CDZ Who set the medical field up when it comes to it's outrageous cost ??

[Flopper]

1st.. We have us as human beings (correct), therefore being created by God (correct), and being gifted by God (correct), with our abilities to learn, create, build, and care for the beings and things in which we have control over.. Therefore these things were again given unto us by God (correct), so why do we fail him now ??

2nd.. we have the earth in which is full of natural resources, and is surrounded by the air in which we breath, the water in which we drink, the cycles in which we live by daily, and all things in which God had given us to thrive and survive as human beings upon it, so you tell me how after all that God had granted unto us here, that we can't seem to produce a pill, treatment or medical procedure that saves human lives after all that God had done for us for free, (for a reasonable price to us as human beings) ??

We as a Godly people should absolutely not be putting human beings in a position to choose death over the cost of care at the levels in which it is currently going on in hospitals all across this nation. I mean a pill that cost thousands of dollars when the natural resources it took to create the pill or went into the pill was so miniscule that you can't even see it with the naked eye barely ??

Is the technology, education, and labor to create the chemical make up of the pill worth thousands ?? How do we have an economy within an economy that is so much more valued than the other, that when the two cross paths it causes catosrophic consequences on a human beings life or lives ?????

It is evil what has been created or by what is going on now in my honest opinion. The greed of man has compromised our principles and our values in which we are to hold sacred in concerns of our fellow human beings. What will God think of us when comes to visit with us, and to sit with us, and to listen to us, otherwise if we have not our brother's and sister's very lives in our best interest, just as he would have us in his best interest ??? We must fix these things, and fix them fast.

In regard to prescription drugs, most of what you pay for is not the chemicals in the drugs or the cost of making the pill. That's practically nothing. What we pay for is the R&D to create and get the drug on the market. Unfortunately the actions of the FDA, the drug companies and foreign governments have created a situation in which Americans foot the bill for most of the drug companies R&D costs. So the same drug with a retail price of $425 at your local pharmacy can be bought outside the country from a reputable pharmacy for $50. I'm talking about the same exact medication, often made in the same plant as the $425 medication. And just to make it more painful the government has rules that make it difficult for you to fill your prescriptions abroad. In fact, it's really not legal to do so. That is just plain wrong.

 

[initforme]

Big pharma pours a ton of money into politics so they make out like bandits.......but neither the repugnant I'll begotten party of the rich man GOP nor the give away everything dems will touch them.....

 

[Flopper]

1st.. We have us as human beings (correct), therefore being created by God (correct), and being gifted by God (correct), with our abilities to learn, create, build, and care for the beings and things in which we have control over.. Therefore these things were again given unto us by God (correct), so why do we fail him now ??

2nd.. we have the earth in which is full of natural resources, and is surrounded by the air in which we breath, the water in which we drink, the cycles in which we live by daily, and all things in which God had given us to thrive and survive as human beings upon it, so you tell me how after all that God had granted unto us here, that we can't seem to produce a pill, treatment or medical procedure that saves human lives after all that God had done for us for free, (for a reasonable price to us as human beings) ??

We as a Godly people should absolutely not be putting human beings in a position to choose death over the cost of care at the levels in which it is currently going on in hospitals all across this nation. I mean a pill that cost thousands of dollars when the natural resources it took to create the pill or went into the pill was so miniscule that you can't even see it with the naked eye barely ??

Is the technology, education, and labor to create the chemical make up of the pill worth thousands ?? How do we have an economy within an economy that is so much more valued than the other, that when the two cross paths it causes catosrophic consequences on a human beings life or lives ?????

It is evil what has been created or by what is going on now in my honest opinion. The greed of man has compromised our principles and our values in which we are to hold sacred in concerns of our fellow human beings. What will God think of us when comes to visit with us, and to sit with us, and to listen to us, otherwise if we have not our brother's and sister's very lives in our best interest, just as he would have us in his best interest ??? We must fix these things, and fix them fast.

/----- If we even mention tort reform the libs become unhinged and jump to the defense of the trial lawyers.


Sent from my iPhone using USMessageBoard.com

. Who are the real culprits in it all ??? Name them by group, and then let's work to stop them doing these things.

There are many culprits but the biggest culprit is people like you and me who want the best medical care available and we don't care what it cost, as long as someone else is paying for it. When we have an out patient procedure that takes 10 mins and the hospital bills the insurance company $2,000, do we complain to the hospital, no. However, when we have to wait weeks to get an appointment or have to waist 4 hours sitting in the ER, we certainly complain.

It's not just patients. it's society in general. If a new procedure is found that will reduce the chance of death from .05% to .01% but it cost 10 times as much, the AMA or some other group is going to work toward getting it approved. We require insurance companies to provide coverage to people that are so sick, they would be un-insurable and require the ER to take patients regardless of their ability to pay.

It's also about the risk involved with healthcare. Unlike an automobile repair, there are no guarantees. But when shit happens we look for a culprit and if we can't find one, a lawyer will, usually the doctor or hospital. A drug company or medical device company may spend tens of millions getting a product on the market only to find that a side effect makes the product worthless and they have to recovery those cost on another product.

And then there's government, both federal and state that are always making laws and regulation to make healthcare better which it may or may not but often has a very high price tag.

And finally, there is the cost of medical personnel, 10 years to become a doctor at a cost of a quarter to half million dollars. Registered Nurses, 4 to 6 years at cost $30,000 to $80,000. And then there's the support people, medical technicians, physicians assistants, lab technicians, pharmacologists, social workers, security people, all kinds of specificity maintenance staff and of course insurance and billing people. And finally there's the people on standby or on call that have to be available on a moment's notice because of the life or death conditions that develop throughout the day and night in hospitals.

 

[usmbguest5318]

FWIW, the above describes an industry, not an economy.

I'm not, at this juncture, fussing with you over the terminology. I merely wanted to understand what you had in mind. I now do. TY.

. Yes industries, but with their own economies surrounding them. Take the racing industry for example, where as it has an economy that feeds alot of families along with satellite companies that are built up around that industry. If a downward trend begins to shift, then the industry may start suffering badly, so quickly new energy, concepts, safety standards, promotional ideas go into action in order to try to head off or stop the bleeding. While the specific industry thrives, then all boats began to rise or fall yet all depending on the strategies involved. Separate industries who have their own economies, and have their own securities working great for them will leave the competition in the dirt, and
up to their eyeballs in over regulation is what has happened lately..

.

....whatever....

. The medical industry has it's own economic value going, but what has happened is that somehow the industry has snowballed into a freight train that is mowing patients and insurance companies down, instead of keeping a healthy balance going in as far as it's cost and services go. It is my belief that people are paying with their lives when they can't pay with money anymore. And these people on here boasting about how they can pay their medical cost out of pocket are either lying or thinking that we are a bunch of fools on this forum. One might pay out of pocket for some things, but when it gets serious, then lawyers and deeds to property or assets start flying out people's names, and into other people's names quick fast and in a hurry. Then who pays ? We all do that's who.

The manifest outcomes/observations you've described is a consequence of market structure, which is one dimension of an economy. [1] Market structures are qualified in part by where on the continuum of government price control they lay. As a consequence of the economy in which the market structure exists, some structures one the continuum are inherently more laissez faire and others are less so (One could as easily say some are more commanded and others less so....Remember, we're talking about a continuum, so one can use either endpoint as the point of reference). Regarding the context you've raised, the other quality of market structure that is controlling is the nature of competition.

Insofar as in the U.S. the market structure for healthcare and health insurance is monopolistically competitive and, in terms of pricing, relatively more rather than less laissez faire, the problems you've identified are intrinsic. That is to say, so long as a market structure is laissez faire enough [2], the problems you've noted are unavoidable, and as we all know, intractable. Those problems can be attenuated by adjusting either the extent to which the market is laissez faire or by altering the market structure.

The majority of people and elected leaders in the U.S. have thus far eschewed notions of reducing the extent to which the healthcare and health insurance market is laissez faire, and AFAIK, nobody who matters has proposed willfully changing the market structure. The simple reality is that one cannot rationally declare a non price-controlled and non-profit controlled market competitive and ask the firms in the market not to compete to garner the most profits they can in return for the resources they used to provide the goods/services they sell to earn profit.

