Why does healthcare cost so much?

Why does healthcare cost so much?
Because of insurance of one type or another.
If everyone had to pay from their own pocket it would be much cheaper.

sorry wrong!! I pay $345 a year for auto insurance. Insurance is not necessarily expensive especially when it gives the companys'
the leverage to bargain with providers. Over a liberals head?

Wrong, my ass. He's exactly right. What the hell does your auto insurance have to do with anything?

There are no market forces to bring down the cost of health care because most of the time a third party is footing the bulk of the bill. Nobody cares if their monthly prescription costs $150 to fill if they are only paying a $10 co-pay. Since the insurance is picking up 90% of the tab there is no reason for the manufacture to reduce the cost of their medications. Thus, they charge a ton of money, insurance companies cover it, but after so long the insurance companies have to raise their premiums to keep up with the rising cost.

The way to bring down the cost of health care is for the consumer to be hit in the pocket more than they currently are.

I worked in the medical field working with health insurance contracts and I can guarantee you that a $150 prescription where the consumer pays $10 that the insurance pays 90% is completely wrong. Health insurance contract a fee schedule for each provider of services and they pay if your lucky a third of what is billed to them and the provider (Doctor, pharmacy, etc) has to write off the rest minus your contracted portion of the bill.
 
Wrong, my ass. He's exactly right. What the hell does your auto insurance have to do with anything?

he said insurance, in general, was wasteful and expensive. I explained that my auto insurance was not wasteful and not expensive. The difference between auto insurance and health insurance is that liberals made competition illegal in health insurance but not in auto insurance.

Catching on now?

That has absolutely nothing to do with why auto insurance is less expensive than health insurance. Does your auto insurance cover every new tire, every oil change, every tune up you get? No. If it did then you'd be paying a hell of a lot more than your $350 a year.

Most people's health insurance covers every single doctor visit, sniffle, and sneeze. It's not really insurance as much as it is a health plan. Throw in the third party payment that I already discussed and there is your reason for the vast difference in cost between the two.
 
sorry wrong!! I pay $345 a year for auto insurance. Insurance is not necessarily expensive especially when it gives the companys'
the leverage to bargain with providers. Over a liberals head?

Wrong, my ass. He's exactly right. What the hell does your auto insurance have to do with anything?

There are no market forces to bring down the cost of health care because most of the time a third party is footing the bulk of the bill. Nobody cares if their monthly prescription costs $150 to fill if they are only paying a $10 co-pay. Since the insurance is picking up 90% of the tab there is no reason for the manufacture to reduce the cost of their medications. Thus, they charge a ton of money, insurance companies cover it, but after so long the insurance companies have to raise their premiums to keep up with the rising cost.

The way to bring down the cost of health care is for the consumer to be hit in the pocket more than they currently are.

I worked in the medical field working with health insurance contracts and I can guarantee you that a $150 prescription where the consumer pays $10 that the insurance pays 90% is completely wrong. Health insurance contract a fee schedule for each provider of services and they pay if your lucky a third of what is billed to them and the provider (Doctor, pharmacy, etc) has to write off the rest minus your contracted portion of the bill.

That was just a random number I threw out. What I said is still true.
 
sorry wrong!! I pay $345 a year for auto insurance. Insurance is not necessarily expensive especially when it gives the companys'
the leverage to bargain with providers. Over a liberals head?

Wrong, my ass. He's exactly right. What the hell does your auto insurance have to do with anything?

There are no market forces to bring down the cost of health care because most of the time a third party is footing the bulk of the bill. Nobody cares if their monthly prescription costs $150 to fill if they are only paying a $10 co-pay. Since the insurance is picking up 90% of the tab there is no reason for the manufacture to reduce the cost of their medications. Thus, they charge a ton of money, insurance companies cover it, but after so long the insurance companies have to raise their premiums to keep up with the rising cost.

The way to bring down the cost of health care is for the consumer to be hit in the pocket more than they currently are.

