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How Healthcare Is Dooming the U.S. Economy (In Just 3 Charts)
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
As it stands now, U.S. healthcare will bankrupt the nation and doom it to permanent stagnation and recession.
That healthcare alone is dooming the U.S. economy is not news to Of Two Minds readers, as I have been covering the catastrophic consequences of our runaway healthcare system for the past decade.
Three charts crystallize the healthcare dynamics that are dooming the U.S. economy. The first depicts the runaway growth of healthcare costs--a rapid expansion that is a permanent feature of U.S. healthcare, regardless of which party is in office or what reforms are instituted.
This expansion of costs has many drivers, most of which result from the system's perverse incentives for fraud, overbilling, marginal treatments and defensive medicine.Technological and medical advances offer more options for treatment, and can push costs up--but advances can just as readily push costs down, too.
The primary drivers of rapidly increasing costs are:
1. The cartel/crony-capitalist structure of U.S. healthcare
2. Defensive medicine to stave off litigation
3. Profiteering from needless or ineffective tests, procedures and medications
4. Fraud and overbilling
5. The concentration of expenditures in a small sector of the population
6. America's inability and/or unwillingness to have an adult discussion over end-of-life care for the elderly.
Here is a chart of the rising cost of U.S. healthcare, which is far outstripping the growth of GDP, which is another way of saying healthcare costs are outstripping our ability to pay for healthcare.
Other advanced nations pay for universal healthcare with 8%-9% of their GDP, where the U.S. spends 18% of GDP on less-than-universal healthcare. How do other advanced countries provide healthcare for all for less than half of what America spends per person (per capita)?
Other advanced nations do not spend gargantuan sums on the elderly and end-of-life care. Please look carefully at this chart. No one with any knowledge of life in Sweden or Germany would declare their care of the elderly barbarous, yet somehow Sweden's cost of care actually declines as the elderly approach the end of their lives, while the cost of care for the elderly skyrockets in the U.S.
Is medical care that different technologically in the U.S. and Sweden, or is it the difference between a system that is rational and one that is based on extracting the maximum profit from delivering whatever the government will pay for?
Now that the 60+ million Baby Boom generation is entering Medicare, the soaring cost of caring for the elderly American-style is about to explode higher. Anyone who holds the magical-thinking hope that America's stagnant economy and job market can support healthcare costs that consume 25+% of GDP should study this article and the chart below: The Concentration of Health Care Spending (via B.C.)
Tt is clear that per-person spending among the highest users is substantial and represents a natural starting point when thinking about how to curb health care spending. For instance, the average expenditure for each of the approximately 3 million people comprising the top 1 percent of spenders was more than $90,000 in 2009 (Figure 2). The top 5 percent of spenders were responsible for $623 billion in expenditures or nearly $41,000 per patient. In contrast, mean annual spending for the bottom half of distribution was just $236 per person, totaling only $36 billion for the entire group of more than 150 million people.
The concentration of healthcare expenditures in a thin slice of the populace is astonishing: 20% of the costs are spent on 1% of the populace, typically elderly people with multiple chronic lifestyle-related diseases. 50% of the total costs are spent on the top 5% of high-use individuals.
One direct result of rising healthcare expenditures is recession, as this chart from frequent contributor B.C. illustrates. As healthcare expenditures rise, real sales stagnate and the economy cascades into recession.
The majority of U.S. healthcare spending is not productive; it is a drag on productivity. Subtract the fraud, overbilling, defensive medicine, marginal/ineffective overtreatments and tests and the extreme concentration of costs in 5% of the populace, and we'd have a system that we could afford, i.e. one that cost less than 10% of GDP, in line with our advanced-economy competitors.
As it stands now, U.S. healthcare will bankrupt the nation and doom it to permanent stagnation and recession. It's our choice: live with a bankrupt system built almost entirely of perverse incentives, or begin an adult discussion about a system that delivers responsible care to the elderly in line with other advanced nations, but at a fraction of the current cost.
* * *
But it gets worse. Obamacare is set to add more than a quarter-of-a-trillion—that's trillion—dollars in extra insurance administrative costs to the U.S. health-care system, according to a new report out Wednesday.
The $273.6 billion in additional insurance overhead represents an average of of $1,375 per newly insured person, per year, from 2012 through 2022.The overhead cost equals a whopping 22.5 percent of the total estimated $2.76 trillion in all federal government spending for the Affordable Care Act programs during that time, according to the authors of the online report on the Health Affairs blog.In contrast, the federal government's traditional Medicare program has overhead of just 2 percent, according to the report.
* * *
But apart from that - it's fair, right?
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LAW care in the future
Debt, invest in it. It is as eternal….as we are.
"but, but , but i am so fucking important that i want every test, examination, drug, experiment with out regard to cost and if it fails i want to sue anyone remotely connected" ---- the american health consumer
(and it doesn't matter if im obese, lazy or smoke)
Doctors are as bad as some mechanics who will intentionally fuck you up so you come back for MOAR "health care"
Bunch of fucking blood suckers
Doctors are as bad as some mechanics who will intentionally fuck you up so you come back for MOAR "health care"
Bunch of fucking blood suckers
I once had a dentist (USC Grad) do that to me...
He must have filled 6 teeth yet I never had a cavity before seeing him and haven't had one since.
Other advanced nations pay for universal healthcare with 8%-9% of their GDP,
And MOAR insurance on top of that. And the rationing. And a system that invents nothing. And people that drink out of the potted plants for lack of actual care. And people that die of dehydration and starvation under their care.
And they all seem to want to move away from ithe system. And they seek medical attention elsewhere in large numbers.
HELL YEA!! SIGN ME UP!
Exactly-- why are we being compared to "other advanced nations"? Fuck them-- they have stupid government-run healthcare programs.
Instead, let's compare ourselves to ourselves. In 1960, US healthcare costs amounted to 5% of GDP. Given that technological advances drive DOWN costs in normal free-market industries, one might expect that to be maybe 2.5% of GDP today, assuming that the Feds and the Insurance Companies were cut out of the deal.
