Price controls coming for health care

"you must admit that using a real estate chat board to harangue people and let your frustration out is kind of pathetic."

ph, what, then, are you doing here, and why do you pay so much attention to me, and care at all what I'm doing?

crush?

DR. CARSON: Here's my solution: When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed -- pretax -- from the time you're born 'til the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members, so that when you're 85 years old and you got six diseases, you're not trying to spend up everything. You're happy to pass it on and there's nobody talking about death panels.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/02/07/dr_benjamin_carson_addresses_national_prayer_breakfast_criticizes_obamacare.html

Pre-tax HC accounts are a shitty idea for the 40-50% of Americans who pay no income taxes (and thus get NO benifit from the deduction) or for that matter those in the lowest tax brackets. Deductions are regressive benefits. And they do NOTHING to control costs, because doctors and hospitals will, in a fee for service model, ALWAYS recommend more than the optimal amount of proceedures and tests because they make the most money that way. And you have monopolistic or oligopolistic providers, and diffuse buyers with zero monopsony power.

Car dealers always recommend you buy more and car expenses are a major expense for the average household. Most Americans don't know how their car works exactly, especially today with all of the electronics. And there are only so many manufacturers out there, all large corporations, plus the dealer network is limited by the manufacturers with dealers allowed only certain geographies. Why over time won't people be looking at their medical expenses and say, do I really need that?

As Dr. Carson says, "so that when you're 85 years old and you got six diseases, you're not trying to spend up everything. You're happy to pass it on..."

As for deductions being regressive benefits, that's only a result of the progressive taxation system, or said otherwise, it wouldn't and couldn't be regressive unless the significantly greater taxation was progressive. Of course you never ask yourself in the first place why the government needs so much money, so you are more concerned about punishing higher earners vis-a-vis lower earners than about having government spending be at sufficient but not overextended levels.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/price-for-a-new-hip-many-hospitals-are-stumped/

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/price-for-a-new-hip-many-hospitals-are-stumped/

Those that could gave quotes that varied by a factor of more than 10, from $11,100 to $125,798.

the study did contain some good news: some of the country’s top-ranked hospitals came up with “bargain basement prices” in response to repeated calls. “If you’re a good consumer and shop around, you can get a good price — you don’t have to pay $120,000 for a Honda,” he said.

http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/college-health-plans-respond-transgender-students-gain-visibility

College Health Plans Respond as Transgender Students Gain Visibility

Submitted by Ann McClure on Wed, 02/13/2013 - 8:26am
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Source:
The New York Times
Over the last decade, as activists started pushing colleges to accommodate transgender students, they first raised only basic issues, like recognizing a name change or deciding who could use which bathrooms. But the front lines have shifted fast, particularly at the nation’s elite colleges, and a growing number are now offering students health insurance plans with coverage for gender reassignment surgery. No college or university offered such treatment just six years ago, but when Brown University said last week that its student health plan would be extended to cover sex-change surgery beginning in August, advocates for transgender students said Brown would become the 36th college to do so. Twenty-five additional colleges do not cover surgery, but their student plans do cover related hormone therapy, and 20 universities have plans that cover some or all sex-change treatments for their employees, according to the Transgender Law and Policy Institute. Those lists include many of the top American universities — Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, Penn, Emory, Northwestern, the University of California system, Yale, Princeton, M.I.T., Washington University and others. Colleges are not required to provide health coverage for their students, many of whom are still covered by their parents’ plans, but they generally do. The idea still seems radical to plenty of people; last year, when Sandra Fluke, a law student, became famous for speaking in favor of an insurance mandate for contraceptive coverage, conservatives painted her as part of a fringe element because she also supported sex-change coverage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/health/colonoscopies-explain-why-us-leads-the-world-in-health-expenditures.html?pagewanted=all

were you able to figure out if those prices are based upon billing charges versus the average revenue collected per case? it was not clear in the article and it usually the former that is always used for statistics which is not a correct comparison. for ex, in my specialty, a collection rate over 35% would be phenomenal. of course, on the other hand, if those fees are all skewed because of the high rate received by hospitals, then it is quite possible that they are real fees since hospitals are charging anywhere between 2-10x the normal rate as an outpatient, depending on the procedure and the hospital.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/business/bayonne-medical-center-has-highest-us-billing-rates.html?pagewanted=all

JOURNAL REPORTSJune 16, 2013, 4:11 p.m. ET
Should Physician Pay Be Tied to Performance?

We need to rethink how we pay doctors. That's one thing almost everyone can agree on.

The question is, how?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323528404578454432476458370.html?mod=ITP_journalreport_0

Medical Costs Register First Decline Since 1970s

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/06/18/medical-costs-register-first-decline-since-1970s/?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird

Funny how hb has taken over so many of rs's threads. makes one wonder.

>makes one wonder.

So what's your conclusion aboutready?

you're as big a tool as he is. maybe the same tool.

Is that your bet? I'm Riversider?

Who cares. You're both pedantic tools.

>Who cares.

So you raised the topic because you were disinterested?

Sure. Not really interested. Idle speculation.

