Florida Judge Rules ObamaCare Unconstitutional

[Bern80]

For the 10th millionth time, government is not taking over health insurance companies, although I certainly wish they were. The government is delivering millions of new customers to them. The health insurance companies increase our health care cost. They add their overhead, about 10% and their profits, about 15% to the cost of healthcare.

For the 10 millionth time. Prices of services WILL go up if government takes it over as well. That's basic economics. The less incentive someone one has to be frugal with their money, the more costs will rise. You aren't addressing the price of services by simply saying 'eh, let government handle it'. You're simply subsdizing individual's expenses. And when you subsidize the cost of something, the price of that somethings goes UP, not down.

That is precisely what happened when Medicare and Medicaid went into effect. Up until then medical costs rose pretty much at the overall rate of inflation in general and basic healthcare was affordable for almost everybody. If you look at the history of rising medical costs you see a sharp spike almost immediately after Medicare and Medicaid went into effect and that has continued unabated since. Before Medicare/Medicaid, the uninsured paid off their medical debts in installments. The few who couldn't afford an operation or treatments even with time payments were usually handled as charity cases or the community took up collections.

The fact that every entitlement implemented by the federal government has cost far more than its initial advertisement and every entitlement that has run for any time is currently broke and draining the national treasury should be our first clue. Why anybody is naive enough to think a new entitlement would be any different is beyond me.

It is apparently beyond anyone that hasn't taken basic ecomomics. Maybe we need to address some more fundamental issues here and decide what we want. Questions like:

Do we just want to reduce what a person has to pay for health care?

or

Is there a problem where the prices being charged for services are overly inflated and there are things we can do to bring them down?

Now if all 'we' care about is the first question, fine. Subsidize the shit out of it. Just know you aren't really addressing the issue and in fact you're making it worse.

On the other hand, if you tackle the second question, a side affect of that will be solving the first question. The problem with Obamacare is it's too long on trying to accomplish lowering what people pay and very short (and in cases where new taxes are being levied, making it worse) on addressing the cost of resources. I hope people can see the problem with subsidizing what the individual pays while the actual cost of the resources rise....especially when the reason they are rising is because of the subsidization.

 

[Flopper]

For the 10th millionth time, government is not taking over health insurance companies, although I certainly wish they were. The government is delivering millions of new customers to them. The health insurance companies increase our health care cost. They add their overhead, about 10% and their profits, about 15% to the cost of healthcare.

For the 10 millionth time. Prices of services WILL go up if government takes it over as well. That's basic economics. The less incentive someone one has to be frugal with their money, the more costs will rise. You aren't addressing the price of services by simply saying 'eh, let government handle it'. You're simply subsdizing individual's expenses. And when you subsidize the cost of something, the price of that somethings goes UP, not down.

That is precisely what happened when Medicare and Medicaid went into effect. Up until then medical costs rose pretty much at the overall rate of inflation in general and basic healthcare was affordable for almost everybody. If you look at the history of rising medical costs you see a sharp spike almost immediately after Medicare and Medicaid went into effect and that has continued unabated since. Before Medicare/Medicaid, the uninsured paid off their medical debts in installments. The few who couldn't afford an operation or treatments even with time payments were usually handled as charity cases or the community took up collections.

The fact that every entitlement implemented by the federal government has cost far more than its initial advertisement and every entitlement that has run for any time is currently broke and draining the national treasury should be our first clue. Why anybody is naive enough to think a new entitlement would be any different is beyond me.

Correlation is not cause and effect. Your argument is seriously flawed. By far, the major cause of the rise in healthcare cost is not Medicare and Medicaid but rather new advancement in methods of diagnosing and treating diseases. The growth of medical technology in the past 50 years has exceeded all advances made during the previous 2000 years. These new tools to treat disease have come at a high cost.

The most common treatment for a heart disease 50 years ago was an injection of drugs, bed rest, followed by a warning to take it easy. Today there’re many procedures used, most very expensive that include angioplasty, bypasses, and heart transplants.

The family doctor using a $50 X-ray and possibly a blood test or so diagnosed most cancers. Treatment options were limited and in many cases there was none. Today, a cancer diagnosis often involves MRI’s, CT Scans, and services of specialists. Plus there are numerous new treatments in chemotherapy, surgical procedures, and radiation therapy.

Then there is dialysis, kidney transplants, liver transplants, lung transplants, thousands of new drugs, and procedures not available 50 years ago.

Medicare and Medicaid certainly contributed to the cost increase because these programs made it possible for millions of people to get expensive life saving medical care that they would have never been able get otherwise.

 

[Foxfyre]

For the 10 millionth time. Prices of services WILL go up if government takes it over as well. That's basic economics. The less incentive someone one has to be frugal with their money, the more costs will rise. You aren't addressing the price of services by simply saying 'eh, let government handle it'. You're simply subsdizing individual's expenses. And when you subsidize the cost of something, the price of that somethings goes UP, not down.

