The US spends WHAT on Health Care!!!

I need some help on this folks. The numbers I'm finding and figuring just aren't making any sense. If they are correct why isn't somebody screaming about it.

Some quick background. One of the companies I consult with has me doing some preliminary research on Health Care plans and costs for their employees. I've got a couple of two inch thick proposals from agents to weed through and make recommendations on different plans, levels of coverage and cost to company and employee out of pocket liabilites.

I've done this before but it's been a while, things have changed a lot and, frankly, I'm in favor of Single Payer Universal Health Care for all for many reasons so I wanted to do a little research about the 'average' amount we (US residents) actually pay for health care irrespective of the funding source. I found this National Health Expenditure Projections 2010-2020 report @

www.cms.gov...

It states that in 2010 we, as a nation, spent $2.6 trillion dollars on Health Care. Granted when I saw that number I freaked and haven't yet read the entire report so I don't know exactly what qualifies as a 'Health Expediture'.

Then I looked up the popluation numbers from the 2010 census (separately and in Table 1 of the referenced report). The Population of the US in 2010 is offically 310.3 Million people.

Here's what I can't get my head around - it just has to be wrong:

$2.6 Trillion Dollars = $2,600,000,000,000 (Trillions, Billions, Millions, Thousands, Hundreds)

310.3 Million People = 310,300,000 (Millions, Thousands, Hundreds)

Now the Math

2,600,000 divided by 310.3 = 8,378.99 or

$8,378,990 per person in the United States or over $8 Million per man, woman and child.

I'm speechless, am unable to go forward on anything. - no more reasearch - no more work (I was worried about 8-12 thousand a year per employee and how I was going to sell it - seems cheap now). I haven't stopped thinking about this for a couple of days - haven't talked to anyone. I'm just gob-smacked.

This has to be wrong, doesn't it. I made a mistake. Help me out here, PLEASE. I need to be able to function again. (and I don't have Health Insurance - can't afford it - so a nervous breakdown is out of the question)

Help

$8,378.99 not $8,378,990.

1000 / 500 = 2, if you divide both numbers why 100 (10 / 5) the answer is still 2, not 200.

Sounds like about 8378.00 per person average. That is a hell of a lot of money for healthcare.

Does that include the medicines and supplements that people take? How about dental costs?

I think we have the highest cost per person in the world.

If it helps for the biggies, this is what I'd come up with out of budget figures for the recent past and projections out of the 2013 proposal.



That isn't 100% by any stretch for everything Uncle puts out on Medical.It doesn't even touch the VA, for instance and that's no small omission if you're trying for a grand total figure. I'd recommend going to the White House site and pulling up the Excel Spreadsheet form of the latest 2014 budget proposal if it's available yet. I haven't been there to check yet and will be getting into all that for another big thread after school breaks for the semester.

However, it'll look something like this...



The spreadsheet for the entire US Federal Budget at department line item level is what it will pull up as. It's ENORMOUS, even by Gov't standards ...but that's the big enchilada for getting the best figures, IMO.

reply to post by FyreByrd


Yeah, I don't understand where your confusion is since your calculations bear out the 8 grand ballpark and then you somehow magnify that by an order of magnitude...

But still a heck of a lot of money! I spent enough on healthcare this year to claim it on my taxes for the first time in my life... and I'm 54. I spent something like 14 grand mostly because of elective surgery. Second vasectomy reversal I know you don't want to know that! Sorry!

But my point is that if we spend that much per person why is it so rare to be able to claim it as a deduction?

Phew - Thank you - I was having a horrible panic attack. I was over complicating the problem (as I am wont). Thank you. Sounds much more reasonable and my insurance numbers make more sense.

It's still the cost of the war - so we get war or health care - hmmmm - think I know what I would choose.

Again, Thank you all.

reply to post by SpearMint


That is a figure I could easily agree with.

On the second day of January this year I broke 3 ribs off of my rib cage. They were broken completely off. I thought that they were only bruised at first. But then I could a crunching sound every time I moved or inhaled or exhaled. So a week later I went to the hospital.

They took 10 X-Rays. After about 3 hours the doctor came in and told me I had bruised ribs. I told him to listen as I moved around and you could clearly hear a very audible crunching sound. After looking at the surprise on his face, I told him that he really needed to go get some help reading the X-Rays because it was obvious that he was not qualified. He left the room a little unhappy about my comment. He returned about an hour and a half later to tell me that I actually had 3 broken ribs. Not only were they broken but they had completely separated from the rib cage.

To add insult to injury he said that there was nothing they could do. He said I needed to take it easy for a couple of months so that they could heal.

