ER visit, 3 hrs, $83,000

Torgo · Sep 6, 2012

benbradley said:
Here you go:

I don't disagree that your healthcare system is probably too broken to fix easily. Nevertheless most of the first world has some kind of universal healthcare, in which the costs of treatments aren't driven to extremes by the market. Possibly, if you transition to some more sane model, the overall cost of healthcare provision would decrease. Perhaps you wouldn't need to raise taxes to pay for universal provision. Perhaps Mitt could put his hand in his pocket now and again. I dunno.

What I objected to as a straw man is the characterisation of me - or any universal healthcare advocate - as someone who thinks that 'free' healthcare means nobody pays. Obviously I know that I pay for my care and the care of everyone else via my taxes. But the amount I pay every year for peace of mind is less than a couple of months' health insurance in the USA.

Maxinquaye · Sep 6, 2012

I think people also forget the economics of scale. One of the reasons why health care is cheaper in countries with universal health care is that the buying agents are powerful and can negotiate prices a lot.

If you have to buy say medicines for tens of millions of people, you’re going to be able to negotiate the price of medicines to much closer to cost. If you buy one hundred million doses of a particular brand of medicine, it’s still going to be a hell of a deal if manufacturers' profit margin is only one percent.

Don · Sep 6, 2012

Maxinquaye said:
I think people also forget the economics of scale. One of the reasons why health care is cheaper in countries with universal health care is that the buying agents are powerful and can negotiate prices a lot.

If you have to buy say medicines for tens of millions of people, you’re going to be able to negotiate the price of medicines to much closer to cost. If you buy one hundred million doses of a particular brand of medicine, it’s still going to be a hell of a deal if manufacturers' profit margin is only one percent.

I seem to recall that when the Medicare prescription program was initiated, one of the powers denied to the administrators was the power to negotiate drug prices.

I'm sure someone will correct me quickly if I'm wrong.

GeorgeK · Sep 6, 2012

Kaiser-Kun said:
I really can't understand why the american population is so scared of public healthcare. Both of my parents have gotten lifesaving surgeries thanks to it (colectomy and histerectomy), and it hasn't stopped us from getting private attention if we want to (like my wisdom teeth removal or my laser optical surgery). On all of these cases the attention was excellent and the taxes for it reasonable.

My girlfriend asked her grandma (who is a rural midwife) and she said that in her clinic they wouldn't have charged a penny for applying the scorpion antidote.

It's a twisted symbiosis between preachers, politicians and insurance lobbyists in the shadow of McCarthyism. People remember their parents and grandparents talking about the communist threat and have been instilled with fears regarding that or anything even vaguely resembling it.

Preachers tell their congregations to avoid science and math and that the only book they need to read is the portions of the Bible that the preacher tells them. That keeps the congregation enslaved through ignorance and intelluctual laziness to the preacher. The preachers want tax emempt status so they can bilk as much money as they can. In return for that they tell the congregation to vote for the politicians who make that happen.

The politicians on the side are becoming millionairs by lobbyists, sometimes directly but usually it's through consulting fees, lectures and appointments to boards after they are out of office.

The insurance lobbyists and companies are the ones ultimately running the scam charging ridiculous premiums and then refusing to pay for anything, all with the politicians in their pockets to protect them and the preachers as their ground troops keeping the masses voting for their hired politicians

ER visit, 3 hrs, $83,000

Torgo

Formerly Phantom of Krankor.

Maxinquaye

That cheeky buggerer

Don

All Living is Local

GeorgeK

ever seeking