That is precisely what happened when Medicare and Medicaid went into effect. Up until then medical costs rose pretty much at the overall rate of inflation in general and basic healthcare was affordable for almost everybody. If you look at the history of rising medical costs you see a sharp spike almost immediately after Medicare and Medicaid went into effect and that has continued unabated since. Before Medicare/Medicaid, the uninsured paid off their medical debts in installments. The few who couldn't afford an operation or treatments even with time payments were usually handled as charity cases or the community took up collections.

The fact that every entitlement implemented by the federal government has cost far more than its initial advertisement and every entitlement that has run for any time is currently broke and draining the national treasury should be our first clue. Why anybody is naive enough to think a new entitlement would be any different is beyond me.

Correlation is not cause and effect. Your argument is seriously flawed. By far, the major cause of the rise in healthcare cost is not Medicare and Medicaid but rather new advancement in methods of diagnosing and treating diseases. The growth of medical technology in the past 50 years has exceeded all advances made during the previous 2000 years. These new tools to treat disease have come at a high cost.

The most common treatment for a heart disease 50 years ago was an injection of drugs, bed rest, followed by a warning to take it easy. Today there’re many procedures used, most very expensive that include angioplasty, bypasses, and heart transplants.

The family doctor using a $50 X-ray and possibly a blood test or so diagnosed most cancers. Treatment options were limited and in many cases there was none. Today, a cancer diagnosis often involves MRI’s, CT Scans, and services of specialists. Plus there are numerous new treatments in chemotherapy, surgical procedures, and radiation therapy.

Then there is dialysis, kidney transplants, liver transplants, lung transplants, thousands of new drugs, and procedures not available 50 years ago.

Medicare and Medicaid certainly contributed to the cost increase because these programs made it possible for millions of people to get expensive life saving medical care that they would have never been able get otherwise.

Nice try but I submit that there was as much medical advancement in the first 50-60 years of the 20th Century as there has been in the last 50-60 years--we advanced from using leeches and medicine man potions to a vaccine for polio and numerous other dangerous diseases, we learned what causes and how to prevent malaria and cholera and other mass killers, how to repair and rebuild shattered bones, and other great strides forward. And it didn't break the bank or significantly put health care out of reach of large numbers of people.

I'm not taking anything away from more recent medical advancements, but I think sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that the current prohibiitve costs were inevitable and unpreventable is short sighted at best.

 

[Flopper]

That is precisely what happened when Medicare and Medicaid went into effect. Up until then medical costs rose pretty much at the overall rate of inflation in general and basic healthcare was affordable for almost everybody. If you look at the history of rising medical costs you see a sharp spike almost immediately after Medicare and Medicaid went into effect and that has continued unabated since. Before Medicare/Medicaid, the uninsured paid off their medical debts in installments. The few who couldn't afford an operation or treatments even with time payments were usually handled as charity cases or the community took up collections.

The fact that every entitlement implemented by the federal government has cost far more than its initial advertisement and every entitlement that has run for any time is currently broke and draining the national treasury should be our first clue. Why anybody is naive enough to think a new entitlement would be any different is beyond me.

Correlation is not cause and effect. Your argument is seriously flawed. By far, the major cause of the rise in healthcare cost is not Medicare and Medicaid but rather new advancement in methods of diagnosing and treating diseases. The growth of medical technology in the past 50 years has exceeded all advances made during the previous 2000 years. These new tools to treat disease have come at a high cost.

The most common treatment for a heart disease 50 years ago was an injection of drugs, bed rest, followed by a warning to take it easy. Today there’re many procedures used, most very expensive that include angioplasty, bypasses, and heart transplants.

The family doctor using a $50 X-ray and possibly a blood test or so diagnosed most cancers. Treatment options were limited and in many cases there was none. Today, a cancer diagnosis often involves MRI’s, CT Scans, and services of specialists. Plus there are numerous new treatments in chemotherapy, surgical procedures, and radiation therapy.

Then there is dialysis, kidney transplants, liver transplants, lung transplants, thousands of new drugs, and procedures not available 50 years ago.

Medicare and Medicaid certainly contributed to the cost increase because these programs made it possible for millions of people to get expensive life saving medical care that they would have never been able get otherwise.

Nice try but I submit that there was as much medical advancement in the first 50-60 years of the 20th Century as there has been in the last 50-60 years--we advanced from using leeches and medicine man potions to a vaccine for polio and numerous other dangerous diseases, we learned what causes and how to prevent malaria and cholera and other mass killers, how to repair and rebuild shattered bones, and other great strides forward. And it didn't break the bank or significantly put health care out of reach of large numbers of people.

I'm not taking anything away from more recent medical advancements, but I think sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that the current prohibiitve costs were inevitable and unpreventable is short sighted at best.

If the primary reason for the increase in healthcare costs is Medicare and Medicaid, then we would expect that there would be a close correlation between the growth in the number of Medicare/Medicaid patients and the growth in healthcare costs. Over the last 10 years, the number of Medicare/Medicaid patients increased only 35% but healthcare costs during that time period increased 101%. Clearly, there must be other more important factors. I ran the numbers for 1990 to 2000 and there was even less correlation.

https://www.cms.gov/MedicareMedicaidStatSupp/09_2010.asp#TopOfPage

Health Care Spending Chart in United States 1960-2015 - Federal State Local