Was that also the case the second time you raised the topic?

He's.

Yes

Obamacare's damage to the economy is inevitable. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324634304578539453974685238.html?mod=hp_opinion

" . . . young, healthy adults today spend an average of $854 a year on health care. ObamaCare would require them to buy insurance policies expected to cost roughly $5,800. The law, then, isn't just asking them to pay for "the services that they are going to consume," he continued. "The mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies . . . to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else."

Since he puts it that way, why would they sign up for ObamaCare, especially since the alleged penalties will be negligible and likely unenforced?"

They won't, and then we'll all go to single-payer national health, which Canadians love, and then we'll finally have leverage to get to the root of the problem, lowering health care spending while maintaining or improving quality. Quality that has been slipping considerably in the US over the past few decades.

Then we won't have to pay 20x the price per pill (the wildly over-prescribed mass-market drug Lipitor) that is paid (overall) in New Zealand.

And we won't have tiny little under-the-radar lobbies push up costs unnecessarily -- e.g. anaesthesiologists for colonoscopies.

Both per the article greenberg linked: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/health/colonoscopies-explain-why-us-leads-the-world-in-health-expenditures.html?pagewanted=all

So that's the long-term plan, and everyone seems to know it but you, LICComm.

" young, healthy adults "

Literally the ONLY group that will do worse under the ACA. Which EVERYONE knew from the get-go. This is not new news. I can live with it.

Who cares about young people anyway?

We've already diminished their job prospects, laden them with high education debt, raised the price of the houses they'll want to buy to ridiculous levels, lowered the benefits tiers on new workers and eliminated the possibility to receive pensions replacing instead with Wall Street sponsored risky investments, forced them to compete with illegal immigrants, we spy on them, frisk them, audit them if they dont agree with us, and subject them to an ever increasing breadth of laws intended to trap any given American citizen, and subject them to some of the highest probabilities in the democratic world of being jailed. What's the big deal if we force them to subsidize other people's healthcare and make them participate in a new huge government program?

And the music they listen to ... you call that singing? In my day you had people with great voices who could REALLY sing.

alan, it is still your day. Don't write yourself off so quickly. You are only as alive as you feel.

ROUTINE (not high tech!) procedure by ROUTINE procedure, the NYT is showing how the US system is way more expensive than anywhere else. Even the most basic things cost way more here than any other rich country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/health/american-way-of-birth-costliest-in-the-world.html?hp&_r=0

The most jarringly illustrative item in the chart preceding the NYT colonoscopies article is the price of Lipitor. For everything else, you can make up (fantasy-based) stories about old MRI machines and substandard Communist everything. But a Lipitor is Lipitor, same chemical formula and dosage, truly apples-to-apples. $124 for US compared with $6 for the not-very-impoverished sheep-based-economy nation of New Zealand.

Bah!

"In Need of a New Hip, but Priced Out of the U.S."

Wow. Just... Wow. Anyone who reads this and still claims the US has the best system is smoking crack.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/health/for-medical-tourists-simple-math.html?hp&_r=0

Anyone who reads this and still claims single payer is the best system is smoking crack

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10184004/NHS-inquiry-Trust-by-trust-the-Keogh-Reports-findings.html

Or this

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10141476/NHS-is-worse-than-communist-China-say-doctors.html?fb

I can't believe Jason10006 needs a new hip already. I thought he was in his 30s. But I guess banging your head against the wall constantly can dislocate other parts of the body.

Let's look at the cast of characters in LICComm's press-release driven linked article:

* The Telegraph: right-wing yellow journalism paper, owned by Sir David Rowat Barclay and Sir Frederick Hugh Barclay -- British tax exiles, legal bullies, and lifelong dirty-playing trashy businessmen, liars both

* British Medical Association: the union that represents NHS doctors (who are not indentured servants and can easily open private practices instead), and of course would prefer no managerial oversight, or at least issues press releases towards that end. In this particular article, the "China" reference has to do only with managers "bullying" the doctors. Boo hoo, get the doctors bandaids. Or plasters, anyway.

Who said single payer is the only other answer? The article talked about Belgium, which uses private insurance.

Its amazing that in the US, private insurers can charge up to 10X as much for routine procedures that involve EXACTLY the same medical devices. Its so insane that its cheaper for people to pay 100% out of pocket, including airfare and hotel and go to another rich country to have hip replacements and other procedures, than it is to pay the 20% or whatever one's insurance does not pay in the US.

But still morons like LICC claim USA is the bestest ever.

"The Growing Popularity of Having Surgery Overseas"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/us/the-growing-popularity-of-having-surgery-overseas.html?src=rechp&_r=0

I thought you were promoting or advertising to everyone that health care costs are going down in the US.

>But still morons like LICC claim USA is the bestest ever.

Which country can we send you to in order to help cure your retardedness?

501

http://gothamist.com/2013/08/16/video_hilarious_hypocrite_only_want.php

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/10/type_miscast_misdiagnosis_common_medical_malpractice.php

http://nypost.com/2013/10/16/oreos-as-addictive-as-cocaine/