Recently, I have been seeing US articles that holds the Australian healthcare system up as an example that the US should follow. Now, don’t get me wrong, Australia’s system is in many ways superior, but not for the reasons you might assume.
The area Australia’s system is superior is in overall cost of care. Australian medical care costs a fraction of that of the US. I am not expert enough to comment as to exactly why, but one reason seems to be that pharmaceutical companies are kept under better control. Also, there seems to be actual competition. Competition, you say? But it has universal healthcare, how can that be??!!
Australia is a hybrid system. It runs a private system alongside a public system. If you are a public patient, you are indeed covered. So long as you live long enough to be treated, or are happy to wait years for that hip replacement. The lines are long. Finding a doctor to treat you generally on the public system is getting nearly impossible, as well. The government provides a base level of compensation to doctors for seeing a patient. Most, nearly all these days, will not work for what they get from the government, and charge a supplement of perhaps $30 or $40 a visit.
Most working people take out private health insurance, because they are unwilling to wait for hip replacements, hernia repairs, etc. Without the insurance, you wait, and you get no choice of doctor. You get whoever you are assigned. If you want a well regarded doctor of your choosing, you have to be a private patient, with insurance, or the ability to pay the fees personally. My insurance costs neatly $10k a year these days. Sound familiar?
A lot of public patients have taken to flying over to Thailand, Viet Nam, Mexico, etc., to get treated, as they cannot take the wait, and cannot bear the Australian costs, modest though they are by US standards. The most pressing fiscal issue that Australia has going forward, and which is causing much political angst, is how the country will be able to pay for the rapidly escalating medical costs. Even given its relatively low costs, escalating medical care costs are likely to bankrupt the nation if not addressed.
So, I suppose you see where I am going with this. Bernie wants medical care for all as a right. But the US is starting from a position where medical costs are perhaps two or even three times more expensive than in Australia. Further, the population of the US is older, and its workforce participation rate is lower. And it is subject to untold illegal immigration, which does not afflict Australia to any major extent.
So, tell me, how can Bernie’s plan actually work? How much will it cost (untold trillions, surely)? Will it actually improve things for the majority of people, who will still need to self-insure or take out private insurance to beat the waiting lines? How will you convince, or make, doctors take a reduced fee (which will stagnate owing to the extreme cost of the program)? How can such a program withstand the enormously punishing costs of an ageing population, given the explosion in Medicare and Medicaid costs already underway? Bernie will shrug off such questions as details to be handled later – just pass the legislation, and worry about this other stuff later.
Before anything else can happen, the US must get its medical costs in order. Pharmaceutical costs must be reined in, hospital charges must be defined and reduced, competition must be created and allowed to run. There is simply no way to implement any kind of national, all-encompassing program given the absurd current cost of medical care in the US. But the truth is, neither Australia nor the US can hope to maintain universal healthcare. The costs cannot be contained in the intermediate or longer term.
Demographics will see to it, as well as the citizens propensity to consume more and more of whatever is offered at no cost.
Those people holding up Australia, or others, as blueprints of how universal medical care can be provided are either deluded, are lying, or both.
The best healthcare insurance is NO insurance.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with good old cash for your health cost. The insurance companies are nothing but fraudsters living off your back. It takes a real idiot to pay $10,000 yearly for insurance while the deductible is an additional thousands of dollars. Without these “idiots” the bummercare would instantly collapse, but the American public is all talk and no substance. You want healthcare reform, then QUIT BUYING HEALTH INSURANCE !!
At least my deductible is only $100. Plus that insurance covers everything, including alternative therapies, massage, glasses, etc etc etc.
The reality is, except for perhaps a major cardiac or cancer issue, the cost of such insurance is a waste here, as the private expenses would not be unmanageable for a hip replacement, for instance.
In the US, almost any issue could be catastrophically expensive.
“My insurance costs neatly $10k a year these days. Sound familiar?”
That is similar to U.S…………….BUT
“At least my deductible is only $100.”
BIG difference than U.S…..varies, but $6,000 is not unusual.
Kokoda – I know. It is a disgrace. And honest folks are literally dying because of it. The bulk of the money I pay goes for the extras. Just pure medical would be around $3 or $4k a year, $100 deductible. The US system is broken.
Is there really a blueprint at all? Any system is going to have winners and losers.
I guess the best system would be judged by how many people “get” actual care. All lot of good that does for the losers so it will always be seen as not good enough.
I have heard from my Australian friends that the system is much cheaper, but that there is a severe and chronic shortage of doctors…When I point out that’s not the case in the US, they are bewildered.
Take what the 18% of GDP the US spends on health care a divide it by 320 million or so and you get pretty close to $10,oo0 per head per year.
Is that $10k just for you or for your wife/kids also?
Me and kin.
Anon:
How well will you negotiate a lower cost to have that brain tumor removed?
Dave,
No negotiation necessary. At the Oklahoma City Hospital there is a posted price list for every procedure. You know in advance what the cost is, but they do not take insurance. One year of unsubsidized bummercare premiums would probably easily pay for that brain tumor you refer to. Insurance and the medical industry is a scam that should be prosecuted for fraud under the rico act.
Anon:
Not everyone lives in OK city. Can we extend that process to the entire country?
Join a healthcare sharing “ministry”. There are three grandfathered into obummer care. I live in commiefornia and am still able to negotiate cash prices with almost all doctors. Most will readily take the cash over dealing with insurance.
