US citizens somehow survived for the 232 years prior to Obamacare. Forcing people to pay for health insurance either directly or indirectly is wrong. The cancer and heart attack rates for citizens under 45 years of age is quite low, causing a unfair financial burden to the young. You know, those whose average earning power is less than the general population and some of which are still paying back bloated college expenses. It is astonishing to me anyone under 45 years of age could consider voting for Democrats right now. I guess the $200,000 speaking fees paid to prominent politicians by universities for a short talk is quite effective at convincing students otherwise. As far as keeping tuition costs contained, not so much. Again, there is no free. The health insurance and healthcare industries are increasingly taking a greater proportion of our GDP and are almost certainly in unhealthy territory because of all the consumers and small businesses adversely affected. When business costs go up, what must businesses do to stay in business? Raise prices, right? When consumers pay bloated amounts for healthcare insurance, how much money remains for discretionary spending? It is less. Less discretionary spending means less sales for non healthcare businesses and more business failures. What’s that you say? Rich doctors and health insurance company executives will be able to buy more? You are correct, but there are only so many cars, houses, or haircuts they are willing to bother with. The free market system is the most efficient allocator of resources. Competition in an economic system or in nature leads to fitter and more efficient businesses, institutions, and individuals. Do the weak suffer in competitive free market systems? Yes. So sad. However, those that care are free to donate their own money. For the rest of us trying make ends meet, we shouldn’t let politicians enforce their ideals upon us.
It is astonishing to me anyone without health insurance,like yourself,could consider voting for republicans right now
Doubt MPS has any savings so if he gets sick he will file bankruptcy and pass his medical bills on to us
Odds are high that my savings are higher than most of the more prolific Leftist posters in ETs politics section. Healthcare insurance premiums are basically subsidizing heart attack costs for people of Bernie Sanders age or cancer costs for people of Ruth Ginsburg age. A significant amount, say 25 to 30%, of healthcare costs are for the last year of life. Even worse is 5% of people generate 50% of total healthcare costs. So we have healthy people subsidize sick people, some of whom are addicts. Don't we want our college age students to have enough money to pay the tuition that subsidizes the speaking fees of politicians Hillary Clinton's age? I know I'm sounding anti-age again, but damn, our system is entrenched with establishment politicians whose problem solving skills are lacking. Their solution is to have healthy young people subsidize, directly or indirectly, the healthcare costs of higher earners as if the fucking with Social Security is not enough. The healthcare insurance scam seems more of a tool for political and economic control rather that actually helping people with their health. From Forbes.com: Why 5% of Patients Create 50% of Health Care Costs Michael Bell Michael Bell Contributor Entrepreneurs I am a Babson Adjunct & a Managing Partner of MCP, an LBO firm. This article is more than 2 years old. Medicare (Photo credit: 401(K) 2012) While there are various ways to reduce the costs of health care, this fact (Cohen & Yu, 2012 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) should make you stop in your tracks: most business people have an 80/20 rule they apply in a variety of settings (20% of your customers generate 80% of your volume, etc.). This rule tells us that an enormous amount of the health system cost is centered in a very concentrated group of people. Who are they, why are they so expensive, and can we address this relatively small population to the benefit of the whole? This is when the discussions about courage and character by lawmakers, practitioners and patients moves front and center. These patients tend to be newborns with serious issues and the elderly, who are often quite ill. According to one study (Banarto, McClellan, Kagy and Garber, 2004), 30% of all Medicare expenditures are attributed to the 5% of beneficiaries that die each year, with 1/3 of that cost occurring in the last month of life. I know there are other studies out there that say slightly different things, but the reality is simple: we spend an incredible amount of money on that last year and month. Is it worth it? The answer seems to be no. Dr. Susan Dale Block, Chair and Director of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Health Care, recently shared some data with her colleagues. In the Archives of Internal Medicine, a study asked if a better quality of death takes place when per capital cost rise. In lay terms (because trying to explain the data and methodology requires about 100 IQ points that I don't have) the study found that the less money spent in this time period, the better the death experience is for the patient. It seems that no matter how much money you use during that last year/month, if the person is sick enough, the effort makes things worse. A lot of the money being spent is not only not helping, it is making that patient endure more bad experiences on a daily basis. The patient's quality of life is being sacrificed by increasing the cost of death. Why don't more institutions move to palliative care quicker when they see the obvious trends in their patients? Joe Klein wrote a cover story for Time about his experience with his parents and their end-of-life experience. Anyone who has gone through a similar process can not only empathize, but will become emotional because that last year/month can be a genuinely awful experience for all concerned. So, with all this data and personal experience, why do we continue to reward a system that pushes life-at-all-costs instead of quality of life? Certainly some institutions are reacting to this knowledge. Dr. Block is co-leading a research effort to get a Serious Illness Communication Checklist put in place much more broadly. From my perspective, this is a simple problem that has very complicated politics and emotion that make it difficult to make progress. First, there is a certain amount of political hysteria associated with things like "death panels" and deliberate attempts to scare people about any change in health care. Second, the discussion has to be about quality of life, not just length of life. I also understand that religious, moral and uncertainty issues are involved. Many families have a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order put on the patient record, and the health care proxy (usually a close relative) thinks that takes care of the problem. Yet a DNR does not address quality of life satisfactorily. You can only do that by having a discussion early on with the patient about how they want to live their life to the end in the best possible way. Most of the current physicians, family members and provider institutions really dislike that conversation simply because it can be hard on the person initiating the discussion. I have lived through this with both my father and father-in-law. In retrospect, I wish we had this conversation about how they wanted to live their last days. We didn't because we did not know any better. I deeply regret that fact. The good news is that there are people like Dr. Block (she is also the Co-director for the Harvard Medical School Center for Palliative Care) who are trying to educate us. The bad news is that it is too easy to take cheap political shots on this subject and very few of our leaders are showing the character to take a tough decision. More on this in future posts. Michael Bell I am an Adjunct Lecturer in the Management Division of Babson College, located in Wellesley, MA I founded the Monitor Company consulting firm in 1983, left to be one of... Read More https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...5-of-patients-create-50-of-health-care-costs/