Lets not get sidetracked into the health insurance debate for it
masks
the underlying problem. The fundamental problem is that our
health
care
system has been hijacked by corporate powers making healthcare
too
expensive.

Nonsense. The main thing that makes it so expensive is that
medical
technology marches forward, not backward, and there's always more
stuff
to
apply to medical problems -- increasingly expensive stuff.

That is one factor but there are many others such as malpractice
insurance
but the overriding component is that a corporate monopoly has
seized
control of the industry at large.

Sure, Curley, malpractice insurance is a factor, and there are many
other
factors. It's not a single thing that's done all of it. But if you
spend
some time sorting out where the costs are you'll see that most of it
boils
down to the fact that doctors can -- and do -- employ more expensive
drugs,
procedures, and so on.

I don't agree. It's all about treating a population and most of the
population is healthy and doesn't require a lot of expensive
procedures
and
medications. I think some amazing amount of health care dollars are
spent
on
people in the last five years of their lives and something like the
last
six
months equals more than what they spent on health care in their
entire
lives. So most people are not getting a lot of expensive procedures
that
cost an arm and a leg. g

It doesn't matter. The expensive procedures and pills ($850 per person)
are
still being used, no matter who they're being used on. That's why our
fundamental health costs are so high and getting higher.

--
Ed Huntress


I think everyone knows that as time passes and improvements in medicine
and
technology occur it causes things to cost more. What I'm saying is that
isn't the root cause of all the increases in our health care.

Of course not. But it's the driver for everything else.

If it just
cost more for all the newfangled high tech stuff you couldn't blame the
10%
a year increase in health care costs on that. The truth is most of the
costs
come from other areas. One of which is having to care for a continually
increasing group of impoverished illegal aliens. Another area is the
increasing inefficiency of the whole system. You have to look at all the
reasons for the continuous increases in costs. New procedures, hardware,
and
medicine is only a small part of it.

You'll have to document that before I'll believe it. I've already been
through this exercise, when I was a medical editor.

It's between the new technology and (supposed) overuse of the new
technology. The former is a physical fact. The latter is a matter of
opinion. My own feeling, after having studied the issue at some length, is
that the "overuse" is mostly just a part of the ever-higher standards and
expectations for successful outcomes. In other words, it's there, so we
use
it; we want the maximum assurance it will work, so we use it more; we're
under the legal gun to get the best possible result, so we use it still
more.

--
Ed Huntress

No doubt that happens a lot. My 85 year old father had an MRI on his
shoulder this week because it was hurting. He wouldn't have done it if he
didn't get it free. Results came in today and there was nothing wrong. That
probably cost 1,200 bucks, at least. That sort of thing happens all the time
but it should have cost a couple of hundred max, not 12 or 15 hundred. But I
have looked at this issue myself and most "medicine" is simple stuff. The
prices being charged for the mundane things are astronomical. There is no
rational reason why a hospital charge just to stay over night in a room is
more than Elton John pays for a suite at the Four Seasons. You take someone
with real serious problems that keep them in ICU for days and people who
need the most expensive medications and yeah, that's going to run up a big
time charge. But those are not what most of the dollars are going for.
What's driving up the costs is that we are overcharging everyone for the
people who aren't covered by insurance. That and the needless duplication,
profit, and administrative waste. The bottom line is that what's happening
now can't be sustained. We have to get a new administration or we will stay
with this failing system all the way until it actually goes bust. Maybe
that's okay with some people but I sure hope the ones with brains don't let
that happen.

Hawke