Ted Cruz’s nightmare: Obamacare helps people!

[Brown_Pride]

Look at it this way.

You go see your doctor and negotiate a price, now add an insurance company in the middle(complete with its own cost ans employees that need to be paid) does that lower or raise the price? now add government on top of that, (complete with its own cost ans employees that need to be paid) do you think that lowers or increases the price?

Adding more steps/people will never, I repeat, never lower cost. Single payer is the best way to go, and who that single payer should be is the only discussion we should be having...

that's a pretty myopic way of looking at it.
There's more cost to medical care than labor overhead. I'd take an increase to labor overhead over recouping write off expenses.

That 1 $20 box of kleenex isn't $20 because they are paying salaries, it's $20 because they are trying to recoup the cost on the 10 other boxes that were never paid for.

 

[Brown_Pride]

Where's the idiocy in not wanting to have part of your income forcibly taken to cover some one else's expenses?

that's the part I get. The idiocy comes in where Acri1 is pointing out. Why not use that same money to reduce cost overall or at the VERY LEAST benefit your fellow man? Same $$$ less suffering.

 

[DEAD7]

you're* and i have the dark background, so it really is a struggle

Damn, I never even thought about that.





On the plus side, I'm just spewing anti big government rhetoric, and making little to no sense at all apparently. So you aren't missing much.




I'm beginning to see why so many free thinkers end up going with the status quo. Your labeled a sociopath if you dont.

 

[DEAD7]

that's a pretty myopic way of looking at it.
There's more cost to medical care than labor overhead. I'd take an increase to labor overhead over recouping write off expenses.

That 1 $20 box of kleenex isn't $20 because they are paying salaries, it's $20 because they are trying to recoup the cost on the 10 other boxes that were never paid for.

Absolutely, my point is adding overhead will never lower cost, and Obamacare adds a lot of it.

 

[Brown_Pride]

Americans tend to have higher rates of obesity, narcotics use and homicide than people in some other countries. And there is not much that doctors can do about that.

If those who make international comparisons were serious, instead of clever, they would compare the things that medical science can have a great effect on — cancer survival rates, for example. Americans have some of the highest cancer survival rates in the world, and for some particular cancers, the highest.

The quality of the medical care itself is not the problem. Few — if any — countries can match American medical training, medical technology or the development of life-saving pharmaceutical drugs in the United States. Most countries with government-controlled medical care cannot come close to matching how fast an American can get medical treatment, particularly from specialists.
Where this idea that America has bad or worse healthcare comes from.

We get more, and it cost more.

If we want ed to really reduce cost, we would pass federal legislation putting an end to state regulation of insurance companies. That would instantly eliminate thousands of state mandates, which force insurance to cover everything from wigs to marriage counseling, depending on which special interests are influential in which states.

cancer isn't the end all to medicine. Hell simple shyt that we donate to 3rd world countries like antibiotics would help so many out. Right now if i didn't have antibiotics or insurance in order to get some i'd have to go to the emergency room, pay a thousand dollars, they'd give me a prescription and i'd take it to walmart and get a $4 bottle of penicillin (or its generic equivalent). If I have insurance I have to pay $50 bucks out of pocket, I then get the same prescription, my insurance covers the 950 and i get my $4 for free.

all for medicine that cost what? $1 to make? That's a low level of medical care that some people don't even get.

 

[DEAD7]

that's the part I get. The idiocy comes in where Acri1 is pointing out. Why not use that same money to reduce cost overall or at the VERY LEAST benefit your fellow man? Same $$$ less suffering.

It ends up costing much more... actually take that back, I believe it will end up costing much more*, and I'm not just talking in terms of money. Those who dont want the reduction in quality should be able to opt out. forcing everyone into the same shytty care is wrong.