That's the economics of it, and economics doesn't care about emotion. It recognizes emotion's role in shaping supply and demand curves, but it doesn't whether one has or doesn't have the good/service one may desire. It cares only about the buying and selling behavior exhibited by participants in a economy. Political science, politics, insofar as the buying and selling of ideas/policies about governance is concerned, is the realm of what people like, want, don't like, etc. comes into play. [3]

Note:

1. Within an economy, different industries can operate under different market structures. For instance, in the U.S., the market structure for most industries is that of monopolistic competition. Healthcare and health insurance operates under that market structure. Electricity and water, on the other hand, operate in a monopoly market structure. Nondifferentiable goods and services operate in the market structure called "perfect competition."
   
2. "Enough" being however much it takes such that sellers (buyers too, however, the focus of your remarks is on the supply side; thus I've written "sellers"), behaving in what they believe is their own best interest, act, as we observe them doing in the U.S., as profit maximizers.
3. As we say in my industry, "the only thing that's confounding is the people." That saying encapsulates why business operations and economics are the disciplines in which I made my career. As someone who's input is based on empiricism, I and my staff mostly don't have to care whether people like or don't like "it." I need only articulate what is and/or what most likely is based on the available information and what one can expect (the nature and extent of risk associated with various solution approaches/options) based on what is and our understanding of "it." That a solution will "suck" for someone other than my client isn't what I'm paid to address. (That's not to say I'm not aware of the "sucking" that'll befall someone else, but I'm paid to maximize, across multiple parameters, the "not sucking" for my clients.)

. The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system. It has gotten way out of hand as evidenced in the itemized statements that people are getting from their Healthcare providers and their insurance providers. To much corruption, over charging, and bad products or services being the norm in the nation anymore, and Americans deserve better than this kind of situation now.

The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system.

That is one of the normative policy/solution options that exists. It's not the one I most prefer, but it's one I'd be willing to give a try.

 

[Flopper]

. Yes industries, but with their own economies surrounding them. Take the racing industry for example, where as it has an economy that feeds alot of families along with satellite companies that are built up around that industry. If a downward trend begins to shift, then the industry may start suffering badly, so quickly new energy, concepts, safety standards, promotional ideas go into action in order to try to head off or stop the bleeding. While the specific industry thrives, then all boats began to rise or fall yet all depending on the strategies involved. Separate industries who have their own economies, and have their own securities working great for them will leave the competition in the dirt, and
up to their eyeballs in over regulation is what has happened lately..

.

....whatever....

. The medical industry has it's own economic value going, but what has happened is that somehow the industry has snowballed into a freight train that is mowing patients and insurance companies down, instead of keeping a healthy balance going in as far as it's cost and services go. It is my belief that people are paying with their lives when they can't pay with money anymore. And these people on here boasting about how they can pay their medical cost out of pocket are either lying or thinking that we are a bunch of fools on this forum. One might pay out of pocket for some things, but when it gets serious, then lawyers and deeds to property or assets start flying out people's names, and into other people's names quick fast and in a hurry. Then who pays ? We all do that's who.

The manifest outcomes/observations you've described is a consequence of market structure, which is one dimension of an economy. [1] Market structures are qualified in part by where on the continuum of government price control they lay. As a consequence of the economy in which the market structure exists, some structures one the continuum are inherently more laissez faire and others are less so (One could as easily say some are more commanded and others less so....Remember, we're talking about a continuum, so one can use either endpoint as the point of reference). Regarding the context you've raised, the other quality of market structure that is controlling is the nature of competition.

Insofar as in the U.S. the market structure for healthcare and health insurance is monopolistically competitive and, in terms of pricing, relatively more rather than less laissez faire, the problems you've identified are intrinsic. That is to say, so long as a market structure is laissez faire enough [2], the problems you've noted are unavoidable, and as we all know, intractable. Those problems can be attenuated by adjusting either the extent to which the market is laissez faire or by altering the market structure.

The majority of people and elected leaders in the U.S. have thus far eschewed notions of reducing the extent to which the healthcare and health insurance market is laissez faire, and AFAIK, nobody who matters has proposed willfully changing the market structure. The simple reality is that one cannot rationally declare a non price-controlled and non-profit controlled market competitive and ask the firms in the market not to compete to garner the most profits they can in return for the resources they used to provide the goods/services they sell to earn profit.

That's the economics of it, and economics doesn't care about emotion. It recognizes emotion's role in shaping supply and demand curves, but it doesn't whether one has or doesn't have the good/service one may desire. It cares only about the buying and selling behavior exhibited by participants in a economy. Political science, politics, insofar as the buying and selling of ideas/policies about governance is concerned, is the realm of what people like, want, don't like, etc. comes into play. [3]

Note:

1. Within an economy, different industries can operate under different market structures. For instance, in the U.S., the market structure for most industries is that of monopolistic competition. Healthcare and health insurance operates under that market structure. Electricity and water, on the other hand, operate in a monopoly market structure. Nondifferentiable goods and services operate in the market structure called "perfect competition."
   
2. "Enough" being however much it takes such that sellers (buyers too, however, the focus of your remarks is on the supply side; thus I've written "sellers"), behaving in what they believe is their own best interest, act, as we observe them doing in the U.S., as profit maximizers.
3. As we say in my industry, "the only thing that's confounding is the people." That saying encapsulates why business operations and economics are the disciplines in which I made my career. As someone who's input is based on empiricism, I and my staff mostly don't have to care whether people like or don't like "it." I need only articulate what is and/or what most likely is based on the available information and what one can expect (the nature and extent of risk associated with various solution approaches/options) based on what is and our understanding of "it." That a solution will "suck" for someone other than my client isn't what I'm paid to address. (That's not to say I'm not aware of the "sucking" that'll befall someone else, but I'm paid to maximize, across multiple parameters, the "not sucking" for my clients.)

. The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system. It has gotten way out of hand as evidenced in the itemized statements that people are getting from their Healthcare providers and their insurance providers. To much corruption, over charging, and bad products or services being the norm in the nation anymore, and Americans deserve better than this kind of situation now.

The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system.

That is one of the normative policy/solution options that exists. It's not the one I most prefer, but it's one I'd be willing to give a try.

Most healthcare is already nonprofit or provided by the government. Only 18% of our hospital are operated for profit. Over a third of our doctors work for nonprofits. Almost half of our nursing homes are not for profit. Government pays for 62% of the healthcare and most of the rest is paid for by non-profit health insurance organizations.

Most for profit healthcare providers are auxiliary healthcare facilities such as specialized clinics, labs, and a dwindling number of physicians in private practice.

 

[usmbguest5318]

....whatever....

. The medical industry has it's own economic value going, but what has happened is that somehow the industry has snowballed into a freight train that is mowing patients and insurance companies down, instead of keeping a healthy balance going in as far as it's cost and services go. It is my belief that people are paying with their lives when they can't pay with money anymore. And these people on here boasting about how they can pay their medical cost out of pocket are either lying or thinking that we are a bunch of fools on this forum. One might pay out of pocket for some things, but when it gets serious, then lawyers and deeds to property or assets start flying out people's names, and into other people's names quick fast and in a hurry. Then who pays ? We all do that's who.

The manifest outcomes/observations you've described is a consequence of market structure, which is one dimension of an economy. [1] Market structures are qualified in part by where on the continuum of government price control they lay. As a consequence of the economy in which the market structure exists, some structures one the continuum are inherently more laissez faire and others are less so (One could as easily say some are more commanded and others less so....Remember, we're talking about a continuum, so one can use either endpoint as the point of reference). Regarding the context you've raised, the other quality of market structure that is controlling is the nature of competition.

Insofar as in the U.S. the market structure for healthcare and health insurance is monopolistically competitive and, in terms of pricing, relatively more rather than less laissez faire, the problems you've identified are intrinsic. That is to say, so long as a market structure is laissez faire enough [2], the problems you've noted are unavoidable, and as we all know, intractable. Those problems can be attenuated by adjusting either the extent to which the market is laissez faire or by altering the market structure.

The majority of people and elected leaders in the U.S. have thus far eschewed notions of reducing the extent to which the healthcare and health insurance market is laissez faire, and AFAIK, nobody who matters has proposed willfully changing the market structure. The simple reality is that one cannot rationally declare a non price-controlled and non-profit controlled market competitive and ask the firms in the market not to compete to garner the most profits they can in return for the resources they used to provide the goods/services they sell to earn profit.

