Iconic skier's death points out U.S. health gap (compare, supporters, income)

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by KUchief25

Currently it is your choice to carry health insurance. Part of that choice is whether you want your premiums to pay for others who also make that choice with whoever your provider is if they become sick and you don't. If you don't want to pay for others who become sick then simply don't carry health insurance. Pretty simple stuff. Now the government is saying you HAVE to carry insurance thus FORCING you to subsidize others care.

Everything is simple, isn't it? Simple, elegant, and WRONG!

[TrapperJohn]

Originally Posted by Katiana

In theory, that should make the cost go down!

But mathematically higher per paying customer.

If ten people use $10 each the total cost is $100. If they each pay equally they each pay $10. If only half pay they pay $20 each. Five pay $20 for $10 in services. Five get it free. The total cost didn't change.

The more people who enter the system the higher the total cost. As the pool of payers shrinks, the higher the cost per paying customer.

I'm good at math. I'm good in Finance. The viable solution is a national plan. We need to spread the risk and costs over a larger base. Medicare doesn't work because it can't generate premium dollars at 1.6% of payroll (x 2) to cover the huge costs spent late in life.

We need the healthy kids in the risk pool, and we need them there over years so that when they get sick they have paid enough in to cover their costs.

I'm as conservative as they come but recognize that it would be cheaper in the long run.

[Grim Reader]

I just want to add a few facts to the discussion. Some people on previous pages seem to be basing a lot of reasoning on mistaken information.

The US spends nearly 8 000 $ per person per year on health care. That is over 600 000 per person liftetime. Its 18 % of GDP. As opposed to 4,7 % of GDP that goes on the military.
Other first world nations spend an average of 9 % of GDP on healthcare, and 1,5-2,5 % of their militaries.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans would like people to know how they have managed their stewardship of public assets:

The red bar in this graph is public, tax-funded costs. The pink bar is private costs, including out-of-pocket and insurance:



Yes, an American really pays more in tax for health care than most UHC nations. And that is with the US being bigger than the others and having the economics of scale advantage.

So the yearly waste in health care (when compared to efficient systems) is almost twice the military budget every year. Now where do all this extra money go? Well...


As for the performance...there are a lot of indicators, but I find National Geographic summed it up quite well:


A system that performs well would have a thick line, lower on the left than the right.

[nzrugby]

The USA does have a strange system to we who have Universal health care.
If that lass had had her accident here her total hospital cost would be zero, we cover all residents and visitors to NZ under an insurance type scheme for accidents, but, we have no right to sue for personal injury.
If I travel to say Australia I'm covered under an agreement, the same with other countries.

But, it is of course not possible to have an agreement with the USA due to your approach to the health care of your citizens.

Could we use more money in our hospital/clinic system, of course, 2% of what the USA wastes would do us nicely.

[SuperSparkle928]

Originally Posted by BruSan

Rebuttal: Baloney; the doctors don't benefit from running tests they KNOW BEFOREHAND aren't necessary?They bill the insurance company or YOU for those tests. Or they get a kickback from the testing agency for sending them fillers and if you don't believe that; there's this tract of land in the middle of lake Okeechobee that I will sell you for........

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Oh geez...

This is SO simple....

Quote:"Quote:"Baloney; the doctors don't benefit from running tests they KNOW BEFOREHAND aren't necessary?"

Only if they are 1). unethical 2). Don't mind committing fraud

You need to work on reading comprehension:

[SIZE=3]They don't benefit from it financially (unless they are in a group that buys the test equipment)...[/SIZE]

To benefit from tests run legitimately and necessarily, this is usually how it is done:

Say there is doctor A, in his own general practice by himself (but with a specialty). He sees lots of patients, some for routine things, many when they come in when they feel something is wrong with themselves. Since he is a GP, he will often need a specialist to look at a particular ailment. Typically a cardiologist, neurologist, gastroenterologist, nephrologist, a couple of types of surgeons, etc. So he needs to do referrals. So he gets together with docs B,C,D,E etc. to form a group.
Then, for a specific malady, he refers the patient to the appropriate doctor in the group. This continues on for some time, so the docs make good income. The next step is to pool some resources, and lease a building and some of our own equipment, like ultrasound machines, EKG's etc, often expanding to a few more docs. (I had an endoscopy and colonoscopy done at a physician's facility.) Obviously major surgery requires a much bigger facility.