My brother did that to save money. He had to have a bypass. They denied the costs as they determined it was pre-existing. He was earlier in the Air Guard and they (the Taxpayers) had something that covered the operation.
Conman
When a bill comes to $100,000 do you really believe you can negotiate that down to $10K? Paying cash for day to day maintenance is OK, but when the catastrophe hits, you’re up the creek.
Most people cannot just quit buying health insurance, they would have to also forgo healthcare, as the healthy young people can get away with. The US spends 9000 PER person on total healthcare. Most western European nations and Japan average 4000 per person, and they boast superior outcomes. The population of the US is 325 million; multiply that by 5000 per person, you get more than 1.5 trillion. Our budget deficit is 560 billion on a total budget of almost 4 trillion. I am kind of comparing apples and oranges, but if the US health costs were slashed to 4000 and covered everyone, and the excess applied to the rest of the budget, we would have a HUGE surplus. And that is without touching our obscene military spending. Is this a great country, or what?
AJ:
“The US spends 9000 PER person on total healthcare.”
That number was up to $10.2K last year.
10 people get a quart of milk at the grocery store. Only 4 people pay for the milk.
My question boys and girls: How much will milk cost next week.
At $1 a quart week one, then what, $2.50 week 2. Great analogy.
Lipoh and Dutchman I respectfully submit this: MILK….. therein lies the health problem….cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Quit poisoning your body peeple and right there is your health insurance!!
Read The China Study and watch “What the Health”
It’s so SAD….Standard American Diet.
And I ain’t no pinko commie or ‘snowflake’ either if that’s what you’re thinkin! Well maybe a little sleety
Fer Christ’s sake, it was just a fuckin’ example. Maybe I should have done it with tofu.
Tofu?! Enjoy your xenoestrogens.
xenoestrogens attach to the same estrogen receptors that human estrogen attach to, but the xenoestrogens exert only a very small effect, unlike the human kind. Xenoestrogens therefore exert a protective effect on the cell from the human estrogen by displacing it’s attachment to the cell.
TBP monkeys know shit that I never knew existed. Xenoestrogens? Sounds like those strange aliens that Scientologists believe in. Carry on.
China study was very flawed. IMHO the criticisms seem valid.
Even though the ACA is a marginal improvement over the previous scheme, it is unsustainable. My premium went up 25% again this year, to about $450 per month. At that rate, my monthly premium will be about $1,300 per month in five years. In 10 years, it will be about $4,190 per month. Meanwhile, average wages haven’t really budged for 40 years. So tell me, who will be able to afford to pay $50,000 per year for insurance in 2027? Something has gotta give.
You’re welcome. Not to be any more of a dick than I usually am, but if you’re complaining about your subsidized premium ($450 is a subsidized premium), try paying full-boat unsubsidized. No one earning >$94k gets a subsidy. I pay around $18-19k in premiums for family coverage (roughly half of which is the “employer’s side” which I pay) and have a family deductible of $9,900. The people who really get screwed by Obamacare are the people who aren’t on the exchanges – the other 200+ million whose costs have gone up to pay the hidden taxes that fund the subsidies for those on the exchanges. All those hidden taxes (extra healthcare provider tax) get tacked onto doctors’ and hospitals’ charges.
Iska – you should be a diplomat.
There aren’t enough of us paying the full premiums to make the politicians or the healthcare lobby sweat. Therefore, costs will not come down until government bankruptcy forces us back to a competitive, cash-based system.
It is beyond my comprehension that anybody would pay that much for health insurance. Do you not realize that there are hospitals and doctors that do not take insurance, and charge one tenth of what other institutions charge. One year of your premiums would pay for any catastrophic event if you were using one of these hospitals, one of which in in Oklahoma City, but there are others. It is your dollars which is helping to keep the insurance scam going.
If I didn’t have health insurance I’d be subject to an Obamacare “skipping insurance” penalty of 2.5% of income, which would be a significant portion of the premiums I’m paying. As noted below, my getting hauled semi-conscious in an ambulance to our local level one trauma center resulted in a $116,000 (mostly fake) bill for five days of IV’s and mashed potatoes. (I also got one suppository.) At the start of the ordeal – when the docs suspected a ruptured aorta (which later proved not to have ruptured), I was in no position to go shopping for ANOTHER level one trauma center which would have been ready to take me into open heart surgery within the next 30 seconds. The fact that it’s beyond your comprehension doesn’t mean I haven’t opted for the least-bad option. And if I tried to negotiate down the fake $116,000 bill, the fact that I’m not indigent would work against me.
Hmmm. Being, you know, an Injun, me and mine are exempt from that 2.5% penalty.
🙂
I don’t receive any subsidy. I’ve been paying full freight for 20+ years. $450 is not a subsidized premium. It’s what an individual Bronze plan with a $5,000 deductible gets you in my market.
You have a sick person and you have a doctor. How can anyone possibly imagine that inserting a government agency and and insurance company between the two will do anything but inflate the cost? Two more people to dip their beak into the pot means doubling the cost at the very least.
Health care is no more a right than clothing or food, both of which are used by 100% of the people. Do people buy their own clothes? Groceries? Then why can’t they pay their own physician?
Compelling anyone to subsidize the medical expenses of complete strangers with zero benefit to themselves is theft. Period.
