A BILLION Dollars for Lifetime Medical Care!

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Barliman

All true and your countries life expectancy is better than us in the USA. I can't figure out how, you have the tax payer funded system, I thought you all were dead already///sarc

US
Statistics
Total population (2015) 321,774,000
Gross national income per capita (PPP international $, 2013) 53
Life expectancy at birth m/f (years, 2015) 77/82
Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births, 0) not available
Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population, 2015) 128/77
Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl $, 2014) 9,403
Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2014) 17.1
Australia
Total population (2015) 23,969,000
Gross national income per capita (PPP international $, 2013) 42
Life expectancy at birth m/f (years, 2015) 81/85
Probability of dying under five (per 1 000 live births, 0) not available
Probability of dying between 15 and 60 years m/f (per 1 000 population, 2015) 74/44
Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl $, 2014) 4,357
Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2014) 9.4

First up- the inequality of income in the US is much more extreme than in Australia- we would get a better comparison of per capita income if we subtracted the income of the top 1% from each countries Gross National Income. From what I have read virtually all the income from increasing productivity in the US for the last 30 years has gone into a very few hands- so standards of living have declined- for most.

That inequality translates to a large portion of the population who simply can't access health care. Your "health spending per capita" numbers would be even more dramatic if they were expressed as a curve covering the whole population by income. However many of them will die early, preventable deaths.

Secondly, I think the accidental poisoning of the food supply has gone further in the US than Australia. There are dramatically strong associations in the US between increases of many diseases and glyphosate usage in agriculture, and there are very good biochemical reasons to understand that this is utterly predictable. Now this one is probably getting worse in Australia too (the figures are hard to come by), but we have some catching up to do yet.
Just one paper for now- using CDC and Dept of Agriculture Data:
www.organic-systems.org...

Thirdly, I think that the over interventionist ethos in US medicine is a real problem- more interventions = more chance for error- especially when there is a strong drive for profit that leaves most people hurrying and not having enough time for safety checks.

Here's an article that reviews the study: iatrogenicaddiction.wordpress.com...
and here is the study:
www.jhsph.edu/sebin/s/k/2000_JAMA_Starfield.pdf

There was a later analysis by Gary Null, titled Death by Medicine- which you can search. It quotes only published sources but I cant see any evidence of it having been peer reviewed. He estimates the rate of iatrogenic death as about780,000 Americans per year.
Its not quite that bad in Australia-

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Barliman

What is odd is here in the US there is a large part of the population that defends the goat screw of a mess we have.

I can't figure it out, the info is out to how poor our health care system is and how much more it costs than other countries.

It is the for profit system that has now become the problem. They refuse to keep cost down-it has to go up every year, hell every quarter, has to. So the cost has to go up, has to.

That one has got a lot of people wondering. I guess it is an example of herd mentality, being carefully fine tuned by appropriate memes and messages circulating in the media. They know which buttons to push to have everyone fall in lockstep behind them.

a reply to: seasonal


When it comes to drugs, the U.S. government and U.S. insurance companies are prohibited from negotiating prices lower, according to: cluelessdoctors.com...

Pretty insane isn't it? Maybe it's not true.

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: carewemust

Source please

Here ya go.. www.forbes.com...

As you can see, the companies that are MEDICAID-ONLY, are raking in the biggest profits. Those like Aetna and United Healthcare were also on the ObamaCare exchanges in 2016. Those losses offset their Medicaid revenues.

ObamaCare individual health business is a money loser. That's why AETNA conducted an experiment. It reduced it's ObamaCare indy health footprint to only 4 states for 2017. It made a small profit this first quarter, after losing millions last year. So, the company is jettisoning the remaining ObamaCare business/states at the end of this year. But keeping its Medicaid contracts with Uncle Sam. Nice profit is on the way for 2018.

When you see the headline, "Health Insurers are Against the AHCA from the GOP", it's because the American Health Care Act is trimming back Medicaid payments. Liberal media won't mention WHY these companies like ObamaCare more than the AHCA. They just want ObamaCare to stay, because it is the crowning achievement of Democrat Obama.

Only in America.

My heart goes out to this family

a reply to: DAVID64

I´m with the parents mentally, it´s very hard, knowing it first hand. I hope for the little girl that the doctors do their best and that she´ll be okay in the long term. Weird to formulate something like this in english for me.

But about the 1 billion $ thing. I don´t know the circumstances and who said that but it´s very tactless. That´s an extremely random number. The normal staff that´s walking around there doesn´t have a clue about such numbers due to internal hearsay. The persons who would know, wouldn´t dare to make such an estimate in front off shocked and stresses parents with a sick child.

a reply to: DAVID64

There has to be a public enquiry into medical costs in the US. I suspect there is a big problem with professional insurance.

In Australia, medical insurance is only a fraction of the cost it is in America. I read not long ago on this forum that medical accidents are the second biggest cause of death in the US. Cleary there is some kind of correlation in this.

Australia has combination of private and public medical care. In both cases patients are treated in order of medical need and the standard of care in the public system is identical to that of the private system

The govt pays the cost of medcial treatement provided in public hospitals.

Claims against doctors for some kind of neglligence are rare in Australia.

