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An article about medical costs
On 3/13/2013 8:13 AM, F.O.A.D. wrote:
On 3/12/13 10:15 PM, Urin Asshole wrote: On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:25:24 -0400, wrote: Are you trying to say the SSA trustees report is a lie? I'm saying that when you say this **** "but I disagree that simply putting everyone on Medicare would fix anything" you're making **** up. Do I need to tell you what page of the article we are talking about? Start with the bold print "The way out of the sinkhole" So, perhaps you need to read that section?? You mean this: "I was driving through central Florida a year or two ago," says Medicare's Blum. "And it seemed like every billboard I saw advertised some hospital with these big shiny buildings or showed some new wing of a hospital being constructed ... So when you tell me that the hospitals say they are losing money on Medicare and shifting costs from Medicare patients to other patients, my reaction is that Central Florida is overflowing with Medicare patients and all those hospitals are expanding and advertising for Medicare patients. So you can't tell me they're losing money ... Hospitals don't lose money when they serve Medicare patients." Cost shifting is the name of *the* game in paying for medical care in this country. Just about everyone in the game does it, too. Yesterday, I was running errands and picked up an Rx for a neighbor who has the flu. He is diabetic and takes insulin in those "handy" pen cartridges. The full "price" of the Rx for a month's supply (one shot a day, three shots per cartridge), was $800 and change. His co-pay amounted to about 20%, and his insurance company paid the rest. Now, you have to ask yourself, why is insulin so damned expensive? It's not a new drug, it's been around for a long, long time. It's not the packaging, the cartridges are no more complicated than a decent Pentel plastic pen. The needles are sold separately. The answer is that everyone along the way is making a huge profit off this relatively simple but life extending drug, and that includes the neighbor's insurance company. We do almost nothing in this country to actually control medical costs. If Medicare "under-reimburses," those "lost profits" are assessed against someone else, either an insurance company or an individual. The insurance company covers its "losses" by overcharging its clients. In my wife's field of psychotherapy, psychiatrists charge about $200 per patient visit, and what do most of them do during that visit, which, typically, lasts about 15 minutes? They try to find out if the meds they are prescribing are "helping." They don't provide any therapy; that is left to various non-medically-degreed mental health professionals. Ever paid $20 for a Tylenol in a hospital? Or $15 for a package of facial tissues? It's cost-shifting. We need to entirely restructure how we pay for medical care in this country. I don't see it happening, so we all will continue to be ripped off by the supply chain...hospitals, drug companies, insurance companies, and to a lesser degree, direct providers of services. Krausie needs to get his facts in order before he makes dumb statements over the internet. You could help cut down excessive cost shifting if you would only limit your annual checkups to annually instead of monthly. Are you some kind of hypochondriac, or what. |
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