Posted on 11/19/2010 5:26:01 PM PST by Kaslin
Big Spenders: Increases in health care costs rival the rising of the sun for inevitably. Should we blame greedy doctors and drugmakers? No, blame should be placed on the system the government has promoted.
The tax code encourages employers to buy health care insurance plans with pretax dollars. Because these plans are exempt from federal income and payroll taxes, employers salaries. Nearly 60% of American adults are covered by an employer-based plan.
For most, these plans work well. But the arrangement that so many have become accustomed to has driven health care spending ever higher. The cost of medicine increased 98% between 1992 and 2008, a period when the consumer price index rose 53%. Health care spending now makes up 17% of the economy, a far bigger slice than it did before the 1965 creation of Medicare and Medicaid, when it never went beyond 6%.
Why has this happened? Devon Herrick from the National Center for Policy Analysis has the simple answer: We have become big spenders on health care because our motivation to be thrifty has been legislated away.
"A primary reason why health care costs are soaring is that most of the time when people enter the medical marketplace, they are spending someone else's money," Herrick wrote in "Why Health Costs Are Still Rising," an NCPA report released last week.
Because Americans who have employer-based coverage see little money coming out of their pockets when they visit a doctor or go to the hospital, they have little incentive to keep costs down.
"When patients pay their own medical bills, they are conservative consumers," Herrick writes. "Economic studies and common sense confirm that people are less likely to be prudent, careful shoppers if someone else is picking up the tab."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Uh makes sense to me
and stop acting like an robot when the dr orders a million tests
say “I’ll be back in 12 months or so, that will eliminate a bunch of them. You can do the ones that are left then.”
Huh, well I'll be...
Amen. Insurance should be used to cover catastrophic & major hospital expenses. Everyday office visits, checkups and minor illnesses should be paid out of pocket.
That makes sense
If the newly elected Republicans in Congress have a wit’s sense, they will immediately get rid of Obamacare and open the limits on Health Savings Accounts, and allow them to rollover the money year to year. They should allow people to purchase health insurance with them, which means that an individual would get the same tax break business gets to purchase healthcare. Then they would get rid of the RICO threats to physicians who discuss prices and let docs publish their fee schedules, allowing people to decide whether they will shop for price as one option in choosing a physician. For every dollar someone spends from a Health Savings account, the federal government only “loses” the tax break, which equals their marginal tax rate, say 29% or so. Basically, that means that the government is getting healthcare for it’s citizens for 29 cents on the dollar. And when fee schedules become available to the public, I think you will see fees go down, not up as the government claims they will if doctors discuss fees with each other.
The only problem is that no citizen owes his elected officials in Washington his vote because he promises to “save Medicare” or “save Healthcare”, which I think is the real hindrance for most of Washington, Pubbies included. I hope the new batch prove me wrong.
We could also save a lot of money if we stop giving free medical care to criminals who enter our country illegally. Every American tax payer should be sick of paying the tab for freeloaders who don’t belong here. The first cost saving cuts should come from the illegals.
More recently she was in for 6 days for back surgery. Don't have the insurance statement on that one yet.
She has yet another neck surgery scheduled and then a shoulder surgery (possible shoulder replacement).
God bless her, she's only 57 years old.
Could I pay for all this plus test fees, surgeons fees etc without insurance?
No.
That was a 4 day stay.
I remember the days before HMO’s, you got sick you paid for your own doctor visit and if you had prescription coverage it was a reasonable cost....along comes the HMO and everything skyrocketed as did the wait to get into to see the doctor.
Here’s the secret nobody mentions...your health insurance didn’t pay that bill (the 85,000) either. They probably paid a small fraction of it because they have a contract with the hospital but if you as an individual were to pay it, the hospital would want the whole thing (you can negotiate, but you’ll never get the deal the major insurers do.)
My kid recently went to the ER in the middle of the night for a cut under his eye which was gaping and bleeding heavily (hopefully this teaches him a lesson about roughhousing with his cousins and the consequences, LOL.) He walked in, the cut was glued, not stitched. He was there about 15 minutes. He never saw a doctor, just a nurse...and his ER bill was $3000 (including the ER physician...which he never saw, LOL.) He asked for an itemized statement and got a bill from the hospital that listed the whole amount, no itemization whatsoever, they said it was a “standard fee.” His deductible for ER is 1000 bucks, so he owes the hospital $1000 but I told him to try to negotiate his part down. Absolutely ridiculous charges which could have been handled for 100 bucks if there had been an urgent care open at that time of night, but there wasn’t.
