https://www.arcamax.com/newspics/168/16812/1681225.gif

you see ;they thought they worked for Govenment Motors where jobs are guaranteed .

Just bear this in mind, also known as the "big picture". Currently down to something below 4%. We should all be jumping for joy. Sadly, we are still too stupid to balance the budget, so it's anyone's guess where we go from here.

http://infographic.statista.com/norm...ent_rate_n.jpg

So back to the rise of healthcare costs. Just food for thought.

If, in 1960, you had stage 4 cancer, leukemia, serious kidney disease, serious heart disease, or some types of diabetes, you basically were going to die. Treatment was difficult and since you weren't going to last very long, not expensive. These illnesses are treatable now, at least in many cases, and that's the good news. The bad news is that the treatments can be fantastically expensive. Knew a lady one time who had cancer for years. Her treatments eventually exceeded a million dollars. She died, but the treatments extended her life by probably ten or fifteen years. Good news/bad news. I wonder how much that contributes to things. I had a heart cath done a couple of years ago. The results were positive, thank God, but that was 5 thousand up in smoke. All these new treatments are great, but very expensive. Compare that to the development of penicillin. It was the first of the wonder drugs, and was considered to be a world changer. It was cheap. Get a penicillin shot for a few bucks, go home and get better. New treatments now can be off the charts expensive. Injections for macular degeneration, untreatable fifty years ago, are a sort of wonder drug, but cost about two thousand dollars or so a treatment. Sure beats going blind, but adds greatly to the cost of health care.

Got 210 billion or so every year for 10 years in cuts? We both know any window into economics is temporary and contingent on conditions, market corrections, recessionary trends, or the business cycle. Or some rich guys gone amok. Personally I thought tax cuts for the rich without conditions to earn them was a mistake, and making them permanent was even worse and I believe intentionally so. Hey I did say LEGALIZED Stealing didn't I? Remember how Clinton balanced the budget?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...et_108853.html

Had to include this article as well,

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/03/u...-30-years.html

But I saved the best for last as it all ties together and makes sense during PEACE time.

Clinton Defense Budget Cuts Into Troops, Ships - latimes

I don't think we have that luxury, nor those with that mindset either.

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

So back to the rise of healthcare costs. Just food for thought.

If, in 1960, you had stage 4 cancer, leukemia, serious kidney disease, serious heart disease, or some types of diabetes, you basically were going to die. Treatment was difficult and since you weren't going to last very long, not expensive. These illnesses are treatable now, at least in many cases, and that's the good news. The bad news is that the treatments can be fantastically expensive. Knew a lady one time who had cancer for years. Her treatments eventually exceeded a million dollars. She died, but the treatments extended her life by probably ten or fifteen years. Good news/bad news. I wonder how much that contributes to things. I had a heart cath done a couple of years ago. The results were positive, thank God, but that was 5 thousand up in smoke. All these new treatments are great, but very expensive. Compare that to the development of penicillin. It was the first of the wonder drugs, and was considered to be a world changer. It was cheap. Get a penicillin shot for a few bucks, go home and get better. New treatments now can be off the charts expensive. Injections for macular degeneration, untreatable fifty years ago, are a sort of wonder drug, but cost about two thousand dollars or so a treatment. Sure beats going blind, but adds greatly to the cost of health care.

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You don't have to go all the way back to the 60's to find people that couldn't pay for health care at all and died for lack of it. Or had junk insurance that didn't cover what ailed them. What about the people who got thrown out of insurance when they exceeded a given amount (Sorry you mentioned that), or people mostly kids that required life time care? Or those now that have to meet a high deductible EVERY year? Yeah I'll I agree life is expensive enough without getting sick.

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You don't have to go all the way back to the 60's to find people that couldn't pay for health care at all and died for lack of it.

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What on earth are you talking about? That was not what I was saying and if you think it was, you didn't read my post. Read it again, and you'll hopefully see my point was completely different than the way you responded.

As to all the high costs you mentioned, that's kind of what this thread is about. Low deductibles result in higher premiums. They do nothing to lower the cost of healthcare, they just mask it. The lady I mentioned with cancer never lost her insurance. It ended up being well over a million dollars in bills. Guess who paid for that? If you guessed all the other people on Bluecross insurance, you win the prize.

Forgive me for interjecting my own thoughts and being different than your own intentions, but for me rising costs is the American way and has always been that way for my whole life and it's also about the people those rising cost affects. You mention the bigger picture and that is the bigger picture. You cannot tell me that was how the system has been designed by the profits before people crowd.

Now you can market that and spin it anyway you want, turn it upside down and around and view any angle you want, but bottom line, it gets worse until the whole plan changes, and somebody admits the model don't work well for enough people.

You should know by now my responses seldom conform to your expectation, though I'm glad you can identify some inequity in this thing even if narrower than I might like. LOL, I was really glad that your own charts and graphs were bearing out what I've been saying all along and that's amazing.

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I was really glad that your own charts and graphs were bearing out what I've been saying all along and that's amazing.

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Well, I must have missed that place where you said we are in an era of amazing prosperity and practically everyone is benefiting, but I'm glad you acknowledge it now. (<:

In the meantime, we have found no way to slow the growth of med costs.

actually the bigger picture is the "miracle "treatments available . Why wouldn't they cost ? 15-20 years in development and when all is done when the FDA FINALLY gives the company the NDA approval ;should they not be able to turn a major profit for their efforts ? If their research fails they get nothing for their efforts . THAT is why America leads the world in the development of life saving drugs and treatments .

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actually the bigger picture is the "miracle "treatments available . Why wouldn't they cost ? 15-20 years in development and when all is done when the FDA FINALLY gives the company the NDA approval ;should they not be able to turn a major profit for their efforts ? If their research fails they get nothing for their efforts . THAT is why America leads the world in the development of life saving drugs and treatments .

