The Club takes on Healthcare - Free Market Style

creepycoug

One rare area of common ground between the Centrist Bros and the left wing of @RaceBannon 's Populist Goon Squad is healthcare. We? have generally agreed that it's a BHL Tuff! issue and that is has not been resolved. We? are fearful of state-run health care and death committees; but we agree the current system leaves the vulnerable, vulnerable. It seems in the last years, it is an issue that has been pushed down the list of political priorities. Not discussed at all with the frequency it once was. Did it get resolved and nobody told me?

We? tried to solve this problem for the world in the Tug, but didn't get anywhere. The Club members have the intellectual chops and the even-keeled temperament to give this a go. The Club's wayward son, @UW_Doog_Bot , took a shot at this a couple of years ago. Here's his post. (Seriously), I thought this would be a good discussion for this forum.


https://hardcorehusky.com/discussion/comment/1087413#Comment_1087413


As promised if a bit late. Blame Facebook's ultra shitty search function and my laziness & apathy for convincing people of politics online in general.

Instead of an individual mandate (which is unconstitutional) Congress may pass a tax exemption for every dollar spent on healthcare directly (unlimited, no minimum) or insurance(with a cap) by Citizens. Remove the 10% of income minimum per item on medical expenses etc..

HSA's should be exempt from capital gains and contributions should be tax exempt from income tax. Regular income schedule/capital gains should apply if taken out for other expenditures.

As we already have "Universal Healthcare" although haphazardly and terribly planned through a mandate to treat and a combination of medicaid/unpaid medical bills etc. I actually propose keeping the pre-existing condition clauses of the ACA. I realize this will increase premiums for those of us without pre-existing conditions but it should reduce the amount of money paid to the government to then pay for medicaid expenses and/or help drive down costs for unpaid bills. I also think the concept actually impedes a free market by locking individuals into their current healthcare provider thus not allowing for competition.

One size fits all policies would be eliminated. All young and healthy people should be able to purchase cheap high deductible catastrophic insurance if that's all they want to purchase. Overall, that would bring in more people into the "universal" net and reduce one of our major failures which is catastrophic bills having to be paid by the state or the hospital. This would reduce costs to the rest of us paying normal premiums.

Caps on donations to charities serving high risk pools should be reduced(think St Jude's Children's Hospital) and I actually view federal funding of research hospitals as a good thing as well as prize funds for cures/breakthroughs in research. Pure research(where you might not know what you will get) is a place where the market forces aren't necessarily great without patent or other government protection. We should also stop letting the rest of the world bully our pharma industries as we are essentially subsidizing all medical pharma research for all the "socialized" medical programs of the world. I'd probably also be fine with rolling high risk pools into medicaid but putting them on a voucher system so that they can purchase their own medical care in an open market with competition.

Open up competition across state borders for Health Insurance to help manage costs through competition. Create some standardized rules/best practices around administration etc. through use of the interstate commerce clause. We already do this in plenty of industries. Think DOT or clean air act, mandates are federal, rules are made and enforced at a state level within the guidelines of those federal mandates.

Is this ideal? Fuck no. Would it be an improvement over the current system? I think so. It's full of compromise, doesn't really touch medicaid or medicare, and is *maybe* politically feasible. Probably not in today's hyper-partisan atmosphere though.

Disagree with something? Great! That's what I've got so far. It's a working draft. I'm happy to take feedback and improve it with your help. Policy wonks welcome.

creepycoug

Pre-emptive *Thud*

Come on!

@MikeSeaver

RaceBannon

Not touching

creepycoug

RaceBannon said:

Not touching

Not sure @MikeSeaver would respeck this post. That is, if he cared, and he doesn't btw.

@HoustonHusky and the other economis bros will jump in. I'm sure of it!

Where da fuck is @UW_Doog_Bot anyway? @DerekJohnson said he'd be along momentarily. That was 3 mos. ago.

hardhat

This is cool, @creepycoug . I was actually going to suggest his as a topic, but wanted to keep it tug free. By far the best systems I have seen are in countries like Germany, Switzerland, and Netherlands. I also admire what a country like Japan has been able to do. Of course there are tradeoffs. I think there's a lot of room to discuss this topic without tug style insults or team warfare.

creepycoug

hardhat said:

This is cool, @creepycoug . I was actually going to suggest his as a topic, but wanted to keep it tug free. By far the best systems I have seen are in countries like Germany, Switzerland, and Netherlands. I also admire what a country like Japan has been able to do. Of course there are tradeoffs. I think there's a lot of room to discuss this topic without tug style insults or team warfare.

