Posted on 11/13/2007 7:42:13 AM PST by shrinkermd
...Several American business leaders have come to believe that the American health-care system is not only bad for our health but also for national competitiveness. In the automotive industry, General Motors claims that it spends about $1,600 per car on health care. In Japan, according to GM, Toyota's per automobile healthcare expenditure is just $110.
Health coverage is indeed becoming more expensive for businesses. Over the past eight years, the percentage of firms offering health benefits to employees has dropped significantly, to 60% from 69%.
This decline, however, is almost completely accounted for by businesses with fewer than 10 employees.
These firms find health benefits unaffordable because states have laid a massive burden of over-regulation on small-group health insurance since the early 1990s, making it increasingly expensive
Consider four countries whose health-care systems are often held up as admirable alternatives: Canada, Germany, France and Great Britain. Certainly, the U.S. spends significantly more on health care than those countries do, but these nations also earn significantly less income per person.
Look at it this way: Even after paying for our health care, Americans have far more money left over than their neighbors to spend on other goods and services. It works out to about $8,000 more than the average German or Frenchman, and about $4,000 more than the average Canadian or Briton
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
(1) Your wife is in extraordinary good health. Her individual policy does not have to build in coverage for hundreds of other group members with costly maintenance-intensive diseases.
(2) Her individual policy does not cover all the hundreds of ancillary therapies and treatments that the group policy has to cover, as a result of political pressures from all the acupuncturists, aromatherapists, Wiccan herb healers, etc.
I'd think that (1) is a possibililty and (2) almost a sure bet.
Think twice, type once......
Your point about the illegals is true, but the “legals” (Medicare, Medicaid and your insurance plan) run up the costs just as well.
You're also right about that! But do bear in mind that many Medicaid recipients are illegals, too.
The fact that we demand unlimited care, and the best care, for our parents and grandparents (and our kids too) is the primary driver. Is it wrong to demand that care? No, not if we are willing to foot the bill.
I agree. Are illegal immigrants, frivalous lawsuits, etc. problems? Of course. Are they the major culprit? No, I don’t think so. I think it is increased technology and expectations. For an illustration, sit down and visit with an older person and compare/contrast how medical problems were dealt with early in his/her life versus now. I think there has to be “rationing” to a certain extent. The question is - do you want the government to do it? Or would you rather do it yourself? I would much prefer the latter. If anyone believes that we can have a univeral health care system that can provide the best to everyone at all times, he/she is an idiot. We don’t have unlimited resources.
I quite agree with you that the cause of healthcare expenditure problems does not lie only with illegals. Healthcare costs are a bottomless pit, and as long as everyone demands the latest and the greatest technology and gets someone else to pay for it, costs will continue to skyrocket. I do not see an equitable solution.
LOL!
Working people especially don't have unlimited time to spend competing with non-working people in waiting rooms. By making health care free and equal to all the people without jobs will consume most of the resources. Those with the most rationing line stamina will get exceptional care. Those charged with paying for this system can't make the time investment to get any care until the pain is unbearable.
And you are so right—honesty, morals, integrity and scruples is what it is all about not to mention loyalty but it has to work both ways.
Lawyers have a job to do, I have never blamed them, it is the jury that awards stupidity. Again, morals, etc. . . Some in the medical profession deserve all the litigation they can get but when you had a thoughtful Dr patient relationship it used to be far different. There are always those who think they can make a buck off someone else but again it is juries who I blame and what will change that?
“He concludes thusly: To improve the state of American health care and lighten the burden on business and workers, policy leaders should push for portability of health benefits, transparent pricing for health services, tort reform and more competition among both insurers and providers.”
Right!
The medical industry has learned it is better and more profitable to TREAT an illness than to cure it. So they don’t let anyone including 90 year old bed ridden people die without an expensive fight. On top of that every surgery suite has items that would be used in heart surgery even if most of the procedures done are simple like an appendectomy or any nubmer of similar surgical events. Money grows when you have a well stocked ER and Surgery.
This is true, but look at what happens when very technologically advanced procedures are left totally to the free market, i.e. lasik eye surgery. I’m sure that equipment is very costly, and those who had the procedure done early on paid dearly for it. But now in some cases, it’s a litte more than paying for a few pair of glasses.
You are illustrating my point. We must let the free market reign; regulation and control keep prices high.
(And where do you live that Lasik only costs what a few pair of glasses cost? I’ve been pricing it locally here in Washington DC and it’s $5000 =/- a few hundred.)
There’s an outfit here (Milwaukee area) that advertises $299 per eye. I’m sure there are other costs involved, but it’s come way down.
National Health Care like all other Socialist ideas is really “equal poverty for all”!
or 3. they play lip service to the cost and suck the $$$ from the general fund to line pockets...
"Health care" is the actual benefit. Regardless who pays the bill, "health care" is the doctor, nurse, bandaid, or medicine; whatever is required to actually treat an illness or injury.
"Health coverage" is a quasi-tax, hypothetically intended to spread the risk and cost among enough people to reduce the immediate cost to an injured or sick person. In reality, "health coverage", its monumental bureaucracies, and its battalions of lobbyists, lawyers, MBAs, and overpaid bimbos, is the culprit in the so-called high costs of "health care". Insurance companies don't treat illnesses or injuries. They collect money, and their profit is derived by how much of that money they can avoid paying out in claims. In the process, many tons of money intended for "health care" gets sucked off into one of the most corrupt forms of business in the world.
Rarely does an insurance company go belly-up. Many doctors do. So do clinics and hospitals.
Even if you fund most of your own "coverage" with an HSA, you can only do that if you let one of the anointed insurance companies sit on your HSA funds and earn the interest generated by it.
If Americans want something constructive done about their health care costs, they need to focus on the black hole of insurance, where money goes in and most of it doesn't come back out where it is intended.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.