Could healthcare costs eventually hurt the economy?
What can candidates/our next leader do to fix the problem?
Answers
2703 points
MNSL answered 3 months ago …
I think so. Policy makers worldwide should address this issue sooner than later.
HIgher health cost will reduce economic developments.
951 points
Grudun answered 3 months ago …
Not only could they but they are. Health issurance prices are increasing every year and most employers are not absorbing the costs but passing it on to their employees. This is resulting in significant increases in monthly payments(mine are going up over 15% this year). This is one more drain on individual disposable income which is a major driver in the economy. But the scary thing is that the rate of increase is only expected to rise as the population ages and insurers try to spread out the huge cost of the baby boomers late life care. Add to this the push for Universal coverage if Obama is elected and you end up with a huge effect on the US economy.
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2547 points
Oldman answered 3 months ago …
Our current system is reimbursement for sickness interventions...it's not Health Care. The problems are two-fold: there's a terrible bookkeeping and administrative overhead, and there's very little monitoring of outcomes.
As a result stupid drugs and procedures are billed at exhorbitant rates, because the intermediaries (insurors, Medicare, HMO's and all the other intervenors in payment) try to reduce the payments, while the providers...the hospitals, doctors and care-givers are free to charge as much as they can for the uninsured, because that sets the base of the percentage they are allowed to recover from the insured person's payers (Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance companies).
Very little info is available for the true costs of an MRI or CAT-scan, but the percentage recovered by the physician's clinic or the hospital from insured patients is <25% of the "Billed" cost.
In addition, none of the insurance payors will really pay for diagnostic exams, unless some diagnostic code is applied to "validate" the payment request for the diagnostic exam. As a result, diagnosis is often not, and medication side-effect + hospital errors + pure stupidity is increasing at an exponential rate.
Every new Rx has had serious, and sometimes very lethal side-effects...we are not homogeneous, genetically identical rats, with the stable environment of a research lab. Whether it's a vaccine for human papiloma virus, a statin drug to reduce cholesterol; a non-steroidal antiinflammmatory to reduce platelet aggregation, or even an antibiotic, people's reactions change over time...allergies develop; side effects become more severe over time and age.
There are research-type screening procedures to determine whether a person can tolerate a procedure or a drug...but they cost a lot to implement, and the screens tell you only that they may survive...they aren't fool proof or definitive over one's life-span; even if your genes and ability to detoxify a chemical remain, your physiological systems change with age and prior exposures..
The media are also to blame, collecting humongous payments to advertise "new" me-too drugs or procedures that have a lot of known and future side-effects. The pharmaceutical development companies can often stifle the standardization of natural medicinals that have a lower cost and fewer side-effects, but are unpatentable. They've done this with graviola vs. cancers, with cinnamon aqueous glycosides vs. diabetes, etc., over and over...they buy out the research crew and shut down the clinical trials.
The basic flaw in the U.S. system, is that everyone is led to believe that a miracle will make them young and healthy, when it's their own genes and lifestyles that have caused most of their "feelings of illness" and we have empowered the high priests of "Medicine" to validate these feelings by giving the feelings the name of a "sickness" that "can be treated", if you will only have shown that you're a member of the tithing group to the new church of MEDICINE.
You have to be a real lawyer to prevent a hospital from applying unwanted medical intervention (they claim to read the DNR =Do Not Resuscitate orders on your chart...but they don't), because they claim that someone might sue if they didn't intubate and torture you on your way out. Some "attending" physicians have been known to repudiate their Dr-Patient relationship, if a patient is admitted with a DNR legally described and competently signed. They can't bill for a death!
