BREAKING NEWS: Source: House GOP leaders delay vote on health care repeal bill, in setback for President Trump and Speaker Ryan. Story to come...

[Zambroski]

Just now, snoughnut said:

The biggest problem with healthcare is the industry has gotten way too greedy. From insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceuticals........pigs at the trough.

Agreed.  Did anybody else see that "Supersize Me" guy do that documentary on our healthcare costs?  IMPRESSIVE!  And embarrassingly shameful.

[snoughnut]

By Dr. Mercola

Americans spend twice as much on health care per capita than any other country in the world; in fact, according to a series of studies by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, the US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia.

Other astounding statistics include:

• The US spends more than 17 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare¹
• If the US health care system was a country, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet²
• While the US makes up only five percent of the world's population, Americans consume over 50 percent of all the world's pharmaceutical drugs
• Overall, Americans also pay 50 percent more than other countries for identical drugs, as a result of laws and regulations preventing the US government from reining in drug prices like other nations do

Despite all of this spending and pill-popping, the US ranks dead last in terms of quality of care among industrialized countries, and Americans are far sicker and live shorter lives than people in other nations. Clearly, we have taken a wrong turn down the wrong road somewhere...

The US Health Care System Is Fundamentally Flawed

A review of US healthcare expenses by the Institutes of Medicine³ (IOM) revealed that 30 cents of every dollar spent on medical care is wasted, adding up to $750 billion annually. For perspective, the defense budget proposed by the Pentagon for 2014 was just under $527 billion.⁴ 

The IOM report identifies six major areas of medical waste: Unnecessary services; inefficient delivery of care; excess administrative costs; inflated prices; prevention failures; and fraud. Also, as stated in the featured Time Magazine article⁵:

"A central reason U.S. health care spending is so high is that hospitals and doctors charge more for their services and there's little transparency about why.

There is no uniformity to the system, in which public and private insurers have separate, unrelated contracts with hospitals and doctors. The result is a tangled, confusing and largely secretive collection of forces driving health care prices higher and higher.

This isn't possible in many other countries either because governments set prices for health care services or broker negotiations between coalitions of insurers and providers."

The True Cost of Health Care

The documentary film The True Cost of Health Care⁶ by Dr. David Belk, MD (featured above) also reveals a number of shocking details that help explain the exorbitant cost of American health care. For example:

• Generic medications can cost 100 times less than their brand-name equivalent, and usually cost less than most insurance co-pays. This means you might actually pay LESS by purchasing a generic medication out of pocket, compared to using your insurance if you have a co-pay. In essence, going through your insurance amounts to paying extra for the privilege of being overcharged...
• Hospitals routinely bill 10 or more times what they expect to be paid for any given service. As I discussed in a previous article, most hospitals end up receiving just 35 percent of what they bill, yet they still manage to make tens of millions of dollars in operating profits each year. Some hospitals, including Sloan-Kettering and MD Anderson, who are tougher in their negotiations with insurance companies, end up getting around 50 percent of their total billings.
• Most diagnostic tests and procedures are inexpensive to perform. However, the charges for these tests and procedures typically have no relation to the actual cost. Each hospital has an internal price list called a chargemaster, which contains every single item you may be given or come in contact with during your hospital stay. The problem is, no one quite knows how the prices in the chargemaster are created. What is clear is that there's absolutely no market feedback to regulate and control the prices that are charged.
• Health insurance companies deliberately manipulate these costs to maintain their profits. As explained by TheTrueCostofHealthCare.org:⁷"Health insurance companies can manipulate a patient's out of pocket payments to make it appear as though health care is more expensive than it really is. Insurance companies sell security against financial risk. If no one really understands what that risk is (because all prices are hidden or deceptive) then the price of the security (insurance) can be grossly inflated."

The Chargemaster: What You Need to Know if You Want to Avoid Medical Bankruptcy

Each hospital has an internal price list called a chargemaster, which contains every single item you may be given or come in contact with during your hospital stay. That includes the little white paper cup you get your medicine in, every box of tissue and band-aid, even a toy to a child (which many mistake as a "gift") can be billed at upwards of $200. The problem is, no one quite knows how the prices in the chargemaster are created. What's worse, there seems to be no real rationale or process behind this important document. As journalist and author Steven Brill has stated:⁸

"That so few consumers seem to be aware of the chargemaster demonstrates how well the health care industry has steered the debate from why bills are so high to who should pay them... [T]he drag on our overall economy that comes with taxpayers, employers and consumers spending so much more than is spent in any other country for the same product is unsustainable. Health care is eating away at our economy and our treasury."

There is no real marketplace as such, as you the buyer is completely separated from the seller. There's absolutely no market feedback to regulate and control the prices that are charged. For the most part, the hospitals charge as much as they want, which plays a large role on why these charges have gotten so outrageously out of control. This simply doesn't happen in countries outside of the US.