 

[Brown_Pride]

Absolutely, my point is adding overhead will never lower cost, and Obamacare adds a lot of it.

again you're missing the point.
Right now:
$100 labor overhead
$10,000.00 expenses written off as a loss
Total Cost: 11,000.00

Future:
$300 labor overhead
ONLY $1,000 written off as a loss
Total Cost: 1,300.00

Future wins.
Clearly these are simple numbers but the idea is the same. right now the chief cost is in lost/written off billings.

The 11k write off in current is what is causing your premiums to be so high and also your kleenex to cost so much.

 

[DEAD7]

cancer isn't the end all to medicine. Hell simple shyt that we donate to 3rd world countries like antibiotics would help so many out. Right now if i didn't have antibiotics or insurance in order to get some i'd have to go to the emergency room, pay a thousand dollars, they'd give me a prescription and i'd take it to walmart and get a $4 bottle of penicillin (or its generic equivalent). If I have insurance I have to pay $50 bucks out of pocket, I then get the same prescription, my insurance covers the 950 and i get my $4 for free.

all for medicine that cost what? $1 to make? That's a low level of medical care that some people don't even get.

end all? no. But its a pretty big deal. Lets not trivialize it.

and the material cost to make a drug is only part of the cost.

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Absolutely, my point is adding overhead will never lower cost, and Obamacare adds a lot of it.

facts show otherwise

 

[DEAD7]

again you're missing the point.
Right now:
$100 labor overhead
$10,000.00 expenses written off as a loss
Total Cost: 11,000.00

Future:
$300 labor overhead
ONLY $1,000 written off as a loss
Total Cost: 1,300.00

Future wins.
Clearly these are simple numbers but the idea is the same. right now the chief cost is in lost/written off billings.

The 11k write off in current is what is causing your premiums to be so high and also your kleenex to cost so much.

Oh I get how they are teling us it will work.

What I'm saying is thats bullsh*t...

Every estimate of health cost in every nation(thats moved closer to socialized medicine) has been grossly underestimated. If we look at history we have no reason what so ever to expect America to be different... other than Obama said so.

 

[DEAD7]

facts show otherwise

I'm listening... Go on.

 

[acri1]

We pay more cause we get more. Simple as that.

I back charity as the answer.

To you prior point though, now you can opt out, you can choose to not have healthcare, under obamacare its mandated by the federal government... its completely different.

Was debating whether or not to let this slide, but....NO. Chartiy isn't the answer to shyt, there's not enough charity in the world to help everybody that can't afford insurance. To say otherwise is to ignore basic math.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolynmcclanahan/2012/04/23/is-charity-the-answer-to-healthcare/

Over and over again, when I press free market advocates on how we will provide care for those who have no money, they point to charity. Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Michele Bachman champion this avenue. I would like to poke some holes in the argument that charity is the answer.

I broke this down into two exercises:

1. Charity pays for the uninsured.
2. Take away Medicaid entirely and move toward the free market path

I would also do an exercise on taking away Medicare, but after seeing the Tea Party activists waving signs, “Don’t touch my Medicare,” I think even free market advocates wouldn’t touch that one.

First, how much does health care cost? According to the last OECD report, in the U.S. in 2009, we pay about $7,960 per person per year for health care in this country. This is way too much. Of this $7,960, taxpayers pay $3,660 of the bill and the rest comes from private sources. The average OECD country pays TOTAL $3,233 per person per year.

How much do we give to charity? According to Giving USA Foundation, a wonderful resource on how we donate in the U.S., we gave a total of $291 billion away in 2010. This is about $930 per person given to charity for every adult and child in this country. Here is their breakdown:

Recipient Organization 2010 Contributions (billions)
Religion $100.63
Education $41.67
Foundations $33
Human Services $26.49
Public-society benefit $24.24
Health $22.83
International affairs $15.77
Arts, cultures, humanities $13.28
Environment, animals $6.66
Others $6.32
Medical donations support health care systems and disease research. Of course, part of the money dedicated to religious donations and foundations is funneled to health care.