That's the goal. I've learned to post and be patient. Post it, and they will come.

1to392831weretaken

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rg-DJBd34

I think it's difficult to discuss this because so many people refuse to even entertain the idea that the U.S. healthcare system isn't the gold standard in the world. All they hear is how we get the best care in the world, so changing the system would result in a lower standard of care. I don't understand how anybody could look at the data and come to that conclusion, though:



I've really liked this graph since I saw it in 2011, as it really puts things in perspective, comparing per-capita spending, results (in the form of life expectancy at birth), and number of doctor visits per year. So cost, quantity, quality all on one graph:



Not exactly crushing it in infant mortality, either:

RaceBannon

The CIA is your source?

1to392831weretaken

RaceBannon said:

The CIA is your source?

You can trust them when it comes to baby killing.

hardhat

1to392831weretaken said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rg-DJBd34

I think it's difficult to discuss this because so many people refuse to even entertain the idea that the U.S. healthcare system isn't the gold standard in the world. All they hear is how we get the best care in the world, so changing the system would result in a lower standard of care. I don't understand how anybody could look at the data and come to that conclusion, though:

/>

I think it's best to separate the quality of care vs how we pay for it. I don't think anyone would argue that most hospitals deliver quality outcomes. I don't think it's a secret that when a wealthy person from another country on one of those charts needs emergency heart surgery that they come to the USA for it. There's obviously a problem when someone goes bankrupt due to medical bills though.

RaceBannon

I've been down this road too many times to risk my good relationship with @1to392831weretaken

I don't think US health insurance or health delivery is gold standard regardless of other nations which IMHO are irrelevant to this anyway. The US is a big old melting pot of a lot of different people including a lot who left those other countries

I would like a better insurance and delivery system. I would like to keep the standard of care which again IMHO is pretty darn good if you can get it

I think the last attempt got us or me for sure, further from that goal.

I'll take my answer off the air

creepycoug

1to392831weretaken said:

RaceBannon said:

The CIA is your source?

You can trust them when it comes to baby killing.

Or, really, all things mortality.

creepycoug

hardhat said:

1to392831weretaken said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rg-DJBd34

I think it's difficult to discuss this because so many people refuse to even entertain the idea that the U.S. healthcare system isn't the gold standard in the world. All they hear is how we get the best care in the world, so changing the system would result in a lower standard of care. I don't understand how anybody could look at the data and come to that conclusion, though:

/>

I think it's best to separate the quality of care vs how we pay for it. I don't think anyone would argue that most hospitals deliver quality outcomes. I don't think it's a secret that when a wealthy person from another country on one of those charts needs emergency heart surgery that they come to the USA for it. There's obviously a problem when someone goes bankrupt due to medical bills though.

I'm watching the Crown on Netflix. I get most of my information from Netlfix and pedantically pass it off as my own knowledge.

Anyway, Churchill's Foreign Sec'y, Anthony Eden, is in the US meeting with someone, and he's having severe pancreas issues and needs surgery. Wants to do it in Boston because it's the best place in the word for that surgery. But not because of capitalism. He says to Churchill, he says, "because of the high fat diet in the US"; so we're good at fixing things caused by being like @CFetters_Nacho_Lover and @CfettersNachoLover . According to the pasty Brits.

So, I wonder, but don't necessarily know or believe, if we're good at some things and other countries are good at other things. Are we good at some medical technology because of the nature of our demographics and not because of the system? IDK. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Anyway, thought I'd throw some causation analysis in for fun.

HoustonHusky

creepycoug said:

RaceBannon said:

Not touching

Not sure @MikeSeaver would respeck this post. That is, if he cared, and he doesn't btw.

@HoustonHusky and the other economis bros will jump in. I'm sure of it!

Where da fuck is @UW_Doog_Bot anyway? @DerekJohnson said he'd be along momentarily. That was 3 mos. ago.

