Reducing the cost of medicare/ health insurance

[Carmen813]

Just take a pill, Obama says. Just look at his healthcare czar.

Wake the fuck up people. Cutting costs means cutting care. This experiment has been tried before and it has failed.

Look no farther than the recent gubment recommendations on a god damn mammogram. The goal is to reduce treatment. Reducing treatment means more deaths. This is what gubment controlled healthcare is.

But by all means trumpet and cheer the loss of control of your life and destiny, you stupid, ignorant people.

I was just denied a CT/PET scan because being 3 years remission with Hodgkin's Lymphoma doesn't justify sufficient medical necessity to have scans more than once annually. Wouldn't it be better if I got a scan every month?

 

[Carmen813]

Anyway, to get back on topic (on my now, fourth post...mods hate me)...

The way to reduce costs in health care is to work on lowering administrative costs, and probably some tort reform. We need electronic medical records, and I for one would love to have a credit card type device with my medical information on it (probably secured with a fairly strong password system) so that I could have my medical records with me at all times. We also need preventative medicine, and we need to encourage healthier lifestyles. Less people sick = more people working = better economy. Right now we have an obesity epidemic, which is simply fail.

Doctors order excess tests because they are paranoid about being sued. I had blood work done by my PCP 2 weeks ago. I saw my oncologist last week and he ordered another one...presumably he wanted to check some other blood reading, but honestly, couldn't they have just done it once? Another $100 disappears into American's medical system.

Do I think insurance profits are the problem? Nope. I think rescission is detestable and morally deficient, but profits also should theoretically drive people to be more efficient.

 

[n yusef]

In the abstract, I think that many (most?) people agree that billions in public funds shouldn't be used to extend lives for days or months. However, when it comes to a family member's or one's own life, cost-benefit analysis seems reductive and immoral.

In other words, after establishing that healthcare is a limited resource, how do we justly distribute it? Of course, this is a political question without a clear answer. . .

 

[Xellos2099]

I agree with the idea of "death panels" sorry but in both the OP's people i am NOT for spending hundreds of thousands of tax payers money on giving them maybe 2-3 years fo life.

i would rather spend that money on a 30 yr old guy who needs it.

IF the person wants to have the operation they can pay for it themselves or have private insurance.

This would be an ideal plan but you know those bleeding heart democrat will never allow it under their system. They push for universal fairness and they will take money away from the people with money if they could legally. O they already did, it is call insane tax bracket that the democrat want to push out.

 

[Patranus]

You know, if we had the technology to do genetic defect screening, in vitro, and simply get rid of all the defective people before they are born, just think of all the money we could save.

It would be quite moral also, as the unborn aren't actually people anyway. (The precident already exists for this).

Did you really just say that? I think Hitler tired something along those lines

by the way, here is a list of people with a "genetic defect"
Andrew Carnegie
Prince Charles
Winston Churchill
Leonardo Da Vinci
Walt Disney
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Dwight Eisenhauer
Benjamin Franklin
Malcolm Forbes
Henry Ford
Galileo
Vincent Van Gogh
Alexander Graham Bell
Stephen Hawking
William Randolph Hearst
John F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Abraham Lincoln
Sir Issac Newton
Pablo Picasso
Nelson Rockafeller
Woodrow Wilson
Orville & Wilber Wright
FW Woolworth

Because we don't need the telephone......right....

 

[ohnoes]

I don't know how you can balance medical care & costs with morality since they directly conflict.

 

[ohnoes]

This is one of my main concerns. My sister was born mentally retarded. She is 41 now and has the mind of about a 9 year old. Still she is one of the best people in the world. She can't see bad in anyone, someone can make fun of her and she will cry but then she will still be nice to them later, never holding a grudge. I have seen many people that have defects and are born with things like down's , they are more human than what we call normal, maybe we are really the ones messed up in the head. Someone like my sister would never have been allowed to live under a rationed system.

That makes no sense. How would she not be allowed to live?

 

[First]

Just to be clear, you would support a health care system that runs in the red, correct?

Any company that finances their debt long-term without some significant profit can't survive; this doesn't apply to the U.S. gov't, who can borrow at very low interest rates long-term by selling U.S. treasuries (like we do with SS), and it's because they have the full faith and credit of the country backing them. Running in the red isn't the same for private as it is with public.

Most estimates i have seen have the govt picking up the tab for between 44 and 52% of all health care spending in this country. That include Medicare, Medicaid, SCCHIPs, any other govt program.

It's under 40% but over 30%, read it just recently. I don't remember which one since I don't have the stats off-hand but it's quite clearly not a majority of healthcare in this country. It's literally impossible for that to be the case since Medicare only applies to those 65 and over, and the poor make up a very small minority of the 307M people in the U.S.

I have heard the number was far smaller than 54 billion. More like ~15 billion. Either way I dont see how in a market that is 2.3 trillion dollars, erasing 57 billion is going to cure our ills. I agree it adds to the problem but isnt the sole issue. Just like tort reform on its own wont cure our ills either, it is part of the overall reform package. And unless we are simply going to stop or reduce the reimbursement for procedures, costs will continue to rise.

Until we as a nation really look at how to stop the increases in costs vs who is going to pay for it we wont be like France. We have different politics, different demographics, and a different mindset. We will want the best and be happy to make our neighbor pay for it. We will end up with what we have in the states that run public options. Costs that are simply out of control. TennCare, CaliCare, Hawaii's program, Mitt Romneys unmitigated disaster in Mass. Which sounds an awful like what we have proposed at the national level. It isnt we need a bigger pool of participants. It is these programs never addressed the underlying cost issues.

A bigger pool of participants is precisely how you reduce costs; it simple economies of scale and it's a tried and true method. If it's tied to Medicare prices as the House bill is, the more the merrier. Seniors are scared to death about having their Medicare taken away and it's not because Medicare is rejecting them care. Military men and women aren't exactly complaining about being denied VA care due to pre-existing conditions. France isn't exactly up in arms and revolting against their health care system. The reasons seem to be fairly obvious; they work.

I cant help but wonder if this isnt one giant generational steal job anyways. Baby boomers heading into their twilight years realize they need a way to extend their life. To accomplish this they make their children and grand children pay for it.

If the debt problem were something that we should be sacred about this would be a concern. Unfortunately people can't quite seem to do the math and realize any significant period of economic boom combined with tax hikes on the rich can pay for it. Of the Western industrialized nations, our debt as a percentage of GDP is significantly less and you could include future short-term (5-7 years out) on top of that and we'd still likely be on par with the rest of the world (Britain, Japan, France).