So when I am sent in for an ultrasound, or EKG, or a whole list of tests, (they don't do the bloodwork, as that is easier to farm out to the labs).
all the income from the tests goes to the group, reimbursed by my insurance with my copay. (I am in a little bit of a different situation, since the SO know virtually all the docs in the entire large area, and potentially over-rides my GP's referral to another doc that may be outside the group).

All they are doing is competing with hospitals.

[SIZE=3][/SIZE]

[SuperSparkle928]

Originally Posted by RememberMee

Wrong, those of us who are healthy and have healthcare insurance subsidize those who don't have an insurance and the sick ones who have an insurance. If you pay $200/month in premiums and "collect" $50,000 in treatments you don't subsidize anyone. Every insurance is "socialistic" in its nature. If you are so obsessed about "Freeloaders" depleting the system, why don't you go without insurance whatsoever. There is NO point for an insurance other than a chance to become a "freeloader" and to collect more than you put in. How one being so rugged and individualistic could harbor these evil freeloading intentions? You want superior genetic stock, having better health & luck to pay for your pesky & insignificant health problems. Sorry, it's survival of the fittest. You want social Darwinism, then do NOT hide your freeloading essence behind insurance. Welcome to the jungle, let the strongest win.

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What I stated was
Quote:"Those of us who have healthcare insurance subsidize those who do not."

While that is not all the groups that are subsidized, that statement is not 'wrong'.

Quote:"If you are so obsessed about "Freeloaders" depleting the system, why don't you go without insurance whatsoever."

When I worked, insurance for me was free (well, $14/mo). So of course I took it. Now that I don't work any more (early 40's here)... I don't need any. There aren't too many things that could happen that I couldn't swing (well, permanent coma for the rest of my life, so in that case perhaps I think I would be a 'leech' with long-term health protection, to preserve the rest of the estate so that all of it goes to the non-profits I chose).
(I do carry umbrella, to protect myself from litigious leeches).

Quote:"Sorry, it's survival of the fittest. You want social Darwinism, then do NOT hide your freeloading essence behind insurance. Welcome to the jungle, let the strongest win."

I don't hide behind health insurance. I don't carry any.
As for 'welcome to the jungle', why don't YOU step up to the plate and do the same? Let's see how strong you are.

[orogenicman]

"Those of us who have healthcare insurance subsidize those who do not."

Tjose of you who have healthcare insurance also subsidize those of you who have healthcare insurance. Otherwise, it would be unaffordable for all.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by TrapperJohn

But mathematically higher per paying customer.

If ten people use $10 each the total cost is $100. If they each pay equally they each pay $10. If only half pay they pay $20 each. Five pay $20 for $10 in services. Five get it free. The total cost didn't change.

The more people who enter the system the higher the total cost. As the pool of payers shrinks, the higher the cost per paying customer.

I'm good at math. I'm good in Finance. The viable solution is a national plan. We need to spread the risk and costs over a larger base. Medicare doesn't work because it can't generate premium dollars at 1.6% of payroll (x 2) to cover the huge costs spent late in life.

We need the healthy kids in the risk pool, and we need them there over years so that when they get sick they have paid enough in to cover their costs.

I'm as conservative as they come but recognize that it would be cheaper in the long run.

Who says the pool of payers is shrinking?

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by TrapperJohn

I'm good at math. I'm good in Finance. The viable solution is a national plan.

A national plan will fail even more miserably than any of the current systems.

The first thing that must be done before anything else, is the Hospital Cartels which illegally collude to illegally fix prices must be abolished.

If you fail to do that, then you fail. Period.

When you have accomplished that you will know, because as you read through your health plan documentation, the phrase "out-of-Network" (a fancy Orwellian euphemism for "Outside of Our Robber Baron Monopolistic OPEC-style Medellín Colombian Drug Cartel") will no longer exist, and you will be free to see any doctor you want and utilize any hospital or medical facility you want, without any financial penalty whatsoever.

After you do that, the second thing you must do is adopt the "Sports Franchise Rule" or the old "Radio Station Market Rule" which means that an entity can only own one hospital in a given Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).

That means the Sisters of Mercy can no longer own Saint Luke East, Saint Luke West, Bethesda North, Mercy Hospital West, Mercy Hospital East, or Clermont Mercy.

They will have to sell or close 5 of those hospitals, or pay a $100,000 per day fine until they do.