No time to post detailed thoughts...learned a lot about health care way back when when I went with my friend who had just moved to Holland to go buy Health Care. Was a lot like shopping for home/auto insurance...he bought a Cadillac plan that even covered taxi rides to the hospital.

Dirty secret over there is that there is a 2-tier system...there is a base (pretty crappy) care everyone gets and then there is a private/premium option which is much better and all the affluent folks buy into. And with that he still has flown over to the US a few times and paid cash for things he and his kids have needed...even the premium care had its limitations. A good example for the "premium" health car in Holland is that he had to argue tooth and nail for them to give his wife an epidural when they were having their 2nd kid as the hospital didn't do that because of cost. Always like bringing that example up when a mom tells me how much better health care is over in Europe.

A version of that is probably a better system, but don't think it would/could ever happen as no one would accept the baseline govt coverage and all of its limitations.

FDR really screwed up when he tied health care to work (part of wage controls way back when)...messed with a lot of things but not sure how it will get undone without a big crash/financial reset.

BuffBuffPass

Unfortunately none of that deals with the cost of the actual drugs, which is a huge driver in increased costs. One easy, quick solution to that: state that we will pay no more than the average cost of a drug across a basket of similar countries: let's say Canada, the UK and Germany. If you want to charge more for the drug than the average cost across those countries, you can do so but you lose your patent exclusivity. We currently subsidize the rest of the world by paying outrageously high prices compared to similar economies to the point that states are now looking at importing drugs from Canada that were manufactured in the US in the first place.

There's a lot of other waste in the pharmacy/PBM/drug space that could be fixed, but the above is the lowest hanging of fruit.

RaceBannon

BuffBuffPass said:

Unfortunately none of that deals with the cost of the actual drugs, which is a huge driver in increased costs. One easy, quick solution to that: state that we will pay no more than the average cost of a drug across a basket of similar countries: let's say Canada, the UK and Germany. If you want to charge more for the drug than the average cost across those countries, you can do so but you lose your patent exclusivity. We currently subsidize the rest of the world by paying outrageously high prices compared to similar economies to the point that states are now looking at importing drugs from Canada that were manufactured in the US in the first place.

There's a lot of other waste in the pharmacy/PBM/drug space that could be fixed, but the above is the lowest hanging of fruit.

Solid

hardhat

creepycoug said:

hardhat said:

1to392831weretaken said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rg-DJBd34

I think it's difficult to discuss this because so many people refuse to even entertain the idea that the U.S. healthcare system isn't the gold standard in the world. All they hear is how we get the best care in the world, so changing the system would result in a lower standard of care. I don't understand how anybody could look at the data and come to that conclusion, though:

/>

I think it's best to separate the quality of care vs how we pay for it. I don't think anyone would argue that most hospitals deliver quality outcomes. I don't think it's a secret that when a wealthy person from another country on one of those charts needs emergency heart surgery that they come to the USA for it. There's obviously a problem when someone goes bankrupt due to medical bills though.

I'm watching the Crown on Netflix. I get most of my information from Netlfix and pendantically pass it off as my own knowledge.

Anyway, Churchill's Foreign Sec'y, Anthony Eden, is in the US meeting with someone, and he's having severe pancreas issues and needs surgery. Wants to do it in Boston because it's the best place in the word for that surgery. But not because of capitalism. He says to Churchill, he says, "because of the high fat diet in the US"; so we're good at fixing things caused by being like @CFetters_Nacho_Lover and @CfettersNachoLover . According to the pasty Brits.

So, I wonder, but don't necessarily know or believe, if we're good at some things and other countries are good at other things. Are we good at some medical technology because of the nature of our demographics and not because of the system? IDK. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Anyway, thought I'd throw some causation analysis in for fun.

Interesting point. I chortled at a brit mocking any other country for their diet. In the UK, I also think mr. pancreatitis would have had to wait his turn for his procedure. Or maybe if he was a bigwig he could have jumped the line.