Everything else is semantics.
HSF – you are wise. So simple to understand when you say it. And what you say is why in the long run it, Australia’s or the US, system is unsustainable. It cannot last.
The medical system is a racket.
Our system is a hybrid as well. Too complicated to get into in a post here.
The drugs I take to control my AS are approximately $1500.00 CAD cost per month. My insurance, which runs about $4000.00 per year covers 80% of the cost up to $6k at which point the government system kicks in and pays for the drugs.
If I were a poor person the drug company would drop the cost of the drug to less than $200.00 per month to make it affordable and the government would pick up a portion of the tab.
My question is, what is the cost of that drug?
I doubt anyone (other than the drug company) actually knows. There are other drugs on the market but there is no price discovery because the government and the insurance companies keep the price inflated (alhtough not as badly in the US from what I understand).
The same goes for medical attention. People think our system is free because they don’t pay for hospital visits but fail to understand that one of the reasons their taxes are so high is because it is not free. Thus they make visits to see doctors for things they shouldn’t which drives up costs even more.
I see a doctor once per year just to check in and make sure I’m healthy. Same with my daughter and both of us were dealt some unfortunate hands at birth. Both of us are still healthy (in the general sense) mind you and annually cost the system very little in comparison to many at this stage because we maintain our health so that we don’t have problems. If we work so hard at it why are we paying for those who don’t?
This is going to sound pretty heartless but I don’t feel sorry for people with health problems. Too many of them play the victim and some use it as an excuse to let their health fall into further disrepair because they know the system will pick up the tab thus alleviating them of the responsibility of taking care of themselves.
Our health care system has actually become a ‘get sick while you can’ system.
Your health is your responsibility from childhood to death. Take care of it and spend less time and money down the road trying to repair it.
AMEN TO THAT! I have friends, who I watch smoke 2 packs a day, eat like shit, and do nothing and then whine because they are on 3, 4, or 5 different meds that cost them more and more each year while their insurance goes up.
How is this even a thing anymore?
HSF.
People can grow their own food and make their own clothes. I know of no one that can remove their own brain tumor. Therefore, the guy that can, can pretty much charge you anything he wants.
Fine, Dave, valid argument but far wide of the actual point. No one here would disagree that the guy that can remove your brain tumor should be able to charge whatever he wants–he should and he should arrange said whatever directly with the guy with the brain tumor. That IS price discovery in a free market. The problem that you miss entirely, is that in this system the insurance companies set the price with the hospital administrators–BOTH parties want it to be as high as possible and neither the patient NOR the doctor has the slightest say in what the cost of the operation will be. This is a good system in your mind?
DRUD:
No, I think all private insurance should be eliminated.
“….he should and he should arrange said whatever directly with the guy with the brain tumor.”
The problem is that he may not be able to pay the price asked for. Then what?
Then he tries another surgeon, he tries to borrow, he begs…perhaps all fails and he dies. My friend’s uncle died awaiting surgery in the wonderful, amazing, miraculous government run system in Canada.
The point is that individual anecdotes are not valid arguments for systemic policies and vice-versa–and almost everyone falls for this fallacy.
The larger point is that maximizing liberty and free market benefits and minimizing government interference in same does the most good for the most people. Period. Do some people still suffer and die, of course. Wait, in fact, everyone, everywhere in history has suffered to some degree and everyone dies. That is life. Government ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS makes it worse. And I am speaking on a broad scale, not individual anecdotal one, so please spare me that response.
Dave, if I wind up with a brain tumor, I will simply enjoy the rest of my days until such time as my life comes to its inevitable end. That may not be a very popular position, but it’s my life so as long as I am free to make my own decisions about how to live, it seems fair to be able to make my own decisions regarding my death.
I love how every time this comes up the person I discuss the topic with will try and think up the most expensive and protracted disease/accident they can conjure. Maybe it’s the inevitable result of being told to live in fear of everything from high cholesterol to hijacked jumbo jets. You know how many people live in the US? 325 million plus 50 million alien invaders. You know how many people died of brain cancer last year? 14,000. That’s roughly a 1 in 27,000 chance of your nightmare scenario coming true. You have a 1 in 3,000 chance of being struck by lightning in your lifetime, how many of those unlucky folks have you ever met? Winning at roulette is 1 in 35. I don’t plan on trying those odds any time soon and they are a thousand times better.
I don’t do fear or gamble, but that’s just me.
Every other medical exigency is something we can take care of ourselves.
There needs to be a revolution in Health Care, or we need to admit that we can’t throw an unlimited amount of money on just one person, year after year. A person who consumes more of the GDP, than they will ever generate, in return. It is finite – we are near the end point.
Most of the time (except for surgery) we don’t make anyone well, we just us drugs and mechanical means to make them ‘feel better.’. The revolution, would to actually heal people. Maybe stem cell, maybe genetic?
Here’s a start; stop calling it what it isn’t.
It’s sick care.
If you are healthy, you don’t require care.
The constant redefining of words and meanings is Orwellian and deeply disturbing to anyone with a grasp on our language.
You want to see what part of the problem is? Go to Goolag and enter ’emergency room waiting area’ and look at the images. 90% of the people in those pics is obese. Not chubby or overweight, but carrying huge rolls of fat and multiple chins, like the kinds of people that you had to pay a quarter to see in a sideshow 50 years ago. And there they are planted for whatever kind of ailment fat people have, tummy ache, numb feet, low blood sugar, whatever. And guess who is on the hook for their deliberate lifestyle choices?