All the comparisons to "other advanced nations" do is lead one inexorably to the conclusion that the US must embrace single-payer health care, with all the well-known shortcomings that model has to offer.
And another thing. When you have a healthcare industry built on the three pillars of fraud and waste (the federal programs Medicare and Medicaid), riskless profit (the insurance industry) and litigation, it is only logical to expect that the largest waste & profits will be generated by the most infirm and helpless patients-- i.e., the elderly. Instead of blaming the elderly, how about we look at the real culprits: the feds, and the insurance industry.
Until we go back to a pure cash-for-services medical care model, supplemented by PRIVATE charitable hospitals and clinics (you know, the kind the Catholic church used to run before they abandoned Christ's directive to care for the sick and poor in favor of the ministrations of the Godless federal government), we will be totally fucked.
Hear hear!!! IMHO, the insurance companies don't get beat up nearly enough.
;-D
That type of dentist keeps track of how much they can bust out of any insurance and HSA funds available in the current year. Medicare/caid have the same wonderful influence on health care spending.
Being poor at the time, I didn't fill the FIVE 'cavities' a [lying scum] dentist 'found' 30 years ago. They still haven't been filled.
Simply kill everyone over 60. No more health care expenses. Dear Leader Obama's health care advisor Zeke Emmanuele (sp?) was all for that.
Or fix the totally effed up government health care system (Medicare) where money is no object and a marching army of government "workers" get wealthy being the health care middlemen. Get the government OUT of my health care.
You'd be shocked at the work I do now for people under 40 with chronic diseases such as diabetes. This Logan's Run idea would have to be set quite a bit lower for any economic benefit.
We have sick care in this country, not healthcare.
Miffed
People behave stupidly because they think the government has their asses covered in old age.
That, and in fact they are stupid.
Did you read the article? Medicare isn't perfect by any means, but it is actually more efficient/cost effective than private insurers.
You obviously don't work in healthcare. Or did you forget the /sarc?
Miffed
I know man, the 22% overhead in private insurance (a figure that's probably a low estimate) is so much more efficient than Medicare's 2%. Charging an order of magnitude more to administer a program is much better, because capitalism and gubmint sucks wharrgarbl blargh.
One your numbers of 2 and 22 are known BS. Two there is probably at least 30 percent fraud in Medicare / Medicaid
You are referring to government run 'private insurance', aren't you?
Have you ever read the definition of "unsustainable"? Medicare is a bloated beurocratic nightmare of unkept promises and fascism. Have another hit of that koolaid.
All of hellcare is a bloated fuck. A subpar system of an old chevy at cadillac prices.
NO ONE CAN AFFORD TO HIRE PEOPLE AND PAY THE HELLCARE!!!!!
Any moron should be able to figure simple econ and 5th grade math.
the european system is basically Medicare for all without any middle man, there are public and private clinics. They don't even check if you are insured because it's paid by taxes from everybody. In some places there's a token payment per appointment. You can choose to go to a private one if you get insurance. Most of the doctors work some days in the public one and other days in the private ones. But the private is mostly empty, wheter in the public one you need to get an appointment, and depending of the danger it may take longer to see the proper doctor. For example for dermatology or psichology they may give you an appointment for next month in the public.
You forgot to mention the unicorns they give out at the end of treatment too.
Get the government OUT of my health care.
With the government embedded in Medicare, Medicaid, VA, etc. it's about as likely to happen as getting the govt out of the military.
I always wanted to be a perfectly healthy, economically restricted poor person! Thank God Obama has given Generation X-millenials that opportunity.
"Live long and pile on horrendous debt."
^^ new human motto.
You could cut at least 20% off the top by no longer providing free medical care to illegal aliens. The moment they report to a hospital, clinic or pharmacy for free care, deport their sorry asses back to wherever they came from.
And another 20 by cutting the folks using the ER for colds and flue.....
Yep, government created a complicated and expensive health care system and then noticed how "unfair" it was. So they proceeded to make it much more expensive and complicated. Our government has the magic touch that completely fucks up anything it gets near....
gimmme a fukn break.. you want to talk about health care costs lets break it down:
Problem is we don't seem to have enough regular doctors.
I have insurance. Had a health issue that needed attention.
Called around to several docs and the earliest anyone said they could see me was August-new patient. Was told that I should go to urgent care to get a referral in to a doctor to skip the new patient BS waiting period.
Went to urgent care. They sent me on to an emergency room. Said they couldn't do anything for me.
So spent 4 hours in ER to finally get the magic ticket - a referral - to see a doctor this week instead of having to wait until the end of August.
And I don't live out in the sticks.
You're wasting your time going to a doctor.
Research your issue online.
You'll find out more that way than a doctor visit, and you'll save the fees.
Ever wonder why we don't have enough regular doctors? Tens of thousands of them have abandoned their practices in the last 15 years thanks to invasive government and insurance company bureaucracy. Many took early retirement, some went to work for hospitals or private corporations, and others went to cash-only practices (which means they are off your radar screen if you are looking for a doctor who takes insurance).
It's just another version of Gresham's law-- bad healthcare drives out the good.
People need to start choosing a healthier way to live. Like the old saying goes - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I don't go to hospital or doctors, other than dentists. Of course in an emergency I would. Simply eating well and supplementing with quality nutritional products - vitamins, herbs etc. - coupled with exercise and stress reduction practices would go a long way to keep people free from sickness. Knowing that processed 'food' is chock-full of health destroying ingredients is important and getting back to eating as your great grandparents did is a good start. It has always amazed me that most people are utterly clueless about the human body and it's systems of organs and how/what they do. Lots of men can tell you every detail about the internal combustion engine, football stats, golf strategies etc. but can't point to the area where the pancreas resides. How crazy is this? The vehicle that your spirit uses to exist in this timespace gets almost no consideration other than superficial aesthetic attention, yet without it, you have no existense here. You can have a great muscle car in absolutely perfect condition, yet your sorely neglected carcass is operating it and will suffer a catastrophic failure due to neglect and mistreatment you would NEVER allow your car.