RaceBannon

My wife and I went to London in 1989 and I almost starved to death. McDonalds and Pizza Hut saved me. #merica

hardhat

RaceBannon said:

My wife and I went to London in 1989 and I almost starved to death. McDonalds and Pizza Hut saved me. #merica

Doog_de_Jour

BuffBuffPass said:

Unfortunately none of that deals with the cost of the actual drugs, which is a huge driver in increased costs. One easy, quick solution to that: state that we will pay no more than the average cost of a drug across a basket of similar countries: let's say Canada, the UK and Germany. If you want to charge more for the drug than the average cost across those countries, you can do so but you lose your patent exclusivity. We currently subsidize the rest of the world by paying outrageously high prices compared to similar economies to the point that states are now looking at importing drugs from Canada that were manufactured in the US in the first place.

There's a lot of other waste in the pharmacy/PBM/drug space that could be fixed, but the above is the lowest hanging of fruit.

I was going to mention this but you beat me to the punch.

I am going to skirt dangerously to Tug talk here, but the fact that the US is not only footing the in pharma but in things like biomedical devices is definitely problematic. We might not have the best standard of care, but we’re still the best in scientific/medical research. That research ain’t cheap and the cost has to be passed on to somebody.

That’s why when people start comparing the US healthcare system to other countries, I get a little upset. There are some very unique problems that the US has to deal with that other countries do not. It’s fine to look to these places for ideas, but trying to replicate Canada or anyone else probably won’t work.

creepycoug

hardhat said:

creepycoug said:

hardhat said:

1to392831weretaken said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rg-DJBd34

I think it's difficult to discuss this because so many people refuse to even entertain the idea that the U.S. healthcare system isn't the gold standard in the world. All they hear is how we get the best care in the world, so changing the system would result in a lower standard of care. I don't understand how anybody could look at the data and come to that conclusion, though:

/>

I think it's best to separate the quality of care vs how we pay for it. I don't think anyone would argue that most hospitals deliver quality outcomes. I don't think it's a secret that when a wealthy person from another country on one of those charts needs emergency heart surgery that they come to the USA for it. There's obviously a problem when someone goes bankrupt due to medical bills though.

I'm watching the Crown on Netflix. I get most of my information from Netlfix and pendantically pass it off as my own knowledge.

Anyway, Churchill's Foreign Sec'y, Anthony Eden, is in the US meeting with someone, and he's having severe pancreas issues and needs surgery. Wants to do it in Boston because it's the best place in the word for that surgery. But not because of capitalism. He says to Churchill, he says, "because of the high fat diet in the US"; so we're good at fixing things caused by being like @CFetters_Nacho_Lover and @CfettersNachoLover . According to the pasty Brits.

So, I wonder, but don't necessarily know or believe, if we're good at some things and other countries are good at other things. Are we good at some medical technology because of the nature of our demographics and not because of the system? IDK. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Anyway, thought I'd throw some causation analysis in for fun.

Interesting point. I chortled at a brit mocking any other country for their diet. In the UK, I also think mr. pancreatitis would have had to wait his turn for his procedure. Or maybe if he was a bigwig he could have jumped the line.

I don't know about the fat content, which I'd guess is just as bad; but the fucking taste and the things they eat ... JFC those people can't cook.

The royal family apparently eschews garlic. Literally forbidden in the Buckingham palace kitchen. Hey Britty, try it sometime. It might make your disgusting food taste a bit better.

Anyway, I digress.

creepycoug

Doog_de_Jour said:

BuffBuffPass said:

Unfortunately none of that deals with the cost of the actual drugs, which is a huge driver in increased costs. One easy, quick solution to that: state that we will pay no more than the average cost of a drug across a basket of similar countries: let's say Canada, the UK and Germany. If you want to charge more for the drug than the average cost across those countries, you can do so but you lose your patent exclusivity. We currently subsidize the rest of the world by paying outrageously high prices compared to similar economies to the point that states are now looking at importing drugs from Canada that were manufactured in the US in the first place.

There's a lot of other waste in the pharmacy/PBM/drug space that could be fixed, but the above is the lowest hanging of fruit.

I was going to mention this but you beat me to the punch.

I am going to skirt dangerously to Tug talk here, but the fact that the US is not only footing the in pharma but in things like biomedical devices is definitely problematic. We might not have the best standard of care, but we’re still the best in scientific/medical research. That research ain’t cheap and the cost has to be passed on to somebody.

That’s why when people start comparing the US healthcare system to other countries, I get a little upset. There are some very unique problems that the US has to deal with that other countries do not. It’s fine to look to these places for ideas, but trying to replicate Canada or anyone else probably won’t work.

