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That may be true, but as Keynes said, "in the long run, we're all dead." The relevant question is how we can solve the healthcare problem in the here and now.
That may be true, but as Keynes said, "in the long run, we're all dead." The relevant question is how we can solve the healthcare problem in the here and now.
More central moneys for the middle class. Either make the costs like Medicare, or do it with Medicare. And that takes about 1/3 off the system, covered by deficit spending.
Why don't we just set caps to the cost of care per person? I.e. you cannot bill more than $100,000/per person per year. This is still too much for the average person to afford, but why can't we set these caps?
My wife's HC bills last year for her lymphoma were like $180K. Who loses the extra $80K?
This year she is over a $M with our car wreck. Who lose out on the $900K?
Yes, you did mention that, but others will also read the post.
Here is an interesting link about administrative costs and healthcare. Physician pay only makes up about 9% of healthcare costs.
[url=http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics/news/administrative-costs-are-killing-us-healthcare?page=0,1]Administrative costs are killing U.S. healthcare | Medical Economics[/url]
I didn't realize it was that low. I know this is off-topic (and probably sounds silly) but this reminds me of the packaging business. I worked in food packaging for over 20 years and sometimes the packaging was as much as 90% of the cost.
Last edited by justNancy; 03-23-2017 at 10:10 PM..
Reason: fix sentence
More central moneys for the middle class. Either make the costs like Medicare, or do it with Medicare. And that takes about 1/3 off the system, covered by deficit spending.
Yup. We are spending 30% of healthcare dollars on administrative overhead. Medicare's overhead is less than 3%.
They could save a bunch more by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug reimbursement like other countries do. Instead we have asswipes buying patents and jacking up prices like the guy who made a twenty dollar drug suddenly cost six hundred.
I concede that your argument is valid to an extent. It seems like you have much more experience in the healthcare industry than I do, so I'll take your word for it. The only experience I have is working in an electronic medical record (EMR) startup that was acquired by a foreign company for a year then went out of business not too long afterward.
But what you said kind of proves my point. Health insurance companies are trying to cut costs. By trying to not pay the full claim, they're in a way trying to control costs, are they not, although their methods of doing so are hardly ethical.
This is a large way how MA programs and HMO's make money. Through denials. Through narrow and controlled delivery channels. This can be ethical if done properly, evidence based. But of course inconvenient. Years ago I learned from one of the original masters, who assisted me in setting up my original practice here in 1981, unrelated to his HMO.
My wife's HC bills last year for her lymphoma were like $180K. Who loses the extra $80K?
This year she is over a $M with our car wreck. Who lose out on the $900K?
The doctors, health insurance companies, and hospitals do. There should be no unconditional right to extract unlimited profits from sick people. It's just the humane thing to do.
Same thing. Maximum caps on liability for individuals.
I didn't realize it was that low. I know this is off-topic (and probably sounds silly) but this reminds me of the packaging business. I worked in food packaging for over 20 years and sometimes the packaging was as much as 90% of the cost.
The 8.6% number is doctored, as usual. This is a more reliable source. The number is actually 20%, not 8.6% (The 8.6% was arrived at by considering take-home pay of physicians, which is completely nonsensical. You can verify this by doing some additional research on your own.) If you add dentists, that goes up to 27%. And since hospital expenses make up 32% of total cost (read about that here: http://marketrealist.com/2014/11/ana...ital-expenses/), and 50% of hospital expenses, in turn, go toward paying salaries, that's an additional 16% of expenses going toward salaries. Add that up, and you get 43%. In other words, almost half of all healthcare costs can be accounted for by people who are directly involved in providing patient care. Sure, administrative costs are a lot too, and you can argue that admin costs are superfluous, but the 8.6% number is still completely misleading.
That site's numbers are misleading.
And if you think the problem isn't big now, wait until 20-30 years. There's been a consistent trend of doctors' salaries outpacing the rate of inflation over the last couple decades, and there's no indication this trend will stop anytime soon. And plus, if you really think about it, why are there so many people in the healthcare industry who aren't directly in charge of patient care? They're like the flies that are attracted to honey. Because there's so much money being made by healthcare providers, and the system is so complicated, you almost need an army of other people to help keep the system functioning.
But if, according to my model, all healthcare services were made cheap enough so that NOBODY NEEDED INSURANCE TO PAY FOR IT, you wouldn't just save money because people were paying less for the medical services. The whole health insurance industry wouldn't even be necessary anymore! Again, the massive amount of money being made and the need for an insurance-based fee model is the very thing that's causing the administrative bloat. If prices were cut so that patients could pay for everything out of pocket, like they do with other expenses, then all of the other expenses would dramatically shrink as well. I'm no genius, but isn't that kind of obvious?
Yup. We are spending 30% of healthcare dollars on administrative overhead. Medicare's overhead is less than 3%.
They could save a bunch more by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug reimbursement like other countries do. Instead we have asswipes buying patents and jacking up prices like the guy who made a twenty dollar drug suddenly cost six hundred.
And...we could also stop doctors from charging thousands of dollars for a 10 minute procedure. Again, you're proving the point I made in my original post. You're constantly misdirecting your outrage toward the obvious low hanging fruit and not seeing what's behind the curtain. Of course drug companies are price gouging. But that's obvious. Everyone already knows they're doing it, and when people know, people act in a democratic society and change happens. But why do we get so angry at a guy who charges $600 for a drug that was once $20, but not get mad at a guy who's charging $6000 for a procedure because it was always $6,000? Who set the price for the procedure? Why do we accept something that's expensive because it always was and get pissed when something that's less expensive is made more expensive?
It's really the same thing. In one situation, you have a guy who has a monopoly on some product and charges hundreds of dollars for something that costs pennies to make. In the other, you have a guy who has a monopoly on something else (a medical device that only a doctor is allowed to operate), who charges hundreds of dollars for that machine's use.
Medical devices are nothing more than fancy computers. They can, with proper instruction, be used by anyone. Make them idiot proof and safe so that people won't get hurt using them. Get rid of the gatekeepers to the machines, and allow anyone to openly access them for low prices, just like anyone can use a computer on the cheap. When anyone can own or operate a medical device, the demand for them will increase, and the supply will also increase to meet that demand. Mass production will in time result in lower costs as it becomes a consumer product.
The 8.6% number is doctored, as usual. This is a more reliable source. The number is actually 20%, not 8.6% (The 8.6% was arrived at by considering take-home pay of physicians, which is completely nonsensical. You can verify this by doing some additional research on your own.) If you add dentists, that goes up to 27%. And since hospital expenses make up 32% of total cost, and 50% of hospital expenses, in turn, go toward paying salaries, that's an additional 16% of expenses going toward salaries. Add that up, and you get 43%. In other words, almost half of all healthcare costs can be accounted for by people who are directly involved in providing patient care.
That site's numbers are misleading.
And if you think the problem isn't big now, wait until 20-30 years. There's been a consistent trend of doctors' salaries outpacing the rate of inflation over the last couple decades, and there's no indication this trend will stop anytime soon.
My original point still stands.
Hospital salaries include nurses, lab techs, x-ray techs, dietitians, physical therapists, etc. Hospitals do NOT pay most of the doctors you see working there. They have privileges at the hospital, they are not employees of the hospital.
You are attempting to cook the books to fit your theory, but it's incorrect. You don't know jack about medical billing and reimbursement ( revenue cycle ). Care to address the 30% administrative overhead.
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