Stay healthy and starve the sick care system.
It's a paradox, as you aptly stated.
Most people have their priorities wrong.
"For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? "For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels." - Mark 8:36-38
It's getting harder and harder to stay healthy given forces like Monsanto and the pharmaceutical companies who profit off of your misery. They have a profit motive to make you as sick as possible, and they are pursuing that motive with tremendous alacrity and zeal. Soil, air, water, and food are all being turned into toxic sludge in order to make you sick, extract your wealth, and then put you in the grave when you have nothing left to give.
No mention of glyphosates, fluoridated water, food contaminated with carcinogenic dyes (courtsy of the FDA), defective drugs (poisonous flu vaccines) and illegal drugs like meth that the government allows the distribution of, for a price. The spike in medical costs starts in 1980, around the time Reagan came in and turned the FDA over to big business (e.g. illegal approval of aspartame) and heroin and cocaine distribution over to the CIA. Poisoned people require plenty of medical care, sometimes for life.
"LAW care in the future"
How nice would it be to get your Health Care taken care of really affordable in one of those other countries? And get a vacation to boot.
(Personally, if my Blue Cross insurance doesn't do the job, I will get a major procedure taken care of in another country -- where all the doctors I've had, are actually better than most of the overpriced MD's/quacks I've encountered in the USSA. For example, foreign MD's I've used, have digital stethoscopes, ECG dynamic heart-lung load testing, and ultrasound for organ exam -- ALL in their practice -- which they use as Std Procedure. In the US, I have not seen any of these. Scamming quacks with an MD, is all they are. And if I get an X-Ray done, I get to [gasp!] keep the X-Ray for future reference/comparison. Try that in the USSA. One time I got sick on the way to Germany. Had to see and MD. The 15 minute Visit + Rx set me back $45 cash (that he pocketed). No paper work. Fuck you very much, Blue Cross! And... 25 years ago, I injured my shoulder on a Downhill run in the Alps. Went to a hospital/Krankenhaus in that Bavarian town that has the 'Disney Castle'. The ER MD on duty was a PYT who was a clone of young Kim Basinger. We ended up dating for a year, and I shagged her silly indoors and outdoors (yodeling) till she moved to Berlin and fell for her boss. Now that's what I call 'Health Care' or 'Wellness'.)
Better invest in that Foreign Residency, you stubborn Set-In-Your-Ways bitchez.
How the hell could you get injured on those shitty slopes and why would you be skiing them? Unless, of course, you already knew about the Kim Basinger clone and were working a plan.
"ObamaCare";
It was supposd to have recollateralized the derivative house of cards by hustling another 30 million paying bodies into the bankers service-but that hasn't materialized. "can't get blood from a stone" There are good reasons 30 million people were uinsured. Waving a wand can't change that. Nor does Congressional or Presidential edict.
Obamacare's increased costs have sucked out discretionary spending from all corners of the service economy, in the process hollowing out previously "good" collateral.
Its complete repeal by MN tonight would lessen the October Crash on the horizon triggered by lack of discretionary spending income; it would also bolster some of the collateral dykes a bit.
But absent a productive economy since about 2006, the collateral shortage on the horizon is a tsunami at this point.
The banks, fueled by government Constitutionally unrestrained, have managed to crap the world.
I didn't know that dykes were considered good collateral.
No shit Charles.
Now to serious stuff, there's this hugely fat chick trying to date me. I'm terrified!
What should I do ZHers? BTFD?
Now to serious stuff, there's this hugely fat chick trying to date me. I'm terrified!
What should I do ZHers? BTFD?
Simple- tell her your relationship will be sex-only and you will be dating other women... if she's cool with that then you got yourself an outstanding slumpbuster on-call 24/7.
N.F.C. YOU MOOK!
Ever done it with a fat chick? Some men like it. My wife's put on a lot of pounds over the years and she keeps getting better. But don't take her out to expensive private restaurants-tell her you're a private person who likes to stay at home and drink beer and eat pizza.
You can take your slick and sleek chick girlfriends out in public. Remember -variety is the spice of life. Fat chicks need lovin too,
Yea I have..
But this girl is planet-like! I'm actually worried I might get swallowed up by her mass and her gravitational pull.
http://youtu.be/c49EMvrs2hs
Miffed;-)
That was funny.
I used to describe fat chicks by how many 3lb. cans of Crisco they were carrying around.
As an aside, I would recommend to those overweight to get checked by their doctor and then if okay, try intermittent fasting. For me that is less than 200 calories every third day and try to avoid binging in between.
Has some profound effects, including helping to rejuvenate the immune system.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140605141507.htm
In the first evidence of a natural intervention triggering stem cell-based regeneration of an organ or system, a study shows that cycles of prolonged fasting not only protect against immune system damage -- a major side effect of chemotherapy -- but also induce immune system regeneration, shifting stem cells from a dormant state to a state of self-renewal.
OK! I just texted her that shit...awaiting her bombshell reply.
But i'll need a van for her size..or ambulance
Tell her you have AIDS.
It didn't discourage some bar rednecks,but its worth a try.
I tried that once in Paris when a guy was really coming on to me. He just pulled out a condom and smiled at me. I laughed when I guessed he knew I was bluffing. So I said "you Frenchmen are all the same." He says " Je suis different!" I laugh and rolled my eyes. He says " Je suis casse." I didn't know what that meant. So he pulls down his pants to show me he was circumcised. I guess the explanation was deemed too difficult with our language barrier.
That was an interesting day. I found the USA quite boring after that.
Miffed;-)
^^ What he said. Also keep dropping subtle hints that if only she were skinny she would be perfect. You may be able to save the healthcare system millions.
Slap the thigh and ride the wave in.
Her thigh is the size of me dammit.
All Obamacare did was try to hide the existance of the top 5% by shifting them from plan to plan. Anyone with a knowledge of statistics will tell you that the only way to afford the top 5% is by spreading their cost over the whole population. All private insurance is going to do is play hot potato with them.
