Why Healthcare costs so much: Explained in one cartoon

The simple problem of Health Care is the same as brought down ancient Egypt, the first civilization.

The people wanted to live forever, so they made the tax paying working public build impossibly expensive Pyramids that had the secret of eternal life locked in their mystery religion.

Modern Medicine now sucks in 17% of the GDP.

That is, 17% everything sold and bought in America each year is for the doctor.

As long as the medical bills get paid, the research and development will make available even better and more unique, though expensive ways to "help" people stay around.
New equipment will be installed and require customers to use it.

In addition to this driving force behind medicine in general, the patient does not pay.
He hardly knows what the bill was.

So there is no "shopping" in the medical business.
Insurance companies pay what certain Medical Boards have decided is "fair" for the doctor to get paid.
The cost for serices is never run against competition with other doctors who might work cheaper.

To give you some idea how good business is for the medical profession, on two occassions in Israel the surgeons and doctors demanded higher payments from Boards that determined the fees.
They were turned down.

So the surgeons went on strike and refused to operate until their demands were met.

After one year of no operations, the death rate actually fell.

 

Thanks, Dave!

Do you have a source for this report. I would like to send it to some of my friends in the medical profession!

 

that looks like something Obama would have come up with, no answers, no solutions, just a big cluster (*)(*)(*)(*) of hope and change.

 

Government = bureaucrats, You want the hospital to be more like the DMV? I prefer a system with no employer insurance, where I can buy catastrophic coverage only along with any riders I feel I might need on top of that, such as pediatric coverage if I decide to have a kid, etc. As for physicals, broken bones, or other smaller things; I would have my own health savings account and pay the bills for that right away out of it. This would keep insurance out of the smaller things all together. The insurance would cost less, smaller things would cost less because there is less need for administrative costs and dealing with the insurance company. It would make the patient more aware of the costs of the care they are using.

As much as you wish the bottom line won't disappear, healthcare is a finite resource and it can't be given out whenever and however everyone wants. Advocating for only one provider is fine and dandy till that one provider decides that you should wait 3 weeks before you receive your care because your not as important as some other patients. I rather have options so if someone screws me over I can replace them.

Sorry this is not true. There are too many unknown variables with this statement. Yeah if we switched to single payer and taxed everyone at 50% to pay for it, we might lower our deficit. If we switched and charged everyone just 10% it might increase our deficit. I don't like dealing with BS blanket statements like yours, there is no info to back it up.

This is a stupid statement, those people who can't pay for the service under our current system aren't all of a sudden going to have the money to pay for it under a government only system. Their cost is still going to be transferred to others. At the same time under a government only system Medicare and Medicaid will no longer be able to reimburse hospitals below cost as they do now for many things. Thus this alone will cause costs of them to go up assuming amount of care provided stayed the same. Also under government only system demand will rise as everyone feels entitled to it since its "free" and people will go for care more readily, at least based on human psychology. This increase demand will lead to rationing and in the end longer wait times.

I don't even want to think what it will do to medical innovation, if their is no profit motive anymore lots of the R&D will dry up. Is the government going to take care of the shortfall in that as well? Face it one of the reasons our healthcare is more expensive is that we get the majority of the newest tech and such here first. When it first comes out its really expensive as companies invest billions brining this stuff to market and they want to recoup costs and become rich. Take that ability away or diminish it and you diminish innovation. There is a lot more to consider, the economy is a dynamic thing far beyond such a simple comparison.

All I know for sure is competition breeds effeciency, monopolies breed stagnation and screwed customers.

 

Nope, they don't.

 

Nonsense. I already provided you with numbers that flatly contradict this claim.

The per capita private healthcare expenditures in the US are roughly the same as the per capita public healthcare expenditures in Europe. Norway's per capita expenditures are actually higher. There is absolutely no data whatsoever to support your claim. All you have is socialist propaganda and lies.

 

Anecdotal evidence is all you got.

 

Are Thomas Jefferson and James Madison "legal experts"?

 

The "expert" opinion is clearly wrong as it flies in the face of basic logic and American history.

 

it's good enough for me.... because the anecdotes are mine and those of my shipmates.

 

Which of course becomes the single payer insurance company with no competition and no reason to be efficient. Sure you might be able to do away with the current 3% profit but don't worry, that will be replaced with 20% inefficiency.

 

No. They probably would know next to nothing of modern law. And they wouldn't know the first thing about economics either.

 

I sure would love to see those guys opinion of the mess that's become America..who could of predicted..?

 

Amen, single payer is the most efficient way to spread the cost\risk

 

insurance companies moved the group most likely to need insurance to the government and kept the healthier younger crowd, that is why we were allowed by the right to have Medicare

 

You mean like this?

Hope you don't mind waiting 7 weeks to see the Doctor.

 

You mean they would not be familiar with the progressive theories that got us in this mess? Maybe they did understand.

 

I'm happy for you, but it isn't relevant.

 

lol

Just shows how ignorant progressives really are.

 

So you wanna put the government in charge???

AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHA



.

 

Economics wasn't even a thing in with 18th century. And a LOT has changed in our definition of freedom since then too. There is a reason we don't allow 250 year old dead men run our country.

Thomas Jefferson himself actually suggested we rewrite the constitution every 20 years to prevent our country from being run by previous generations.

 

Nothing like revisionism to rationalize loss of freedom. The Founders were very well read men and considered enlightened.

Now how has the definition of freedom changed unless you have changed it to freedom to oppress, freedom to make up new rights, freedom to use the force of government to bend others to your will.

 

Well for one thing women and black men were not free.

 

I don't know if you are intentionally lying or if you honestly believe the bull(*)(*)(*)(*) that you spew. Where did you get the insane idea that the US healthcare system is private? It hasn't been that way for half a century. The last half century has seen continuous expansion of the govt/corporate partnership over control of the healthcare system. And we've seen the system continuously go downhill. Your progressive vision is failing, and yet you're using the free market as your scapegoat. You basically rely on fear and disinformation to decieve others into accepting your viewpoint.

 

The only government intervention has been the result of private insurance not doing a good enough job of distributing healthcare and still make a profit.

Poor people couldn't afford their rates. So the government had to step in and give them medicaid. Old people were too risky to make a profit on. So the government had to step in and create medicare.

We're constantly having to create government patches because of private insurance failures. There is no reason to hold on to this pipe dream that private insurance works.