Now on to the exercise. First scenario – pay for all the uninsured with charitable dollars:

If we had to depend on charity to take care of the uninsured, how much would we need? To provide coverage for the 50 million uninsured people in our country, based on our latest OECD rate of $7,960 per year, we would need about $398 billion. For charity to fund this, we would have to stop all other charitable pursuits, plus increase our charitable donations by another $108 billion per year.

Let’s say we create a wonderfully efficient health care system, and only need the OECD average of $3,233 per year to take care of all the uninsured. The need would now go down to $162 billion. This is over half of what we give to charity now. Do you think any of these other worthy causes would be willing to give up their charitable dollars in the name of helping the uninsured? Many charities asked the Supreme Court to uphold the health care law. They know charity is not the answer.

Scenario two – lets get rid of Medicaid as we move to a totally free market system:

Medicaid currently covers about 60 million individuals, or roughly 20% of our population. Although the elderly and disabled account for only 25% of the Medicaid population, they are responsible for 72% of Medicaid expenditures. The rest are children who need inexpensive care and and taking care of the young is very important.

What is the current Medicaid budget including state and federal dollars? About $400 billion. Simple math based on these rough numbers – Medicaid patients cost an average of about $6,667 per person per year, which is less than our average OECD number. Health care for the young folks on Medicaid costs about $2,500 per person each year. The elderly and disabled patients cost about $19,000 per person per year – this includes all the big dollars Medicaid pays toward nursing home care.

Pretend we get rid of Medicaid. Now the $400 billion in taxes each year has to be collected by charities and divided as they see fit for health care. We are depending on donors to give more and hope charities do the right thing with the money. We are asking our citizens to more than double their charitable contributions? Given our population of 313 million people total, every man, woman, and child would have to give $1,278 to charity to take care of the population covered by Medicaid. Even if we brought average health care costs down to OECD average, we would need to collect $194 billion in charity, which equates to $620 everyone would have to donate to charity for health care each year to replace Medicaid.

So is charity the answer? I don’t think so. There are better ways.

 

[acri1]

Americans tend to have higher rates of obesity, narcotics use and homicide than people in some other countries. And there is not much that doctors can do about that.

If those who make international comparisons were serious, instead of clever, they would compare the things that medical science can have a great effect on — cancer survival rates, for example. Americans have some of the highest cancer survival rates in the world, and for some particular cancers, the highest.

The quality of the medical care itself is not the problem. Few — if any — countries can match American medical training, medical technology or the development of life-saving pharmaceutical drugs in the United States. Most countries with government-controlled medical care cannot come close to matching how fast an American can get medical treatment, particularly from specialists.
Where this idea that America has bad or worse healthcare comes from.

We get more, and it cost more.

If we want ed to really reduce cost, we would pass federal legislation putting an end to state regulation of insurance companies. That would instantly eliminate thousands of state mandates, which force insurance to cover everything from wigs to marriage counseling, depending on which special interests are influential in which states.

Bullshyt. We have better cancer survival rates than some countries but otherwise our medical system is nothing special. We even have worse infant mortality rates than most other developed countries, and that can't be blamed on obesity. Our healthcare certainly isn't good enough to justify spending double what everybody else spends.

http://www.rwjf.org/en/research-pub...u-s--health-care-compare-internationally.html

A common theme is how the U.S. health care system stacks up when compared to the rest of the world and the impact that reform could have on it. Recent surveys show that the majority of Americans believe that despite spotty coverage, high costs and other problems, the U.S. health care system—and the quality of health care delivered—is the best in the world. But is it really?

An analysis from the Urban Institute looks at the evidence on how quality of care in the United States compares to that in other countries and provides implications for health reform. Authors Elizabeth Docteur and Robert Berenson find that international studies of health care quality do not in and of themselves provide a definitive answer to this question.

What they do show is that the evidence for American superiority in quality of care (or lack thereof) is a mixed bag, with the nation doing relatively well in some areas—such as cancer care—and less well in others—such as mortality from treatable and preventable conditions.

