Ok, so now we have a clearer picture of aspects of health care that cause our costs to rise. The OP’s question was “where does the money go?” and it sounds like there are a few major recipients: more techs/employees, pharmeceutical companies, hospitals, equipment manufacturers, and insurance companies. It just seems like such an overly complicated system, with massive inefficiencies and redundancies, and replete with greedy corporations (maybe that’s redundant in itself). What do we know about the profits of these sectors of our economy?
Hospital profits have been declining in recent years, and according to my company’s last quarterly report, close to a third of all US hospitals are operating in the red.
Hi,
I’m the OP and yes, that does get back to ther basic question. While there are many reasons for the rise in the pricetag for health care, there are (well, were) few explanations for where those $ were actually going. I mentioned that my physician isn’t getting rich, and as noted hospitals are losing money and in many cases closing beds. I don’t know any rich nurses for that matter either.
From all the posts above the answer seems to be that money is flowing to the many causes listed (expensive equipment, drugs, a larger number of healthcare-related workers who don’t make a lot, etc etc) and then most of it ripples its way back into the economy via salaries of all the employees in those areas, with perhaps a few disproportionate chunks going to individuals like CEO’s.
Don’t forget too, that money billed out != money due in. Insurance companies take a significant “contractual adjustment” that is written off. So, if a hospital bills out $3 million per month, it’s not going to get that much back.
Robin
The link i listed has a breakdown of the factors in healthcare cost increases.
Litigation and risk management - 7%
Other - 5%
Drugs, medical devices and other medical advances - 22%
Increased consumer demand - 15%
Government mandates and regulation - 15%
Rising provider expenses - 18%
General inflation - 18%
Maybe some hospitals are not making as much money as they had been before (which is one definition of “losing money”) but our local hospital has over 2 Billion dollars in cash assets. They’re doing fine.
>General inflation - 18%
The header in the link read 200102, would that mean general inflation was 18% from 2001 to end 2002? Seems high. Otherwise I’m glad to see medical advances as the biggest cause of cost increase. I’d pay $10,000 to be free of bad arthritis (if I or my insurer had the money); it would be worth it unless you could get it cheaper.
Business Week just had an article on the bogusness of malpractice insurance “persuasion by anecdote” reasons to keep raising premiums.
Here’s a link, if you want to subscribe:
http://search.businessweek.com/search97cgi/s97_cgi?action=FilterSearch&ServerKey=Primary&filter=bwfilt.hts&command=GetMenu&ResultMaxDocs=500&ResultCount=25&resulttemplate=bwarchiv.hts&querytext=malpractice&x=0&y=0
One bit I remember from it: In Nevada, malpractice insurance paid $22,000,000 last? year in claims. 2/3 of that was from the actions of two doctors; the other 1/3 was for all the rest of the doctors in Nevada. The two doctors are still in practice.
Are you sure of this?. Smokers and the obese die young which should mean less life-time healthcare costs. I would think a very long-lived population is more of a financial burden.