That's the economics of it, and economics doesn't care about emotion. It recognizes emotion's role in shaping supply and demand curves, but it doesn't whether one has or doesn't have the good/service one may desire. It cares only about the buying and selling behavior exhibited by participants in a economy. Political science, politics, insofar as the buying and selling of ideas/policies about governance is concerned, is the realm of what people like, want, don't like, etc. comes into play. [3]

Note:

1. Within an economy, different industries can operate under different market structures. For instance, in the U.S., the market structure for most industries is that of monopolistic competition. Healthcare and health insurance operates under that market structure. Electricity and water, on the other hand, operate in a monopoly market structure. Nondifferentiable goods and services operate in the market structure called "perfect competition."
   
2. "Enough" being however much it takes such that sellers (buyers too, however, the focus of your remarks is on the supply side; thus I've written "sellers"), behaving in what they believe is their own best interest, act, as we observe them doing in the U.S., as profit maximizers.
3. As we say in my industry, "the only thing that's confounding is the people." That saying encapsulates why business operations and economics are the disciplines in which I made my career. As someone who's input is based on empiricism, I and my staff mostly don't have to care whether people like or don't like "it." I need only articulate what is and/or what most likely is based on the available information and what one can expect (the nature and extent of risk associated with various solution approaches/options) based on what is and our understanding of "it." That a solution will "suck" for someone other than my client isn't what I'm paid to address. (That's not to say I'm not aware of the "sucking" that'll befall someone else, but I'm paid to maximize, across multiple parameters, the "not sucking" for my clients.)

. The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system. It has gotten way out of hand as evidenced in the itemized statements that people are getting from their Healthcare providers and their insurance providers. To much corruption, over charging, and bad products or services being the norm in the nation anymore, and Americans deserve better than this kind of situation now.

The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system.

That is one of the normative policy/solution options that exists. It's not the one I most prefer, but it's one I'd be willing to give a try.

Most healthcare is already nonprofit or provided by the government. Only 18% of our hospital are operated for profit. Over a third of our doctors work for nonprofits. Almost half of our nursing homes are not for profit. Government pays for 62% of the healthcare and most of the rest is paid for by non-profit health insurance organizations.

What is the point you're attempting to make?

Only 18% of our hospital are operated for profit.

By whose reckoning? In 2013, there were 5,724 hospitals in the U.S., according to the American Hospital Association. Of these, 2,903 hospitals are nonprofit and 1,025 are for-profit. Additionally, 1,045 are owned by state or local (county, hospital district) government entities.

Over a third of our doctors work for nonprofits.

No matter for whom they work, doctors, like everyone who works for wages/salary, are for-profit workers. Doctors, may occasionally their volunteer services via, say, organizations like Doctors Without Borders, but every one I've seen and been treated by requires I (my insurers) pay them a fee, one that includes a provision for profit, in return for having seen me.

Government pays for 62% of the healthcare and most of the rest is paid for by non-profit health insurance organizations.

Since when? Most people in the U.S. do not qualify for government paid health insurance coverage. Medicare doesn't kick-in until one is over sixty and most people don't meet the income and asset requirements of Medicaid. What most people have employer coordinated health insurance, and every one of those insurance companies is a for-profit corporation.

 

[beagle9]

1st.. We have us as human beings (correct), therefore being created by God (correct), and being gifted by God (correct), with our abilities to learn, create, build, and care for the beings and things in which we have control over.. Therefore these things were again given unto us by God (correct), so why do we fail him now ??

2nd.. we have the earth in which is full of natural resources, and is surrounded by the air in which we breath, the water in which we drink, the cycles in which we live by daily, and all things in which God had given us to thrive and survive as human beings upon it, so you tell me how after all that God had granted unto us here, that we can't seem to produce a pill, treatment or medical procedure that saves human lives after all that God had done for us for free, (for a reasonable price to us as human beings) ??

We as a Godly people should absolutely not be putting human beings in a position to choose death over the cost of care at the levels in which it is currently going on in hospitals all across this nation. I mean a pill that cost thousands of dollars when the natural resources it took to create the pill or went into the pill was so miniscule that you can't even see it with the naked eye barely ??

Is the technology, education, and labor to create the chemical make up of the pill worth thousands ?? How do we have an economy within an economy that is so much more valued than the other, that when the two cross paths it causes catosrophic consequences on a human beings life or lives ?????

It is evil what has been created or by what is going on now in my honest opinion. The greed of man has compromised our principles and our values in which we are to hold sacred in concerns of our fellow human beings. What will God think of us when comes to visit with us, and to sit with us, and to listen to us, otherwise if we have not our brother's and sister's very lives in our best interest, just as he would have us in his best interest ??? We must fix these things, and fix them fast.

/----- If we even mention tort reform the libs become unhinged and jump to the defense of the trial lawyers.


Sent from my iPhone using USMessageBoard.com

. Who are the real culprits in it all ??? Name them by group, and then let's work to stop them doing these things.

There are many culprits but the biggest culprit is people like you and me who want the best medical care available and we don't care what it cost, as long as someone else is paying for it. When we have an out patient procedure that takes 10 mins and the hospital bills the insurance company $2,000, do we complain to the hospital, no. However, when we have to wait weeks to get an appointment or have to waist 4 hours sitting in the ER, we certainly complain.

It's not just patients. it's society in general. If a new procedure is found that will reduce the chance of death from .05% to .01% but it cost 10 times as much, the AMA or some other group is going to work toward getting it approved. We require insurance companies to provide coverage to people that are so sick, they would be un-insurable and require the ER to take patients regardless of their ability to pay.

It's also about the risk involved with healthcare. Unlike an automobile repair, there are no guarantees. But when shit happens we look for a culprit and if we can't find one, a lawyer will, usually the doctor or hospital. A drug company or medical device company may spend tens of millions getting a product on the market only to find that a side effect makes the product worthless and they have to recovery those cost on another product.

And then there's government, both federal and state that are always making laws and regulation to make healthcare better which it may or may not but often has a very high price tag.

And finally, there is the cost of medical personnel, 10 years to become a doctor at a cost of a quarter to half million dollars. Registered Nurses, 4 to 6 years at cost $30,000 to $80,000. And then there's the support people, medical technicians, physicians assistants, lab technicians, pharmacologists, social workers, security people, all kinds of specificity maintenance staff and of course insurance and billing people. And finally there's the people on standby or on call that have to be available on a moment's notice because of the life or death conditions that develop throughout the day and night in hospitals.

. All of this don't address an itemized statement that has obscene charges & cost involved or even those mysterious charges that were attempted to be charged, but funny no one can remember the procedure, test or treatment that the charges were for. And why is that ? It's because the charges were Bogus is why. Medicare has been bilked out of millions this way.

 

[usmbguest5318]

. The medical industry has it's own economic value going, but what has happened is that somehow the industry has snowballed into a freight train that is mowing patients and insurance companies down, instead of keeping a healthy balance going in as far as it's cost and services go. It is my belief that people are paying with their lives when they can't pay with money anymore. And these people on here boasting about how they can pay their medical cost out of pocket are either lying or thinking that we are a bunch of fools on this forum. One might pay out of pocket for some things, but when it gets serious, then lawyers and deeds to property or assets start flying out people's names, and into other people's names quick fast and in a hurry. Then who pays ? We all do that's who.

The manifest outcomes/observations you've described is a consequence of market structure, which is one dimension of an economy. [1] Market structures are qualified in part by where on the continuum of government price control they lay. As a consequence of the economy in which the market structure exists, some structures one the continuum are inherently more laissez faire and others are less so (One could as easily say some are more commanded and others less so....Remember, we're talking about a continuum, so one can use either endpoint as the point of reference). Regarding the context you've raised, the other quality of market structure that is controlling is the nature of competition.

Insofar as in the U.S. the market structure for healthcare and health insurance is monopolistically competitive and, in terms of pricing, relatively more rather than less laissez faire, the problems you've identified are intrinsic. That is to say, so long as a market structure is laissez faire enough [2], the problems you've noted are unavoidable, and as we all know, intractable. Those problems can be attenuated by adjusting either the extent to which the market is laissez faire or by altering the market structure.