And while evidence base is incomplete and suffers from other limitations, it does not provide support for the oft-repeated claim that the “U.S. health care is the best in the world.” In fact, there is no hard evidence that identifies particular areas in which U.S. health care quality is truly exceptional.

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/hea...est_health_care_in_the_world_you_judge_1.html

"Best" health care in the world? You judge...
Posted by John McDonough July 24, 2013 12:10 PM


The two most influential Americans trying to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act have a clear reason for doing so. U.S. House Speaker John Boehner calls our health care system "the best health care delivery system in the world." U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says we have "the finest health care system in the world." Who would want to mess with that?

Who indeed?

Take a look at the chart below which was published in the July 10 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association in an important and under-reported article, "The State of US Health, 1990-2010 Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors" (available free).




Shorthand: green indicates better performance, yellow average performance, and red worse performance. The U.S. has the highest number of reds and the lowest number of greens of any nation in this selection of nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The good news is that, between 1990-2010 (from 75.2 to 78.2 between 1990-2010), the U.S. has seen improved outcomes on life expectancy and other important health indicators. The bad news is, our rate of improvement is among the worst of all leading industrialized nations, and dropped from 18th to 27th in age standardized death rate between 1990-2010. Here is the article's conclusion:

"From 1990 to 2010, the United States made substantial progress in improving health. Life expectancy at birth and HALE increased, all-cause death rates at all ages decreased, and age-specific rates of years lived with disability remained stable. However, morbidity and chronic disability now account for nearly half of the US health burden, and improvements in population health in the United States have not kept pace with advances in population health in other wealthy nations.

"The United States spends the most per capita on health care across all countries, lacks universal health coverage, and lags behind other high-income countries for life expectancy and many other health outcome measures. High costs with mediocre population health outcomes at the national level are compounded by marked disparities across communities, socioeconomic groups, and race and ethnicity groups. Although overall life expectancy has slowly risen, the increase has been slower than for many other high-income countries. In addition, in some US counties, life expectancy has decreased in the past 2 decades, particularly for women.

"Decades of health policy and legislative initiatives have been directed at these challenges; a recent example is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is intended to address issues of access, efficiency, and quality of care and to bring greater emphasis to population health outcomes. There have also been calls for initiatives to address determinants of poor health outside the health sector including enhanced tobacco control initiatives, the food supply, physical environment, and socioeconomic inequalities."


Much to learn from this study which is part of a growing literature on the "global burden of disease" undertaken by a significant number of health researchers from all over the world.

Because the U.S. spends as much as 50% more per person on health care than the average of our leading peer nations, we might expect to do better or at least as well as our international peers. Not so.

"Finest" and "best" health care system in the world? Not even close.

 

[DEAD7]

Was debating whether or not to let this slide, but....NO. Chartiy isn't the answer to shyt, there's not enough charity in the world to help everybody that can't afford insurance. To say otherwise is to ignore basic math.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolynmcclanahan/2012/04/23/is-charity-the-answer-to-healthcare/

The amount of money donated to charity would increase once it stopped being taken.
and the amount of people needing care would drop dramatically. The incentive to avoid risky behavior would be a lot greater and in the interest of self preservation(one of, if not the strongest incentive there is) behavior would change.

Pointing out how much we give now while part of our income is being taken for care of the poor, cant possibly be taken serious by anyone with a functioning brain.

If you are saying there isnt enough -NOW-, i agree, and dont see why anyone would expect there to be...

Bullshyt. We have better cancer survival rates than some countries but otherwise our medical system is nothing special. We even have worse infant mortality rates than most other developed countries, and that can't be blamed on obesity. Our healthcare certainly isn't good enough to justify spending double what everybody else spends.

http://www.rwjf.org/en/research-pub...u-s--health-care-compare-internationally.html




http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/hea...est_health_care_in_the_world_you_judge_1.html

Infant morality rates or no more defining than cancer rates.

and no one is arguing that we dont spend a retarded amount on HC. The question is why, and what should be done to lower cost.

 

[TheReal_Broke_88m3_13]