In response, a small grassroots-type industry has emerged as a result of shell-shocked patients reaching out for help to understand their medical bills. Referring to themselves as medical-billing advocates, they help you not only read and understand the content of your bills, but also negotiate with the hospital to reduce the charges. The problem with that, of course, is: what about the people who don't realize they CAN bargain with a major hospital? And should we really accept "bills of fiction" to begin with? 

Even with the help of a medical-billing advocate (who of course charges a fee for the service), many uninsured patients still overpay. After all, getting a 50 percent discount on a test billed at $200, which should cost $15 is not necessarily a great bargain, although it's certainly an improvement if we only take fictional numbers into account. The sad thing is, as mentioned earlier, the overcharges are SO grossly inflated that even if you get the bill cut in half, the hospital still makes out like a bandit!

[revkevsdi]

54 minutes ago, Highmark said:

Even the most "affordable" countries spend $6-7000 per person per year on HC.  Just exactly what type of Medicare tax will

http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/true-cost-of-health-care-to-average-family-is-11k-per-year-report-1.2525114

54 minutes ago, Highmark said:

4 hours ago, Mileage Psycho said:

That 46% saved your shitty miserable life............now that I think about I can see why your Canadian healthcare has you pissed off.

There are definite downsides. We have save bags of shit like Momo and the decent people in society. There is a different though. If you have people to advocate for you, you will get better care. 

4 hours ago, JEFF said:

You're in lala land if you consider $1800.00 a month "reasonable".It's nuts. I know that's what it is but seriously it's out of control. That's $10 per hour for the working man...

 

Hell, that's only slightly less than it costs me per month to cover my employees. 100% drugs, private rooms etc.

So if you couple the Fraser institutes average cost of 11,000.00 per year per family that it costs our government and what we have to pay privately, Canada's so-called inefficient socialist healthcare programs are looking good.

 

[Snoslinger]

54 minutes ago, snoughnut said:

The biggest problem with healthcare is the industry has gotten way too greedy. From insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceuticals........pigs at the trough.

but add to that nearly every other corporation in America. 

[Mileage Psycho]

1 hour ago, Highmark said:

Even the most "affordable" countries spend $6-7000 per person per year on HC.  Just exactly what type of Medicare tax will pay for that?

The Cadillac plan we provide is $600.00 per month for a single person, so there is your answer.

 

[Mileage Psycho]

41 minutes ago, revkevsdi said:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/true-cost-of-health-care-to-average-family-is-11k-per-year-report-1.2525114

Hell, that's only slightly less than it costs me per month to cover my employees. 100% drugs, private rooms etc.

So if you couple the Fraser institutes average cost of 11,000.00 per year per family that it costs our government and what we have to pay privately, Canada's so-called inefficient socialist healthcare programs are looking good.

 

11K CDN is $8224.61 US.

[ArcticCrusher]

52 minutes ago, revkevsdi said:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/true-cost-of-health-care-to-average-family-is-11k-per-year-report-1.2525114

Hell, that's only slightly less than it costs me per month to cover my employees. 100% drugs, private rooms etc.

So if you couple the Fraser institutes average cost of 11,000.00 per year per family that it costs our government and what we have to pay privately, Canada's so-called inefficient socialist healthcare programs are looking good.

 

From the link.

According to Statistics Canada, Canadians spent a total of $141 billion on health care that year. The authors divided that number by the Canadian population, concluding that, on average, each Canadian contributes $3,961 for health care each year.

However, as the report notes, not every Canadian pays an equal amount in taxes. Dependents and children are not responsible for paying taxes, while high-income earners must pay more than low-income earners.

To account for this, the study broke average Canadian families down into 10 income groups, concluding that Canada’s poorest families pay $477 a year for health care, while the wealthiest earners pay $59,666 a year.

[Mainecat]

1 hour ago, Mileage Psycho said:

11K CDN is $8224.61 US.

The nooks are taking a beating. No wonder momo is stinky

[spin_dry]

22 hours ago, Mileage Psycho said:

Even with the threats from Trump they can't get it done, Trump should have sent leg breakers to the Hill to show them he was serious  

 

 

will donny ever get anything accomplished? 

[ArcticCrusher]

Beating.  You are getting ass raped. 

[Kev144]

why when i think of DJT i think of donny buffalo  

[spin_dry]

2 hours ago, Highmark said:

The second source that Fish gave us was a chart from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. That chart showed exactly what Bates said: Twenty percent of the population accounts for 80 percent of total expenditures. Maybe even more shockingly, the chart also shows that just 5 percent of the population accounts for 50 percent of all expenditures.

why is that shocking? it's basic common sense. 

[Zambroski]

56 minutes ago, Mainecat said:

The nooks are taking a beating. No wonder momo is stinky

They are being sold the same msm rhetoric, lying, and ass-handedness we've taken over the last eight.  Only their idiot king is an idiot prince.  He'll be gone too.  He's building up his supporter's ranks as fast as he can though (Immigrants).  And paying them well for their votes!