What kind of mental patient thinks that the healthy, hardworking portion of America should be on the hook for their self-inflicted problems? It’s mind-boggling.
I argued the same point when a liberal friend for HS posted the cost in Japan or so much less. I googled for a while getting all the stats between Japan and the US on general things like cancer rates, diabetes, obesity, etc. It was a nice correlation at least that the Japans are generally healthier.
I have another friend from HS and he is a lot smarter. He was a Vet and quit that and became a Perfusionist…then he got a MS in medical economics. One day when I was abusing on my liberal friend with the Japanese stats, the smart one piped in and said the real cost drivers were the very small number of very expensive cases. Such cases are those resulting from car accidents and such that need care for life.
The smart one has a much better basis than I do so I do not talk about it anymore.
I just know from my own experience that physical fitness and staying in shape pays you off many times over. Even if the poor bastard is out of shape, sick and is taking your money through “sick care” subsidies, you still have an infinite advantage over him being healthy.
I understand entire exchanges have closed down because of one person that has bills in the millions each year. No insurer is prepared to take the chance of him signing up with them, and so they vacate the area where he is. That one guy is enough to change the entire market.
Dollars are routinely assigned to human life. For instance, it might cost $1 million to put up a hiway barrier that would save 1 life. The life used to be valued at $400k. I do not know what it is now. If it cost more than that, no barrier.
Why is health or sickness insurance different? What if it cost $1 billion a year to keep the guy above alive? $1 trillion? There has to be some number where society simply says, oops, sorry, adios amigo, been nice to know you.
It really does make me sad. I know there are folks that are not doing it easy that post here. They are hard working and industrious. They should not be punished by a system that makes it impossible to afford even a basic level of care for them and their families. Am not like Bernie who wants to offer them free healthcare- far from it. But they should have at least a chance, and right now they are being screwed. So much could be done so easily. The world is hard. But artificially making it impossible is wrong on every level.
“So much could be done so easily. The world is hard. But artificially making it impossible is wrong on every level.” Amen, my friend.
Good, informative article.
Llpoh, not to derail the current subject, but …
how do the Australian PEOPLE view Trump? And, also Australian politicians?
Short answer is fine. Just curious from a first hand source.
TIA
Those on the left hate him. Those on the right like him. Go figure.
Best health plan ever: Don’t get sick!!
You are correct. It requires effort, though. Eating right, exercise, cutting out stress, not taking risks, thinking about your body and where it is in space at all times, etc.
It also requires a dose of reality. Understanding that our lifespans are finite, that heritable disorders are a probability, that pain is not something that must eliminated or medicated every time we experience it, but something all living creatures should learn to endure until they recover, etc.
First I love AUS, been there on business, great people.
About 13 years ago I considered taking a job in AUS, I’m a US citizen. The company was good enough to have me talk with a 3rd party tax consultant. Yes taxes are higher there than here, period. Yes they have gov’t health care (free). The tax consultant strongly suggested I purchase private health care insurance. They summed it as having a better hospital & go to the front of the line. Without being political, I never thought that was a good idea (higher taxes and private health insurance), but it perfectly explains ‘single payer’ solution for the US. Since then, I am opposed to anything like that here, take Obama Care – I pay more in taxes, pay more in deductibles, hence to pay for everyone else, WTF.
Unfortunately, my daughter got seriously ill, I had to stop the interview process, to help see her through everything. I don’t regret not taking the job, but I do miss traveling to a great country. I really liked AUS rules football!
Crawfish – astonishingly, you have been mislead. Total tax take as a % of GDP in Australia is less than in the US. Add in the extra trillion in debt expenditures the US makes, and the US spends far more on govt than Australia. Strange but true!
Australia is the new world order’s wet dream.
Team Goy #432
The mandated expenses of running any business are enormous. The government makes many rules that do nothing but increase costs. Yes, less government will help reduce costs, but who will decide on which person gets expensive life saving surgeries if you only have $10 in your pocket. At this point in time there are no easy answers without sacrifice on everyone’s part. With the prevailing entitlement attitude of so many people, “sacrifice” is the farthest thing from their mind, if they know what the word means at all. John
Good skinny Llpoh, my friend.
I consider health insurance companies to be “rent takers” and agree completely with HSF -above- that it makes no sense whatsoever to stick two extra layers between patient and physician.
One reason people allow it is that it spreads risk. For every sick person, there are a dozen paying into the health insurance scheme that are healthy. A “one payer” Bernie Sanders method is no different – it just puts all the taxpayers of the the US of A in the risk pool to cover the expenses of those who are ill while substituting a thicker layer of Federal/State bureaucrats between the two. Net difference? Zip-squat except that the Government(s) can never do anything as efficiently as the private sector, so it will be more expensive (by squares!)..
Have a lovely day down under, Llpoh and keep your powder dry..
muck
Thanks Muck. Look forward to the next Minute.
I agree that the government can never do anything as efficiently as the private sector, but in assessing which should run health insurance, consider that private insurance companies’ GOAL is to extract as much as they can as intermediaries who provide nothing of intrinsic value (other than risk-sharing). So, as Jordan Peterson would say, its “not obvious” which (government or private sector) would be the less efficient in the aggregate. To me, at least.