I worked in the medical field working with health insurance contracts and I can guarantee you that a $150 prescription where the consumer pays $10 that the insurance pays 90% is completely wrong. Health insurance contract a fee schedule for each provider of services and they pay if your lucky a third of what is billed to them and the provider (Doctor, pharmacy, etc) has to write off the rest minus your contracted portion of the bill.

That is how the entire medical industry works. If you go to the hospital, the hospital bills you $50,000. Then the insurance pays them $20,000 and that is considered payment in full. This is why nobody can figure out how much anything really costs. The whole thing is a bloody mess.
 
Wrong, my ass. He's exactly right. What the hell does your auto insurance have to do with anything?

he said insurance, in general, was wasteful and expensive. I explained that my auto insurance was not wasteful and not expensive. The difference between auto insurance and health insurance is that liberals made competition illegal in health insurance but not in auto insurance.

Catching on now?

That has absolutely nothing to do with why auto insurance is less expensive than health insurance. Does your auto insurance cover every new tire, every oil change, every tune up you get? No. If it did then you'd be paying a hell of a lot more than your $350 a year.

Most people's health insurance covers every single doctor visit, sniffle, and sneeze. It's not really insurance as much as it is a health plan. Throw in the third party payment that I already discussed and there is your reason for the vast difference in cost between the two.

We could solve a lot of our problems and reduce costs substantially if health insurance went back to being major medical and didn't cover every little thing.
 
If we would promote preventive medicine as much as we have promoted Viagra, costs would be much lower.

The data shows that preventive medicine programs do not lower the cost of health care.

That depends on your definition of "preventative medicine". You are likely referencing the work of Dartmouth's Institute of Health Policy which is one of the leaders in this area.

Preventative Medicine as it applies to costly and un-necessary screens and tests to "look for disease" costs more money and leads to poor patient outcomes. The simple question of "why order a test if you don't have an idea of what you are going to do with the results?" should be asked. If you order a CT chest in an asymptomatic smoker to look for lung cancer and find an incidental mass in the lungs that leads to a full work up and biopsy to discover it's an old ball of fungus, you have cost the system money and subjected the patient to un-necessary suffering.

However, simple prevention such as annual physicals and lifestyle modification absolutely save money.

Both sides are guilty of this silly canard. When the USJPTF recommended against annual mammograms due to the poor outcomes, people went absolutely batshit crazy. It was likened to death panels.

Guess what? Mammograms are "preventative medicine". So either you live and die by the data or simply join the masses that selectively choose the healthcare cause du joir because it fits their political opinion.

Essay - McCain and Obama Health Plans Promote Myth of Prevention as Cost Cutter - NYTimes.com

The term “preventive medicine” no longer means what it used to: keeping people well by promoting healthy habits, like exercising, eating a balanced diet and not smoking. To their credit, both candidates ardently support that approach.

But the medical model for prevention has become less about health promotion and more about early diagnosis. Both candidates appear to have bought into it: Mr. Obama encourages annual checkups and screening, Mr. McCain early testing and screening.

I am defining preventive medicine as how it does not lower health care costs on a national health policy level, which is the subject of the original post.

Individually, preventive medicine programs lower costs and prevent disease. If one stops smoking, they can expect to have less physician visits that relate to respiratory and ENT complaints.

As a whole, the U.S. populace are not positively affected by the numerous and expensive preventive medicine programs due to the large number of people that continue to smoke, make poor food choices, abuse drugs and alcohol, get pregnant too early, and the list goes on.
 
Its actually rather simple. There is no effective competition in the health care delivery system. The prices are indirectly controlled by Medicare payments. What is needed is to create an incentive so that efficient health care providers are more economically successful than inefficient ones. To put it another way, if there is no incentive to be efficient, no one will be efficient. The standard becomes the least efficient doctor or health care provider will set the standard for the service.
For example, a federal study determined that the health care industry costs for new technology run directly contrary to that for almost all other industries. When new technology is generated in almost all industries other than health care, the costs go down. In health care the costs go up. The author of the study wanted to know why this occurred. The answer is not that anyone is trying to take advantage of the health care industry. It is that the only way to make a profit in the health care industry is to increase the charges for the service. In order to qualify for such an increase, the provider must have a reason for increasing the costs. New technology provides that reason.
In contrast to the health care industry, other industries see a significant reduction in costs when new technology becomes available. Since industries other than health care do not have to comply with price limitations, logically the other industries would increase the costs of new technology to cover the development costs and get a greater profit. However, industries which produce new technology have a secret that the health care industry can not take advantage of. It is that they make more money by making a smaller profit on a large quantity of sales, rather than a greater profit on a smaller quantity of sales. Therefore by reducing prices, they make many more sales and hence the reason for price reductions with respect to new technologies.
 
