Guest Post by The Zman
Yesterday’s post, was tangentially about health care, but it got a lot of responses about health care. It is a funny subject, in that everyone starts from the premise that everything has been the way it is now since forever. The Left has been so good at proselytizing about government run health care for the last 25 years that the public suffers from collective amnesia. We forget that no one complained about insurance very much a generation ago and no one expected miracles from medicine. Health care was just not a big topic.
After a quarter century of chanting about health care, most everyone seems to buy into the belief that it is a fountain high up on Magic Mountain. It is guarded by the twin dragons of Big Pharma and Big Insurance. The keepers of the faith sent their paladin, Barak Obama, to slay the dragons so that the people could dip their cup into the fountain of health care, getting all they need. His failure to accomplish this is proof that the dragons are mighty and therefore the most extreme weapons must be deployed.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
It’s all ridiculous nonsense, of course, but that’s where we are with the topic. All goods and services are rationed. That’s an iron law of the universe. There are no exceptions. The rationing is either done though control of the supply or through price. In America, a massively convoluted system to control supply has evolved so that the people do not see the cost of health services. This lets a long list of skimmers attach themselves to the system so that prices go up, even though the quality of service often declines.
The question no one ever asks is how to make it cheaper. Follow the talking heads on the subject and they will never address making the price of services cheaper. Instead, they prattle on about access and risk pools and other terms they think sound clever. The reason is not that they view health care as a right. It is because they see it as a privilege to be dispensed by the Cloud People to the Dirt People. Allowing a free market for health services would take all the fun out of being a Cloud Person.
Even so, the goal of any health care reform should be making it cheaper, especially the common care items. The two areas where health care has gotten much better and much cheaper are dentistry and eye care, both of which are usually paid for out of pocket and have low barriers to entry. Veterinary medicine is the most obvious example of what happens to prices when you have anything resembling a marketplace. That’s also why the people in charge will never allow competition for health services. Their donors hate it.
The other aspect of health care is the quality of medicine. The truth is, the advance of medicine has been very slow and is not looking to speed up in the near future. The great leaps in health are a) diet, b) antibiotics and c) sanitation and d) a crackdown on quackery. All of these things are products of the last century. Some treatments are much better than fifty years ago, but cure rates for most diseases have not budged. Death, of course, remains a universal constant. Medical advances are glacial, not revolutionary.
As Greg Cochran pointed out the other day, a free market in medicine is probably not the answer, any more than a government monopoly has been. The truth is we don’t know a lot of about the human body and the diseases that afflict it. Genetics promises to open the door to a vast new trove of learning about human biology and medicine, but that’s not going to speed up with any government health care scheme. This is a science problem, not an economics problem and that takes the time it takes.
Finally, the problem of health insurance starts with understanding that there is no such thing as health insurance. What we have in America is an elaborate system of cost shifting. The young are forced to pay for the old. The healthy are forced to pay for the sick. The government and their buddies in the insurance business get a piece of the action. Nowhere in America can you buy insurance in case you have a stroke or just for the chance you fall off your roof. Everyone’s plan is designed by the government.
This is a problem that is easily solved in theory, but nearly impossible to solve in reality because insurance companies have billions to spend on politicians. There’s also the fact that generations of Americans have become conditioned to having someone else pay their doctor bills. All the reforms that would work require people paying their own way and that will never happen on purpose. It’s why the current system will mostly likely stagger along until it collapses. At that point, we end up with government insurance.
That’s the truth of health care in America. The system, at its best, is a web of lies designed to shield the citizens from reality. At its worst, it is a complicated skimming operations so the people at the top can squeeze a bit more from the middle-class. It does not have to be this way, but until we resurrect the national razor, nothing substantive will change until it collapses. At which point, the “solution” will be something worse like national health care or single payer insurance.
Anyone left that remembers the days when “healthcare insurance” was called “hospitalization insurance” because that’s what it covered and the people were expected to provide for their own routine healthcare needs?
That’s the difference between then and now.
Costs were lower when people paid their own way for most of their doctors visits and treatments and insurance, for those who had it, covered only major problems that put you in the hospital.
