Maybe he’s planning to use some of the money from wherever the hell the half a trillion dollars Bush has spent on the Iraq war came from.
Why is it the GOP hasn’t batted an eye that we’ve spent in the mid twelve figures getting several thousand U.S. soldiers maimed and killed, but starts screaming bloody murder when the idea of spending a fraction of that kind of money on keeping American citizens alive pops up?
Universal health care can’t be as pricey as a war that has cost $500,000,000,000 in just over half a decade and has been touted by its supporters as potentially lasting a hundred years.
Other countries pay costs in terms of wait lists and accessablility to services.
The US also has far more specialists than other countries, and The US also subsidizes drugs for much of the rest of the world and I don’t have a problem with that b/c we can afford it more than other countries.
Daagar also makes the excellent point that US tends to have too much care which can also drive down results.
Also, realize that cross-country comparisons are very difficult. Americans tend to be in worse physical shape than other countries so our medical costs should be higher. Then you look at how things are classified such as infant mortality and you can large differences in results/expenditures.
to get back to the original quesiton, the # of uninsured drives up the price of private insurance b/c some of the costs of providing medical care for uninsured gets passed to insurance companies who pass it on to customers. Finally, benefits offered by private insurance has increased over time.
You’d ban direct to patient advertising, which would save drug companies a fortune. Then you’d… well, hell, you wouldn’t have to do much after that because, just like with smoking, the demand would go down once the advertising isn’t there to drive it anymore. And since drug companies would be forced to compete through prices only, you’d be creating a virtuous cycle instead of the unholy rape gang we have now. Holy hand grenade, I just made medical care affordable again!
Reducing doctor/nurse/PA salaries wouldn’t do much. We already pay teachers “the same salaries we pay teachers”, and the education system is an acknowledged money hoovering clusterfuck.
I guess you could also execute the heads of the insurance companies. Damned if I can think of a legal reason to do it, but it sure would feel good.
An excellent point. I’ll be sure to tell my Aunt, who lives in Canada, that she has to give back the stent she got from her heart attack just a few weeks ago. Not exactly sure how she’ll give back her angioplasty but I’m sure that the market will find a way.
That’s quite a thorny subject. For example here very old people won’t usually get major surgery just to get them through a few months more.
But it’s not plain straight rationing or triage. The doctor will discourage the patient and family and the decision will be agreed. In a way I guess it ends up being more humane in many cases.
It happened for my grandma not long ago: heart in a very bad way and choosing between surgery and months of hospital bed, tubing and machines vs. just not waking from siesta one day.
You took from his post that he’s suggesting people should never have angioplasties, even though he explicitly left that door open with ‘except in more extreme cases’?
I think that was Ron Paul’s plan, but he got shouted down by the Republicans. I don’t know all the numbers, but it’s a start, and I hope Obama does more than just pull a few troops out of Iraq and shuffle them to Afghanistan.
Why is it the GOP hasn’t batted an eye that we’ve spent in the mid twelve figures getting several thousand U.S. soldiers maimed and killed, but starts screaming bloody murder when the idea of spending a fraction of that kind of money on keeping American citizens alive pops up?
Universal health care can’t be as pricey as a war that has cost $500,000,000,000 in just over half a decade and has been touted by its supporters as potentially lasting a hundred years.
I was referring to my favorite doomsday numbers from the CBO about the 14-figure unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Medicare Part D, and (to a lesser extent) Social Security. They are just trend lines that could change, but it’s a completely unsexy topic compared to universal health insurance, so I was wondering if Obama had a decent plan for it. I just went to his site and it looks like he wants to negotiate for drug prices, increase the employment tax a bit, and “reduce waste.” Eh, maybe we’ll tackle this one next time around.
I wonder if it’s even possible here in America to attain low per capita rates (seen in other countries) by a top-down approach. If we’re addicted to prescription drugs, liability law, and timely service, we’d never get there anyway. It’s going to take a few generations to change the whole system from the ground up. (Just kidding, I meant one term with Obama.)
Try closer to ten times the cost - 3% for feds, 20%-30% for private sector.
You can find it in the quarterly expense reports.
Aetna Feb 2008: Commercial Medical Benefit Ratio: 80%. That is, they spend 80% of the money they get on medical expenses.
Another wrinkle is that good commercial insurance can pay up to double what medicare would pay for a procedure, making their efficiency worse.
So if medicare pays $500 to the doctor and Aetna pays $1000, medicare is spending 3%, or $15 on overhead whereas Aetna is spending 20%, or $200. That’s a 13.33 ratio.
The difference I guess would be executive bonuses, marketing costs, and having to deal with 50 different rules, and a very fragmented health insurance system. They love pushing different “products” which means you need a lawyer to figure out whether something is covered or not. It’s such a waste of time on everyone’s end.
For United Healthcare 2008:
Expenses
Medical services 9,550 891 -
Marketing, general and
administrative 16,897 16,580 16,472
I find these kinds of arguments to be pretty specious for the most part. How long did it take to get traction in other countries?
New ideas do have extraordinary consequences, but similar plans implemented similarly tend to have similar results.
We only think we’re completely unique and special, but for the most part we tend to be just like other humans in hindsight.
Part of the reason why the Canadians pay less for prescription drugs compared to Americans is that the benefit of having universal healthcare we get a discount by buying bulk. That and there are price cap laws.
The other day on the Toronto radio talk show I listen to, the host was listing off the side effects of prescription drugs for ailments like getting of smoking or shaking leg. The side effects were worse than the ailments (the “cold turkey” smoking drug’s side effect included disturbing dreams, vomiting, and suicidal thoughts).
Do we need so many erectile dysfunction drugs? I think R&D and marketing money could be put into better use than helping old limp dicks.
Perhaps if people concentrated on preventative medicine instead of taking drugs for everything the cost of necessary drugs wouldn’t cost so much.