From what I understand, Australia doesn’t face a situation like this:
http://www.realclearscience.com/quick_and_clear_science/2017/09/09/one-fifth_of_medical_care_is_unnecessary_doctors_say.html
We have a great opportunity to apply Federalism to Medicaid if Rand Paul would get on board and end his ideological grandstanding , egomania or whatever motivates him before he ends up like his father. A washed up crackpot.
Giving block grants to the states to run their own medicaid systems ( do I need to remind the POS from Kentucky that 30 states have GOP governors and legislative majorities) and can design their own Medicaid programs!
If he blocks this attempt the GOP should cut him loose and not give him a penny for his re-election. See if he can win office on the Libertarian ticket or write columns nobody reads to earn a living.
Unit. It’s time for your daily blue pill…
Thanks, Llpoh, for the report. Do they have fake bills there? The main reason we get ass-raped here for healthcare insurance is the conspiratorial system of fake bills. I spent five days in intensive care earlier this year after an accident. Underwent two CT scans and around-the-clock nursing, but no surgery. The bone breaks were the type that heal on their own. They gave me a lot of pills, IV’s, fed me mashed potatoes and emptied my urinal. And there was the ambulance ride. The bill was $116,000. After the insurance company processed it, the bill was cut to around $14,000. $102,000 of the initial bill was bullshit. If I hadn’t had insurance, I would have legally been obligated for the whole $116,000. I probably could have bargained that down somewhat by digging up evidence of the usual & customary costs for such treatments, but I probably couldn’t have gotten it down to $14,000.
That’s what Denninger is talking about. Until we get the fraud out, it’s almost a waste of time to conjure up the optimal payment system.
Fake bills? Oh yes, for sure. It is a big issue. Docs charging for patients they have never seeen is the biggest issue I hear about.
Interesting discussion for now…Post collapse America none of this will matter….one will need to be on friendly terms with a local Doctor….or go untreated…or learn to Doctor yourself..
Post collapse America will be totalitarian.
You’ll get the treatment the government allows you to get, some will get everything available and some only minimal routine care.
Being on good terms with your local overseer will probably be better than being on good terms with your local doctor if you want decent care when this happens.
“So, tell me, how can Bernie’s plan actually work? How much will it cost (untold trillions, surely)?”
We currently spend $3.2 trillion dollars per year on health care. Why would we spend more if there was just ONE payer? It seems we might spend less by trimming out the private insurer overhead. Reducing massive paperwork of doctors dealing with multiple insurers, and utilizing the power of government negotiating to bring down the fraudulent costs in billing and in pharmaceuticals. Coupled with a mandatory annual physical and lab work to detect problems early(as well as sparking competition for your business), with a premium penalty for not improving correctable destructive lifestyles. And premiums and out of pocket maximums based on income, with government picking up the tab after maximum OOPs are reached.
This is exactly the dangerous sort of wises-sounding tripe that leads to disaster. Give me one, just one, example EVER of when government involvement led to “trimming” of anything or a “reduction” of paperwork or waste. JUST ONE will do.
It has never and will never happen.
DRUD:
I can reverse that and ask you to give me one example of private insurers trimming anything and reducing paperwork or waste. Private insurers have no incentive to do so because they know they can tack their 20% profit onto your premium no matter what the demand cost is from the medical providers. And if they can’t, they’ll just deny your claims. At least with the government running the show, you have the ONE THING that will curb their incompetence. THE VOTE. Ever wonder why politicians are scared shitless to fuck with Medicare? OLD PEOPLE VOTE.
First of all, I never mentioned insurance, but ok:
“Private insurers have no incentive to do so because they know they can tack their 20% profit onto your premium no matter what the demand cost is from the medical providers.”
Until a different company decides to take 10% and steals all of their customers, and on and on. This is what some people like to call competition.
At least with the government running the show, you have the ONE THING that will curb their incompetence. THE VOTE. Ever wonder why politicians are scared shitless to fuck with Medicare? OLD PEOPLE VOTE.
I will let Tytler answer:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. … It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.”
This always happens, until there is no longer a public treasury, always. It is human nature. Liberty requires a strong, critically thinking, individually minded citizenry. We no longer having that. The only route forward is collapse. Ultimately, everything we are discussing is moot.
If the voters are willing to vote themselves out of existence, I can’t prevent that. But I haven’t seen all those single payer countries around the world go out of existence yet.
Medicare is pretty efficient. They pay bills. The waste, fraud, and abuse that you speak of is not coming from Medicare, it’s coming from those highly moral, “hippocritic” providers of the medical services. A few pointed executions would stop that.
“Until a different company decides to take 10% and steals all of their customers, and on and on. This is what some people like to call competition.”
Get serious. Until Obamacare, ALL insurance companies were taking 25-30% profit. There was no competition. And Obamacare just reduced it to 20% for everybody. There is still no competition. There is no price discovery when the provider of the service has a monopoly on that service. The medical service needs some regulation and cost control. Simple fact. Medicare has a 4% overhead Insurance is priced based on risk. Obamacare just forced them to take all customers regardless of risk, so they all either get subsidized by the taxpayers or they jack up their prices accordingly. There’s no negotiation.