It works like this. If you have a large population (e.g. network) and 5% of the population on average needs $200K in care and the other 95% nothing, then you need to charge $10K to break even IF THE SIZE OF THE GROUP IS HUGE. If you only have 10,000 people in your group, you would expect 500 people to need their $200K in a given year. BUT, there is a pretty high chance (like one in 8) that 1000 of your insured may need $200K in a given year. Instant bankruptcy. The only way to insure that you never have a losing year to double or triple your rates on everyone.
Math is math.
USA, Sweden, Germany, Spain and the UK.
What does the USA have a lot of that the others do not have?
Lawyerscum. Dear Leader Obama, Michelle Obama, Hillary(!) Clinton, Billy Bob Clinton, John Kerry, Harry Reid, et al. We have WAY more lawyerscum that any other country. And they make HUGE money, driving prices up.
Yes but there is another thing those countries have very few of with the UK having a bit more. Put on your thinking cap.
Also Spain doe snot have a lot of fat shits like Wal Mart shoppers.
I'll take door number 2.
Pharmaceutical megacorps pushing toxic crap with horrid side-effects as the "cure" for everything from impotence to toenail fungus.
Tell her your gay.
If your not snipped. Make sure you Bring Your Own Condoms and dispose of them.
...unless you want to be her personal ATM until the kid is out of school.
Fat chicks are like mopeds. Lots of fun to ride, you just don't want to get caught doing it.
Best lay I had in my life was via a fat chick. YMMV.
What about the giving it away free to illegals and people who do not buy insurance..I think if you cut that out costs would drop 50%...also the trials lawyers should be cut out....save another 20% I bet....tough choices..but that is life
Also the cost of a medical education needs to be lowered.
Make it subsidized in exchange for some number of years of medical practice in underserved areas or specialties.
I think it might actually be worse as my pathetic-plan healthcare costs have been rising by at least 11% each year since 2010... I'm pretty sure by 2020 I'll be paying over $7000-per-year-per-person...
That which cannot be sustained...won't be.
Why Are American Hospitals Charging Up to $800 for a $1 Bag of Salt Water?http://www.thedailysheeple.com/why-are-american-hospitals-charging-up-to...
Hospitals probably shift a lot of costs around. Some working American paying for their insurance has to pay for the free care for endless Trayvon's in the emergency room, endless illegal aliens and other people.
F**king Trayvon or some other thug having a gun shot and surgery or some illegal shot or knifed - how much does that cost.
I visited someone who had a back operation and they had a section of the floor for those people. I think most were illegals and one white woman on welfare who gamed the system. She sued anyone who treated her for free too.
I went to an eye doctor and paid for everything while blacks and illegals were getting it ALL free from Mediciad or whatever. Oh and they were not picking out cheap glasses either. Designer shit glasses.
Americans pay about 4 times for healthcare. Premiums, local real estate taxes for the local hospital, federal income taxes, being gouged more to cover those who do not pay - you pay co-pays etc.
Freddie, I have long advocated for a special ambulance service for gangbangers using oxcarts.
USSA is exceptional alright.
Exceptionally fraudulent.
Yet no politician will ever admit failure so we are stuck with a horrible system with no price controls.
Is there anyone with integrity left in Washington?
I didn't think so.
Price controls don't work. They simply limit supply. Free markets do work. We don't have a free market. Get the government out of health care.
Is there anyone with integrity left in Washington?
Louie Gohmert
Obamacare MIGHT have been acceptable or even successful had the country been in a sound fiscal state. But to throw a huge money drain on top of an already faltering financial system and expect it to actually work was just plain hubris.
Obozocare was written by the same corporations that now benefit from it. It's working exactly as intended.
Socialized medicine has worked OK in other countries.
Yes, if "OK" is defined as totally sucking to the point where the people with money in those countries go to other countries (mostly the U.S.) for their health care you have a point.
What many people fail to recognize is that the Marxist con man socialist in chief wants this health care overhaul attempt to fail so he or Hillary can implement a single payer system and further send the country over the edge to a communist state. Period.
2. Defensive medicine to stave off litigation
Obviously the writer has not been in doctor's office in awhile, defensive medicine was practiced in US before 2000.
At some point the COST of health care, public and private will have to be addressed. Until then Obama Care or no Obama Care will not make a bit of difference when exorbitant costs continue to rise. Of course if everything comes down around our ears ZH style Obama Care and everything else will be repealed without a vote.
no mention of all the illegals that use our system (and can't be refused) and don't pay the bills?
Look at the chart- costs rise exponentially after the age of 60. That is where you will get most bang for your buck- addressing this issue is more profitable than worrying about illegals. Scapegoating is a tool for the small minded.
Look at the chart- costs rise exponentially after the age of 60. That is where you will get most bang for your buck- addressing this issue is more profitable than worrying about illegals. Scapegoating is a tool for the small minded.
Who gives a shit? Nothing is real and nothing is going to get fixed. We are all FIFA now.
person forcibly taken to local hospital in ambulance
they work on patient for twenty minutes
patient dies, gets bill for $198K
i don't see the problem /s
Mixing the modus operandus profit and growth at any cost and "healthcare" reduces humans to commodities. Anyone that wishes to avoid this has to literally hide and dispose of one's own body at death, and that of course is most likely a crime.
It really drives home how depraved the uniquely human traits of malice and greed can be.
That scenario along with the possibility of ever needing orthopedic surgery of some type (especially a hip replacement) to maintain my mobility are the reasons that I allow $565/mo to be extorted from me for high deductible medical insurance. I am a retired registered nurse who has seen dead persons brought into the ER and have watched (and participated in) stupid resuscitative efforts which have ramped up bills for no good cause.
There is plenty to hate about our healthcare system.
There will be a great deal of pressure on the American healthcare system. There are some tools to work with the situation.
Medicare/Medicaid can determine the prices of drugs/services such that they're less burdensome. Of course, if you allow medical professionals to deny Medicare/Medicaid, that doesn't work too well.
