Why Healthcare costs so much: Explained in one cartoon

Ha-Ha!

You are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts.

Reliable source, please!

 

Here, fixed it for you.

Since when is it that government has control of business? Oh yeah, since fearless leader has been in charge. Nothing like a little more totalitarianism to make a statist's day is it?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)#Program_History

Medicare was created because the insurance companies failed to provide care to old people.

This is a historical fact. Not opinion.

 

It's the government's job to protect the health of it's citizens. Business takes the back seat when it comes to health and security.

No one should die because a business was unable to make a profit on your healthcare.

 

The private sector has more overhead than government?

On what planet?

 

Health insurance back then was only used to measure risk. Most folks could easily pay cash for a routine checkup, doctors visits, and drugs. None of that is affordable today without health insurance. That is because health insurance companies have rigged the system, through decades of lobbyism, to eliminate competition and force reliance on their corporate services. Who do you think lobbied the hardest for Obamacare?

Way more poor people can't afford it today compared to back then.

Grossly unconstitutional. Why couldn't the states have done this?

Haven't you noticed that with every patch being applied, the system gets worse?

The record is crystal clear. The system operated far more efficiently 50 years ago than it does today. Your feel-good opinion has little to do with reality.

 

I don't care if 95% of people can afford healthcare. If even one person cannot the system has failed. This is life or death we're talking about. Not an iPhone.

Source?

General welfare. This was a national problem and therefore fell into congress's jurisdiction.

Absolutely. Because they're all beating around the bush. End them all and create one single payer system that serves everyone.

Far less people were covered 50 years ago. The system did not work then either. Universal healthcare has been debated for a hundred years. The healthcare system has always been broken.

 

Elke, Can you tell everyone why the Left is completely wrong...

[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8rT76vNmxc[/ame]​

 

BS. Insurance is a product that you don't have to purchase. No one has a "right" to someone else's property or labor.

 

Why is Obamacare so extremely expensive and so screwed up?

Because it was written and passed by idiots and fools like Nancy Pelosi!

Pelosi says just pass the bill, read and study it later!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uQvCpNx1O0"]Pelosi says just pass the bill, read it later - YouTube[/ame]

 

The fact that you don't see government as the biggest profiteer of all of the corporations, or get concerned about that fact that they are the biggest monopoly is concerning

Non-sense hyperbole.

Lets look at a very similar system which has essentially been subsidized by everybody else not part of the system.

Medicare. This is essentially a "single payer" system applied to a portion of the country. The system is broke, hugely inefficient, corrupt and full of fraud, and essentially forces doctors and healthcare providers to take pennies on the dollars for procedures. Its only supported by doctors then pushing those costs on everybody else's insurance to make up the difference.

Market value principles still exist in health care. The cost of X treatment should be X dollars based on supply and demand principles. The problem is, the market has been so manipulated by politicians and insurance companies, nobody could tell you what the ACTUAL COST OF ANYTHING health care related would be.

Further, the government has required that private health care providers provide services to everybody regardless of their ability to pay.

The only difference between the current application of health care, and the way you desire it to be administered is the fact that government gets to "level the playing field" even further and allow some people to more easily obtain treatment on the backs of others. The desire is simply to wash the current system that makes the level of subsidies very noticeable into a red tape bureaucratic nightmare which prevents anybody from having any idea what things should actually cost.

Its simply another, yet again, wealth re-distribution program, using government as the tool.

"When people realize they can vote themselves free money (or in this case free healthcare) that will herald the end fo the republic." - Ben Franklin

LOL

So you are going to tell me that if I pay more to government, to pay for other people, its better because its less than what I am paying to other people through my insurance now.

Wow, what a win/win situation you have created for me there.

Are you unable to pay for your own bloody healthcare?

 

BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, just stick the US Government between patients and doctors...

 

Insurance is a required product if someone wishes to stay alive long enough to get their first gray hair.

That is not a product you have the right not to provide to everyone. And if it can't be provided to everyone in a successful business model then the only possible solution is to provide it as an essential government service.

 

Whether or not I can afford it is not the issue. The issue is that their bottom lines rely on providing as little care as possible. Which means I'm almost certainly going to have to fight for my own life against their profits. That's not a battle I'm willing to risk having.

 

More BS. It is still a product and you still do not have a right to other peoples property or labor. Show me where that is a right.

You steal by proxy. Either you come to my house to take my money and suffer the consequences of getting shot or going to jail, or you use a proxy that can do things illegally for you using force.

If you cannot afford what you want then you do without, that is called reality and life, something you statists cannot seem to accept. You also cannot seem to accept the fact that death is a part of life and expect the best of care because you think you are somehow owed it and that someone else should pay for it. What you do is avoid reality.

 

Absolutely it is.

The biggest reason why we have healthcare costs as high as we do is because we continually provide state of the art treatment, procedures, equipment, and drugs to people who can't or won't pay for it. The costs are then covered by everybody else, upon which time more people can't afford the increased costs.

Ignoring that fact, and simply saying things like greed and profiteering is simply ignoring the issue.

"As little care as possible"... to people that can't pay.

Their bottom lines are in a much better position providing AS MUCH CARE as possible to people who can pay.

