Sorry, my apology for any misunderstanding. I was not offended, but was merely making a response. If such response was misdirected due to my failure to understand your post, then the fault is mine. :smack:
And I’ll be most pleased to know that we are in agreement after all.
The faith healers and witch doctors would make out like bandits under the Republican plan, as those without the ability to analyze things go with a solution that costs less. Find the quack lobby and you’ll find the source of Republican funding.
Something that confuses me is how he compared it to a regulated utility. Regulated utilities usually have no problem lowering rates, but have to get approval before raising them. Romney seems to be saying that take away regulations and we’ll have lower prices, but using the utility analogy regulations are keeping prices from going even higher.
I don’t think they can get much worse then they are now. Like he said, People go for a test and make their co-pay then the hospital charges whatever it wants for the procedure. I recently had outpatient surgery and was flabbergasted that it cost 70,000 dollars. It wasn’t even major surgery.
The price gouging is coming from the greedy hospitals and their billing. Things got out of control and we need to reign in the amount they can charge for a procedure or they will charge whatever they want. This is why having the states handle it will be a good thing. In Massachusetts it is working well.
One thing I’ve been thinking about for a while is the price hospitals are charged for their equipment. A few years ago my wife and I were at her pulmonologist and he mentioned, I forget what it was, but some item that sold in hardware stores for something like 20c a piece, but the same exact item when manufactured for medical purposes costs something like $15 a piece, or something like that. And that made me wonder, how much lower would hospital costs be if they weren’t gouged by suppliers.
Police and fire departments work like that, you don’t pay any user fees you just pay taxes and call them when necessary. Some people make excessive calls to the police, but by and large people are responsible enough to not make 10 calls to the police each month just for the hell of it.
If our police system was run the way our health system was run, that would be miserable. People who need to but can’t afford to call, people afraid to call because they’ll be labeled with a ‘high risk crime victim’ status and their coverage dropped or impossible to get, people who lose their coverage when they need it most.
If our police worked the way our health care does, there would be large scale rioting.
I’ve heard that veterinarians prescribe a number of medications that (a) are chemically identical to the stuff we get, only they (b) cost decidedly less, since people aren’t usually going to shell out their life’s savings or have massive insurance policies backing them up when it comes to a sick pet.
That is true. The drugs are a whole lot easier to get as well.
That said, they now have pet health insurance, although I don’t know much about it. My vet was pushing it pretty hard the last time we were there and she wanted to do some tests. The vets want on the gravy train too and creating pet health insurance is the way there.
Getting back to Mitt - I think it’s important to remember that there may not be any internal consistency in his stance. He may not have reviewed all the facts, thoughtfuly considered all the implications, and then drawn a reasonable conclusion (if he has, it isn’t obvious). Instead - he seems to have gone all knee-jerk and opposed that which is Democratic, simply because. I think this quote from his recent CPAC speech proves it:
Huh!!! We will endure government healthcare AND cuts in Medicare??? Government healthcare is bad because it might lead to cuts in Medicare? Does he even understand that Medicare is . . . . . wait for it . . . . . . government healthcare? The irony is so thick it burns.
I can’t believe I’m defending them, but there are reasons for high costs. The parts need to be high-quality, and they are often tracked so they can be re-called/replaced if a batch is found to be bad. The same thing occurs for parts used in aviation, nuclear power plants, and other critical applications.
You also see this in the food industry. There was just a recall of hydrolyzed protein made by a particular plant after a particular period. Food manufacturers keep track of their ingredients so they know what to recall. This adds cost.
One of the major source of funding for the HCR currently being considered is cuts to Medicare. This has not been done in a corner, but is common knowedge to everyone who has followed the current HCR effort. You should educate yourself before sneering at the ignorance of others.
The current HCR bill is very similar to the Massachusetts system Romney helped create. It has been a failure at lowering costs, premiums in Massachusetts are growing very quickly. Perhaps Romney has learned from his mistakes. I hope the rest of the country can learn from them too, instead of repeating them as some seem to be anxious to do.
