The real "entitlement" in our health care system

They should at least close down their R&D departments, think of all the money we the people would save if they passed down the cost savings from that.

 

The Koch Brothers, Fox, The WSJ, etc. never touch doctors. Or the military. We spend about 22% of national GDP on health care & the military, while the rest of the developed world is about 10%. But do we hear that? No, we don't. Teacher bashing, union bashing, lawyer bashing, government bashing. But a free ride for health care, a free ride for the military -- for the two sectors where we truly are overpaying.

I realized after writing that how much the right wing has won the media battle. The "liberal" media doesn't tell you what Dave and I just did. The "liberal" media takes its cues from the right, It covers about the right's targets, the teachers, the unions, gubmint. The "liberal" media hops and jumps to the Koch Brothers' agenda.

That's because the "liberal" media no longer does real analysis. It just reports He Said/She Said attacks. And since the right is always attacking, the right always gets heard. It gets to talk about what it wants to talk about.

 

A friend of mine owns a coffee shop. One day,two guys in neckties came in and each bought a cup of coffee. They were followed by 14 guys who did not, but who took up pretty much every chair and most of the tables in the place for about a half hour. They were pharmaceutical sales reps. A couple of days later, they came back. This time, no one even bothered to buy coffee. She threw them out.

That story actually raised my opinion of pharaceutical sales reps, since the first two guys actually did buy coffee.

 

Free Wi-Fi office space, eh? I like it.

 

I read both articles. Two things are not mentioned in either, the costs of medical training and personal responsibility.

1. Medical Training costs. Let me ask the posters here, how much should a doctor make after going hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and spending all of his/her 20s and some of the early 30s either in school or residency working 60-80 hours a week for about 50K a year and only starting to earn the "big bucks" in their 3os.

2. Personal responsibility. Three things jump out at me here, tobacco, HIV, and obesity.
How much money do we spend every year treating HIV and tobacco related illnesses? Yet both expenses could be cut to almost zero if people were just more responsible. One has to actively engage in very specific activities to become victims of either HIV or tobacco. It may sound cliche, but seriously, how much would we save if people just said no to smoking, dipping, unprotected sex, and needle sharing. I do not think we as a society should be blaming "fat-cat" doctors for health care costs as we continue to smoke, eat, and f*ck ourselves to into the hospital and into early graves.

(I am not being prude about sex, I do not care where or how often you stick your weiner, just put a wrapper on it. And I favor needle exchange programs)

How many here would favor a prohibition, IF it were possible, on tobacco for the sake of health care costs?

 

My local liberal media is always quick to tell me what is trending on Twitter.

 

Doctors? Meh. They've earned the right to charge a lot by right of expertise and training.

Very nearly one-third of health care costs are for a completely unnecessary bureaucracy. 1 No other country has to deal with that burden; they're the real problem IMO.

 

I would not favor it, but I would favor Premiums on Smokers, Alcohol drinkers (Can I get a waiver ) obese people (hard to draw a line I imagine).

HIV is more iffy, we do want to treat it like an epidemic, so maybe more prevention and education over premiums.

 

Prohibit tobacco? Sure thing, as long as you also ban soft drinks, stuffed pizza, Shoneys, and Bacinators.

 

Spend enough time in doctor's offices and you'll see the young male/female spit-shined pharma rep in the office, passing out his/her card and trying to get face time with the doctors to get them to buy into the drug de jour. It's only a little more above-board than weapons sales...or prostitution.

 

Wait a moment now. It's not more above board than prostitution, quite the contrary.

 

Well in fairness the Social Security problems can perfectly be described like that, Most of us were not meant to live this long when they passed that law.

 

Funny you should mention that.

http://factcheck.org/2012/08/a-campaign-full-of-mediscare/

I know you won't believe it but the "plans" both sides have for Medicare are almost identical. So, before you continue with your belief that Medicare is being "attacked", understand that both sides are proposing to do the "attacking".

It really is a good article that shows how much trouble Medicare is in and criticizes both sides on scaring voters while proposing identical solutions.

 

1 in 8 Americans are elderly. 1 in 3 are obese.

 

If my doctor wife didn't have over 300k in student debt and need 21 years of education (including residency as education), she'd be happy to be paid less. Even making pretty big bucks, it takes a decade to catch up to the lifetime earnings of a person who obtained a technical degree out of high school. Likewise, I do well now, but it took several years of making way under poverty guidelines to build a caseload. Again, once student loan payments are calculated, it really was pathetic for several years there.

 

Saw this today, from a U.K. writer about his health care experience -

At half the price of the States? Sign me up. Today.

 

Aren't their provisions to ensure that we get refunds for excessive non-benefit-related spending? That should incentivize a reduction in bureaucracy...at least that's the idea, I think.

 

That recently happened at my workplace, not for our primary health care but with the company we use for "alternative" medicine (acupuncture, massage, chiropractic). Got a letter saying we'd be getting a refund because they went over the (I think) 20% limit that can be spent on administrative costs. It's fresh in my mind because our HR guy sent an email explaining what that letter meant and that our other healthcare providers are subject to the same rule.