Incidentally the hospital will not prescribe pain medication for any type of pain. Primarily because drug addicts. What they do now is give you a little booklet that teaches you how to manage your pain.

So, when it was all said and done I spent nearly 4 hours at the hospital and had 10 X-Rays taken.

The bill for the X-rays was $21.00.
The bill for the hospital was $728.00
The bill for the physician that didn't know his ass from as hole in the ground $600.00

When basic math is applied the total comes to $1349.00.

For NOTHING.

That will teach me to Not have insurance.

Health insurance typically runs about $1000 a month for a reasonable policy for two adults. Often, an employer will pay all but about $200 a month, which is up to the employee to pay. Cobra coverage is about the same for two adults -- private insurance may be more or less depending on your "need" for insurance. If you have serious health issues, you are going to pay a lot more if you can find coverage.

I believe the estimate for basic coverage under Obama care is going to be about $1000 a month per adult, or higher. That estimate comes from what was released into the media using the IRS examples of how to calculate penalties for lack of coverage and affordable care.

Good luck on your research. Get someone to check your math.

reply to post by rickymouse


....aaaaaaaand, PROFIT!

Who here is surprised? Show of hands? This is exactly what happens when you take a necessary facet of human existence in the modern world and sell it.

You should see what we spend on bottled water. Or the military, which is what? .26 pennies for every dollar spent.

The old "protection" con is the deepest con of them all. Guns or bandaids; the song remains insane.

Originally posted by BayesLike


Good luck on your research. Get someone to check your math.

Thank you - I will. It's humiliating but I do a lot of bookkeeping and my math is usually very accurate. I knew something was wrong but couldn't see it in my panic. LOL.

Another day.....

I have a couple things to mention in this thread. Thank you to the OP for posting this S + F.

See the thread linked in my signature. That's the 3rd time I've heard of a medical group being able to cure diabetes on lab animals that had been given diabetes. It's worked to cure chimps. Oh and then there's the mouse studies that Denise Faustman of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical University did a few years ago, and was able to replicate the cure in some (not all) type one diabetics. Then, years ago in Canada some doctors injected mice with the hot part of peppers in their pancreases and were able to remove the diabetes for up to six months. Ironically, medical studies were never approved on humans, and the research got shelved like millions of other things that would help people.

If you go to Denise Faustman's faustmanlab.com, you can see in the right hand section that they are still trying to raise only a few millions of dollars to complete the medical studies she did in mice and humans and prove dosage and efficacy.

So the biggest question I have is why is it that the governments of any of the nations of the world not want to cure diseases? Each year in America between Type 1 diabetics and Type 2 diabetics it costs the USA an average of 250 billion dollars a year! Wouldn't it stand a chance to severely help the economy if those people could be cured of their illness? And what if the USA or Canada became the curing center for the world?

In some respects, it would hurt the big pharma making their GMO insulin from e-coli bacteria, and using Meta-Cresol (highly cancerous agent) as a preservative in the amount of 3mg per 10 ml! It would also hurt all the companies making home A1C test kits, blood testers, sugar glucose tablets, logbooks for records, and hospital trips with hyperglycemia or hypoglycemic episodes like seizures. Lastly, it would hurt the endocrinologists who don't get to treat their diabetics anymore, but with all those negatives it would still only cost THE CORPORATIONS more. The government would be able to get a lot of people off of disability.

I know of more than one diabetic who are on disability because of the horrible complications of the illness.

My conclusion in all of this is the system is built to fail, and take your life while doing it. I hope at least one of the governments in the world will step up to the plate and start curing diseases. That government would be the richest in the world.

Originally posted by 0zzymand0s
reply to post by rickymouse

 

....aaaaaaaand, PROFIT!

Who here is surprised? Show of hands? This is exactly what happens when you take a necessary facet of human existence in the modern world and sell it.

And what is necessary "facet of human existence"....how did we make it so far without having a doctor or a Government who will pay for that visit in our first 256,000 years of existence? I mean, they didn't have this "right"..

Just curious how you see that....

reply to post by ownbestenemy


Big Pharma is the reason - from expensive, un-needed "cholesterol pills" to the fact that a lot (of what the gentleman eluded to with diabetes) hot peppers would cure. Really.

Why don't we have this info? The drug companies wouldn't, couldn't, make money on it.

Add to this many, many, un-needed, and disease causing vaccinations - which they love to "mandate" and pass around for "free".

All, or most, of the psychotropic drugs.......

PS I'm a psychiatric nurse for 28 years.

I'm not in the US currently, so I am trying to see the situation from what posters are putting up.

It is the prices that people always put up that make my eyeballs pop out of my head!