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Yes, what you say is true, but it all still has to be paid for. And when you throw in Medicare, Medicaid, widespread insurance, and CHIPS, then these treatments become perceived as a "right" that must be extended to everyone. So then the question becomes, how do we pay for all this stuff? There is a limit. That's what our country does not want to believe. What you buy has to be paid for, one way or another.

The longer I have to watch this mess, the more I come to believe that any congressman/woman stupid enough to introduce a spending bill without a believable means of paying for it should sent off to prison. We will have to do something perhaps a little extreme to get this stopped.

Ill tell you what will happen if free market principles don't prevail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rin4h4cRs6Y

death panels . or Nanny Bloomy deciding that you don't need to drink that soda .

We have to come up with ways to lower costs. I don't know what that will entail, but it must be done somehow.

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

We have to come up with ways to lower costs. I don't know what that will entail, but it must be done somehow.

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To summarize, what causes the high costs by Big Pharma, hospitals, doctors?

Seven years ago, one of the area hospitals built a new facility because the old one was crumbling and badly needing updating.The new hospital is very grand with vaulted ceilings, enormous lobbies, twelve meditation gardens (!!!), and endless hallways that have almost no offices or treatment rooms along them. It's a very handsome building but I see dollar signs all over the place. Patient rooms are single now with huge plasma TVs hung on the wall, nooks and shelves for vases of silk flowers and statuary (to give a homey feel?), and beautiful wooden storage chests and small tables. Now the hospital is fund raising to add nine more ER cubicles plus more up-to-date MRIs for cancer detection. Oh, and the hospital itself hasn't been completely paid for. I was there as a patient for three days in early May. The med my doctor prescribed for me is over $600 a month (but my pharmacy was somehow able to reduce that to a much smaller amount). Please tell me what's going on.

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Please tell me what's going on.

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I'm going to guess that the newspaper ran glowing stories about the wonderful new facility. There were, of course, no protests because no one seems to make the connection you have made, that the many non-essential aspects of the hospital's construction will drive up the price of medicine. We all just seem to accept it. Maybe if everyone had a 10,000 dollar deductible, we would begin to take more notice.

The answer doesn't lie in making patients pay more, if it did, medicine would be cheap, the answer lies in regulating what doctors and hospitals can charge for their services, then the incentive to build and gold plate would be removed

wage and price controls is what created the insurance mess we are in. Artificial controls on markets don't work . What do you do when physicians rebel and stop treating patients ? Already the average wait time for primary care is over 2weeks. Create a scarcity and see which way costs go.

I've already given some examples where insurance doesn't cover ;and there is competition in the market . Prices lower or are at least get stabilized .It makes a difference when patients shop around . The market reacts accordingly .

This is happening now more frequently where doctors and clinics are cutting out insurance for primary care .Instead of fees for service ,they instead make a private contract with the patient ,;usually annually for care . The patient only has to then get coverage for catastrophic care . It makes sense . We do not have insurance coverage for routine auto maintenance . Most patients can afford the costs of primary care under these terms .

Tort reform .Doctors pay a fortune for malpractice insurance . They also have to have an administrative staff to deal with this and other paperwork now mandated by Obamcare . All these costs are passed on to the patient. But the biggest impact of practicing in our sue happy society is that unnecessary tests are performed for CYA .

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The answer doesn't lie in making patients pay more,

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Got bad news for you. Patients pay 100% of the costs of medicine either through direct payments, insurance premiums, or taxes. There is no money tree.

As to regulating charges, that is already done. Both Medicare and insurance companies have established systems which regulate what docs and hospitals are permitted to charge. The fact that those who benefit from Medicare and many insurance programs don't even pay premiums, or at least all of the premiums, tends to mask the true cost of health care. So once, for instance, I meet my 200 dollar deductible for my Medicare supplement, I tend to not care what a doctor charges for a particular service. That's a big problem. Low deductibles do nothing to lower health care costs overall, but place a wall between the patient and what is being charged. Doing away with low deductibles would put us in a position where cost would become important each one of us as a consumer.

I just think that Wondergirl's post was so enlightening. No one really cares about controlling costs.

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I just think that Wondergirl's post was so enlightening. No one really cares about controlling costs.

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The same thing happens in higher education also .The costs of glitzy campuses gets passed on .

Sure rising cost apply to EVERYTHING because the whole GOAL is to make profit FOR investors FROM the consumer. That was the goal when the stock market was invented, and that has NEVER changed. More profits require MO"MONEY. The whole term whatever the market will bear only means whatever they can get (from a consumer). It's not like nobody cares about controlling costs, but the investors make the rules, and governments job is merely to regulate (Keep it HONEST). Part of the problem is our government officials know very little about how economics work, and are really behind the curb and at the mercy of those that work for and lobby the investor class for sweet deals to make MO'MONEY for themselves. LOL, Tom, even in a stable market prices and costs will rise.

That's my problem with the supply siders as they make rules for the big bucks people, and don't keep it honest or fair for the consumers, and with that kind of structure prices RISE, as do profits, from consumers. Until you balance that equation to include consumers you will never achieve an equity that benefits those consumers. This is particularly troubling with essentials like education, health, and welfare, and environmental services.

Or you could take the stigma from socialism and apply it as a good thing ..IE...Social Security. If you exam the socialism of our "enemies" it looks exactly like capitalism, but without social freedom.

Too bad health insurance companies never run discounts, sales, or buy one get one free sales. Bottom line, the only way of controlling prices, you must control PROFITS, and investors and supply siders would never stand for that.