"Healthcare" in a country where people are addicted to McDonalds, BurgerKing, CocaCola, all kinds of "fat and sugar compositions" and frozen chemicals under the name of "food"? Where Monsanto is ruling the agricultural sphere? Indeed, "healthcare" is a funny idea only in such a Horror House.
It is just another Consumer Product designed for anyone but the seriously or chronically ill
In 1974 New Zealand jettisoned a tort-based system for compensating medical injuries in favor of a government-funded compensation system. Although the system retained some residual fault elements, it essentially barred medical malpractice litigation. Reforms in 2005 expanded eligibility for compensation to all “treatment injuries,” creating a true no-fault compensation system.
Maybe lawyers in Congress could bite the bullet ?
You negate your entire argument by blaming old people who want to live as long as possible.
You're an asshole.
Stick #6 up your ass.
More like a complete lack of emphasis on lifestyle improvement and prevention. Doctors get paid on the basis of services rendered, not for making their patients healthier so they don't need care.
Eastern medicine deals with prevention and nutrition.
They generally work with the body to prevent and heal.
Western medicine has some of the best trauma doctors.
They want and need trauma.
No wonder the average Western doctor is dead before 60.
At least the one's who take their own medicine.
That's how I look at it.
Now the question is whether the rest of the population is going to put up with Boomers voting to enslave the working class to pay for their health bennies.
An apt analogy might be that the American 'government' is a fat, stupid, lazy, arrogant, greedy, pampered, megalomaniac sociopath POS....
And the human beings living in America (this vile monsters BITCH) need a FUCKING DIVORCE?
Does the Govt. mirror its peeps or vice versa ?
Chicken or egg.
As it stands now? How about as it stood 20-30 years ago? Or even further back, after WW2?
For profit healthcare is a crime. Everyone needs it at some point, and at that point you'll be robbed.
Love these posts by the 'Martenson' brigade... They always butter the audience up with agreeable points so that the last one can be swallowed more easily... Sorry Charles... Last time I looked, you ain't so 30 years old-looking anymore and I'd wager that when the time comes, you'd like to hang around as long as you can too, so please spare the audience your soft peddling of Eugenics, Ok...? Just come out and say it: Giving grampa the needle when he's past his sell date is the Swedish way, right...? Yeah those Swedes - so much more 'advanced' and foward-thinking, aren't they Charles...? If they're so good at that, they must be out in front with everything else, right...? Fuck me...
The Mexican culture puts a lot more value on the old people than the US. When you turn 60 here you can get an INAPAM card which gets you things like a 50% discount on travel (some is even free), discount at drug stores, free admission to museums, etc. Sometimes they even have a seperate line for people over 60. It doesn't happen often but at times younger people in front of us in line will ask us to get in front of them. In a crowded room with few chairs people will get up to let an older person sit.
oh the horror.
We live in Mexico and have what is called IMSS (government sponsered healthcare). We live in a large city which has an excellent IMSS hospital. We are both in our early 60's and this year we paid less the $700 USD for the two of us. There are no deductibles and if they have the medicines our GP prescribes they are free. The lines/wait time to see a specialist (dermatologist, cardiologist) can be very long - but I remember waiting in the US as well. In many cases we see the same specialist at IMSS we would in private practice. Even ifwe want to get health care outside IMSS it is much simpler than in the US. You can just walk into a top notch lab and ask for a mamogram which will cost you about $70 USD. No preapprovals/references required. That is what an office visit to a first rate orthopedic surgeon runs as well. While we are very happy with IMSS we might at some point consider private health insurance which should run us about 2000-3000 USD per year for each of us.
Imagine that...cut out the middle man (Private Insurance Companies) and you can have affordable health care.
Well, you've cut out ONE of the middlemen-- the insurance companies. Still have the other middleman-- the government.
How about we get rid of BOTH middlemen???
And the doctors earn $25K per year - less than L.A.'s new minimum wage.
It seems that there are too many parties with their hands out and too many rules and regulations involved in the healthcare process.
Way too much overhead and inefficiency.
Anything the government touches turns to bloated crap.
In a real world if a doctor is paid cash at the time a service is paid, then his price and the cost to the patient should be lowest. In our world, prices are lowest after they have gone through have gone through a bloated insurance system because the insurance companies have government guaranteed profit margin and a monopoly on negotiated low prices.
Yes we all know this but what this article doesn't address (or anybody very well for that matter) is, Where the fuck is the money? Who is getting rich from this scam job and what barriers are intentionally placed to avoid ompetition?
At the end of this rope, it starts with medicare in the 60's - That's when the outrageous inflation started. FU govt.
This is what a sociopathic individual on both sides of the isle calls success.
Mission Accomplished!
Mission Accomplished!
Most chronic illness can be avoided through diet and exercise, especially diet; but no one makes money on that and besides having to change the way you eat "isn't fair."
Selling pills is way more lucrative than telling someone to stop drinking pepsi and eating sugar bombs for breakfast lunch and dinner.
The one union the GOP would not touch = The AMA. The AMA controls medical school admissions and sets standards for who can do what in health care. So, doctors are kept in continuous shortage, and midwives, physycians assistants, and nurse practicioners, who would be able to resolve some of the shortages are not allowed to practice independently.
There is NO connection in reality between prices charged for drugs, hospital stays, office vists, tests, and probably the most outrageously profitable of all durable medical equipment, and actual costs.
As long as the right continues to focus on tort reform as a driver of cost escalation there will be no substantial solutions to this problem becaue malpractice suits account for 1/10th of 1% of medical costs and 99% of those suits that are successful were successful because there was REAL malpractice.
The only way we will get costs under control is if the largest payers set limits on what they are willing to pay (Government and insurers). In effect setting prices. Private for obscene healthcare insurance adds nothing to and arguable hinders good care, it should be banned
I wish people would stop calling it "Healthcare". ACA is a tax.
Well, it's a tax when it needs to be a tax, and a fee when it needs to be a fee.
But you are correct that it certainly isn't healthcare!
The cost of any product will rise to the level of easily available funding.
As long as there is no push back the drug companies will raise prices.