Australia also provides a pharamscuitacl medical beenfits scheme in which most drugs are provided free or at nearly free prices for all public patients and thoe on benfits and pension.

If I had to pay the full cost of one of my drugs, It would be close to $10,000 a pop which I need 4-5 times a year. Each year this drug costs me about $100.00 or so.

Sadly as the NWO takes over Australia I can see this sitution changing to match the sititution in America. ( part of the depulation agenda, sick people will counselled along the line of "death with diginity" and the rick will be told of "cures, jouist around the corner," 'New treatments every day"

a reply to: Azureblue

Land of the frivolous lawsuit..it's that simple, that mixed with healthcare for big profit.

originally posted by: vonclod
a reply to: Azureblue

Land of the frivolous lawsuit..it's that simple, that mixed with healthcare for big profit.

kinda thought that but I trying to inform the readers of the situation here. Trump recently made the comment that health care in Australia was lot less that America.

While ours is not perfpect, I reckon its one of the best in the world.

a reply to: Barliman

Excellent post, can't find anything to challenge you on

The gains in productivity is going to the corps-owners-share holders. For profit has no business in health care.

a reply to: Barliman

But do you think it is failing? I twas a Limbaugh-Beck listener until I heard Limbaugh talking about a story in Oregon (I think) about drug addicts getting "free" apartments. I looked into it and why the city was doing it. Long story short, It was the right thing to do.

That day 6-7 years ago I left the herd. And now drive my wife crazy with my logical research into everything from health care and social issues.

Almost $47 billion dollars profit in one quarter

that`s only 3.9 billion a week in profits, how will the insurance companies ever survive if they are only raking in profits of almost 4 billion a week?

a reply to: Tardacus

The 46.5 billion was not in profits it was in revenues. I read a story that they made $200,000,000 a quarter, this is from memory.

The profits of health care co's doesn't matter. They only charge the public with a guess of how much $$$$ it will cost for health care (plus the cost to run and pay the investors).

The real problem is the cost of medical care. The US is #1 in cost and #37 in health out come. We have a terrible system that costs way too much.

a reply to: DAVID64


They can start by stopping enabling heroin addicts, whom use the hospitals regularly to get addavan in between their dwindling money supply from their Ssdi checks.

Also, Narcan is given out freely, but epipen costs have gone through the roof.

This country is losing it balls - make the tough choices already!


For the record, I'd rather pay for a child, then some addict who refuses to get help, or try to help themselves. Especially grown adults. WTH

Well at least your baby is getting the best possible care, regardless of money. If the baby was born premature in many 2nd or 3rd world countries all the money in the world wouldn't save him/her.

a reply to: KTemplar

Then the decision needs to be made, either we help the heroin addicts or we don't.

In other words if an addict comes into the ER and needs assistance, they are turned away to a certain death.

This needs to be a public declaration that we will not help you if you are a known addict. If you come here we will have security walk you or dump you (if unconscious) off the property.

originally posted by: crazyeddie68
If this is the price to have a healthy child in this world,then we as a species have failed.

It's not. It's the price to bring an unhealthy child into the world.

a reply to: seasonal

I blame the healthcare 'cartel' for the problems of such ridiculous expenses.

Of course anyone would pay (or 'promise' to pay, or have someone else pay, ideally) whatever is asked to preserve their life, or the life of a loved one.

The cartel uses this. The market is controlled. How do they control the market? There are only a limited number of providers in a geographic area, and they do not train enough healthcare workers or provide enough physical resources to bring the price down in a given area, because they like the high prices.

By 'they' ... in this instance, I mean healthcare institutions, especially the academics, and big *BIG!* healthcare corporations. The ones that own multiple hospitals in a geographic area. (A minority of hospitals are actually independent anymore ... because they get squashed or bought by bigger competitors.)

Want doctors to be paid less? Well ... train more of them. A good glut can certainly bring some prices down. Doctors and workers can move around, and there is no reason there cannot be a glut of them. But, there is a cap on the number of physicians that are allowed to graduate yearly in a good number of areas, maybe most areas.

Pharmaceuticals? Same thing ... produce more of them. The problem is that the pharmaceutical companies also act like a cartel, and manage prices better (worse?) than even OPEC can these days with oil! They don't want a glut, so they try to (just barely) match demand. Also they seem to cooperate on pricing - which I see personally because I have a family of insulin dependent diabetics.

The geography is even easier to control. How far would you travel for cheaper healthcare? Probably not too far in an emergency, that is for sure. The healthcare corporations know that their markets are trapped like this.

When these tools start failing for the cartels, well ... they use politicians and bureaucrats to limit markets and providers in their area, through regulation.

Why must we pay so much for healthcare? Because nobody is stopping these people from limiting the competition in the marketplace. They are truly a cartel. Fee-for-service was better than what we have now.... At least there was more competition with fee-for-service, and people would occasionally charge less than the market price.

Sorry for the rant. *sigh*

a reply to: Fowlerstoad

But Pharmaceuticals cost so much less in other countries. like they have a cartel that targets America only.

a reply to: carewemust

The cartel does target the United States predominantly ... I won't say 'only' ... just because they can get the prices they want more often here, from insurance, the government programs, or because the law allows them to come for a person's estate in the worst case scenario. Why is that legal, to force someone to sell their assets?