nordstrom said:
Yup, thats clear. Its also not something i agree with for 2 reasons.
The first is medical care costs 10x more because there is 10x more of it to use. We also spend much more on many more types of entertainment. You can't compare the world of 40 years ago to the world of today as there are many more options and processes to choose from nowadays. Treatments were not as advanced and there weren't as many of them, this makes up a large % of medical cost increases.
This all fits the model I have described.
The availability of things increases proportionally to the money spent on it. Think of efficiency as a multiplier. If I spend $1T, I get huge improvements. If I spend $1T inefficiently, I still get improvement. With that kind of money, something good happens, right? If I spend $1T efficiently, I get the maximum benefit.
From the provider end, it matters not where the money comes from. There is still lots of money for R&D and treatment. This is a good thing, but not an argument you ever advanced. This is what happens when you plug in a source of unlimited money.
In ignoring this argument, you overlooked its corollary downside: You raise the cost of everything for everyone. The government's money (really, our money, confiscated) has made some real breakthroughs possible. It has also made health care super expensive for people who have to pay.
The 40 years ago stuff is irrelevant. The unlimited payor is the difference.
Your explanation still doesn't hold water because no other country spends as much as the US does on healthcare even though government pays a larger percentage of healthcare costs in those places. Am i to understand more privitization will end this? You are skirting the issue on the fact that an independent article says your idea of privitization is more corrupt and inefficient than a government sponsored program.
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=5365605§ion=news
I'm not skirting shit, brother.
When the free market sets the cost of something, efficiency is maximized and prices are as low as they can get. When something is socialized, prices are controlled by extra-market forces, namely, legislation. When people bitch, government acts.
But it acts in a heavy handed across the board manner. So you will get policies like "you need a referral for a specialist" for EVERYTHING. Referrals will get harder to get, lines at the doctor's office will be 4 hours long to get a referral (!) and fewer people will use the system. Some fat woman who has been there 20 years, and is waiting for that lifetime pension will tell you she cannot help you until you have a "Form 34, Form 36, and Form 112B. And your gateway physician didn;t notarize it. Come back tomorrow."
Costs will drop. So will quality of care.
In both a free market and a socialized scenario, there is a cap on expenditures: market forces and legislation, respectively. Our US model is a hybrid. The government pays for some, and not for others. So, some people have an unlimited payor, which means they use what they need with no regard.
Prices skyrocket. And unlike the socialized model, government has no recourse to legislatively lower prices. Private insured's want the same treatment, and prices goup up up. So do premiums. That's why Velvett pays $500 a month when she is young and healthy. We could ask her, but I doubt her healthcare cost $6000 last year. I know mine didn't. I don;t even know what I pay.
It;s Grandma's fault. And Big brother. Your family is just screwing you.
We have the worst of all worlds from a cost standpoint: partial socialization - for the most expensive group, with no recourse to force prices down.
You want to drop costs: get Grandma off the dole pronto. I could actually live with socialized healthcare for everyone under 25. There is a logic to it.
"And experts who wrote a commentary on the study said converting all investor-owned hospitals to nonprofit status could have saved $6 billion in 2001............Investor-owned hospitals charge outrageous prices for inferior care"
Garbage. Show me an economic thought process behind anything you are posting, not just stats.
As far as your views on medicare overhead, I don't consider you unbiased enough to be a trustworthy person on issues of government interventions (its like asking Rush Limbaugh who i should vote for) so i don't take your explanations seriously without independent proof. 'your explanation' is just that as far as i'm concerned until i see independent evidence. I am trying to find something online by using the words 'medicare 3% overhead myth' but can't find anything.
Try looking up "CAPITALISM". Learn to love it.
I didn;t give you "evidence", I gave you a rationale behind why things break down the way your stats tell you. What evidence do you need?
You know a claim is processed. That is unchanged for any provider.