The majority of people and elected leaders in the U.S. have thus far eschewed notions of reducing the extent to which the healthcare and health insurance market is laissez faire, and AFAIK, nobody who matters has proposed willfully changing the market structure. The simple reality is that one cannot rationally declare a non price-controlled and non-profit controlled market competitive and ask the firms in the market not to compete to garner the most profits they can in return for the resources they used to provide the goods/services they sell to earn profit.

That's the economics of it, and economics doesn't care about emotion. It recognizes emotion's role in shaping supply and demand curves, but it doesn't whether one has or doesn't have the good/service one may desire. It cares only about the buying and selling behavior exhibited by participants in a economy. Political science, politics, insofar as the buying and selling of ideas/policies about governance is concerned, is the realm of what people like, want, don't like, etc. comes into play. [3]

Note:

1. Within an economy, different industries can operate under different market structures. For instance, in the U.S., the market structure for most industries is that of monopolistic competition. Healthcare and health insurance operates under that market structure. Electricity and water, on the other hand, operate in a monopoly market structure. Nondifferentiable goods and services operate in the market structure called "perfect competition."
   
2. "Enough" being however much it takes such that sellers (buyers too, however, the focus of your remarks is on the supply side; thus I've written "sellers"), behaving in what they believe is their own best interest, act, as we observe them doing in the U.S., as profit maximizers.
3. As we say in my industry, "the only thing that's confounding is the people." That saying encapsulates why business operations and economics are the disciplines in which I made my career. As someone who's input is based on empiricism, I and my staff mostly don't have to care whether people like or don't like "it." I need only articulate what is and/or what most likely is based on the available information and what one can expect (the nature and extent of risk associated with various solution approaches/options) based on what is and our understanding of "it." That a solution will "suck" for someone other than my client isn't what I'm paid to address. (That's not to say I'm not aware of the "sucking" that'll befall someone else, but I'm paid to maximize, across multiple parameters, the "not sucking" for my clients.)

. The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system. It has gotten way out of hand as evidenced in the itemized statements that people are getting from their Healthcare providers and their insurance providers. To much corruption, over charging, and bad products or services being the norm in the nation anymore, and Americans deserve better than this kind of situation now.

The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system.

That is one of the normative policy/solution options that exists. It's not the one I most prefer, but it's one I'd be willing to give a try.

Most healthcare is already nonprofit or provided by the government. Only 18% of our hospital are operated for profit. Over a third of our doctors work for nonprofits. Almost half of our nursing homes are not for profit. Government pays for 62% of the healthcare and most of the rest is paid for by non-profit health insurance organizations.

What is the point you're attempting to make?

Only 18% of our hospital are operated for profit.

By whose reckoning? In 2013, there were 5,724 hospitals in the U.S., according to the American Hospital Association. Of these, 2,903 hospitals are nonprofit and 1,025 are for-profit. Additionally, 1,045 are owned by state or local (county, hospital district) government entities.

Over a third of our doctors work for nonprofits.

No matter for whom they work, doctors, like everyone who works for wages/salary, are for-profit workers. Doctors, may occasionally their volunteer services via, say, organizations like Doctors Without Borders, but every one I've seen and been treated by requires I (my insurers) pay them a fee, one that includes a provision for profit, in return for having seen me.

Government pays for 62% of the healthcare and most of the rest is paid for by non-profit health insurance organizations.

Since when? Most people in the U.S. do not qualify for government paid health insurance coverage. Medicare doesn't kick-in until one is over sixty and most people don't meet the income and asset requirements of Medicaid. What most people have employer coordinated health insurance, and every one of those insurance companies is a for-profit corporation.

BTW, it's worth noting that non-profit status is a reflection of a tax status. It does not indicate that such entities do not realize an excess of cash receipts and claims to cash over disbursements and obligations to disburse cash. A quick look at a non-profit organizations statement of activities (non-profit/accounting language for what in the corporate world is called an income statement) to see as much. The change in net assets will either be positive or negative. The only thing making the organization non-profit is that increases in net assets are not distributed to owners, and that's because there are no owners of the entity.

 

[beagle9]

....whatever....

. The medical industry has it's own economic value going, but what has happened is that somehow the industry has snowballed into a freight train that is mowing patients and insurance companies down, instead of keeping a healthy balance going in as far as it's cost and services go. It is my belief that people are paying with their lives when they can't pay with money anymore. And these people on here boasting about how they can pay their medical cost out of pocket are either lying or thinking that we are a bunch of fools on this forum. One might pay out of pocket for some things, but when it gets serious, then lawyers and deeds to property or assets start flying out people's names, and into other people's names quick fast and in a hurry. Then who pays ? We all do that's who.

The manifest outcomes/observations you've described is a consequence of market structure, which is one dimension of an economy. [1] Market structures are qualified in part by where on the continuum of government price control they lay. As a consequence of the economy in which the market structure exists, some structures one the continuum are inherently more laissez faire and others are less so (One could as easily say some are more commanded and others less so....Remember, we're talking about a continuum, so one can use either endpoint as the point of reference). Regarding the context you've raised, the other quality of market structure that is controlling is the nature of competition.

Insofar as in the U.S. the market structure for healthcare and health insurance is monopolistically competitive and, in terms of pricing, relatively more rather than less laissez faire, the problems you've identified are intrinsic. That is to say, so long as a market structure is laissez faire enough [2], the problems you've noted are unavoidable, and as we all know, intractable. Those problems can be attenuated by adjusting either the extent to which the market is laissez faire or by altering the market structure.

The majority of people and elected leaders in the U.S. have thus far eschewed notions of reducing the extent to which the healthcare and health insurance market is laissez faire, and AFAIK, nobody who matters has proposed willfully changing the market structure. The simple reality is that one cannot rationally declare a non price-controlled and non-profit controlled market competitive and ask the firms in the market not to compete to garner the most profits they can in return for the resources they used to provide the goods/services they sell to earn profit.

That's the economics of it, and economics doesn't care about emotion. It recognizes emotion's role in shaping supply and demand curves, but it doesn't whether one has or doesn't have the good/service one may desire. It cares only about the buying and selling behavior exhibited by participants in a economy. Political science, politics, insofar as the buying and selling of ideas/policies about governance is concerned, is the realm of what people like, want, don't like, etc. comes into play. [3]

Note:

1. Within an economy, different industries can operate under different market structures. For instance, in the U.S., the market structure for most industries is that of monopolistic competition. Healthcare and health insurance operates under that market structure. Electricity and water, on the other hand, operate in a monopoly market structure. Nondifferentiable goods and services operate in the market structure called "perfect competition."
   
2. "Enough" being however much it takes such that sellers (buyers too, however, the focus of your remarks is on the supply side; thus I've written "sellers"), behaving in what they believe is their own best interest, act, as we observe them doing in the U.S., as profit maximizers.
3. As we say in my industry, "the only thing that's confounding is the people." That saying encapsulates why business operations and economics are the disciplines in which I made my career. As someone who's input is based on empiricism, I and my staff mostly don't have to care whether people like or don't like "it." I need only articulate what is and/or what most likely is based on the available information and what one can expect (the nature and extent of risk associated with various solution approaches/options) based on what is and our understanding of "it." That a solution will "suck" for someone other than my client isn't what I'm paid to address. (That's not to say I'm not aware of the "sucking" that'll befall someone else, but I'm paid to maximize, across multiple parameters, the "not sucking" for my clients.)

. The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system. It has gotten way out of hand as evidenced in the itemized statements that people are getting from their Healthcare providers and their insurance providers. To much corruption, over charging, and bad products or services being the norm in the nation anymore, and Americans deserve better than this kind of situation now.

The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system.

That is one of the normative policy/solution options that exists. It's not the one I most prefer, but it's one I'd be willing to give a try.

Most healthcare is already nonprofit or provided by the government. Only 18% of our hospital are operated for profit. Over a third of our doctors work for nonprofits. Almost half of our nursing homes are not for profit. Government pays for 62% of the healthcare and most of the rest is paid for by non-profit health insurance organizations.

Most for profit healthcare providers are auxiliary healthcare facilities such as specialized clinics, labs, and a dwindling number of physicians in private practice.