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he said insurance, in general, was wasteful and expensive. I explained that my auto insurance was not wasteful and not expensive. The difference between auto insurance and health insurance is that liberals made competition illegal in health insurance but not in auto insurance.

Catching on now?

That has absolutely nothing to do with why auto insurance is less expensive than health insurance. Does your auto insurance cover every new tire, every oil change, every tune up you get? No. If it did then you'd be paying a hell of a lot more than your $350 a year.

Most people's health insurance covers every single doctor visit, sniffle, and sneeze. It's not really insurance as much as it is a health plan. Throw in the third party payment that I already discussed and there is your reason for the vast difference in cost between the two.

We could solve a lot of our problems and reduce costs substantially if health insurance went back to being major medical and didn't cover every little thing.

Definitely. It would bring the free market aspect into play, and prices for drugs and Drs office visits would come down accordingly.
 
I don't understand why the price of MRI machines have not gone down in the way that DVD players, VHS players, Flat Screen TVs, etc. have gone down, after an initially high price.

Supply and demand. There are very few places (hospitals and medical facilities) that are in the market to purchase an MRI machine, while nearly everyone has a DVD player, if not three.

Plus, the techology is much more complex with an MRI machine.
 
The problem I see is that the current solutions does not take full acount of all players involved in healthcare. By allowing all the Healthcare insurance companies to still have control over what is paid for in their fee schedules, what premiums to assess to employers for their employees based on age of each individual and allow providers to charge what they do for each code that is billed, the tax payor is still getting screwed.
The government is making this mandated on monthly insurance premiums without addressing everything else that is involved that created the high cost of healthcare. It is comparative to putting a bandaid on a wound that requires suturing first before it can heal properly.

The costs of healthcare is an illusion in the public's eye since nothing is ever paid in full on charges that are submitted to the insurance carrier. They paid alittle over a third of what is billed and the provider must write it off if contracted with carrier. If the public were to see the actual amount that the carriers are paying verses what is charged this definitely would not appear as if Healthcare Providers are charging too much.

The point is it is a game where providers of service have to attempt to increase their charges while the insurance company is always reducing their fee schedules of what they will pay or cover. We only see what is being charged in total amount of services rendered.

Another point is doctors and hospitals charge in time spent with a patient with a code where they can charge more but the time spent does not justify the code they use and they should be using a code that honestly reflects the time spent. They also will order tests if they know the carrier will pay for those even though the reason why they are there does not justify the test being done. They use diagnosis codes that will get the claim paid for example: a person coming in with a headache, they will use a migraine code that the insurance will pay for.

Corruption is occuring at all levels and if they are not all addressed at the same time, this new healthcare act will fail miserasbly and we the tax payors will suffer the most.
 
Private health insurance administration costs are through the roof.
CEOs live like kings. Those make it expensive.
 
Per capital smokers cost medicad and medicar LESS THAN (not more than) non smokers.

Why?

Because they die younger and more quickly than people who don't smoke, that's why.

They don't live long enough to demand new hips, new knees, longe term medications for debilitaring but not fatal medical conditions.

Hey don't believe me?

Take the governments own numbers, include in those every person that they say died from smoking related diseases and include in those the total amounts spend on that class of patients.

Now deduct that number from the total cost of HC the government pays.

Take the remainder and divide that number by the people who didn't die from smoking related diseases.

What you find is that non-smokers cost our government on average, more money than smokers.