I take a med that’s been on the market for close to 15 years...yet that med cost $3500 per month (if I didn’t have insurance I wouldn’t be taking it.) But my question is why the high cost after all these years?
Until medical bills are reasonable, people wouldn’t be able to pay their own bills.
They paid $46,000, still big bucks for a 4 day stay.
My first wife died of cancer in 1991, she was in the hospital in a huge private room, more like a studio apartment, for NINE WEEKS and the bill for everything was a little over fifty thousand. We had one hundred percent coverage on our insurance then and they wrote one check for fifty one thousand and one other small check for a minor amount. That makes that line about medicine increasing 92 percent between 1992 and 2008 sound kinda ridiculous don’t it? Your bill for four days room and board was nearly 70 percent higher than our bill for EVERYTHING for nine weeks!
Back then I think they charged something like three or four hundred dollars for a cat scan, now I am told that a cat scan runs more like ten thousand.
I had been paying about a hundred and eighteen dollars a month for the premium on that one hundred percent coverage major medical policy in 1992, that covered myself and my wife. Within five years after that they wanted more than twice that just to cover me alone.
Somebody needs to start screaming about the mandates that state legislations force on insurance companies. Everybody and his brother lobbies their state reps about some test or treatment that they want covered, so that we end up paying for things we do not want.
If somebody wants coverage for a particular treatment, then they should pay the cost of it themselves. What we have now might be called socialized health insurance.
Health Savings Accounts DO roll over from year to year and are set up similar to 401k’s. It’s the Flexible Spending Accounts are the “use it or lose it” model.
Yes, they did pay alot. My husband was in the hospital a few years ago for 4 days. I think the bill was in the 60’s range and the hospital accepted 15 from the insurance company.
Could I pay for all this plus test fees, surgeons fees etc without insurance? No.
It's unlikely the cost would be even a fraction of that if insurance didn't cover everything for everyone. Besides, no one is talking about doing away with insurance--what a lot of people want when they talk about reform is a return to the model where medical insurance was more like car insurance--it covers the big, unexpected costs, but not the routine or minor costs, and there are deductibles and copays that make the consumer aware of what the costs are.
As long as people don't pay their own bills, medical bills will never be reasonable.
He never saw a doctor, just a nurse...and his ER bill was $3000 (including the ER physician...which he never saw, LOL.)
That bill didn't just cover the few minutes of treatment your son received; it also covered the treatment of all those on Medicaid who don't have regular physicians so use the ER as their primary care facility, and all the illegals who go to the ER for "free" treatment.
Any kind of meaningful reform would include some cost-control measures on ER use: what would be the effect, for instance, if everyone walking into the ER had to pay an up front fee of $25, $50, or whatever, unless they had immediate life-threatening injuries (or, as we say in the military, immediate danger to "life, limb, or eyesight")? Wouldn't that cut down on the freeloaders?
I have insurance, for which my contribution is $369 per month, lots of deductibles and co pays etc. Office calls are not covered at all. In 2009 I paid a little more than $16,000 out of pocket (That includes premiums), I am a retired factory worker, that’s a hell of a lot of money to me.
I’m not complaining mind you, at least I have insurance, even if it isn’t the best in the world. I still can’t afford “free” gov (Obamacare) insurance.
I received a letter in October from my insurer, notifying me of changes in the law effective Jan, 2011. Including such nonsense as children covered to age 26, no more copays on well children check ups, no co pays on vaccinations, no cap on life time coverage, no denials on any new dependents for any reason, etc.
In the same letter, they told me that there would be a premium increase and I’d be notified some time in November. Can’t wait to get that letter huh?
I hold every liberal responsible, no matter what letter they have behind their name. Here in Illinois the liberals just elected Mark Kirk for the U.S. Senate, he calls himself a “republican” but he will out liberal Snowe and Collins every day of the week. There was a more conservative choice on the ticket and I voted for him, his name is Mike Labno and was running as a Libertarian, first time in my life I have ever voted for one but he was the only one on the ticket that was pro life - he received a little over 2% of the vote.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
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