always wins. OH, and we... we are not the house.
Quote:
Originally Posted by migee
We can certainly start by no longer covering drunks, drug addicts, people with all STDs (that cost us a fortune because they won't take 5 seconds to put a rubber on).
Why punish the people that worked all their lives, paid taxes and medicare, and never cost the system anything until the end of their lives....They contributed to our society all their lives and deserve care.
You want to save money...get rid of the high paid directors of the hospitals, tell doctors they don't really deserve to make millions, and get rid of the amenities that the health care industry enjoys.
If medicines are the problem, and we are financing much of the education and research already...nationalize it...It is a critical part of our lives, just the same as government runs the fire and police services.
My Father passed away about 6 weeks ago and the last 3 months had to consume over half of his medical cost after retiring. He was very healthy until the last couple of months after a stroke. It was heart wrenching and caused family dissension trying to make medical decisions for someone incapable of making them...and could cause a permanent sibling rift.
As an overall comment, I think the US spends far too much on medical care and I think much of it is self inflicted by bad habits such as eating to the point of obesity and smoking, etc. My Father had none of those bad habits but advanced years and genetics caught up with him.
I'm not offering solutions but I think it best that you have a conversation with your parents before they get to far along in years about what they want done to keep them alive....not easy.
27% of Medicare's annual $327 billion budget goes to care for patients in their final year of life.
The question is can we still afford this kind of expense, and is it right to be spending this much for a hopeless causes when there are more productive ways to spend this money that would be in the better interest of the country and the general welfare of the people.
How could the system be improved.
If you want to look at who costs the country the most in terms of health care and social security, look to the healthy crowd. Face it, healthy, fit people live longer, long enough to drain more out of SS than they paid into it, let alone long enough to be a drain on Medicare. Many smokers and obese people don't even live long enough to collect SS or qualify for Medicare.
That is not true as general statement because you are not factoring the costs of the morbidly obese, drug/alcohol abusers, and smokers, many of whom usually die of lung or bladder cancer before 70.
The abusers may not live long enough to drain Medicare, but they get their pound of flesh, nonetheless, while they live.
I worked with a youngish woman in her 40s, morbidly obese, got to the point she needed a wheelchair to get to around the workplace, finally eased out on disability including SSDI, but not before she had bragged to numerous people in the place that her health care had already cost the company (self-insured) over a million dollars. Then moved out of state to live with her parents and died a year later.
These people cost the country plenty - in added costs to employers - which are always passed on one way or another to the rest of us.
Further, you assume everyone who lives a long life will be expensive at end of life. That is not true, either. Many die quickly, without long-term expensive care, or even short-term expensive care. There are examples of this in my family, self-sufficient until four days before the end, dying at age 91 in the hospital. Far from the $1MM cost bragged about by my now-deceased coworker.
From what I've read, dementia and disability are the most expensive, along with chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma, and mental illness.
Seniors are being squeezed. Universal healthcare does nothing to bring the costs down. Why are they calling it the Affordable Healthcare Act? Affordable for whom?
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The report, which appears in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, looked at data from more than 3,000 people covered by Medicare in 2002-2008 to gauge the impact of health care cost on seniors. Researchers measured how much Medicare-eligible seniors had spent out of pocket on healthcare in their last five years alive, and looked at how those costs weighed on their total household income.
After crunching the numbers, the report found that during that time period, more than 75 percent of Medicare-eligible households spent at least $10,000 out of pocket on health care. Spending for all participants during those last five years averaged $38,688, and for the remaining 25 percent the average expense was even greater: they spent a whopping $101,791 out of pocket. A quarter of participants also spent "more than their total household assets on healthcare," according to the report.
The report's researchers noted that expenses varied based on the type of illness participants faced, with dementia costing the most money (double the cost of cancer or gastrointestinal diseases).
Rising health care costs can't be ignored: in the last year, 58 percent of people didn't seek treatment they needed because it was too expensive
Obesity, now classified as a disease, has only added more to health care costs, and you see them in LTC/Rehab facilities along with the elderly and other patients. I've seen them come in weighing up to 600 pounds, which requires an extra-wide bed, extra staff to turn them, transfer them. And God forbid they should ever fall out of bed!
Even with a Hoyer Lift, I hold my breath every time, transferring them, the Hoyer lift is going to break or the Hoyer jacket is going to give way!
Again, the dilemma! What do you do with these people, some I've seen even in their 20's!
My grandfather is pushing mid 90s and still lives by himself in good health. He took care of himself all his life through exercise and healthy eating.
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Here's my anecdote: my sister, who took care of herself all of her life through exercise and healthy eating, died of cancer at 54 years old.
What's your point?
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