. So the government take over is almost complete ?? Then what is driving the cost of the products and services, and why are people paying for it with their lives more and more ? Do these small percentages you speak of control the system we all need to be cost friendly for all involved ?

 

[usmbguest5318]

. The medical industry has it's own economic value going, but what has happened is that somehow the industry has snowballed into a freight train that is mowing patients and insurance companies down, instead of keeping a healthy balance going in as far as it's cost and services go. It is my belief that people are paying with their lives when they can't pay with money anymore. And these people on here boasting about how they can pay their medical cost out of pocket are either lying or thinking that we are a bunch of fools on this forum. One might pay out of pocket for some things, but when it gets serious, then lawyers and deeds to property or assets start flying out people's names, and into other people's names quick fast and in a hurry. Then who pays ? We all do that's who.

The manifest outcomes/observations you've described is a consequence of market structure, which is one dimension of an economy. [1] Market structures are qualified in part by where on the continuum of government price control they lay. As a consequence of the economy in which the market structure exists, some structures one the continuum are inherently more laissez faire and others are less so (One could as easily say some are more commanded and others less so....Remember, we're talking about a continuum, so one can use either endpoint as the point of reference). Regarding the context you've raised, the other quality of market structure that is controlling is the nature of competition.

Insofar as in the U.S. the market structure for healthcare and health insurance is monopolistically competitive and, in terms of pricing, relatively more rather than less laissez faire, the problems you've identified are intrinsic. That is to say, so long as a market structure is laissez faire enough [2], the problems you've noted are unavoidable, and as we all know, intractable. Those problems can be attenuated by adjusting either the extent to which the market is laissez faire or by altering the market structure.

The majority of people and elected leaders in the U.S. have thus far eschewed notions of reducing the extent to which the healthcare and health insurance market is laissez faire, and AFAIK, nobody who matters has proposed willfully changing the market structure. The simple reality is that one cannot rationally declare a non price-controlled and non-profit controlled market competitive and ask the firms in the market not to compete to garner the most profits they can in return for the resources they used to provide the goods/services they sell to earn profit.

That's the economics of it, and economics doesn't care about emotion. It recognizes emotion's role in shaping supply and demand curves, but it doesn't whether one has or doesn't have the good/service one may desire. It cares only about the buying and selling behavior exhibited by participants in a economy. Political science, politics, insofar as the buying and selling of ideas/policies about governance is concerned, is the realm of what people like, want, don't like, etc. comes into play. [3]

Note:

1. Within an economy, different industries can operate under different market structures. For instance, in the U.S., the market structure for most industries is that of monopolistic competition. Healthcare and health insurance operates under that market structure. Electricity and water, on the other hand, operate in a monopoly market structure. Nondifferentiable goods and services operate in the market structure called "perfect competition."
   
2. "Enough" being however much it takes such that sellers (buyers too, however, the focus of your remarks is on the supply side; thus I've written "sellers"), behaving in what they believe is their own best interest, act, as we observe them doing in the U.S., as profit maximizers.
3. As we say in my industry, "the only thing that's confounding is the people." That saying encapsulates why business operations and economics are the disciplines in which I made my career. As someone who's input is based on empiricism, I and my staff mostly don't have to care whether people like or don't like "it." I need only articulate what is and/or what most likely is based on the available information and what one can expect (the nature and extent of risk associated with various solution approaches/options) based on what is and our understanding of "it." That a solution will "suck" for someone other than my client isn't what I'm paid to address. (That's not to say I'm not aware of the "sucking" that'll befall someone else, but I'm paid to maximize, across multiple parameters, the "not sucking" for my clients.)

. The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system. It has gotten way out of hand as evidenced in the itemized statements that people are getting from their Healthcare providers and their insurance providers. To much corruption, over charging, and bad products or services being the norm in the nation anymore, and Americans deserve better than this kind of situation now.

The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system.

That is one of the normative policy/solution options that exists. It's not the one I most prefer, but it's one I'd be willing to give a try.

Most healthcare is already nonprofit or provided by the government. Only 18% of our hospital are operated for profit. Over a third of our doctors work for nonprofits. Almost half of our nursing homes are not for profit. Government pays for 62% of the healthcare and most of the rest is paid for by non-profit health insurance organizations.

Most for profit healthcare providers are auxiliary healthcare facilities such as specialized clinics, labs, and a dwindling number of physicians in private practice.

. So the government take over is almost complete ?? Then what is driving the cost of the products and services, and why are people paying for it with their lives more and more ? Do these small percentages you speak of control the system we all need to be cost friendly for all involved ?

why are people paying for it with their lives more and more ?

They aren't "paying for it with their lives more and more." That they are is a Beagle9 fact pattern that, outside your mind and those of others who don't know any better, is extant nowhere else.

 

[Marion Morrison]

1st.. We have us as human beings (correct), therefore being created by God (correct), and being gifted by God (correct), with our abilities to learn, create, build, and care for the beings and things in which we have control over.. Therefore these things were again given unto us by God (correct), so why do we fail him now ??

2nd.. we have the earth in which is full of natural resources, and is surrounded by the air in which we breath, the water in which we drink, the cycles in which we live by daily, and all things in which God had given us to thrive and survive as human beings upon it, so you tell me how after all that God had granted unto us here, that we can't seem to produce a pill, treatment or medical procedure that saves human lives after all that God had done for us for free, (for a reasonable price to us as human beings) ??

We as a Godly people should absolutely not be putting human beings in a position to choose death over the cost of care at the levels in which it is currently going on in hospitals all across this nation. I mean a pill that cost thousands of dollars when the natural resources it took to create the pill or went into the pill was so miniscule that you can't even see it with the naked eye barely ??

Is the technology, education, and labor to create the chemical make up of the pill worth thousands ?? How do we have an economy within an economy that is so much more valued than the other, that when the two cross paths it causes catosrophic consequences on a human beings life or lives ?????

It is evil what has been created or by what is going on now in my honest opinion. The greed of man has compromised our principles and our values in which we are to hold sacred in concerns of our fellow human beings. What will God think of us when comes to visit with us, and to sit with us, and to listen to us, otherwise if we have not our brother's and sister's very lives in our best interest, just as he would have us in his best interest ??? We must fix these things, and fix them fast.

Hospital administrators, around 40 grafty Congresses, Insurance lobbyists, State comptrollers, and Pharmaceutical lobbyists. That's who's involved and a minimum of how long the cost has been snowballing.

 

[Toronado3800]

FWIW, the above describes an industry, not an economy.

I'm not, at this juncture, fussing with you over the terminology. I merely wanted to understand what you had in mind. I now do. TY.

. Yes industries, but with their own economies surrounding them. Take the racing industry for example, where as it has an economy that feeds alot of families along with satellite companies that are built up around that industry. If a downward trend begins to shift, then the industry may start suffering badly, so quickly new energy, concepts, safety standards, promotional ideas go into action in order to try to head off or stop the bleeding. While the specific industry thrives, then all boats began to rise or fall yet all depending on the strategies involved. Separate industries who have their own economies, and have their own securities working great for them will leave the competition in the dirt, and
up to their eyeballs in over regulation is what has happened lately..

.

....whatever....

. The medical industry has it's own economic value going, but what has happened is that somehow the industry has snowballed into a freight train that is mowing patients and insurance companies down, instead of keeping a healthy balance going in as far as it's cost and services go. It is my belief that people are paying with their lives when they can't pay with money anymore. And these people on here boasting about how they can pay their medical cost out of pocket are either lying or thinking that we are a bunch of fools on this forum. One might pay out of pocket for some things, but when it gets serious, then lawyers and deeds to property or assets start flying out people's names, and into other people's names quick fast and in a hurry. Then who pays ? We all do that's who.

The manifest outcomes/observations you've described is a consequence of market structure, which is one dimension of an economy. [1] Market structures are qualified in part by where on the continuum of government price control they lay. As a consequence of the economy in which the market structure exists, some structures one the continuum are inherently more laissez faire and others are less so (One could as easily say some are more commanded and others less so....Remember, we're talking about a continuum, so one can use either endpoint as the point of reference). Regarding the context you've raised, the other quality of market structure that is controlling is the nature of competition.