Not just for medicine though (as much as everyone claims the problem lies in Big Pharma) the hospital bills are absolutely unheard of.... and look in the post of Shadella Zumbrum- a consult with a doctor $ 600.00 ??? Really? That doctor sees how many people in one day??? He is making how much a day....??

When we discuss healthcare in the US, there so many that claim that the prices are correct- hospitals are topnotch and that is simply the cost, and doctors are struggling because they don't make enough. But I have yet to hear someone describe a recent consult/treatment which reflects that reality.

Perhaps people sense of proportion is warped? So used to paying such prices, they feel it is normal now?

reply to post by ownbestenemy


First -- People live (and are expected to be productive) longer than they did thousands (or even hundreds) of years ago. Second -- I can't buy raw milk, or grow my own crops without a permit from those who claim I owe them rent for being born. Third -- I buried my sister when I was 13 and she was 11 (Childhood Leukemia 1982) and back then, that diagnosis was a death sentence. Today? Easily treated. Naturally - I am disinterested in seeing any 11 year olds die because their parents can't afford their protection money.

So here's the way I look at it: Everybody lives longer and is treated for things that might have killed us a few decades ago. In return, we contribute to the economy through spending at ground level, which does more to drive overall economic health than "let them eat cake."

The cost of medicine has increased 500% since 1986 while wages have remained flat over the same period.

That means there are a lot more losers than there are winners, by design, and I'll be damned if I go quietly while a few blowhards try to skew things further south.

reply to post by 0zzymand0s



Okay, that sounds like a valid argument, except if we compare life expectancy in different countries!

A consult with a doctor in France (sorry I keep using them as an example, it is what I know intimately) costs 25 euros (around 30 dollars). A day in a hospital room costs 200 euros.
I know that the common answer is- "the quality of the care is better in the US", which it is not. But I know that my anecdotes will not serve as proof. Let's just stick to the average life expectancy rate-

In France it is 81, in the US it is 78.1.
In countries where the Americans say the care is atrocious, you still see higher life expectancy -
Canada 81.2 , UK 79...

Source

Between $ 30 and $ 600, is a very wide chasm........

reply to post by Happy1


How does that all relate to a "basic need" since we survived for eons prior to it? Access to medical care (or rather; going to a doctor and not paying is more like it) has no correlation on the human condition. We have lived, thrived and evolved for a quarter of a millennium without Government mandated care....

Originally posted by 0zzymand0s
First -- People live (and are expected to be productive) longer than they did thousands (or even hundreds) of years ago. Second -- I can't buy raw milk, or grow my own crops without a permit from those who claim I owe them rent for being born. Third -- I buried my sister when I was 13 and she was 11 (Childhood Leukemia 1982) and back then, that diagnosis was a death sentence. Today? Easily treated. Naturally - I am disinterested in seeing any 11 year olds die because their parents can't afford their protection money.

You didn't answer the question. You are stuck on "i deserve this!" mentality. People lived, and it is only the expectations of society and Government that demands them to live longer. Sure our life expectancy has grown and that is a good thing, but with that growth, Government has decided that they will impose their wants upon it.

So here's the way I look at it: Everybody lives longer and is treated for things that might have killed us a few decades ago. In return, we contribute to the economy through spending at ground level, which does more to drive overall economic health than "let them eat cake."

So keep people alive not because science has done so, but because they can be benefactors to the State? Am I getting this right?

That means there are a lot more losers than there are winners, by design, and I'll be damned if I go quietly while a few blowhards try to skew things further south.

OR a lot more people looking for an easy out. I obviously am a modern Man, but yet, I see no desire to go to a doctor for every cough, ache or bumb; that is the difference in the crowd that is seeking a doctor for all that.

It is hard for me to understand these numbers. How can healthcare cost so much in US?

en.wikipedia.org...(PPP)_per_capita
en.wikipedia.org...

When checking the statistics US is spending more than 1,5 times as much on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet their overall ranking of the health system is 38th. Even countries who have much higher cost of living and salaries spend much less on health care.

It seems very odd.

Originally posted by Cabin
It is hard for me to understand these numbers. How can healthcare cost so much in US?

en.wikipedia.org...(PPP)_per_capita
en.wikipedia.org...

It really is subjective I suppose; speaking from my perspective. I pay a premium of $400/month. To be quite frank, it is over the top considering I (or my children) never go to the doctor unless it is life/limb/or I don't know what is going on.

Overall, its not too bad for my situation, but that is my situation. I can afford the premium which has excellent perks; preventive care, low prescription cost (which, are low in my case cause we don;t go to the doctor for every cough/bump/scrape.

When checking the statistics US is spending more than 1,5 times as much on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet their overall ranking of the health system is 38th. Even countries who have much higher cost of living and salaries spend much less on health care.

It seems very odd.