It's about health care costs, stupid

Debra — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:31:51 GMT

Before the gasoline prices went through the roof, health care costs were what was driving the economy into ruin. Increased costs affect every business' bottom line. We need to get a handle on medical, drugs and service expenses. Hospitals can't handle the expense of all the non-insured people they serve.
Those costs get passed on to insured consumers and further drive the costs higher. Then the insured consumer has to fight with the insurance company over what they don't cover. Its almost better to not be insured for catastrophic events. I could go on and on.

It's about health care costs, stupid

B. Spoon Charleston, IL — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:17:06 GMT

No business would allow an unnecessary, amoral, greedy middleman to divert 31% of its revenues before any products or services could begin to be delivered, but that's what private health insurers do with our health care dollars. I say get rid of them and free up the market including our choice of providers. Not until consumers are united into one very large and very protected pool under one set of nondiscriminatory rules for our health coverage, will we have the base we need to begin to fix what else is wrong with the rest of the system.

It's about health care costs, stupid

Joe M. Orlando FL — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:09:17 GMT

The cost of healthcare is extremely high in the US. Therefore, so is the cost of health insurance. Most of the groups we see have at least a $300 single cost per month-and some of our largest groups are closer to $400. A larger "pool" is not the answer-you have to have a pool that is balanced with young, old, sick, healthy. Small employers tend to NOT grow with that kind of number in their budget per employee, and end up only covering a few people. Especially when the minimum percentage that they have to cover is 50% of the single rate.

It's about health care costs, stupid

B. Spoon, Charleston, IL — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:00:46 GMT

We have the pool that we have. Why don't more Americans "get" this? We are one national pool of over 300 million people whether we realize it or not. When 47 million (and growing) of our group are rationed to zero with wait times until after it's too late, then we win all the booby prizes for rationing, wait times, easily preventable bankruptcies, disabilities and deaths, as well as out-of-control costs and endless court cases over who has to pay the bill. We ALL pay the bill one way or another. One pool under one set of nondiscriminatory rules would provide the transparency we need but now lack to fix what is wrong, including quality and costs. Now we are divided and conquered in myriads of aptly-named "risk groups" where no one knows who is paying how much for what, and where we are all paying vastly disparate prices for precisely the same things.

It's about health care costs, stupid

Connor Smith — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:13:30 GMT

The problem with health care costs is a simple matter of economics. The AMA controls what schools can confer Medical Degrees and how many they can grant a year. That's it, there's nothing more to it.

If you had a great demand for chemical engineers colleges all over the country would be churning out degreed chemical engineers left and right. That doesn't happen in the medical field because the cartel that controls the supply of MDs wants the supply of doctors to be scarce so they can make a lot of money. End of story.

It's about health care costs, stupid

S.Gadasalli M.D. Odessa Texas — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:42:41 GMT

The AMA does not control medical schools.It is an organization for licensed physicians. The issues are complex and do not have a simple straightforward solution. Check out the per capita MDs in the US compared to other advanced countries tofind out the answer.

It's about health care costs, stupid

Steven D. Coffeen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:49:33 GMT

This AM while driving to work I heard that the EU (European Union) is negotiating a "deal" where an insured individual from one country within the EU can get medical care from another EU country. The cost for the care would be charged back to the country where the patient resides. Greater competition between medical providers? Will quality improve due to this type competition? Could the United State participate in such a program? I thought that this was interesting "food for thought" ie, global health!

It's about health care costs, stupid

Tom Fiore, Morrison, CO — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:20:01 GMT

Dr. Gadasalli, I'm no sure what you were getting at with number of doctors per ca pita. I checked and Canada is at 2.2 vs. 2.4 per 1000; 1.7 and 3.0 per thousand for England and France respectively. Our medical professionals are paid higher, but they also have higher expenses for education and malpractice insurance.
The biggest factor in the high and increasing cost for health care in this country appears that we have a market based system for it whereas other countries have more government intervention. While the consumption of medical care is controlled by each individual they for the most part only pay for a small portion of the bill with the balance paid either by the government through Medicare and Medicaid or through insurance provided by the consumer's employer. With the consumer insulated from the total cost of the good consumed it causes a perversion of the market mechanisms that would hold down consumption of the product and insulates the providers from cost constraints of having to deal directly with the consumer.
At this point we are stuck with the system that we have and significantly changing it is going to be very difficult. We're not going to be able to cut the amount we are spending unless we enter into something as draconian as what Mr. McCain is proposing with making the individual responsible for obtaining their own heath care. Our system as it is now constituted doesn't have the ability to ration care in order to contain costs; just look at what happened with managed care in the 1990s--people were all for the lower or static cost until they found out that care might be limited, then they went nuts.
In the rest of the world health care professionals make less, drug companies must charge less, and hospitals are limited in the reimbursement they can attain for treatment. Our cost containment mechanisms have not worked to keep us competitive with the rest of the world. On the other hand I can get a joint replaced whenever necessary it just comes out of the bottom line of my company instead of as a bill from the people providing the service.

It's about health care costs, stupid

William Hayes, Edmond Ok. — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:47:32 GMT

I am tired of being expected to bail out people for being stupid. You knew your city and business we in a flood plain, then your city let developers bulldoze trees and pave concrete over every inch of the city so that water runs off very fast overloading systems designed at best in the mid 50's refused to pay the
rates for flood insurance because you thought they were to high, the flood rates were high because you are in a high risk flood area. You ignored all of the previous weeks and days of rain to moving your property that could be moved to high ground, when the water started getting close to your school or business you worked like heck at the last minute to avert the flood waters, but you refused to vote for city iniatives to build canals for years, refused bond issues to pay for designing and building new levees. While the waters were flooding towns upstream you waited to see if their levees would
hold and like little dominoes your system failed
too little too late.