Physicians are locked into contract rates for all services except for those which are not covered by standard insurance. Thus we see regular doctors struggling even as plastic surgeons and Derm 'Beauty Centers' do well. I suspect the underlying push is to drive small providers out of business and let the big box medical clinics take over. I have not had more than a 1% increase in ALLOWABLE fees in decades!
Remember, it is not what you charge but what you are legally (contractually) allowed to collect that counts. I can bill a million dollars for an office visit. It is not illegal. If I try to collect more that the allowable amount I'm in trouble.
KNOW YOUR ALLOWABLE>>>don't pay more...stick to physicians on your plan. If you see someone not on your plan be sure you know fees in advance. The doctor might not be limited by a contract and sky's the limit.
All the charts and BS in the world won't matter when they haul your carcass off to the incinerator after they have extracted what little wealth you have accumulated and max out what the government counterfeiters will pay.
Every u.s institution from the u.s military to healthcare is now a giant fraudfest hell bent on extracting every last item of wealth using funny money and debt.
Just looking at the roadside bill boards explains the economy. Litigation and healthfraud. Lawyers and Doctors, like piranha squabbling over what's left to steal.
We are now living in a Ferengi economy. Nothing personal the Doc says as he is administers the governments cocktail of drugs to end your life. Your benefits have run out.
Ferengi's were analogs to which ethnic group you think?
Big Eared peeps?
A major disruption in health care is coming after the sickest and most dependent on Big Government of the public die off in the next financial crisis from self-induced stress. The less toxic and young survivors are going to usher in a new far healthier society.
The problem with today's healthcare is government-protected monopoly medicine. It's unaffordable because there is no competition between the various types of medicine.
Our state governments gave Ambulance or Allopathic medicine a government-protected monopoly to diagnose, treat and cure ALL medical afflictions including degenerative diseases that represents 90% of medical care.
Much of the world is using cheap Chinese, Naturopathic, Homeopathic or Ayurvedic medicine and they aren’t dropping like flies like Americans want to believe.
Monopoly Allopathic Medicine has duped Americans into believing that disease strikes randomly like lightning from germs or genetics and that we have little control over our health.
Louis Pasteur, the founder of the Germ Theory of Disease, finally admitted on his death bed that germs don’t cause disease but the terrain is the chief cause.
The terrain is the state of cleanliness or toxicity in the body that enables our immune system to reverse or prevent disease. Monopoly Allopathic Medicine completely ignores toxicity, detoxification, nutrition and natural immunity as all the alternative medicines emphasize.
With government-protected Monopoly Medicine, it's all about managing disease not curing it, maximizing profits and getting patients on daily "maintenance" drugs, using costly surgery and interventions with toxic vaccines.
A massive disruption is coming in health care. In fact investors who have Big Pharma stock should sell ASAP because when the dollar devalues, corrupt agencies
like the FDA and state medical boards that protect the "Standard of Care" favoring Big Pharma and Monopoly Medicine will not be able to continue protecting these corrupt industries from competition.
Like the corrupt Fed, these are the last days of government-protected monopolies and if they had to compete with cheaper, safer and far more effective natural medicine like Homeopathy, Naturopathy or Chinese Medicine they would likely be starved for patients.
The last time the dangerous Allopaths competed in the marketplace in 1900 they could only attract 14% of patients.
The public was afraid of them and fortunately there was back then a free market in medicine so the public chose affordable, safe and vastly more effective natural medicine.
In the 1918 Flu Pandemic, the Allopaths lost 30% of their patients. The Alternative Medical providers lost 1%.
Allopaths were known as the Quicks (later Quacks) for the quicksilver or mercury they poisoned their patients with.
They're still poisoning patients with toxic mercury in vaccines along with aluminum, MSG and formaldehyde embalming fluid. And that's besides the toxic infectious agent that starts a brushfire in the brain for life causing Autism and Schitzophrenia.
They're also poisoning and killing patients with chemotherapy for cancer that's a derivative of WW1 mustard gas.
Because we allowed the European Black Nobility - Organized Crime through their Jesuit, Zionist and Masonic agents to take over our money and medicine around 1913, we allowed the quacks of the day, a government-protected monopoly and drove out the true healers.
The sheeple to this day still believe the myth that Ambulance Allopathic Medicine earned it's government-protected monopoly status because it's the only "proven and scientific" medicine.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It's a vicious, cruel lie that 90% of Americans not only believe, but even defend because they have been chemically dumbed-down with vaccines, fluoridated water and GMO food to name a few.
Forget about government-protected monopolies containing costs and becoming affordable, our hidden rulers are getting a huge belly laugh on their way to the bank as they have handicapped the public with poisons in the food, air, water and medicine.
Visit naturalnews.com and mercola.com and educate and treat yourself with cheap, safe and effective natural medicine that cleans up your immune system terrain and turns on powerful prevention.
Empower yourself and dispel the myth, power and fraud of Monopoly Quack Medicine.
Allopathic Ambulance Medicine specializes in stabilizing traumatic accidents and that’s what they should be restricted to doing.
PBS doctor Andrew Weil MD says that Allopathic Medicine has no business treating degenerative diseases just as natural medicine has no business treating accident victims.
We’ve all been duped by our organized-crime hidden rulers into believing false paradigms about medicine and money.
It’s time we woke up and started controlling our economic future and health. We will all find that the body is enormously powerful in keeping us healthy without the poisoning agendas and interventions of corrupt men.
See this video describing this handicapping agenda by neurosurgeon Dr Russell Blaylock MD for a real eye-opener.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB3xcN_eoPo
Some good posts here at the end.
I'm going to give an example with my wife. She ended up with horrible migraines after a traumatic life event. For these she first took pain killers (standard action by most people who don't have much knowledge and a family that wouldn't let her see a psychotherapist which is what she really needed). This led to worse headaches and the supposed best neurosurgeon in the country prescribing for her 'migraine preventatives' from a list of cocktail meds they have to push. They also pushed anti-nausea bullshit meds vs. simply prescribing the best anti-nausea in the world - cannibinol. In the end my wife (she wasn't my wife back then) got so bad and all the drugs failed to sustain they started injecting her with Botox. These treatments and all the other bs covered virtually completely under Medicaid/Medicare because she has been blind since birth. When I asked how much the botox cost it was like $4-4.5k PER treatment which was like every 3 months.