Insofar as in the U.S. the market structure for healthcare and health insurance is monopolistically competitive and, in terms of pricing, relatively more rather than less laissez faire, the problems you've identified are intrinsic. That is to say, so long as a market structure is laissez faire enough [2], the problems you've noted are unavoidable, and as we all know, intractable. Those problems can be attenuated by adjusting either the extent to which the market is laissez faire or by altering the market structure.

The majority of people and elected leaders in the U.S. have thus far eschewed notions of reducing the extent to which the healthcare and health insurance market is laissez faire, and AFAIK, nobody who matters has proposed willfully changing the market structure. The simple reality is that one cannot rationally declare a non price-controlled and non-profit controlled market competitive and ask the firms in the market not to compete to garner the most profits they can in return for the resources they used to provide the goods/services they sell to earn profit.

That's the economics of it, and economics doesn't care about emotion. It recognizes emotion's role in shaping supply and demand curves, but it doesn't whether one has or doesn't have the good/service one may desire. It cares only about the buying and selling behavior exhibited by participants in a economy. Political science, politics, insofar as the buying and selling of ideas/policies about governance is concerned, is the realm of what people like, want, don't like, etc. comes into play. [3]

Note:

1. Within an economy, different industries can operate under different market structures. For instance, in the U.S., the market structure for most industries is that of monopolistic competition. Healthcare and health insurance operates under that market structure. Electricity and water, on the other hand, operate in a monopoly market structure. Nondifferentiable goods and services operate in the market structure called "perfect competition."
   
2. "Enough" being however much it takes such that sellers (buyers too, however, the focus of your remarks is on the supply side; thus I've written "sellers"), behaving in what they believe is their own best interest, act, as we observe them doing in the U.S., as profit maximizers.
3. As we say in my industry, "the only thing that's confounding is the people." That saying encapsulates why business operations and economics are the disciplines in which I made my career. As someone who's input is based on empiricism, I and my staff mostly don't have to care whether people like or don't like "it." I need only articulate what is and/or what most likely is based on the available information and what one can expect (the nature and extent of risk associated with various solution approaches/options) based on what is and our understanding of "it." That a solution will "suck" for someone other than my client isn't what I'm paid to address. (That's not to say I'm not aware of the "sucking" that'll befall someone else, but I'm paid to maximize, across multiple parameters, the "not sucking" for my clients.)

. The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system. It has gotten way out of hand as evidenced in the itemized statements that people are getting from their Healthcare providers and their insurance providers. To much corruption, over charging, and bad products or services being the norm in the nation anymore, and Americans deserve better than this kind of situation now.

I have no faith in humanity working "not for profit". We just need to regulate them and start deciding how we are going to deal with increasing medical costs.

The crux of the matter is, if Donald Trump needs gene therapy and a new set of lungs every 5 years he can afford it and will get it.

If Dan Marino does, he can afford it once, maybe twice, but the second time you and me are going to have to pay extra because his insurance company bit the bullet and wasn't charging him enough.

Extend that to the guy working on your car. If he needs a kidney are you going to say:
"tough go die"

are you going to pay for it like we sorta have been for a bunch of years (sort of, it helps to be upper middle class at least I suspect)

or are you gonna admit you are gonna help him pay for it ahead of time and create a healthcare system?

 

[beagle9]

. Yes industries, but with their own economies surrounding them. Take the racing industry for example, where as it has an economy that feeds alot of families along with satellite companies that are built up around that industry. If a downward trend begins to shift, then the industry may start suffering badly, so quickly new energy, concepts, safety standards, promotional ideas go into action in order to try to head off or stop the bleeding. While the specific industry thrives, then all boats began to rise or fall yet all depending on the strategies involved. Separate industries who have their own economies, and have their own securities working great for them will leave the competition in the dirt, and
up to their eyeballs in over regulation is what has happened lately..

.

....whatever....

. The medical industry has it's own economic value going, but what has happened is that somehow the industry has snowballed into a freight train that is mowing patients and insurance companies down, instead of keeping a healthy balance going in as far as it's cost and services go. It is my belief that people are paying with their lives when they can't pay with money anymore. And these people on here boasting about how they can pay their medical cost out of pocket are either lying or thinking that we are a bunch of fools on this forum. One might pay out of pocket for some things, but when it gets serious, then lawyers and deeds to property or assets start flying out people's names, and into other people's names quick fast and in a hurry. Then who pays ? We all do that's who.

The manifest outcomes/observations you've described is a consequence of market structure, which is one dimension of an economy. [1] Market structures are qualified in part by where on the continuum of government price control they lay. As a consequence of the economy in which the market structure exists, some structures one the continuum are inherently more laissez faire and others are less so (One could as easily say some are more commanded and others less so....Remember, we're talking about a continuum, so one can use either endpoint as the point of reference). Regarding the context you've raised, the other quality of market structure that is controlling is the nature of competition.

Insofar as in the U.S. the market structure for healthcare and health insurance is monopolistically competitive and, in terms of pricing, relatively more rather than less laissez faire, the problems you've identified are intrinsic. That is to say, so long as a market structure is laissez faire enough [2], the problems you've noted are unavoidable, and as we all know, intractable. Those problems can be attenuated by adjusting either the extent to which the market is laissez faire or by altering the market structure.

The majority of people and elected leaders in the U.S. have thus far eschewed notions of reducing the extent to which the healthcare and health insurance market is laissez faire, and AFAIK, nobody who matters has proposed willfully changing the market structure. The simple reality is that one cannot rationally declare a non price-controlled and non-profit controlled market competitive and ask the firms in the market not to compete to garner the most profits they can in return for the resources they used to provide the goods/services they sell to earn profit.

That's the economics of it, and economics doesn't care about emotion. It recognizes emotion's role in shaping supply and demand curves, but it doesn't whether one has or doesn't have the good/service one may desire. It cares only about the buying and selling behavior exhibited by participants in a economy. Political science, politics, insofar as the buying and selling of ideas/policies about governance is concerned, is the realm of what people like, want, don't like, etc. comes into play. [3]

Note:

1. Within an economy, different industries can operate under different market structures. For instance, in the U.S., the market structure for most industries is that of monopolistic competition. Healthcare and health insurance operates under that market structure. Electricity and water, on the other hand, operate in a monopoly market structure. Nondifferentiable goods and services operate in the market structure called "perfect competition."
   
2. "Enough" being however much it takes such that sellers (buyers too, however, the focus of your remarks is on the supply side; thus I've written "sellers"), behaving in what they believe is their own best interest, act, as we observe them doing in the U.S., as profit maximizers.
3. As we say in my industry, "the only thing that's confounding is the people." That saying encapsulates why business operations and economics are the disciplines in which I made my career. As someone who's input is based on empiricism, I and my staff mostly don't have to care whether people like or don't like "it." I need only articulate what is and/or what most likely is based on the available information and what one can expect (the nature and extent of risk associated with various solution approaches/options) based on what is and our understanding of "it." That a solution will "suck" for someone other than my client isn't what I'm paid to address. (That's not to say I'm not aware of the "sucking" that'll befall someone else, but I'm paid to maximize, across multiple parameters, the "not sucking" for my clients.)

. The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system. It has gotten way out of hand as evidenced in the itemized statements that people are getting from their Healthcare providers and their insurance providers. To much corruption, over charging, and bad products or services being the norm in the nation anymore, and Americans deserve better than this kind of situation now.

I have no faith in humanity working "not for profit". We just need to regulate them and start deciding how we are going to deal with increasing medical costs.

The crux of the matter is, if Donald Trump needs gene therapy and a new set of lungs every 5 years he can afford it and will get it.

If Dan Marino does, he can afford it once, maybe twice, but the second time you and me are going to have to pay extra because his insurance company bit the bullet and wasn't charging him enough.

Extend that to the guy working on your car. If he needs a kidney are you going to say:
"tough go die"

are you going to pay for it like we sorta have been for a bunch of years (sort of, it helps to be upper middle class at least I suspect)

or are you gonna admit you are gonna help him pay for it ahead of time and create a healthcare system?

. We just need a healthcare system that works for all of humanity here, and we need to quit with this one human being being more important than the other when it comes to how much healthcare one can afford than another can afford. We are all God's children in my opinion, and we have enough God given sense to stop the insanity. I am willing to contribute to a system that covers all Americans equally in this country. What ever that system is, I am pledging to contribute to it. We all deserve a chance, and money should never be an obstacle that stands between the life and death of a human being getting a fair chance like anyone else would.