Ohhhhhh......CAN-A-DAAAAAA!!!!!!

[Jimmy Snacks]

House Republicans withdraw healthcare bill.

http://www.startribune.com/house-sets-risky-health-care-vote-after-trump-demands-it/416999794/

[Mileage Psycho]

1 hour ago, spin_dry said:

will donny ever get anything accomplished? 

Well he told the Speaker and the House Republicans that today was now or never, so now I guess it's never and to think he even use Planned Parenthood in his morning Tweet to pound it home.

Quote

 

House Republicans postpone vote on healthcare bill

WASHINGTON  - House Republicans, short of votes, withdraw health care bill.

This is a breaking news update. Check back later for more.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-republicans-postpone-vote-on-healthcare-bill/ar-BByHMcJ

 

 

[Mainecat]

 

DOA

Edited March 24, 2017 by Mainecat

[Angry ginger]

32 minutes ago, Mileage Psycho said:

Well he told the Speaker and the House Republicans that today was now or never, so now I guess it's never and to think he even use Planned Parenthood in his morning Tweet to pound it home.

 

another idiotic tweet over planned parenthood,  wtf is he thinking

[ICEMAN!]

[Angry ginger]

  

[Mileage Psycho]

4 minutes ago, Angry ginger said:

another idiotic tweet over planned parenthood,  wtf is he thinking

He doesn't think or pay attention, Priebus, Ryan and other told him before the election that Obamacare had to be the #1 priority and he agreed to it without giving it much thought, the political capital that he spent on this is huge.

The Dems were chanting on the floor VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

[revkevsdi]

3 hours ago, Mileage Psycho said:

11K CDN is $8224.61 US.

Sure that makes it look even better but you can't really figure the exchange rate into it. We were at par a few years ago.

It's not like our houses or wages float with the exchange rate.

Regardless, I'd like to compare what it costs taxes in for a person to own a factory fully insure their employees, pay property taxes, live in a nice house, take home a decent wage etc.

I bet after paying for private health care Americans are worse off than Canadians. When it is all said and done, your Health care provider can fuck you over. In Canada it is less likely.

 

Edited March 24, 2017 by revkevsdi

[Angry ginger]

19 minutes ago, revkevsdi said:

Sure that makes it look even better but you can't really figure the exchange rate into it. We were at par a few years ago.

It's not like our houses or wages float with the exchange rate.

Regardless, I'd like to compare what it costs taxes in for a person to own a factory fully insure their employees, pay property taxes, live in a nice house, take home a decent wage etc.

I bet after paying for private health care Americans are worse off than Canadians. When it is all said and done, your Health care provider can fuck you over. In Canada it is less likely.

 

if you have good insurance and connections or money and connections there is no better country in the world for healthcare,  it's why people come into places like Mayo,  Mass General etc from all over the world.  But what we pay for that system fucks the average person who doesn't need the finest healthcare in the world they need basics at a basic price.  Reality is we would be better off with universal healthcare and a rationing of care including letting people die when the quality of their life is low.  

 

 

[Mainecat]

23 minutes ago, revkevsdi said:

Sure that makes it look even better but you can't really figure the exchange rate into it. We were at par a few years ago.

It's not like our houses or wages float with the exchange rate.

Regardless, I'd like to compare what it costs taxes in for a person to own a factory fully insure their employees, pay property taxes, live in a nice house, take home a decent wage etc.

I bet after paying for private health care Americans are worse off than Canadians. When it is all said and done, your Health care provider can fuck you over. In Canada it is less likely.

 

While in Quebec they tack on a food tax for healthcare. The waitress said she was very happy to have healthcare for herself and 2 kids. She said she could never afford her home if she had to pay it alone.

[hayward]

13 minutes ago, Mainecat said:

While in Quebec they tack on a food tax for healthcare. The waitress said she was very happy to have healthcare for herself and 2 kids. She said she could never afford her home if she had to pay it alone.

well, that might be a way to curb america's obesity problem.

[ArcticCrusher]

43 minutes ago, revkevsdi said:

Sure that makes it look even better but you can't really figure the exchange rate into it. We were at par a few years ago.

It's not like our houses or wages float with the exchange rate.

Regardless, I'd like to compare what it costs taxes in for a person to own a factory fully insure their employees, pay property taxes, live in a nice house, take home a decent wage etc.

I bet after paying for private health care Americans are worse off than Canadians. When it is all said and done, your Health care provider can fuck you over. In Canada it is less likely.

 

I would like to know that as well, but the more you make the pendulum swings to the US.

 

On the second bold,  Americans with good insurance have much faster access to HC than Canadians do.  That is why we always hear of Canadians heading to the US for treatments but never the other way around.