Truth is, there is no such thing as completely private R&D in medicine or biotech. NSF is almost always somewhere in the funding tree. And, yes, that includes Harvard and its $31 billion endowment. You'd think they wouldn't need the Fed's money. But that's in part why they have $31 billion. They know the power of spending other people's money.

Doog_de_Jour

creepycoug said:

hardhat said:

creepycoug said:

hardhat said:

1to392831weretaken said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rg-DJBd34

I think it's difficult to discuss this because so many people refuse to even entertain the idea that the U.S. healthcare system isn't the gold standard in the world. All they hear is how we get the best care in the world, so changing the system would result in a lower standard of care. I don't understand how anybody could look at the data and come to that conclusion, though:

/>

I think it's best to separate the quality of care vs how we pay for it. I don't think anyone would argue that most hospitals deliver quality outcomes. I don't think it's a secret that when a wealthy person from another country on one of those charts needs emergency heart surgery that they come to the USA for it. There's obviously a problem when someone goes bankrupt due to medical bills though.

I'm watching the Crown on Netflix. I get most of my information from Netlfix and pendantically pass it off as my own knowledge.

Anyway, Churchill's Foreign Sec'y, Anthony Eden, is in the US meeting with someone, and he's having severe pancreas issues and needs surgery. Wants to do it in Boston because it's the best place in the word for that surgery. But not because of capitalism. He says to Churchill, he says, "because of the high fat diet in the US"; so we're good at fixing things caused by being like @CFetters_Nacho_Lover and @CfettersNachoLover . According to the pasty Brits.

So, I wonder, but don't necessarily know or believe, if we're good at some things and other countries are good at other things. Are we good at some medical technology because of the nature of our demographics and not because of the system? IDK. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Anyway, thought I'd throw some causation analysis in for fun.

Interesting point. I chortled at a brit mocking any other country for their diet. In the UK, I also think mr. pancreatitis would have had to wait his turn for his procedure. Or maybe if he was a bigwig he could have jumped the line.

I don't know about the fat content, which I'd guess is just as bad; but the fucking taste and the things they eat ... JFC those people can't cook.

The royal family apparently eschews garlic. Literally forbidden in the Buckingham palace kitchen. Hey Britty, try it sometime. It might make your disgusting food taste a bit better.

Anyway, I digress.

We’re all having big belly (YSWIDT) laffs in the press room about the fatty shit Americans eat, but this another example of what I’m talking about with challenges that the US faces and other nations don’t (well, until recently as we?ve gotten very good at exporting fast food), is obesity and diet.

I know it’s fashionable on this bored to make fun of overweight people, but it is a very real problem for many that leads to other serious conditions and ultimately drives up the cost of healthcare.

Again, I have no clue how to solve it. But that’s another layer of complexity to the issue.

hardhat

Doog_de_Jour said:

creepycoug said:

hardhat said:

creepycoug said:

hardhat said:

1to392831weretaken said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rg-DJBd34

I think it's difficult to discuss this because so many people refuse to even entertain the idea that the U.S. healthcare system isn't the gold standard in the world. All they hear is how we get the best care in the world, so changing the system would result in a lower standard of care. I don't understand how anybody could look at the data and come to that conclusion, though:

/>

I think it's best to separate the quality of care vs how we pay for it. I don't think anyone would argue that most hospitals deliver quality outcomes. I don't think it's a secret that when a wealthy person from another country on one of those charts needs emergency heart surgery that they come to the USA for it. There's obviously a problem when someone goes bankrupt due to medical bills though.

I'm watching the Crown on Netflix. I get most of my information from Netlfix and pendantically pass it off as my own knowledge.

Anyway, Churchill's Foreign Sec'y, Anthony Eden, is in the US meeting with someone, and he's having severe pancreas issues and needs surgery. Wants to do it in Boston because it's the best place in the word for that surgery. But not because of capitalism. He says to Churchill, he says, "because of the high fat diet in the US"; so we're good at fixing things caused by being like @CFetters_Nacho_Lover and @CfettersNachoLover . According to the pasty Brits.

So, I wonder, but don't necessarily know or believe, if we're good at some things and other countries are good at other things. Are we good at some medical technology because of the nature of our demographics and not because of the system? IDK. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Anyway, thought I'd throw some causation analysis in for fun.