Its quite apparent that your entire motivation for your support of a single payer system is because of the benefits received by those people less capable of receiving such benefits.

LOL

Right. Its greedy profits that are making it more and more difficult to pay for healthcare.

The fact that you can't even see that its your own agenda in these wealth redistribution and subsidizing programs that is causing the problems is the scariest thing of all.

 

Socialist propaganda. So if I choose to quit my job for no reason and live under a bridge, then the fact that I can't afford healthcare means that "the system has failed"? Your flawed logic amuses me.

Healthcare is a service and an iPhone is a good. Both are produced because demand for profit exists in a competetive market. Take away the profit motive and the competition (as is what happens when government monopoly takes over), then you have lower quality, higher inefficiency, and higher costs. Which is exactly what's happened as government has gotten more involved.

What about people who make just enough money to not qualify for government benefits, but are still too poor to afford to be covered on their own? Tough (*)(*)(*)(*) for them. I guess the obvious solution would be for the government to just pay for everybody's healthcare. LOL! I bet the health insurance and big pharma companies would LOVE that, espeically when the government puts a gun to everyone's head and forces them to pay big pharma and big health insurance for their universal healthcare.

In 1965 only 9.9% of the US population was receiving medicare benefits:



Source: http://rs9.loc.gov/medicare/history.htm

Today, over 15% of the US population is recieving medicare benefits. That's almost double what it was 40 years ago. Which is what you'd expect from government getting more involved.
Spending on medicare alone as a percent of GDP is continuously growing. Which is what you'd expect from government getting more involved.
You see, the more government spends on medicare, the higher the costs go, the more people that can't afford it, the more people who have to rely on the government. Which is what you'd expect from government getting more involved.

That is a horribly twisted version of the general welfare clause. It's not even close to the meaning of the term "general welfare". By that definition, anything could be considered a "national problem". Obesity could be considered a national problem - is it Congress's duty therefore to legislate what we can and can't eat? You're on a slippery slope.
You leftists obviously do not stop for one second to ponder the totalitarian consequences of your radical misinterpretations of the Constitution. But if you hate freedom, then obviously that wouldn't bother you.

Unconstitutional and far worse than what we even have now. Milton Friedman annihilates your argument:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPADFNKDhGM"]Milton Friedman - Socialized Medicine - YouTube[/ame]

I agree with that, because healthcare was cheap enough that people didn't need coverage for anything except serious emergencies. But I assume you're making the flaw of somehow illogically concluding that more people having health insurance somehow equates to a better healthcare system....that affording healthcare = affording insurance. This couldn't be more false, but it just goes to show how well the corporate media has conditioned you to think.

Of course a free market system isn't perfect...nothing in this world is. My point is that it's far superior to any other type of system - especially the corporate fascist ones you're proposing.

 

Such unbelievable ignorance of basic economics and history...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

The definition hasn't changed one bit, try reading Locke.

Then why are you regurgitating Alexander Hamilton's construction of the general welfare clause?

Thomas Jefferson believed in radical reform to existing systems, yes, but the direction he wanted to move in was less government, not more.

 

Which has nothing to do with how "freedom" was or is defined, only applied.

 

Wrong, with single payer, people who currently go without healthcare, because of cost, will jump on the wagon and cause costs to sky rocket. Our country cannot afford to give everybody the healthcare you liberals think everyone deserves.

 

So when they go to the emergency room, and get free treatment at the most expensive cost what does that do?

Also since we pay more per capita than every other industrialized nation, and yet are the only one not to have some form of UHC, how does that fact fit in with your argument?

 

They don't go to the emergency room for a headache or the flu. Most people don't anyhow. Most people simply suffer through their colds without medical care. If they had single payer they all would be showing up. When I joined the Army I would go to sick call every time I got a headache and needed an aspirin. It's free so why should I go to the store and buy my own (*)(*)(*)(*) aspirin?

Single payer will make things more expensive not less because more people will use it for everything that ills them.

 

You are making an argument that emergency care isn't used as the primary health provider for millions of people living in this country; both legally and illegally. That is not the case unfortunately and it adds huge costs to our system.

Let me give you an example. Hector is works here illegally and breaks his arm. Do you think he just rides it out?

Another example. A family finds themselves without insurance when they lose a job. One of their children is running a 103 temp. Do you think they ride it out? What happens it one of them breaks a leg? Has cancer? etc etc etc

 

What you put in bold is, unfortunatly, untrue. I have several friends that work in the local hospitals/care clinics and they are usually dealing with people on free government healthcare abusing the hell of of the system. The problem is when something is perceived as free then people have a tenacity to not pay attention to costs.

My tooth hurts - instead of going to the dentist tomorrow I am going to go to the ER right now. This example carries over with headaches, earaches, small scrapes and cuts, ect.

While I agree that we need serious reforms in our health care laws/industry I cannot agree with giving our corrupt and inefficient government more control over that much of our economy because it is only a matter if when (not if) they will (*)(*)(*)(*) it up - just like they (*)(*)(*)(*) everything up.

 

Take a look at France's model. A guaranteed UHC environment that is a private/government hybrid. If you want better health care you pay for premium policies, but if you are without job the government acts as your provider until you get another.