I felt the neurosurgeon was a QUACK there to push drugs from drug companies and not really treat the basic cause of my wifes condition which was psychological trauma AND physical toxicity. We decided to spend my own hard earned cash and took her to a natrualpath my sister suggested. In the end we learned a couple things.
1) Diet - our food and disease industry is producing toxic foods now more than ever. If you eat the stuff you buy in stores and not direct from organic producers you find yourself diseased in different ways quickly now. One of the direct causes of my wifes migraines was ironically cheese due to hormones. The other are glutens now found in foods because the GMO seed stocks are significantly different than 100 years ago.
2) Just living in a more healthy environment and seeing a psychotherapist has helped her reduce stress dramatically.
The end result is we now have a new healthy baby girl and my wifes migraines while still there due to hormonal changes due to getting pregant and giving birth are tapering off quite dramatically. She is completely off all meds, no botox, nothing except an occasional 800mg Motrin which she is loath to take. Savings to our medical plans. perhaps $20k/yr which cost me about $3-5k to achieve. No thank you. No "How did you do it?" Nothing..
Others have said this better, but the reason the US health care system is screwed up is because we only treat patients symptoms we don't cure diseases, great at dealing with trauma but we never take the time to document with a MRI etc. a healthy person so we can learn what has gone wrong later. Our attitude towards our environment is that we can poison it and not poison ourselves. Treat the symptoms not the cause. Suprisingly some things we can cause in the end won't be treatable easily and impossible to reverse.
Put simply virtually the entire Amerian way of Life is diseased, corrupt, and terminally ill and everything is being done to make sure the patient continues to live doing the same old shit, for higher cost, in the same old way. Do anything but treat the actual cause of disease, force the same tired old ways of greed, consumption, and waste on everyone and everything and try to plug the holes and shut people up with pills when they get sick.
I'm beginning to believe that 'we the people of this planet' need to take things into our own hands and away from those we have trusted these powers with. The FDA, AMA and every other letter agency is now serving Mammon and Evil doing masters and until WE each and every one start taking our power back directly BY NOT BUYING their evil products or participating in their corruption it will continue unabated. Cut them off at your pocketbook and your productivity.
We the people need to construct the new world order ourselves, organically, holistically and with only a few basic precepts. Honestly, truth and open-ness in all social/political constructive systems, rights and protections for the individual in the face of the virtualization and globalization of everything, and actual compassion and caring not just for people but everything on this planet as well as the future generations of everything that will be on this planet. We now have enough technological prowess we can solve virtually every problem on the planet, we simply do not have the wisdom or the compassion to actually do so. Instead we fight greedily over what scraps are left to fight over because that's what we did in the past because what we did yesterday worked then so it should work now.
What I see is a world of greedy uncivilized children all fighting with each other over who is the biggest, baddest, and who controls the playground. What I do not see is adults cooperating with each other using reason, knowledge, and wisdom to create wise, healthy and compassionate solutions that can work for everyone and everything and it's a damn shame most of the few adults on this planet are letting the children run rampant. I am confidant one way or another these things too shall pass but as time goes on it is likely we humans too will mostly pass as well because we will have created the agent of our destruction.
What is ironic is that the last thing that will be said is "How could we have forseen this?".
I would ask "HOW COULD WE HAVE NOT FORSEEN THIS?"
It has been staring us in the face for decades, centuries and likely millenia.
I ask "HOW WE COULD NOT DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT IN TIME?"
I'm going back to gardening and cloth diaper changing. Right now the best thing I can do is to feed the system less and less until it starves to death.
OldE_Ant
Top 1% of users consume all the costs? Well what do you expect? How often do you get cancer? It's always going to be the way that the highest spenders consume the most costs. This is why insurers try their best to deny them care. They can reduce 95% of the cost with no impact on 90% of their "customers". You only find out about the lack of care when you join the 1% sick.
I doubt cancer patients are the reason costs are high. More likely the millions of obese, diabetic, sick freaks that use their doctor as a way out of changing their lifestyle.
How many of these people have cancer because of lifestyle choices?
If you want to buy into the healthcare insurance scheme great, please do but don't ask the government to force me to subsidize your lack of responsibility for your own situation.
And please...can we stop calling this insurance. It's a socialist government ponzi scheme just like the rest of the schemes. The minute the government forces you to buy something it stops being whatever it was and is by definition a socialist ponzi scheme.
I wonder where I would fit in your theory. It is more complex than your simplicity. No disrespect to you or anyone. You are correct when you say it is not insurance, but you must look at the intentions of Obamacare for the much braoder picture. The main barrier to the One World Economic System is the American Middle-class and it must be dismantled and is by ALL means possible and unimaginable and that is the much larger picture.
i live in germany and while "babarous" may not be the word I would use to describe the sick care system for the elderly i would not hesitate to thorw in "usurious", "tyrannical" "crony capitalist cartel driven". the same forces at work in my olde home the USSA are at work here too. I just talked to an olde fellah who went in for a knee replacement and was denied due t a blood illness he never knew he had. he will most certainly die in agony and much quicker with the chemo which will cost him much more than the knee would have and THIS after a lifetime of good health and paying HIS MONEY into a system which says his remaining years are worth less for some reason now.
This is largely a manufactured crisis. One of the companies I consult with did their own study, and I can't remember the exact figures but something like 50% of the spending that occurs is due to care in the last two weeks of life among patients over 65. Essentially it's a fine for dying made possibly by heroic but futile efforts.
There's a reason nearly all doctors have DNR orders in place in their own old age.
When my father died of cancer, he had the option of staying at his place with a nurse we hired while fading out with morphine, or dying in the hospital. Staying at home cost $1000. A hospital stay would involve being in ICU, would probably have extended his life another week or two, and cost 15-20K per day. It's pretty easy to see why those costs skyrocket with age on the chart.