 

[usmbguest5318]

....whatever....

. The medical industry has it's own economic value going, but what has happened is that somehow the industry has snowballed into a freight train that is mowing patients and insurance companies down, instead of keeping a healthy balance going in as far as it's cost and services go. It is my belief that people are paying with their lives when they can't pay with money anymore. And these people on here boasting about how they can pay their medical cost out of pocket are either lying or thinking that we are a bunch of fools on this forum. One might pay out of pocket for some things, but when it gets serious, then lawyers and deeds to property or assets start flying out people's names, and into other people's names quick fast and in a hurry. Then who pays ? We all do that's who.

The manifest outcomes/observations you've described is a consequence of market structure, which is one dimension of an economy. [1] Market structures are qualified in part by where on the continuum of government price control they lay. As a consequence of the economy in which the market structure exists, some structures one the continuum are inherently more laissez faire and others are less so (One could as easily say some are more commanded and others less so....Remember, we're talking about a continuum, so one can use either endpoint as the point of reference). Regarding the context you've raised, the other quality of market structure that is controlling is the nature of competition.

Insofar as in the U.S. the market structure for healthcare and health insurance is monopolistically competitive and, in terms of pricing, relatively more rather than less laissez faire, the problems you've identified are intrinsic. That is to say, so long as a market structure is laissez faire enough [2], the problems you've noted are unavoidable, and as we all know, intractable. Those problems can be attenuated by adjusting either the extent to which the market is laissez faire or by altering the market structure.

The majority of people and elected leaders in the U.S. have thus far eschewed notions of reducing the extent to which the healthcare and health insurance market is laissez faire, and AFAIK, nobody who matters has proposed willfully changing the market structure. The simple reality is that one cannot rationally declare a non price-controlled and non-profit controlled market competitive and ask the firms in the market not to compete to garner the most profits they can in return for the resources they used to provide the goods/services they sell to earn profit.

That's the economics of it, and economics doesn't care about emotion. It recognizes emotion's role in shaping supply and demand curves, but it doesn't whether one has or doesn't have the good/service one may desire. It cares only about the buying and selling behavior exhibited by participants in a economy. Political science, politics, insofar as the buying and selling of ideas/policies about governance is concerned, is the realm of what people like, want, don't like, etc. comes into play. [3]

Note:

1. Within an economy, different industries can operate under different market structures. For instance, in the U.S., the market structure for most industries is that of monopolistic competition. Healthcare and health insurance operates under that market structure. Electricity and water, on the other hand, operate in a monopoly market structure. Nondifferentiable goods and services operate in the market structure called "perfect competition."
   
2. "Enough" being however much it takes such that sellers (buyers too, however, the focus of your remarks is on the supply side; thus I've written "sellers"), behaving in what they believe is their own best interest, act, as we observe them doing in the U.S., as profit maximizers.
3. As we say in my industry, "the only thing that's confounding is the people." That saying encapsulates why business operations and economics are the disciplines in which I made my career. As someone who's input is based on empiricism, I and my staff mostly don't have to care whether people like or don't like "it." I need only articulate what is and/or what most likely is based on the available information and what one can expect (the nature and extent of risk associated with various solution approaches/options) based on what is and our understanding of "it." That a solution will "suck" for someone other than my client isn't what I'm paid to address. (That's not to say I'm not aware of the "sucking" that'll befall someone else, but I'm paid to maximize, across multiple parameters, the "not sucking" for my clients.)

. The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system. It has gotten way out of hand as evidenced in the itemized statements that people are getting from their Healthcare providers and their insurance providers. To much corruption, over charging, and bad products or services being the norm in the nation anymore, and Americans deserve better than this kind of situation now.

I have no faith in humanity working "not for profit". We just need to regulate them and start deciding how we are going to deal with increasing medical costs.

The crux of the matter is, if Donald Trump needs gene therapy and a new set of lungs every 5 years he can afford it and will get it.

If Dan Marino does, he can afford it once, maybe twice, but the second time you and me are going to have to pay extra because his insurance company bit the bullet and wasn't charging him enough.

Extend that to the guy working on your car. If he needs a kidney are you going to say:
"tough go die"

are you going to pay for it like we sorta have been for a bunch of years (sort of, it helps to be upper middle class at least I suspect)

or are you gonna admit you are gonna help him pay for it ahead of time and create a healthcare system?

. We just need a healthcare system that works for all of humanity here, and we need to quit with this one human being being more important than the other when it comes to how much healthcare one can afford than another can afford. We are all God's children in my opinion, and we have enough God given sense to stop the insanity. I am willing to contribute to a system that covers all Americans equally in this country. What ever that system is, I am pledging to contribute to it. We all deserve a chance, and money should never be an obstacle that stands between the life and death of a human being getting a fair chance like anyone else would.

We just need a healthcare system that works for all of humanity here

There isn't going to be such a healthcare system. What there will be is what we have now: "one size fits most/many."

 

[flacaltenn]

1st.. We have us as human beings (correct), therefore being created by God (correct), and being gifted by God (correct), with our abilities to learn, create, build, and care for the beings and things in which we have control over.. Therefore these things were again given unto us by God (correct), so why do we fail him now ??

2nd.. we have the earth in which is full of natural resources, and is surrounded by the air in which we breath, the water in which we drink, the cycles in which we live by daily, and all things in which God had given us to thrive and survive as human beings upon it, so you tell me how after all that God had granted unto us here, that we can't seem to produce a pill, treatment or medical procedure that saves human lives after all that God had done for us for free, (for a reasonable price to us as human beings) ??

We as a Godly people should absolutely not be putting human beings in a position to choose death over the cost of care at the levels in which it is currently going on in hospitals all across this nation. I mean a pill that cost thousands of dollars when the natural resources it took to create the pill or went into the pill was so miniscule that you can't even see it with the naked eye barely ??

Is the technology, education, and labor to create the chemical make up of the pill worth thousands ?? How do we have an economy within an economy that is so much more valued than the other, that when the two cross paths it causes catosrophic consequences on a human beings life or lives ?????

It is evil what has been created or by what is going on now in my honest opinion. The greed of man has compromised our principles and our values in which we are to hold sacred in concerns of our fellow human beings. What will God think of us when comes to visit with us, and to sit with us, and to listen to us, otherwise if we have not our brother's and sister's very lives in our best interest, just as he would have us in his best interest ??? We must fix these things, and fix them fast.

Pharma prices in general are for book-keeping purposes only. The "retail price" does not exist. It's all inflation to counter the beatings and shakedowns that the INSURERS do to providers. Not only applies to Pharma prices, but also applies to Doctor services.

Insurance companies negotiate on "discounts" with providers. Only way for providers to negotiate AGAINST these horrid discounts is to jack their "retail" or rack prices. So that inflation is NOT THE COST to anybody.

When I get an insurance "discount" from CVS --- doesn't mean that ANYONE PAID the difference in cost. I've investigated and asked. Walgreens/CVS gets NO reimbursement on 80% of what they sell at "discount" to you. IN FACT -- I got stuck because of ObamaCare and had to find a way around the "RETAIL" prices on drugs that CVS was asking. I told them that NOBODY ever pays that cost. Embarrassed good friends behind the counter with people waiting. They pulled me aside, gave me a "GoodRX" discount card and SUDDENLY --- the drug was CHEAPER TO ME than anything an Insurance company had ever negotiated.

GoodRX and others have figured out that there is no real "retail" or list price for drugs. They do this because they NEGOTIATE with the pharmacies directly in response for providing advertising for them. Something the insurers do not do. IN FACT -- pharmacies LOVE GoodRx because INSURERS are in COMPETITION with them as MOST insurers push their own "by mail" pharmacies.

WalMart ALSO figured this out. Which is why the cheapest place in America to buy Pharma is at Walmart.

This applies to your GP doc as well. He/She have been PUMMELED TO DEATH on pricing discounts. They make LESS than veterinarians for similar services and yet vet services are CHEAPER to the uninsured. So they RAISE their rates to negotiate with the insurers and then TRY TO convince "non-insured" patients that those rates for services are real. But they are not. NOBODY pays them. It's ALL negotiable.

