Jail. Now. Not Bailouts. (Healthcare).

Market-Ticker ^ | July 14, 2017 | Karl Denninger

[Wuli]

While I do not disagree with all Mr Denninger has to say, he is not perfect, that is his understanding of facts is not perfect.

He makes the claim that the stated amount Medicare says it will cover is always at or above the providers cost. Anecdotally it may be above cost some percentage of the time, but there are sufficient numbers of cases where it is not above cost; so much so that any number of doctors in each of the states choose to not provide services if Medicare is the only “insurance”. (yes, by law providers can choose to not accept Medicare if it is the only insurance someone has, just as they can choose to not accept Medicaid either).

Also he assumes it is feasible to report to patients in each and every health care facility, up front upon entry to the facility, a one-price-fits-all price list for all services performed there. That is not technically feasible. Why? Every patient is different. Every health care requirement that individuals enter the facility to get treatment for can require a combination of things to be done, for that individual’s case, that is not the same for every other individual, even though their cases may appear to be exact/similar on first glance.

That is not the same as might be said for some very specific items (a dose of medicine X, daily bed rate for a semi-private bed, a single and singularly focused x-ray, ect., ect.). But EXACTLY what combination of things will actually need to be applied in each case is not known ahead of time.

I think if Mr Denninger admitted his own understanding of what insurance can and cannot be - which he does in other posts - his recommendations would be less focused on the “insurance benefit” side of what insurers could provide, and his prescription for solutions would require plans that begin with extremely robust health savings accounts, from which many things would get paid directly by the consumer, from that account, with additional “insurance” for benefit coverage for accidents, and a “comprehensive/catastrophic” benefit for major hospital treatments (major surgeries [heart], cancer treatments, kidney failure, colostomy, child-birth delivery, ect., etc.).

His treatise is lengthy and though I read much of it, including some of the text in links to additional work he has done on this topic, my comments here are only on the items I saw first.

[Lorianne]

If any other business operated like the those in the medical industry they would be hauled up on RICO charges in 2 seconds.

Our own government (federal and before that states) not only allowed but sanctioned monopolies/

This is why I say, there is no rule of law. Some laws for some, different laws or no laws for others, different enforcement of laws depending on who you are. This is how a banana republic is run.