Interesting point. I chortled at a brit mocking any other country for their diet. In the UK, I also think mr. pancreatitis would have had to wait his turn for his procedure. Or maybe if he was a bigwig he could have jumped the line.

I don't know about the fat content, which I'd guess is just as bad; but the fucking taste and the things they eat ... JFC those people can't cook.

The royal family apparently eschews garlic. Literally forbidden in the Buckingham palace kitchen. Hey Britty, try it sometime. It might make your disgusting food taste a bit better.

Anyway, I digress.

We’re all having big belly (YSWIDT) laffs in the press room about diet, but this another example of what I’m talking about with challenges that the US faces that, until recently (because we?ve exported American fast food), is obesity and diet.

I know it’s fashionable on this bored to make fun of fat people, but it is a very real problem for many that leads to other serious conditions and ultimately drives up the cost of healthcare.

Again, I have no clue how to solve it. But that’s another layer of complexity to the issue.

Good point about obesity. No easy solutions, and I want to enjoy my food and my god given right to mock fatties, but there are some better approaches:

...only about 3.5% of the population is classified as obese, compared to rates as high as 30% or greater in countries like the U.S. And it's not just a generally healthier diet and lifestyle that's kept the Japanese trim.

Citizens must adhere to government-mandated waistline limits or face consequences. The government has established waistline limits for adults ages 40 to 74. Men must maintain a waistline at or below 33.5 inches; for women, the limit is 35.4 inches. The "metabo law" went into effect in 2008, with the goal of reducing the country's overweight population by 25% by 2015. The government's anti-obesity campaign aims to keep "metabolic syndrome" — a number of factors that heighten the risk of developing diabetes and vascular diseases, such as obesity and high blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol levels — in check, thus minimizing the ballooning health care costs of Japan's massive aging population.

https://www.mic.com/articles/84521/japan-has-cut-obesity-to-3-5-in-a-controversial-way-that-wouldn-t-fly-in-america

BleachedAnusDawg

My plan is all people who have medical conditions due to being obese or smoking, etc get no help from taxpayers. Costs of everything go down for people who try to lead a decent lifestyle. Leave the fat people to the churches.

DawgOfTheAges

My two cents: The cost of the progression of technology and the embedded return on investment for facilities has created the higher cost of care in the US.

When I was younger we had a charming show on early TV ~ Marcus Welby MD with two actors that would focus on one malady after another in the various episodes. The humorous part was that there was no technology in the day so really the doctors were largely flying blind.. the testing was elemental and rudimentary and as a result the solutions were often country doctor approaches which amounted to try this because it has been helpful to similar cases that I have seen over time. Many surgeries were exploratory in nature which amounted to lets take a look and go from there.

Fast forward to today and the picture is vastly different ~ visualization through MRI, Sonar, CaTSCAN ETC provides unheard of levels of advanced diagnosis, drugs platforms have widened as research has created sceismic breakthroughs, sophisticated levels of testing is geometrically better, hospital facilities are geometrically better and the level of sophistication has gone skyward as we approach levels of bionic healthcare solutions.

the issue is that all of this has been accomplished within the construct of Profit Based modeling which has caused pricing to go skyward as well. As an example, during the 80]s and 90's the growth rate of earnings revenue and cash flow for drug companies, hospital companies, medical supplies, surgical technology and the beginnings of biotech all grew 3x faster than the underlying economy.

The growth rate advanced just like clockwork. Since 2000, the growth rate of these groups has slowed as a result of the increased size and scale of the remaining companies, and the increased cost basis of operation has occurred as a result of the accumulated levels of increased pricing *** occurring over the last 30 years.

*** [During the 80's - 90's the accelerated growth rate also meant accelerated buyouts that reduced the number of competing companies in geometric fashion as furiously companies bought each other. Each buyout typically came at a premium to the publicly listed price through stock swaps and debt employed to close the deal. The importance is that the geometric buyout pattern reduced competition and increased the cost basis of the cost of care without providing additional benefit. ]

Summary: our health care provider network has the greatest access to technology available, and also the highest profit generating basis of operation on the planet ~ no wonder it doesn't profile like any other health care system ~ the entire basis of operation is fundamentally different.

creepycoug

BleachedAnusDawg said:

My plan is all people who have medical conditions due to being obese or smoking, etc get no help from taxpayers. Costs of everything go down for people who try to lead a decent lifestyle. Leave the fat people to the churches.

