Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[glatt]

Originally Posted by BigV

Why is our health care so expensive?

We're at over 2500 posts in this thread. When the thread started, there was a good discussion about defining what was wrong with health care and where the outrageous costs come from.

The best information was in a chart posted, by UT of course, in post 152.

I'm not going to restate what that chart said, and more importantly the independent study behind UT's link, but lawyers and malpractice costs are responsible for only a small part of the outrageous costs. There are numerous factors, and the biggest was health care administration. This rings true. Go to any doctors office. There are usually like 5 people behind the desk for every doctor in the place. Too much paperwork.

[Undertoad]

Normally markets provide things cheaper. Any other product you would find better and cheaper in a market system. The problem here is that it's a broken market.

[Pico and ME]

The damn cable market is broken then too. When is the pressure of Netflix and Redbox gonna get them to lower their rates for On Demand movies, by god.

[Undertoad]

It certainly is, in most locations it's a mandated monopoly.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Normally markets provide things cheaper. Any other product you would find better and cheaper in a market system. The problem here is that it's a broken market.

Is part of the problem the cost of entry or regulation? What is driving the quantity of competition away and leaving just a few to control the market?

[Undertoad]

I am guessing it's not just one thing but a ton of them.

[Pico and ME]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

It certainly is, in most locations it's a mandated monopoly.

And by people who jump ship to go to work for them not 6 months after voting for mergers that totally favors them.

[classicman]

Yeh its certainly not a partisan issue.

And in mid-December Peter Orszag joined Citi as vice chairman of the investment-banking division
Of all the financial joints in the world, he had to choose the megabank whose unmatched combination of incompetence and recklessness led it to seek some $45 billion in government aid? He had to go to the place that best emphasizes the corrosive relationship between Wall Street and Democratic Party elites? (Citi is where Robert Rubin got paid a ton for hanging his hat after serving as Clinton’s Treasury secretary.) Worse, at the time Orszag was negotiating with Citi, Treasury still owned a huge chunk of the bank’s shares.

That was 4 months after leaving the Obama Administration. <shrug>

[Pico and ME]

<shrug>

*sigh*

[Fair&Balanced]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I am guessing it's not just one thing but a ton of them.

Agreed.

The administrative costs of an employer-based health insurance system coupled with the anti-competitive nature of that system.

The system is reactionary rather than focusing on prevention.

There is an emphasis on over-testing and over diagnosing

The higher cost of prescriptions that most other countries.

The litigious nature of Americans and the high cost of medical malpractice.

An aging population and living longer lives where costs rise with age.

The high number of uninsured whose costs are borne by emergency rooms, hospitals, etc. thus driving up the costs.

[classicman]

There is a simple explanation for why American health care costs so much more than health care in any other country: because we pay so much more for each unit of care. As Halvorson explained, and academics and consultancies have repeatedly confirmed, if you leave everything else the same -- the volume of procedures, the days we spend in the hospital, the number of surgeries we need -- but plug in the prices Canadians pay, our health-care spending falls by about 50 percent.

Link

[classicman]

...you all wanted to know what makes our health care system so expensive. You all want to know where the money is going.

I will be endeavoring this week (and further) to give you better answers. I’m going to draw heavily on the McKinsey & Company paper I have referenced in the past, supplementing that when appropriate. I’m also basing much of this on an important point made by Uwe Reinhardt and colleagues in their paper U.S. Health Care Spending In An International Context: Why is U.S. spending so high, and can we afford it?:

Link

Lotta info to read in this link...

[Undertoad]

50% of the product is bought by the government.

[TheMercenary]

Question: What do the following have in common? Eckert Cold Storage Co., Kerly Homes of Yuma, Classic Party Rentals, West Coast Turf Inc., Ellenbecker Investment Group Inc., Only in San Francisco, Hotel Nikko, International Pacific Halibut Commission, City of Puyallup, Local 485 Health and Welfare Fund, Chicago Plastering Institute Health & Welfare Fund, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Teamsters Local 522 Fund Welfare Fund Roofers Division, StayWell Saipan Basic Plan, CIGNA, Caribbean Workers' Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Health and Welfare Plan.
Answer: They are all among the 1,372 businesses, state and local governments, labor unions and insurers, covering 3,095,593 individuals or families, that have been granted a waiver from Obamacare by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

All of which raises another question: If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?

More specifically, why are more than half of those 3,095,593 in plans run by labor unions, which were among Obamacare's biggest political supporters? Union members are only 12 percent of all employees but have gotten 50.3 percent of Obamacare waivers.

Just in April, Sebelius granted 38 waivers to restaurants, nightclubs, spas and hotels in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco congressional district. Pelosi's office said she had nothing to do with it.

On its website HHS pledges that the waiver process will be transparent. But it doesn't list those whose requests for waivers have been denied.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/politi...ls-punish-foes

[BigV]

And what do you conclude from this excerpt, mercy?

do you know what constitutes the waivers in described in the article?

Perhaps you are implying that these largest of obamacare supporters run health care plans that are so efficient, with such narrow profit margins that they cannot afford to offer the plans that were granted waivers without "either a large increase in premiums or a significant decrease in access to coverage." It seems clear to me that other plans that do not qualify for waivers are run in such a way that there's plenty of profit margin to dip into to allow for plans that have annual payout limits in excess of $750,000.

I applaud you for pointing out the lean efficiency of these plans. thank you.