FWIW, I had my tonsils out in a doctor’s office when I was a child and went home several hours after the in office visit. My dad paid the doctor at the time when it was done.
Wonder if it’s still that way or has become something major and expensive?
When I proposed a plan here that would provide for catastrophic coverage, i.e. hospitalization and major cost coverage, while the individual provided out of pocket costs for routine care, I got ten down votes and a lot of scorn.
Did you say anything about Pete Seeger?
Health Care is a human right……….that is Bullshit.
You will notice that this only became an issue to recent political issues. It didn’t exist 1,000, 500, or even 50 years ago. It only became an issue when the FSA became a significant voting bloc.
The progress in medicine is much slower than people even imagine. As Nassim Taleb points out, most or perhaps all of the increase in life expectancy in the US in the last 50 years is attributable to the decline in smoking rates. So medical research, much of which is so shoddy that it has spawned the reproducibility crisis, has provided very little return on investment.
“you have high blood pressure, and you need to take these pills for the rest of your life.
I based this diagnosis on a single test, taken in my office, there can be no doubt.”
is what most folks get when they see a Dr., and they are over the age of 4o, and maybe a bit overweight.
when I visit my Dr. the nurse always does a BP reading with a stupid machine, and the results are always high, gee, who built that machine.
then my dr. uses the old school liquid mercury wall mounted meter, and talks to me about the color of the leaves during fall, and like magic, I get a different, lower, acceptable reading, and no pills.
Most of the medical issues we face, are self induced, related to diet and habits, and no pill will cure, and the medical pros know this.
So what is the average you get when you regularly take your own blood pressure at home and have you pointed it out to your doctor?
Who cares.
What is the tire pressure of the left rear ?
Fuck you troll.
Economic Hit Men went to work on the medical industry and voila-more profit for every layer. Yes, private health care paid for out of pocket is the best solution by far. Cut out the regulators and middle men paper shufflers. Oh, and attorneys too. The legal system doesn’t protect you but it does impair delivery of health care with every layer second guessing every other.
Im afraid I have to disagree
Health care in America is for profit how do you maximize profit you cut cost to the bone
Where do you have the most control of cost
labor and you better believe hospitals run short staff in all departments from nursing to ancillary x ray lab ect
You are admitted to the hospital and fill out a form who to contact in case of emergency
you reply next of kin
I am admitted to same hospital same form to fill out
my reply the most well known medical claims attorney in my area who is on retainer best hospitalization insurance you can buy
we both ring the buzzer to go to the bathroom at the same time
who do you think is going to get to go to the bathroom first or get taken care of first for anything
and if they have to put you to sleep for any proceedure it is money well spent to have your medical law firm send an associate to sit in on that proceedure
qualification for opinion 25 years in level 1 trauma centers in central florida
Most individual doctors are great Hospital Administrators spawn of Satan
Zman is right. We will continue on this course until it collapses. As I posted the other day, that was the purpose of Obamacare. Make it an even bigger mess, speed up the collapse. Leave just enough private/for profit influence and control in the system so that when it collapsed they will get the lions share of the blame. At that point, the government will ‘have no choice’ but to take over the entire thing and voila – govt run socialized medicine. Higher taxes, rationing, worse services, and an end to innovation since the profit motive will be destroyed.
If you want to see what the future of govt run healthcare looks like, check out the VA under Obama. That is the future. Except it will probably be even worse than that, since by then we will be even more broke as a country.
No. VA is just another government run scam like the Health Care industry. The intention is not to serve the returning soldiers. The intention is not to make you healthy. The intention is to line cloud peoples pockets so they can buy the food that they serve on their yachts. Everybody else in the world has single payer government run health care where the criminals are prohibited from infecting the swamp and everybody else is very happy to have that universal care. It is only in England where the criminals have taken over the NHS that everybody is complaining and what they are complaining about is that their single payer no criminal system was taken over by a merkin style (and merkin companies) criminal run money grubbing system and they can see first hand that your way sucks.
And it does suck and you know it. Competition doesn’t work for air, it doesn’t work for water, and it doesn’t work for healthcare so get off your criminal loving high horse and shove a little reality up that tight ass of yours. You don’t have any health care. You pay for every service that you receive because your copay and deductible and out of pocket max more than cover the real cost of treating your sorry ass.