Where do you buy your prescriptions??? Walmart maybe? Have you ever bought the $4.00 drugs there? No one ever thought about paying for there drugs direct, without insurance. And now all the other pharmacies are having to match the 4.00 prescriptions. Wow, free market society, hummm!!!! You don't run around and compare prices, sick and limping driving from store to store, no you know Walmart offered it and now all the others do to.... soooooooo where ever you go the prices are low!!!!! F#%ing daaaaaaaaa
I found out my Insurance was paying over $900.00 for 2 bottles of Nexium! What the hell… who in there right mind would ever pay that amount, no wonder the costs are so high. I would love to sell my products for 10 times there worth, but guess what - no one would pay for it!
Why is this soooo hard for people?
I’m not sure if you agree or disagree with me. Maybe you’re overwrought about something. Relax. Take a deep breath. Otherwise I’ll be forced to conclude, judging by this example, that coherent communication is perhaps not your strongest suit.
Are you saying that the Giant Economy Hospital with low, low prices would be known to everybody, like Walmart? And would the Giant Economy Hospital, like Walmart, make its primary business the sale of cheap, crappy goods/services in order to have those remarkably low, low prices? And so we wouldn’t actually need to comparison shop for our health care because we would all know right where to go? (“Oh, I’m going to MegaClinic for my liver transplant! They’re going to do it for 999 bucks, flat cost! I’m not sure what kind of liver I’m getting, but you can’t beat the price!”)
And so now everybody sells for Walmart prices, even if their goods aren’t cheap crappy junk?
And why does your insurance company pay so much for Nexium? Don’t they know about Walmart?
Or something?
Oh, and not to play junior mod or anything, but you’re new here, so perhaps you don’t know-- lines like your post title are not appropriate in this forum. If you want to insult me, take me to the Pit.
Thats not the point. The point is that people like Romney are so clueless/unprincipled that they will rail against government run health care and entitlement programs and then a few seconds later rail against cuts in medicare.
Its like the tea party members who are on social security and medicare who rail against welfare & government healthcare. Or Glenn Beck saying his hatred of progressivism started because of all the books he got for ‘free’ at the library.
But here is a good article on the subject of how some of the reforms being proposed on the federal level didn’t work on the state level.
There are times the market is important. On pharmacychecker you can buy 20mg brand pills of nexium for about $0.90 and generics for $0.30. Or you can buy one of the endless OTC drugs (zantac, cimetidine, etc) or generics that will run less than $30/month.
Prescriptions make up about 10-15% of all health spending ($291 billion in 2008) and they are an area where market forces can work. But to really make them work, you have to understand a decent amount about drugs. You have to understand the classes, the various drugs within a class, etc. Some people do, some don’t.
Either way, even if you are stuck with one drug you can still get a better deal by shopping around.
Like I said, I think with pharma and elective surgery, market forces play an important role. But for other things like emergency care, end of life care, I doubt it matters.
FTR, one of the reasons other wealthy countries keep their health care costs so low is the government investigates to find the cheapest, but highest quality health care possible. So market forces (bottom up) are important, but so are top down attempts at comparative effectiveness.
I understand that there are extra costs involved in making items and machines that are appropriate for medical facilities, but I also think, no cite, just my opinion, that companies raise the cost of their products a little more just because what they are selling is for medical use.
My wife works in healthcare. She has seen a person on Title 19 (I think that’s the name) go to the emergency room for Tylenol. They told her Tylenol isn’t a prescription medicine and she can go buy a bottle for a few dollars at a local store. Her response was “It’s okay, I don’t care. My insurance will pay for it.” Instead of the patient buying a $3 bottle of Tylenol the insurance gets hit with an emergency room visit bill. While this is an anecdotal example I hope it helps explains the type of strange things that can happen.