Considering the current government and populace there is only one predictable event--national, single-payer, insurance. Not that it will fix anything. Just going to happen.
There is no near-term fix except for the individual--get yourself out of the system in any possible way, be it by doing what you can to stay healthy, using alternative sources of care, and, if you can afford, get the hell out of the country and live somewhere else.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything that Charles Hugh Smith states in the article. I unfortunately think that he misses the one massively low hanging fruit that is the starter for the explosion in healthcare costs. That is the fact that the Federal Government via the USDA, FDA and EPA in conjunction with the large pharmaceutical, agricultural, chemical and energy companies are knowingly poisoning the population. Whether it is allowing for GMOs without testing or labelling, to increasing pesticide, herbicide or radiation limits for use on agricultural produce or it's accumulation in various species who are in the food chain, or allowing for the insertion of highly toxic chemicals into the water, they know how harmful it is to the population from birth through the point of death but they do it anyway! From this starting point, it cascades downstream into the healthcare system and butts up against all the problems Mr. Smith discusses above. So what you'll have is an economy that is doomed in everyway imaginable.
Yes,
and it isn't just the very poor who live in a "food desert",
whether the others realize it or not.
http://news.yahoo.com/americas-most-obese-states-tend-one-thing-common-1...
The anemic health care (sick care) system barely serves to mask and distract from the robust debilitating systems which are immune from having a strictly medical cure.
such as;
all the attendant physical and mental health problems caused by neglected infrastructure, endless warfare, and joblessness
a counter-productive war on drugs, a counter-productive promotion of legal pharmaceuticals, debased foods from the production to consumption (e.g. concentrated feed lots, round-up ready to eat, advertised promotion of profitable junk foods, etc. and etc.)
the endless fearmongering for safety and the endless advertised cure-alls which, coupled with various legal restrictions, prevent many if not most from dealing with end-of-life medical issues in a rational manner.
A recent study reported that Hawaii is the only state with an obesity rate less than 20%. The problem here is not lack of a streamlined health care system to dispense diet pills.
We have the worst of both, an anemic sick care system
and a life draining social system.
"Lose the excess fat, lose the disease."
LastDietATx.com
"Lose the excess fat, lose the disease."
TwoMindsBlog needs to cut off both heads; the Obamacare is killing the economy because it is real damn expensive and pays out nothing. I have spent more in the past three years than the previous 10 years combined and get nothing but headaches in the process; literally and figuratively. This week I had a Synvisc shot in the knee and BOTOX in the forehead for migraines and it will cost almost $2000 out of pocket. Since it is almost June, paid monthly premiums total $3600; so I have paid $5600 and the insurance has paid NOTHING. Yep, pass before you can know what is in it...the TPP contains language to force the US to abide by international gun laws; backdoor confiscation is coming.
This is the point that Karl 'douchebag' Denniger has been making for a long while on his ticker blog. The real threat to the economy is the exponential health care costs.
Yes he's a prick of the highest order, basically a wanker, but even pricks/wankers get it right sometimes.
And if his BBRY stock rallies 200% from here, he'll be back in the money and right on two calls.
Compare real US sickcare costs to those of other comparable nations (not using CHS's silly chart, it's completely misleading). It's not affordable, economical, sustainable, or rational anywhere.
The amount of embedded energy and capital investment in modern medicine is scarcely conceivable. It works when oil is $20/bbl and everyone has a fat line of credit. Not so much anymore.
The 6 items CHS lists and all the others mentioned in the comments are just premia on top of the real issue - a system designed around next-to-free energy, embedded at every step and point and level of medicine. This is, of course, greatly compounded by inefficiencies at all levels, too - think of how much is wasted in insurance, billing, and regulatory paperwork.
Never ever forget that total credit (total credit market debt) must expand. It used to take place in the form of financed non-productive and non-remunerative infrastructure and consumer spending, now it's financed healthcare (among other things).
So the solution to corporatist crony healthcare monopolies is a "single payer" government corporatist crony healthcare monopoly Charles? Uhhhh???
I love it when people try to argue that some special area of human existence is immune to the benefits of competition...healthcare and education are usually the standards...but have no logical explanation for why they are.
I am a general internist and I can guarantee you it's not just the blacks and old people, though that's a huge chunk.
There are a ton, and I mean a ton, of middle aged white people in this country in remarkably poor health. Whether they were undone by the system or not is a chicken or egg question, but it is what it is.
You dig your grave with your spoon.
It's Obama's Legacy.
- Lawyers are here to help you, they gave you Obama Care
- BAR Association is here to help you, they have kept your health care costs, liability costs, Financial Costs, Capital Investment Costs all under Control, Great Guys
And of course we don't need to read ACA before we sign it.
Thank the BAR Association for your DC Term Limits too.
What Financial Conflict of Interest would be complete with out the Lawyers wonderful Help.
We should Create National Medals to Give to BAR and US Lawyers!
And the AMA and doctor-encouraged culture of "keep them alive (in misery) for another week, no matter the cost". Bunch of BS. Let people die before they get into such misery.
the "health care" system is just part of the already doomed economy.
the TBTF Global War Street has doomed the 'economy',
with or without a sensible health care system
(though given the TBTF political economics, no sensible health system is possible)
Monopolies baby!
The fact is, health insurance has terrible consequences. Even if the only health insurance that existed was "fully private, fully voluntary" health insurance (not through employer, union or anyone else)... that drives up healthcare costs for EVERYONE.
Health insurance just convinces doctors and hospitals to set utterly corrupt prices for services, and grossly over-prescribe services.
The FACT of the matter is this. If healthcare insurance did not exist, and everyone paid out of pocket without exception, and no government laws regarding healthcare existed, the cost of healthcare would be 100x lower (in the USSA).
Yes, about 100x lower.
And no, that is not an exaggeration.
Of course, almost nobody would spend $27,000,000 extra to keep great-great-grandma in absolute misery for "one more week" either.