The solution is so obvious, it’s even on Drudge as we speak: http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-forward-office-tour-2017-1/#this-is-what-you-get-when-several-dozen-former-employees-of-google-facebook-uber-and-palantir-put-their-heads-together-to-reinvent-the-doctors-office-1
At least AI’s eliminate human error and nothing can go wrong the way it does now.
http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/47-of-jobs-in-the-next-25-years-will-disappear-according-to-oxford-university
The four most important things that a person can do to stay health is to eat a calorie-restricted diet, exercise, not smoke, and limit alcohol intake. Those four things will avoid 80% of health problems. And yes, there have been studies on this issue.
Get MSG and HFCS out of the diet as well and the percentage would probably be 90+.
The main problem we live with, today, is being dictated to about our health care choices. The first thing to be done is eliminate the federal government from any activity not granted to it in the constitution. I know they use the general welfare clause to expand their activity to just about everything, but that is just plain chicanery on their part, and nobody has ever called bullshit on that lie. Healthcare is not in their purview, or education, and a number of other intrusions, too many to list.
The second step is to allow unrestricted freedom of choice for healthcare, private or public, which is legal (ie. no quackery or charlatans), and regulated under the health and safety laws of the several states. If the states, or municipalities, want to form government sponsored healthcare, then fine, let them. Just don’t force participation or cost on those who don’t want to use it. Let it survive on it’s own merits and not be propped up by fleecing the public at large.
Sure, and while your at it why not take the government out of the clean air and water business. I am sure that competition will lead to a joyously bucolic world of blue skies and fresh water from every lake and stream. Nobody would ever want to pollute the water that we all need to survive, would they? Why no, they would gladly spend the money necessary to clean up the toxic chemicals that they spew from their money making enterprises. Why wouldn’t they? Competition only drives humanity in one direction. Those with the most greed gather unto themselves the most resources. It’s a fundamental law of nature and it is why governments were invented in the first place. As soon as you had enough people in big enough tribes to steal someone else’s shit, they started stealing someone else’s shit. And they will every single time unless they are stopped by some higher power and that’s not gonna be God and it’s not gonna be Allah. It has to be you.
Imagine a business, say car repair, where you had to go to a different shop/mechanic for every part of your car. Tire, brakes, A/C, motor, transmission etc were all serviced by a separate business who did their own billing. They might even all operate out of the same dealership but they all operate as independent businesses. Like doctors! The surgeon and the anesthesiologist are not part of the same ‘company’ so they bill you ( or your insurance company) separately. Again, imagine if the guy who fixed your brakes was a ‘tire and brake mechanic’ who your mechanic brought in to change a tire and whose head office was in Orlando while your doctor was in Tampa.
You get a bill from McGee’s Tire and Brake Clinic out of Orlando and go ‘what the hell is this’? I’ve never gone to McGee’s Tire and Brake Clinic and why wasn’t this paid by my insurance provider. Well how in the hell is McGee’s Tire and Brake supposed to know who your insurance carrier is? You didn’t hire him, your doctor did and all he’s knows is that he changed the tire on YOUR car so he bills you. This shit happens all the time in medicine and its up to you to figure it out even if you are on death’s door.
Single payer may or may not be the way to go but the health care system is going to collapse because patients and insurers can’t tell if a biopsy bill from a company in Cincinnati is legitimate and ordered by your ENT doctor in Atlanta or some crook in the Ukraine who has a database of stolen patient info.
This is a transcript of the 1971 conversation between President Richard Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman that led to the HMO act of 1973:
John D. Ehrlichman: “On the … on the health business …”
President Nixon: “Yeah.”
Ehrlichman: “… we have now narrowed down the vice president’s problems on this thing to one issue and that is whether we should include these health maintenance organizations like Edgar Kaiser’s Permanente thing. The vice president just cannot see it. We tried 15 ways from Friday to explain it to him and then help him to understand it. He finally says, ‘Well, I don’t think they’ll work, but if the President thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll support him a hundred percent.’”
President Nixon: “Well, what’s … what’s the judgment?”
Ehrlichman: “Well, everybody else’s judgment very strongly is that we go with it.”