I guess most of you Meatheads would just let me die .Die of a herina and now heart attack.Well I finally got my herina fix now the docs find a blockage in my heart. Will require bypass surgery which is open heart surgery. I have no insurance and no way to pay for something so expensive .Thank God Christ in heaven for Christians and Christian charities who have agreed to cover most of the expenses.
It won’t be long until you heartless bastards can’t afford health insurance for yourselves or families then you’ll have a change in attitude.
I would happily contribute to the save BB fund if they did not already force me to do so at the barrel of a gun. I would be a very significant donor to a lot of things if they did not strip 2/3 of my tax dollars off me to donate on my behalf, to things not of my choosing. You would be top of my list. Unless little BB was sick – little BB would get preference in that event.
But seeing as they already strip mined my contribution, you need to go see Donnie T and ask him that my forced contribution to be applied specifically to your case. Tell him that is my preference. That should work.
If any of you ? less bastards want to pray for me good.Only way to relieve your Guilt.My open heart surgery will be at 7 am on the 28th of this month.I am currently taking 10 different heart meds to prepare my heart.If I die on the operating table I hope all of you feel guilty for the rest of eternity. Especially you Stucky and you Injun Chief and you Hardass Farmer.
BB, I’m pulling for you, hate that you’ve had to suffer with health issues and that it’s come down to this, but that is life and you understand it. If the same were to happen to me I wouldn’t be happy about it, but I would accept it.
Look how fortunate you’ve been to have had this life at all, all the myriad experiences and sensations, the people and the places over the span of what? Half a century or more? Lucky you. You should be focusing on that as you go into this new adventure ahead of you, not the negative.
If you want my prayers, you’ve got them, I give you my word.
Either way we’d better hear something after the 28th or you’re the heartless bastard.
Your Friend, HSF
I echo HSF’s sentiment to a Tee, as I’m sure we all do.
We all hope you come out flying colors and remain with us for years and decades to come.
And however much time you have left–how much ANY of us have left–let us waste not one second of it worrying about the end.
On their way to the prom Lisa and Todd had a wreck; Todd was banged up but Lisa (no seat belt) was ejected, head hit a stump, died instantly at 17.
On her way home a week after graduation Brenda lost control and smashed into a road barrier, died at the scene. She was 18.
BB, I hope you hang around to bitch at us a while longer, but you had three or four times the lifespan of those two highschool girls I didn’t go to college with.
We all should enjoy what we have, and celebrate daily while we can. You never know your last day – and nowadays I think that’s a real blessing.
You got it.
And when you get out and recover the next time you are coming through my neck of the woods with little BB on the truck you better stop so I can meet you and buy you dinner.
It’s bad manners to pass through without stopping to visit. 🙂
Dear bb,
We weren’t aware you had a heart.
Sincerely,
Niggers, Joos, Fags, Mooslims, Beaners, and other deplorables you have deplored here
PS; Should you croak, you have a lot of questions to answer to your Creator, … who loves all his creation.
PSS; Should you croak … what if God sticks you in the Niggers, Joos, Fags, Mooslims, or Beaners section of heaven?? That would be funny as shit …. and God DOES have a sense oh humor so, prepare thyself.
Good Luck beebs! You’re going to do just fine. I put a good word in with Big Guy and he sez that you can stay if you want to. He is saving all our liquor and whores for later anyways.
Like some I am surprised you have one. A heart that is. But then so did the Grinch.
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Yours in Odin,
RiNS
Separate post … to give folk more opportunity to thumb down. I have questions.
1. Do you now regret the shitty diet and lifestyle you have led which more than likely is the cause leading to your current condition?
2. Since you are on record here for berating kneegrows and others for being FreeShitters, do you now feel hypocritical that you must now rely on free shit?
3. Since you so fervently believe in heaven, are you afraid to die? And, if so, why?
4. Why go to a doctor at all when you could just quote some Bible verse about healing, and then claim that promise for yourself?
5. Why ask others for prayer … aren’t yours sufficient …. or, do you believe you can overwhelm God with volume?
6. If I were to pray, isn’t the correct method one that closes with “thy will be done”?
7. If the answer to #6 is yes … and you wind up croaking, then wasn’t that God’s will all along? Then wouldn’t my correct prayer be; “Dear God. Please make bb croak as soon as possible, in Jesus’ name.”?
8. Why ask ME to pray when you know I have no faith is such things? If I did pray for your recovery …. what if God decided to spite my sorry ass by killing you? Is that called effectual prayer?
9. What if you have a JOO doctor?? Will you tell him he’s going to hell for being a Christ hater? Will you inform him of his Joofuk ways and how he’s destroying America? Will you tell the Joo to fuckoff, and ask for a regyoulah doctor? If ‘no’ to the above, aren’t you a pussy compromising your cherished principles?
I don’t expect an answer to any of these questions, as you might be just moments away from croaking. Ya never know with these blockages. Besides, you should spend your time getting right with God rather than groveling for sympathy here on TBP.
All that being said, I wish you well. It’s all I can do. I would be sad if I didn’t have your ass to kick. Really. Besides all that, we don’t have a replacement for Village Idiot …. AWB is too fucked in the head for even that title.
Hey, Beebs!
Blessings ;-}
Can’t thumb that down.
It is classic TBP irreverance.
Awesome Stucky!
It would be funny as hell to see the look on beebs face when the doors swing open and the guy splitting his chest open is a Joo or Gawd forbid a neegrow…
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There is no pot of shite that Stuck cannot stir.