@CFetters_Nacho_Lover & @CfettersNachoLover ... you ok with this?

creepycoug

THIS:

the issue is that all of this has been accomplished within the construct of Profit Based modeling which has caused pricing to go skyward as well. As an example, during the 80]s and 90's the growth rate of earnings revenue and cash flow for drug companies, hospital companies, medical supplies, surgical technology and the beginnings of biotech all grew 3x faster than the underlying economy.

Waiting for @Swaye to come in with tall tales about VA medical care.

Doog_de_Jour

BleachedAnusDawg said:

My plan is all people who have medical conditions due to being obese or smoking, etc get no help from taxpayers. Costs of everything go down for people who try to lead a decent lifestyle. Leave the fat people to the churches.

We must not forget about people who use pot, have unprotected sex, drink alcohol, do extreme sports, don’t floss, etc.

I get where you’re coming from, we do have to have some accountability in all of our own individual healthcare. But until there’s better access to preventative care and address some of things in America that contribute to a sedentary lifestyle (for example) I don’t think punishing people will work.

creepycoug

Doog_de_Jour said:

BleachedAnusDawg said:

My plan is all people who have medical conditions due to being obese or smoking, etc get no help from taxpayers. Costs of everything go down for people who try to lead a decent lifestyle. Leave the fat people to the churches.

We must not forget about people who use pot, have unprotected sex, drink alcohol, do extreme sports, don’t floss, etc.

I get where you’re coming from, we do have to have some accountability in all of our own individual healthcare. But until there’s better access to preventative care and address some of things in America that contribute to a sedentary lifestyle (for example) I don’t think punishing people will work.

This is a great point. What do I owe anybody who plays, or let's their kids play, football and 28 concussions later need life-tim care.

And, yeah, you nailed it: drugs and alcohol ... and smoking. We? are picking on fatty here ( @CFetters_Nacho_Lover and @CfettersNachoLover , still waiting for you to weigh (lolz) in), but the troof is we? put A LOT of bad shit into our bodies.

hardhat

creepycoug said:

hardhat said:

creepycoug said:

hardhat said:

1to392831weretaken said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rg-DJBd34

I think it's difficult to discuss this because so many people refuse to even entertain the idea that the U.S. healthcare system isn't the gold standard in the world. All they hear is how we get the best care in the world, so changing the system would result in a lower standard of care. I don't understand how anybody could look at the data and come to that conclusion, though:

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I think it's best to separate the quality of care vs how we pay for it. I don't think anyone would argue that most hospitals deliver quality outcomes. I don't think it's a secret that when a wealthy person from another country on one of those charts needs emergency heart surgery that they come to the USA for it. There's obviously a problem when someone goes bankrupt due to medical bills though.

I'm watching the Crown on Netflix. I get most of my information from Netlfix and pendantically pass it off as my own knowledge.

Anyway, Churchill's Foreign Sec'y, Anthony Eden, is in the US meeting with someone, and he's having severe pancreas issues and needs surgery. Wants to do it in Boston because it's the best place in the word for that surgery. But not because of capitalism. He says to Churchill, he says, "because of the high fat diet in the US"; so we're good at fixing things caused by being like @CFetters_Nacho_Lover and @CfettersNachoLover . According to the pasty Brits.

So, I wonder, but don't necessarily know or believe, if we're good at some things and other countries are good at other things. Are we good at some medical technology because of the nature of our demographics and not because of the system? IDK. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Anyway, thought I'd throw some causation analysis in for fun.

Interesting point. I chortled at a brit mocking any other country for their diet. In the UK, I also think mr. pancreatitis would have had to wait his turn for his procedure. Or maybe if he was a bigwig he could have jumped the line.

I don't know about the fat content, which I'd guess is just as bad; but the fucking taste and the things they eat ... JFC those people can't cook.

The royal family apparently eschews garlic. Literally forbidden in the Buckingham palace kitchen. Hey Britty, try it sometime. It might make your disgusting food taste a bit better.

Anyway, I digress.