President Nixon: “All right.”
Ehrlichman: “And, uh, uh, he’s the one holdout that we have in the whole office.”
President Nixon: “Say that I … I … I’d tell him I have doubts about it, but I think that it’s, uh, now let me ask you, now you give me your judgment. You know I’m not too keen on any of these damn medical programs.”
Ehrlichman: “This, uh, let me, let me tell you how I am …”
President Nixon: [Unclear.]
Ehrlichman: “This … this is a …”
President Nixon: “I don’t [unclear] …”
Ehrlichman: “… private enterprise one.”
President Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”
Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can … the reason he can do it … I had Edgar Kaiser come in … talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because …”
President Nixon: [Unclear.]
Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”
President Nixon: “Fine.” [Unclear.]
Ehrlichman: [Unclear] “… and the incentives run the right way.”
President Nixon: “Not bad.”
[Source: University of Virginia Check – February 17, 1971, 5:26 pm – 5:53 pm, Oval Office Conversation 450-23. Look for: tape rmn_e450c.]
“All goods and services are rationed. That’s an iron law of the universe. There are no exceptions.”
Gee! The Zman and I have an agreement. I’ve been saying this on this site more than once.
The free market, where price rations goods, is terribly unfair say the Liberal Progressive Socialists. Poor people can’t afford good health care. We will make the system fair for the poor. We will create a better system. The problem is what they won’t tell you is that a government committee will ration health care rather than the free market. They vehemently deny their plan rations health care, but they’re liars. Of course, anything a government designs costs more and provides less than the free market provided at a better price. Why is that, you ask? It’s because of free market competition.
Competition has been systematically remove from health care. When you don’t have competition, you have a medical oligarchy with its ever escalating prices. Compound this with single payer, a government middleman, and you have the same thing you have in higher education-outrageous increase in prices far exceeding the rate of inflation. Karl Denninger has written about this 10,000 lb gorilla in the waiting room.
read it here: http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231764
Just admit to the truth that both the the free market and government committee rations and choose the one that provides the best care at the lowest price with less hassle. Hint: that’s the free market.
You don’t have to legislate competition. You just need to dismantle all the anti competitive rules and regulations that the health care industry has gotten their CONgessional todies to write into law. Competition will spring forth from the muck of anti competitiveness leading to greater progress in medicine and lower health care prices to the benefit of all.
So, what are you waiting for?
“…a free market in medicine is probably not the answer,…”
That’s when I stopped reading. The free market is the only thing that can save healthcare or the economy as a whole. Open it up to real, free market competition and watch costs and premiums drop like a stone. Those who can provide the best quality at the best price will always win. It won’t be possible to institute outrageous prices for procedures and medications simply because your plan tells you you HAVE to go to this hospital or that doctor. When your choices are so limited, you have no choice but to pay whatever they require; not so in a truly free market. The problem with nearly everyone is that they don’t understand that we do NOT live in a free market system and have not since at least 1913. We live in an era of corporatism, not capitalism, and it’s the medical corporations, in collusion with government legislators that institute laws that limit competition and consolidate power and profits into fewer hands, that is the real problem. More “socialism” won’t solve the problem of our quasi-socialized medicine. It needs drastic change. It needs government OUT of the process entirely, especially since the Constitution does not permit government to be involved in healthcare, and opened up to a wide, free market, allowing the natural law of supply, demand and real honest competition take over.
Bell1, you’re smart cookie!
Note that government is the biggest monopoly.
No Belli. You simply can’t open the healthcare system up to competition. If you do, as pointed out above, people like Kaiser will come in and make money off the system. You would have to admit that they could only have that one goal. But their customers can not shop around. They have one hospital that they will be dragged to. They have one doctor that will see them. And once they get real sick, they will not be able to go out and shop around. That one hospital will not have any competition. That one doctor will not have any competition. And if you think that you will be getting up out of your bed and walking out the door to go find cheaper healthcare then you are dumber than a bag of hammers.
It’s easy to claim that the free market will solve all ills. Our blessed economists have been doing that for hundreds of years. But they are lying and you know it. And their lies lead us all down a trail to betrayal which is where we are now. Criminals will always flock to the most lucrative scam and a free market in health care is only free to them. It will never be free for you and that is why universal healthcare is embraced and works great all over the world. It is only bad here and it is your continued insistence on a free market solution that will keep you enslaved to the criminals and psychopaths. But what do I know?