Medical “insurance” is prepaid services, not insurance (like car or homeowners insurance.)
Everyone in the medical services industry gets paid what amounts to Cost-Plus. No one has an actual incentive to reduce services, medicines, surgeries, etc. In fact, as payments get cut, doctors and hospitals have incentives to make it up by INCREASING THEIR CHURN. This is why you see cardiac surgeons doing (medically USELESS) CABG surgeries, several a day, to keep their lifestyle up.
Question: What’s more important, one Hep C treatment ($40,000) or four prosthetic hips ($10,000 each)? What’s more important, a new wing at the hospital or a helicopter ambulance?
If you think the answers to those questions can be discerned by a committee, you belong in the Soviet Union. The same kinds of questions animated their 5 year plans, and (surprise surprise) they had chronic shortages, for example, they’d have a bumper-crop of potatoes, enough truck bodies and engines and transmissions to transport them but half the tires they needed so the crop ROTTED IN THE FIELDS as people went hungry.
We have NO MECHANISM for rationally determining how much of FINITE resources goes to new hips for grannies, new incubators for preemies, new ambulances in Fargo, maintaining the old MRI unit in Seattle, etc., and on forever….
There is no price mechanism in medical services. NONE. I worked in pharma. You have NO IDEA how it works.
Your insurer gets MORE MONEY the more your hospital charges you. Cost plus, baby! And at the top of the Food Chain is Uncle Sam, whose EVERY BORROWED DOLLAR that goes into medical services (GDP, GDP, GDP, GDP!) also has a second dollar go to the bond market where bondholders get a dollar richer (YAY US!)
This system disguises the utter insanity, the destruction of epic proportions that is now baked in. Imagine what happens to all those great jobs dispensing drugs or giving grandpa his physical therapy when Uncle Sam suddenly gets the National Mastercard Declined?
It’s going to happen. At the rate of increase, medical services will take 100% of the Federal budget in a few years. At that point it will become obvious that the US government is behaving like a person using one credit card to pay off the other.
Sometime between now and then the bond market is going to erupt like a supervolcano.
All these discussions will be moot. If you don’t have cash on the barrel head, you won’t get what you want.
Barnum:
“There is no price mechanism in medical services. NONE. I worked in pharma. You have NO IDEA how it works.”
Someone after my own heart. I’m surprised you got upvotes.
Every “highly successful” industry in the USA now profits by using some population “X” to reach into the deep pockets of the CREDIT industry and pull out the loot.
Pharma figures out how to use “some patients” to reach into Medicare/Medicaid/The-Insurance-Cartel for loot. The “patient” is just a conduit. $40k to treat Hep C tells you all you need to know. Now you see why there are endless commercials on TV for it. The limiting factor on their profits is how many “patients” they can jam into the pipeline.
Same for the Chamber of Commerce promoting open borders, to arbitrage between stuffing “consumers” into the USA (high cost retail) and where stuff is made (and where jobs are) in low cost places like China.
Same for colleges, who use students as a conduit to $100,000 to $200,000 in loan money. It’s ALL THE DAMN SAME.
Won’t be any Sin in heaven so I’ll be ok with Blacks.I had great insurance before Obama now not any.I have paid alot of taxes in my life so I don’t feel guilty about getting ” free ” help .I do believe in heaven so if I do die no problem for me but I don’t want to leave my mom by herself.
I was just fucking with everybody this morning.I have know about this heart condition for a month or so. Started contacting Christian Societies that same week.I had no problem finding help.To be continued!
Stucky ,Big Injun Chief and Hardfarmer ,my mom said she was going to get on the Burning Platform the day of my surgery and specifically ask for you 3.My mom will make you wish you had never been born.She will tell you all how much she loves me.What a great son I am and have been.How it took her 11+ hours to give birth to me.How proud she was .You guys are in for a shame and guilt Trip you will never forget.
I too, as I said when you first mentioned your bad ticker a while ago, hope everything goes well, thst you will be ok, and I will keep a good thought toward that end. I am not the praying type, but if what you believe is correct, then you have yourself covered already.
I’d offer a prayer but the only ones I know are Catholic ones. And like the Canadian Dollar I am not sure what the exchange rate is on them these days. All kidding aside my trucker buddy, I hope it works out. Should be no sweat. My father in law went thru it a couple of years back and now he is back better than ever. And he is 80!
If you make it through this you are invited to my place for a big old plate of fried eggs, bacon and pancakes smothered in maple syrup. But then I am going to insist that you help me split wood for the rest of the day.
Tell Moms I said hey.
See you on the other side.
Stucky, best comment ever. BB, if ya live, ya gotta go see the Red Woods. Saw them last week. It was spiritual, and me an God don’t talk. May the Forest be with you.
BB, it’s a crime that Fed Ex is allowed to hire you as a “contractor” so they can avoid providing any health insurance for you. Taxpayers will once again need to provide for the workers of a huge corporation. It’s total fucking bullshit what they get away with.
You have my sincere get-well-soon wishes. I’ll even ask wife to pray for you too.
Vodka – business should have no more responsibility for providing insurance to an employee as individuals should have. In fact they should have less, if anything. It is a de facto tax, and anything that taxes employment is a very bad thing indeed, as it reduces employment.