Selling or closing those hospitals will foster true free-market competition in health care, which is presently non-existent, and will also hasten the shift from costly and inefficient Hospital Model to the less costly and more efficient Clinic Model.

Note that in this MSA, there are 19 full-service hospitals for 3 Million people, or one hospital per 157,894 people. You will not find anything like that in Europe. At most, you'll find 6 full-service hospitals in Paris, France serving 3 Million people or one hospital per 500,000 people, and in Berlin, Germany and Buchresti, Romania, you will find 3 full-service hospitals each serving 3 Million people, or one hospital per 1 Million people, and yet their health care is cheaper, and on a par with health care in the US.

If you do those things, you'll find that the cost of health care drops 350% to 700% practically over-night (with a matter of weeks).

I have to believe that some of you just don't get it, or you would rather pay 350% more for your health care than you really should.

And yet you people will whine and cry and go into a total panic over a piddly 1.7% increase in gasoline prices at the pump.

I have to believe this has more to do with brain-washed ideology than common sense.

Originally Posted by TrapperJohn

We need to spread the risk and costs over a larger base. Medicare doesn't work because it can't generate premium dollars at 1.6% of payroll (x 2) to cover the huge costs spent late in life.

That's because Medicare was intended to be Hospital Insurance (that's what the "HI" in the HI Trust Fund stands for).

It was never intended to be Doctor's Office Visit Insurance, or $4,000 Electric Motorized Home-on-a-Wheel-Chair Insurance (with DVD/Blu-Ray/Surround Sound/Plasma TV), but the loony left mucked it up so bad they have bankrupted it.

Medicare will be completely bankrupt before 2018. No more money in the Trust Fund, no more Trust Fund at all, and unable to get enough money from payroll to pay existing costs.

You've all been warned repeatedly, so don't act all shocked and get indignant when it happens.

If you read the June 2011 Medicare Report, then you know that Medicare recommended an immediate tax increase to 3.7% or a spending cut of 17%.

That was in June (8 months ago) and your Congress did what, when?

Congress has done nothing, so Medicare has been harmed that much further.

Originally Posted by TrapperJohn

We need the healthy kids in the risk pool, and we need them there over years so that when they get sick they have paid enough in to cover their costs.

What risk pool? You don't use actuarial science, so you don't even know what the risk is, and because you don't, you will never be able to determine anything even remotely to the true cost, which is one reason why you're getting beat over the head with premiums now.

You need to start using actuarial science. You need to start saying, "This person is an American Phatassâ„¢ and at great risk for Type II Diabetes, Heart Disease, Stroke, Hypertension, etc etc etc" and slam them with higher premium rates.

Sure, I know the *******s will start frothing at the mouth and screaming until they fall over backwards that, "It is their god-given right as an American or illegal alien to stuff their face until their ass is bigger than Mount Rushmore and you're a big meanie for refusing to sell everything you ever owned in your whole life just to subsidize their life-style."

How do you think life insurance companies, auto insurance companies and the whole lot manage to stay in business without going bankrupt, yet paying what they owe? They use actuarial science.

And you cannot have a national plan, because you are not a nation; you have never been a nation; and you never will be a nation.

You are a federation, with 50 sovereign States, and 50 separate economies and 50 separate costs of living etc etc etc and nothing in the Great Galactic Universe will ever change that, so you all need to grow up and get over it already.

Better at finance...

Mircea

Originally Posted by Grim Reader

I just want to add a few facts to the discussion. Some people on previous pages seem to be basing a lot of reasoning on mistaken information.

The US spends nearly 8 000 $ per person per year on health care. That is over 600 000 per person liftetime. Its 18 % of GDP. As opposed to 4,7 % of GDP that goes on the military.

That's GDP. You might want to look at what GDP actually is, and also at the arguments against calculating GDP the way the US does.

Health care GDP is $2.7 TRILLION, but that includes all aspects of health care, and if you understand how the US calculates GDP, then you know it is simply the amount of times money changes hands.

If I manufacture $1 Million worth of wheel-chairs and sell them to a wholesale distributor, that goes into the health care GDP. Then when the wholesale distributor sells them for $1.6 Million to health care outlets and distributors, that goes into the health care GDP, which is now $2.6 Million.

And when the various hospitals, pharmacies, health care retail outlets, catalog suppliers etc sell them for $2.1 Million, that gets added to the GDP which is now $3.7 Million.

Get it?

So, the numbers you posted are useless.