Rob,
Universal health care is not embraced the world over.
Have you ever looked at the Singapore health system? There they have mandated health savings plans, that can even be pooled by a family. So you don’t pay a premium to an insurance company, but instead pay into a savings account. On top of that you can purchase additional catastrophe insurance for those rare but high cost incidents that you cannot save enough for. Most treatment is by private providers and there is a very competitive market such that Singapore, which is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, has some of the cheapest medical treatments.
Most health system in Europe are a mixture of government and private, only the UK seems to have monstrous NHS system that everyone there is so in love with because they believe all the propaganda.
France has a wonderful system, where the government pays for basics, but it is mainly provided by private doctors, clinics, and hospitals. The majority of French then have additional top up insurance to cover what the government does not cover.
Here in New Zealand we are halfway. There is a government run health system with government hospitals but it only covers critical health. Anything not urgent you really need to go private for. When I need a blood test or Xray I go to a private clinic, normally the same day. I remember my days of waiting for blood tests and Xrays in the wonderful UK NHS.
My catastrophe health insurance costs my family an “extortionate” US$1800 a year. The difference between public and private treatment is unbelievable. My daughter, who due to herage is not on my plan and had been too lazy to take out her own cover, was admitted to hospital with stomach pains and needed an operation. The first 18 hours she was on a trolley in a corridor, Doctors would come up and do consultations in public, no privacy at all. When finally admitted it was to a shared ward, 3 other people shared one room just separated by curtain dividers. It was horrendous. Men and women share the same room so even worse privacy. The toilets are shared facilities in the corridor that you have to walk down in that excuse of a dressing gown that leaves you naked at the back. You can hear the doctor asking the most personal of questions to the other people you share with, and of course they can hear you. On the 2nd night one of the men died, after extensive efforts to resuscitate him that we were all listening to. My wife and I spent 2 nights sat on hard upright chairs keeping our daughter company. When I was admitted for an eye operation to a private hospital I had my own room, and toilet. My wife had the comfort of sleeping on a LazBoy chair in my room. The moral of that story is my daughter made sure she took out private cover after that operation, she will not face the horrendous public system again.
ive been a self pay medical tourist for years in SE Asia
2005 thru 2016 kidney stones colonoscopy bi lateral catarac surgery with IOL insertion total cost $4500.00 USD divide by 12 years = $375.00 per year all work done at hospitals equal to or better then most american hospital by doctors trained and board certified in the States England Australia
so there is afforable healthcare out there you just need to know how to access it
Yes, you can access it if you are free to travel around SE Asia. You can access it if you have a lot of money in NZ. It’s all great for you isn’t it. It must be great for you that you have been so successful that you can afford to have private medical service. But most merkins can’t even afford public medicine. What works for you just doesn’t make for a model for everyone else. Sure you got it great. I’m glad for you. But I bet even in NZ you find that you go to your local hospital and see your one doctor which you haven’t changed for a coons age. You are not talking about competition. You are suggesting that privilege has solved the problem for you and that is your prescription for everyone else but the minute you introduce competition into the healthcare model you invite the criminals to wade in to steal the resources.
Rob,
My medical insurance costs me US$5 dollars a day for a family of 3, not even the cost of a Big mac. My daughter’s medical policy costs her US$2 a day, less than a cup of coffee. Anybody, and I repeat anybody can afford that if they prioritise their spending.
I have a total choice of doctor who to see. At the local Doctor’s surgery (clinic) I go to I have a choice of 9 doctors to choose from, although of course I normally try and see the same one. If I want to I can go to any Clinic in the city. So loads of competition. My regular clinic try and keep me by having facilities such as my records on line, private messages to the Dr, ordering prescriptions on line, receiving blood test results etc online.
Funny enough there is only one local supermarket, but I don’t think they are run by criminals so why is healthcare online. If anything the biggest crimminal in healthcare are the government, making people believe they have free healthcare, but only due to high taxes, and even then deliver a crap service and say it is great.