I guess it’s their shameless self-promotion as a stellar employer that rubs me wrong. Whenever you see a Fed Ex truck where the “Ex” is green, that’s Fed Ex Ground and the workers are all contractors with no bennies. They wouldn’t want the public to know that.
UPS, with their Teamster’s Union $30/hr employees with full bennies and retirement plan can somehow stay in business. I already have to pay for Wal-Mart’s employees’ food stamps. I don’t want to have to pay for BB’s operation too.
I’ll remind you that there was a balance between business and labor in the recent past that seemed to work just fine. There was no need for a discussion about healthcare or who would pay for it. Corporate greed is what changed a model that was working adequately. That’s the reason the previously unthinkable topic of single-payer healthcare is even up for discussion.
BB works full-time and lives and sleeps in a fucking truck in the richest nation on planet earth, but yet he has no healthcare insurance. That’s bullshit. His employer should be severely penalized for failing to provide him with medical insurance. But you think I should pay instead??
I think no one should pay but BB. How hard is that to understand? Please point to anything I have said anywhere that you should pay. That is bullshit. Never said it, never implied it. How on earth does his insurance become the responsibility of the employer? They pay him a wage. That is where it should begin and end. Nothing more, nothing less. BB could always get a job with UPS if they are better.
And you seem unable to grasp the impact of global competition. Corporate “greed” is what drives competition – profits are what it is about. Unless you want to be Venezuela. I doubt it. Capitalism relies on incentive.
Corporations are owned by people. By requiring corps to pay for insurance, you are actually requiring their owners to do it. And by so doing you would only ensure ever more rapid loss of jobs.
Save your breath, Llpoh.
Everyone who isn’t in the top 2% (who can imagine self-pay in an honest system) wants someone else to pay for stuff they consume.
People don’t want liberty and freedom. They want to live as slaves on a Slave Plantation that treats them well and gives them their essentials. Sallust noted this 2000 years ago and not one thing has changed since then.
BB,
To paraphrase Llpoh and Brain-Dead Bailey: “I’m living good, motherfucker, don’t rock the boat and disrupt my nice, soft, cushy existence with your tales of woe. Suck it up, pussy”.
That’s their real message.
Godspeed to you BB.
If we had single payer government sponsored catastrophic insurance with the payee picking up daily maintenance costs up to a cap based on income, and a premium based on income, BB wouldn’t have to be concerned about how things were going to be paid for.
I’ve actually used the Australian medical system as a foreigner.
It was great.
Cost of US eye operation, just the OR room fee: $12,000
Cost of Sydney Eye Hospital, OR fee with included optional overnight stay and food: AU$800 ($700 US then).
Amount US doctor paid for eye surgery: $1200
Amount AU doctor paid: AU$5000 ($4500 then).
Overall AU cost: under US$5,500
Overall US cost: over $35,000
And I paid cash in all cases.
Profit seeking American health care can f*** off and die.
C1 – much as I have estimated. Oz care cost is 1/2 or 1/3 of that in the US. And Oz care is quite good overall.
Sorry, but your math is wrong. The difference was 6x to 7x($5500 in AU vs $35000 in the US, and that was with the AU doctor getting paid 4x that of the US doctor.
As an aside, the fucking AMA is a huge part of the problem. The control how many doctors there are (limiting competition), control nurse practitioners, etc etc. They contribute mightily to the high cost of sick care by limiting competition and supply.
The whole thing is a cartel. Doctor cartel, hospital cartel, pharma cartel, med device cartel, insurance cartel. And they buy the best Congressmen available.
We live in the age of mutual, joint and continuous rape. Everybody is busy raping everyone else, and the key to power is to take a small commission for every time you tie down a victim.
The USA in a nutshell.
There is a lot of documentation of how the AMA is directly responsible for the US having a different health care system than anywhere else in the world.
For example: they put out ads saying that National Health Care was bad because Germany had it – and we just finished fighting them in World War 1. This continued through WW2, after which it was Russia and commies
https://www.bumrungrad.com/en/packages-promotions
I spend $4000 AUD for coverage but sometimes it is cheaper to put it out to market, the best market
(that would be a small hint) and get it done on Holidays in 5 star Luxury.
You fellow humans in America are being Raped with the rough end of the pineapple.
India and Vietnam are also in the mix. India for teeth. Vietnam for price / results.
Anonymous said it first.
The problem with our rising medical costs and soon to be bankrupt health care system is simply insurance. People have been conditioned and confuse health insurance as health care and also conditioned to believe that only the government can fix this huge motherfucking problem, that they created.
Currently, insurance companies are subsidized by the government using taxpayer dollars and a new law that created health insurance customers under the force of law.
Pharmaceutical companies R&D is also subsidized by the government using taxpayer dollars, and then that cost is passed on to the US consumer. This cost is a huge burden to the US only, the rest of the world does not share the R&D costs. Which is why you can get the same drug for less outside the US.
The government created all this, and we think the solution is more government involvement from republicans, democrats, or idiots like the Bern?
There’s a reason why congress is full of millionaires, the same reason why CEO’s of insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are also millionaires. Our government is full of corrupt career politicians and I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
A new republican plan, a redo of the ACA, single payer system or medicare for all, if our government is involved there will be more millionaires created, but far more losers.
Elite politicians all claim to sympathize with the citizens burden and spew loud criticism towards said insurance and pharmaceutical CEO’s, then head to the bank to cash another check.