Throw in the fact that smokers pay and pay and pay taxes every day for their HC (that they don't really get most of their lives) and you discover that in terms of who costs more and who pays the most?

Non-smokers are driving UP the cost of HC while smokers not only help keep it down but pay MORE in taxes for the previlege, too,
 
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Private health insurance administration costs are through the roof.
CEOs live like kings. Those make it expensive.

Biggest reason is consumers, not the people paying the tab in most cases with employer paid health insurance, over utilize the system.
"It is free so I might as well use it" mentality has ruined American health care.
Blank check health care is the problem.
 
Private health insurance administration costs are through the roof.
CEOs live like kings. Those make it expensive.

Biggest reason is consumers, not the people paying the tab in most cases with employer paid health insurance, over utilize the system.
"It is free so I might as well use it" mentality has ruined American health care.
Blank check health care is the problem.

I'd like to see some statistics to prove that POV.

I doubt you can find them.
 
Biggest reason is consumers, not the people paying the tab in most cases with employer paid health insurance, over utilize the system.
"It is free so I might as well use it" mentality has ruined American health care.
Blank check health care is the problem.

I'd like to see some statistics to prove that POV.

I doubt you can find them.

Of course not. Statistics don't work that way. Data can never prove causation, only correlation. What is required is logical analysis of likely causes and effects to explain the correlation. It's a truism than when a consumer isn't spending their own money, they won't care about price. So it's not surprising that prices have risen as we've transitioned to third party payers as the standard way we finance health care. What IS surprising is that prices haven't gone up even faster than they have.
 
For the Health Care System, we need Universal Health Care, not the horrid for profit system of today.

For our children, we need to do whatever it takes to get them physically active. That has mental benefits as well as physcial. Just living longer is not a good goal. Living longer actively is. One cannot do that as an obese slug.

One of the biggest reasons for the spike in costs is simple..and a dirty little secret.

HMOs went public. They have shareholders to be concerned about.

:eusa_shhh:
 
Private health insurance administration costs are through the roof.
CEOs live like kings. Those make it expensive.

Biggest reason is consumers, not the people paying the tab in most cases with employer paid health insurance, over utilize the system.
"It is free so I might as well use it" mentality has ruined American health care.
Blank check health care is the problem.

I'd like to see some statistics to prove that POV.

I doubt you can find them.

If you had to pay the bill, instead of the insurance company, YOU would question the high prices and shop for a better one.
You want statistics? You can handle the truth.
From 1950 to 1965 health care costs grew at about 3-5% a year. In 1965 85% of Americans paid their own health care expenses, even those that had health insurance! Back then the insurance companies DID NOT run the show. Your doctor DID NOT bill the insurance. Back then YOU paid the bill and sent it to the insurance company for payment. And with most Americans NOT having health insurance the doctors answered to THE CONSUMER, YOU!
From 1965 forward health care costs went from going up 3-5% a year to now at a clip of 15% a year for the last 20 years. Health care in the 50s was 5% of GNP, now it is approaching 20% and rising.
Why? Because we OVER UTILIZE THE SYSTEM. And get this startling fact. NOw we spend 55% of ALL health care dollars on disease care to treat 4% of the population. And 80% of themare over the age of 70! And 7 of the top 8 of those diseases we treat are PREVENTABLE!
Group health care has ruined American health care as it has made us the best producer of DISEASE CARE.
One that has even the slightest knowledge of economics knows that when thew deamnd for services for one sector of the economy goes from 5% to almost 20% in about 2 generations it is OVER UTILIZATION of the system from increased demand.
1965 85% of Americans paid their own health care costs and were BY FAR a healthier nation.
2011 85% of Americans HAVE GROUP HEALTH CARE OR GOVERNMENT PAID FOR HEALTH CARE and look at the massive failure it is cost wise and how unhealthy a nation we are.
We spend all that $$$and you claim there is no evidence to back up that the system is UNSUSTAINABLE, broken, over utlilized and not caused by GROUP HEALTH INSURANCE?
Wake up man.
Ball is in your court.
 
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