So please, stop calling it health care...because it is not and, given the amount of zealotry between the FDA, Congress, conservatives and liberals, it never will be Pure Medicine. Given the amount of greed, lobbying and emotionally-laden verbiage used to defend wasteful procedures and uselesss treatments, I don't believe evidence-based and outcome measurments stand a chance of changing treatment patterns and costs. In addition, anyone can criticize the statistical basis for a clinical finding, but only the patients who survive - and recover - are counted and interviewed. Those who've dropped out and/or died are not. The supervision of the trials is bad and getting worse, because the FDA is under-funded and the monitors see only the paper work submitted, under the guise of "confidentiality" the patients aren't "seen" by clinically competent, but unbiassed, professional monitors..
Many of the clinical trials are obscene..."If you have this disorder...call and enroll in a new clinical trial (in which you may be given a standard treatment that really sucks, or a new one that may be even worse)". (words in parentheses are what should be in the advt.) "Those who enroll will be given free diagnostic tests and ..." (We need to know if you can withstand the proposed treatment) and be monitored for response" (we'd be happy to hear your complaints, but we won't record them because, they're irrelevant).
The pressures from professional societies to shield the incompetents and derelicts from cynosure, and from prosecution, have slowly been disappearing. The pressure from the ambulance-chasing lawyers hasn't. More and more good, well-meaning physicians and nurses, therapists and care-givers, etc, are "restricting" their area of activities., to cover their asses... not just against the Dr._shopper and junkie types, but from the freeloaders and the "patients" whose belief system is that someone else is responsible for their health.
583 points
jillybeansisme answered 3 months ago …
Oldman is incredibly eloquent. It boils down to the all might $buck$, which is why natural cures are not acceptable and are considered hogwash by the medical profession. As to the insurance companies . . . my recent surgery, anethesia, Rx, and physical therapy will be billed at approximately $10,000. The insurance says $2,000 is the allowed amount and they will only pay 80% of that less my deductible for the year. This is why the medical professionals bill so much. And gee . . . will they really write off the rest?????
Stay healthy and save your pennies (hey, they cost 4 cents to make).
408 points
SallyG answered 3 months ago …
Grudun and Oldman are right on track. I heartliy recommend checking out Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.orgf). Medficare costs are so great in part because such a large percentage of insured are elderly, and use health care services more than the general population because of the health problems that often come with advanced age. Just imagine how much putting everyone, all 303,800,000 of us, into that same risk pool would save, rather than for-profit companies being able to cherry-pick low risk individuals, drop coverage when someone changes jobs, etc. To work best, it would hve to require universal participation, and probably an increase in taxes—but I would gladly pay more taxes if I could get rid of my insurance payment, and worry that it won't really be there when I need it. (Also, currently Medicare' administrative cost is about 4%, compared to overall healthcare administrative cost of 31%. Maybe the tax increase doesn't need to be as great as we fear, especially if Medicare is given the freedom to negotiate drug prices as the VA already does.) If you're interested, you can get information on HR 676, nicknamed "Medicare for All" at www.healthcare-now.org)
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SallyG answered 3 months ago …
Grudun and Oldman are right on track. I heartliy recommend checking out Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.orgf). Medficare costs are so great in part because such a large percentage of insured are elderly, and use health care services more than the general population because of the health problems that often come with advanced age. Just imagine how much putting everyone, all 303,800,000 of us, into that same risk pool would save, rather than for-profit companies being able to cherry-pick low risk individuals, drop coverage when someone changes jobs, etc. To work best, it would hve to require universal participation, and probably an increase in taxes—but I would gladly pay more taxes if I could get rid of my insurance payment, and worry that it won't really be there when I need it. (Also, currently Medicare' administrative cost is about 4%, compared to overall healthcare administrative cost of 31%. Maybe the tax increase doesn't need to be as great as we fear, especially if Medicare is given the freedom to negotiate drug prices as the VA already does.) If you're interested, you can get information on HR 676, nicknamed "Medicare for All" at www.healthcare-now.org)
P.S.: Pennies now cost 6¢ to make, as I understand it, but the cost of dollar bills can certainly subsidize them; they cost even less (not sure exactly, but not more than 3¢) to print.
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