Posted on 08/26/2008 6:13:18 AM PDT by kellynla
WASHINGTON - Americans who go without health insurance for any part of 2008 will spend $30 billion out of pocket for health care and they will get $56 billion worth of free care, according to a report released on Monday.
Government programs pay for about three-quarters, or roughly $43 billion, of the bills for these uninsured people, Jack Hadley of George Mason University in Virginia and a team at the Urban Institute reported.
"Physicians' donated time and forgone profits amount to $7.8 billion. After government payments to hospitals are subtracted, private philanthropy and profit margins are responsible for at least an additional $6.3 billion," they wrote in the report, published on the Internet at http://www.healthaffairs.org/.
"From society's perspective, covering the uninsured is still a good investment. Failure to act in the near term will only make it more expensive to cover the uninsured in the future, while adding to the amount of lost productivity from not insuring all Americans," Hadley said in a statement.
On average, an uninsured American pays $583 out of pocket toward average annual medical costs of $1,686 per person, Hadley's team reported in the journal Health Affairs. The annual medical costs of Americans with private insurance average far more -- $3,915, with $681, or 17 percent, paid out of pocket, the report found.
"The uninsured receive a lot less care than the insured, and they pay a greater percentage of it out of pocket. Contrary to popular myth, they are not all free riders," Hadley said.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Yes, I’d like to see the break-down between “free care,” which is paid for by taxes taken from our paychecks, for Americans vs. the care given to illegal aliens who have no right to be here, much less to usurp services intended for citizens of the U.S.
The Urban Institute...
Quick, somebody tell me how to tap into this! I haven’t had medical coverage since February.
Is that $56 billion at the wildly inflated rate you see on hospital bills, or is it $10 billion at the actual contracted rate that insurance companies pay? It’s still a serious problem, but let’s out it in perspective.
Is that $56 billion at the wildly inflated rate you see on hospital bills, or is it $10 billion at the actual contracted rate that insurance companies pay? It’s still a serious problem, but let’s put it in perspective.
Lemme tell you a dirty litle secret -— NO ONE knows how much ANYTHING costs in a hospital.
One the one hand, some costs can be identified fairly accurately (e.g., electricity, air conditioning, janitors, nurses, food, bulk medicines and supplies). These could be divided up to estimate a basic room charge. Putting aside money for later capital improvements (e.g., renovations, or even building a new wing) also have to be factored in here someplace.
Things are a little more complicated when capital intensive items are used (e.g., some lab tests are completely automated, but the machines cost a lot of money to purchase in the first place; machines for radiation therapy, cat scans, etc). The real “costs” of these tests depend on initial cost, maintenance costs, operating costs, and number of patients per week that use them.
On the other hand, We have:
* FedGov mandates to take care of any critical patient that present themselves regardless of ability to pay (actually, knowing ahead of time that they will not pay);
* FedGov mandates to take care of old folks on medicare for the rates that are published for medicare patients;
* FedGov mandates to take care of poor folks on medical or equivalent for their published rates; and
* the rates “negotiated” with Insurance companies (e.g., 35% reduction from published fees).
Add to this the litigation costs, which come in two flavors: the costs of actually defending (and sometimes losing) lawsuits for real or imagined causes, and the cost of performing extra tests to support possible future litigation.
Since any hospital that charged “honest rates” would go bankrupt on these FedGov and Insurance rates, the hospital administrations have learned to “game the system”. If they say that a sterile dressing in an ER costs $100 to administer, they can give you justifications for that price even though you can get a dozen of them at the drug store for $5.00 (once more demonstrating that figures don’t lie, but liars sure can figure). So the FedGov and Insurance companies strike back with requirements to “code” each procedure, and the hospitals then hire a bunch of “coders” to code each treatment item correctly (which increases their costs); and the doctors learn to charge as many items as possible.
So someone walks into the ER with a cut finger, and walks out with a bandage and a bill for $5000 — $200 for the cost to actually fix it, $2000 for tests which weren’t actually “needed” but are done so they can defend a lawsuit for inadequate care, and $2800 to pay for all the people who didn’t pay, for the medicare and medical patients who underpaid, and to jack those rates up high enough so that the hospital can get by on the 65% the insurance companies are willing to pay, and to pay the litigation costs.
The FedGov mandates are a perfect example of politicians doing “good” with other people’s money - and as a result completely distort the marketplace.
[end rant]
***All these examples are numerous and should be an advertisement by the Republicans, who so far have had the worst marketing campaign as usual.***
Amen to that. It’s a shame they can’t effectively demonstrate why the free market is better. And good points about “free” health care btw.
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