What you want is the total amount of Medicare spending, Medicaid spending and health plan provider spending, because that is the amount actually spent per person, and not the total amount of health care goods and services that were shuffled around. Those figures will not include the purchase of gas tanks from the Gas Tank Company, nor will they include the sale of oxygen now stored in the gas tanks by the Oxygen Tanks for People Who Need Them Company to wholesalers, nor will it include the sale of oxygen tanks by Oxygen Tank Wholesalers Limited to retailers and medical facilities, but it will include the sale of those oxygen tanks to patients.

Anyway, no, the US does not spend $8,000 per person per year or $600,000 per life-time (it is much less than that and you can't even afford it).

Originally Posted by Grim Reader

Yes, an American really pays more in tax for health care than most UHC nations.

That is because you do not use the Clinic Model, and because you allow your hospitals to operate as Cartels that illegally collude to illegally fix prices. When you finally see that, and you force a change, then you will pay less.

Originally Posted by Grim Reader

And that is with the US being bigger than the others and having the economics of scale advantage.

Economy of scale is inverse here and it is not an advantage in health care, unless you want assembly-line health care. Do you? Want assembly-line health care? I hope not, because then your health care system still would not be like Europe, which does not have assembly-line health care (but they do use the Clinic Model).

Originally Posted by Grim Reader

So the yearly waste in health care (when compared to efficient systems) is almost twice the military budget every year.

That is because you refuse to switch to the Clinic Model, and because you continue to allow Hospital Cartels to illegally collude to illegally fix prices.

Just adding a few facts....

Mircea

Originally Posted by RememberMee

Every insurance is "socialistic" in its nature.

That isn't true at all. In the first place, there is no such thing as "health insurance." Insurance is based on actuarial science and the end-game is replacement value or replacement cost.

Because the health care system refuses to embrace risk-based actuarial science, the health care system can never determine what the true costs are and therefore never assess the accurate premiums necessary to provide replacement value or replacement cost.

For that very reason, there are limitations.

You will know when the day comes that you have true, bona fide, actuarial based health insurance, because when you are discussing your plan with your health plan provider, they will ask you questions like, "Do you want Emergency Room visits covered? What deductible would you like for Emergency Room visits?" Do you want Doctor's Office Visits covered? What deductible would you like for Doctor's Office Visits? Do you want Sexually Transmitted Diseases covered? What deductible? Do you want prescription medication for Sexually Transmitted Diseases covered? What deductible? Do you want cancer treatment and medication covered? What deductible? Do you want heart disease treatment covered? What deductible? Do you want pre-natal care? What deductible? Do you want neo-natal care? What deductible? Do you want mammograms covered? Oh, my apologies, you're a man you don't need those things.. etc etc etc.

When that day comes, you will have real health insurance, and it will be very affordable for you.

Originally Posted by RememberMee

You want superior genetic stock, having better health & luck to pay for your pesky & insignificant health problems. Sorry, it's survival of the fittest. You want social Darwinism, then do NOT hide your freeloading essence behind insurance. Welcome to the jungle, let the strongest win.

That would be the best case scenario. Medicine begets medicine. If medicine stopped interfering, many diseases and illnesses would cease to exist.

Loving Darwin...

Mircea

Originally Posted by Katiana

Canada's system is also hospital-based. At least that's what I read in the American Journal of Public Health, generally considered a reliable source on these issues.

Canada is not part of Europe, but it does use the Hospital Model and that is one reason their system is FUBAR and why people are dying waiting in the emergency room and also why Canadians come to the US for health care treatment.

Originally Posted by Katiana

In theory, that should make the cost go down!

It doesn't work that way. It's health care, not an assembly line.

Economics rules...

Mircea

Originally Posted by orogenicman

Using that logic, the U.S. has wasted trillions fighting wars, and yet we keep fighting wars. Thats not my problem. Disband the military.

I don't have a problem with that. After all, I'm the one who said you would ultimately lose in Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Constructivist (like me) or Radical would have told you that.

Originally Posted by orogenicman

I'm afraid you've missed my point. Perhaps you should back up and read the exchange.

You never had a point. Incoherent discombobulated ramblings do not make a point.

Logically...

Mircea

[Marv101]

Lots of states have contributed to skyrocketing health insurance rates by mandating (there's that word again) that many elective procedures be covered for all of their citizens, even if they have no interest in it, or will ever have a need for it.

There's plenty of blame to go around folks, and many of us know it.