And the BEST KIND OF NEGOTIATING, is to have the REAL prices of products and services governed by OPEN competition in a free market WITHOUT so many intermediaries. Right now -- even DOCs, don't know what stuff cost..

 

[Marion Morrison]

A medicine I could get 2 years ago for $16 cash is now $56.

So I find someone with insurance can get it for $11 and pay them $20.

Such bullshit it is.

Big Pharma is so locked into the government it's not even funny or right

 

[flacaltenn]

A medicine I could get 2 years ago for $16 cash is now $56.

So I find someone with insurance can get it for $11 and pay them $20.

Such bullshit it is.

Big Pharma is so locked into the government it's not even funny or right

SERIOUSLY -- try the Pharma cards like GoodRx. They fixed a LOT of that. Same thing as having an insurer -- "discount" it for you... No questions. No personal details. No nagging you with emails and advertising.

 

[beagle9]

A medicine I could get 2 years ago for $16 cash is now $56.

So I find someone with insurance can get it for $11 and pay them $20.

Such bullshit it is.

Big Pharma is so locked into the government it's not even funny or right

SERIOUSLY -- try the Pharma cards like GoodRx. They fixed a LOT of that. Same thing as having an insurer -- "discount" it for you... No questions. No personal details. No nagging you with emails and advertising.

. The system needs fixing, and the inconsistencies worked out for all involved.. It shouldn't be that a person should have to hear information on the street so to speak, but rather that everyone knows exactly what is going on, and the correct information is obtained as is needed by the system being set up this way.

 

[Flopper]

. The medical industry has it's own economic value going, but what has happened is that somehow the industry has snowballed into a freight train that is mowing patients and insurance companies down, instead of keeping a healthy balance going in as far as it's cost and services go. It is my belief that people are paying with their lives when they can't pay with money anymore. And these people on here boasting about how they can pay their medical cost out of pocket are either lying or thinking that we are a bunch of fools on this forum. One might pay out of pocket for some things, but when it gets serious, then lawyers and deeds to property or assets start flying out people's names, and into other people's names quick fast and in a hurry. Then who pays ? We all do that's who.

The manifest outcomes/observations you've described is a consequence of market structure, which is one dimension of an economy. [1] Market structures are qualified in part by where on the continuum of government price control they lay. As a consequence of the economy in which the market structure exists, some structures one the continuum are inherently more laissez faire and others are less so (One could as easily say some are more commanded and others less so....Remember, we're talking about a continuum, so one can use either endpoint as the point of reference). Regarding the context you've raised, the other quality of market structure that is controlling is the nature of competition.

Insofar as in the U.S. the market structure for healthcare and health insurance is monopolistically competitive and, in terms of pricing, relatively more rather than less laissez faire, the problems you've identified are intrinsic. That is to say, so long as a market structure is laissez faire enough [2], the problems you've noted are unavoidable, and as we all know, intractable. Those problems can be attenuated by adjusting either the extent to which the market is laissez faire or by altering the market structure.

The majority of people and elected leaders in the U.S. have thus far eschewed notions of reducing the extent to which the healthcare and health insurance market is laissez faire, and AFAIK, nobody who matters has proposed willfully changing the market structure. The simple reality is that one cannot rationally declare a non price-controlled and non-profit controlled market competitive and ask the firms in the market not to compete to garner the most profits they can in return for the resources they used to provide the goods/services they sell to earn profit.

That's the economics of it, and economics doesn't care about emotion. It recognizes emotion's role in shaping supply and demand curves, but it doesn't whether one has or doesn't have the good/service one may desire. It cares only about the buying and selling behavior exhibited by participants in a economy. Political science, politics, insofar as the buying and selling of ideas/policies about governance is concerned, is the realm of what people like, want, don't like, etc. comes into play. [3]

Note:

1. Within an economy, different industries can operate under different market structures. For instance, in the U.S., the market structure for most industries is that of monopolistic competition. Healthcare and health insurance operates under that market structure. Electricity and water, on the other hand, operate in a monopoly market structure. Nondifferentiable goods and services operate in the market structure called "perfect competition."
   
2. "Enough" being however much it takes such that sellers (buyers too, however, the focus of your remarks is on the supply side; thus I've written "sellers"), behaving in what they believe is their own best interest, act, as we observe them doing in the U.S., as profit maximizers.
3. As we say in my industry, "the only thing that's confounding is the people." That saying encapsulates why business operations and economics are the disciplines in which I made my career. As someone who's input is based on empiricism, I and my staff mostly don't have to care whether people like or don't like "it." I need only articulate what is and/or what most likely is based on the available information and what one can expect (the nature and extent of risk associated with various solution approaches/options) based on what is and our understanding of "it." That a solution will "suck" for someone other than my client isn't what I'm paid to address. (That's not to say I'm not aware of the "sucking" that'll befall someone else, but I'm paid to maximize, across multiple parameters, the "not sucking" for my clients.)

. The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system. It has gotten way out of hand as evidenced in the itemized statements that people are getting from their Healthcare providers and their insurance providers. To much corruption, over charging, and bad products or services being the norm in the nation anymore, and Americans deserve better than this kind of situation now.

The healthcare industry needs to be taken out of the for profit system, and should be placed in the non-profit status or system.

That is one of the normative policy/solution options that exists. It's not the one I most prefer, but it's one I'd be willing to give a try.

Most healthcare is already nonprofit or provided by the government. Only 18% of our hospital are operated for profit. Over a third of our doctors work for nonprofits. Almost half of our nursing homes are not for profit. Government pays for 62% of the healthcare and most of the rest is paid for by non-profit health insurance organizations.

What is the point you're attempting to make?

Only 18% of our hospital are operated for profit.

By whose reckoning? In 2013, there were 5,724 hospitals in the U.S., according to the American Hospital Association. Of these, 2,903 hospitals are nonprofit and 1,025 are for-profit. Additionally, 1,045 are owned by state or local (county, hospital district) government entities.

Over a third of our doctors work for nonprofits.

No matter for whom they work, doctors, like everyone who works for wages/salary, are for-profit workers. Doctors, may occasionally their volunteer services via, say, organizations like Doctors Without Borders, but every one I've seen and been treated by requires I (my insurers) pay them a fee, one that includes a provision for profit, in return for having seen me.

Government pays for 62% of the healthcare and most of the rest is paid for by non-profit health insurance organizations.

Since when? Most people in the U.S. do not qualify for government paid health insurance coverage. Medicare doesn't kick-in until one is over sixty and most people don't meet the income and asset requirements of Medicaid. What most people have employer coordinated health insurance, and every one of those insurance companies is a for-profit corporation.

No, most of the health insurance plans come from nonprofits such as the Blue Cross Blue Shield companies, Kaiser Permanente or government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA. Of the 154 health plans in the United States with at least 100,000 enrollees, 97 (or 63%) are nonprofit, 41 are for-profit (27%), and 16 (10%) are government.

Being nonprofit does not mean you don't make money; that is revenues exceeds expenses. Nonprofit simple means no one owns a the business in the way that shareholders own a for-profit corporation. Thus income can not be distributed to owners. All income is retained within the organization to expand and enhance services.

In a nonprofit corporation Income cannot personally benefit any individual, as it does in a profit-driven corporation. Salaries are not considered personal benefits because they are necessary for operation of the corporation. However, an excessive salary may cause a corporation to lose its nonprofit status making it subject to taxes.
http://www.nonprofithealthcare.org/resources/BasicFacts-NonprofitHealthPlans.pdf
Government funds nearly two-thirds of U.S. health care costs: American Journal of Public Health study | Physicians for a National Health Program

 

[Flopper]

A medicine I could get 2 years ago for $16 cash is now $56.

So I find someone with insurance can get it for $11 and pay them $20.

Such bullshit it is.

Big Pharma is so locked into the government it's not even funny or right

SERIOUSLY -- try the Pharma cards like GoodRx. They fixed a LOT of that. Same thing as having an insurer -- "discount" it for you... No questions. No personal details. No nagging you with emails and advertising.

I've used GoodRx several times. It's a good supplement for most insurance formulates because formulates always leave stuff out that doctors prescribe. However, nothing beats the savings you get by ordering generic equivalents from Canada for US brand name drugs with no US generics. I save about 60% of the US drug price every month on two drugs, over $250 a month.