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The NYT shines a light on a nice little racket that doctors have got going in some states, where...
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Thursday, July 12, 2012, 1:53 PM ETThe NYT shines a light on a nice little racket that doctors have got going in some states, where they're allowed to dispense drugs to patients at massive markups. E.g. heartburn pill Zantac costs 35 cents a pop in a drug store but $3.25 in a surgery. It's costing taxpayers, insurance companies and employers hundreds of millions a year.
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This news story has 32 comments:
That said, surgery made necessary by lack of preventive care is a huge factor driving health care costs higher.
So how is guaranteeing payment for prevention burning down the house? Only in your dreams.
Socialism! If what was passed is socialism, then Teddy Roosevelt was a socialist. As was Nixon. As was Bob Dole. As is the Heritage Foundation. And if you think those folks are or were socialists, you have a pretty strange definition of the term
If you go to a restaurant you can pay $8-$12 for a hamburger that you can buy for your self, cook and serve to your self for about $.50 from the grocery store. Quite a racket the restaurateurs have, but why is it that so many go out of business - probably because they can't make a living at it - due to the high costs of buying, cooking, serving and complying with government regulations in their kitchens and paying for insurance for the possibility of ecoli or some other problem in the restaurant or something else like the coffee is too hot and the customer sues for $10 million. Unless, of course they are selling billions like McDonalds does at a much lower cost and far less quality and can pay the $10 million suit. Everything has a price. You appear to be demonizing the very people you count on to save your live in a critical moment.
You may soon get what you are looking for - low cost, low quality, medical services in the same hospitals you are now decrying for charging you what you demand of them. Is this really what you want a total McDonald system where one low quality level serves all? Good luck to you -- to and all of us in the US if that is what we want.
If your desire is to have a healthcare system that is more cost-efficient then we need to reverse course with healthcare reform and adopt a market driven healthcare system where patients are interacting directly with providers in regards to costs & healthcare delivered.
Time and again capitalism & free markets have proven to be the most efficient way to deliver any goods or services. Healthcare is no exception.
What we know works is wellness, prevention, fee-per-patient. Incentives should be toward saving money, not spending it.
And your ideological tag line is just as nonsensical as anything Lenin ever wrote. Markets are not an ideology. Markets are markets. Even the mafia has rules and enforcement of those rules. Every market must, or everyone gets robbed.
And, by putting a thumb down on costs from the insurance lobby, it makes the system more of a free market than what you described in your very kind comment.
Deliver, perhaps - as long as that delivery doesn't involve a Hino or Mitsubishi Fuso truck carrying goods unloaded from an Airbus or a Hyundai container. Where was your TV made? Your smartphone? Your shoes? All socialist countries, right? Do you think that the doctor's back-office work was outsourced to Baltimore or Bangalore? Why did they go to Bangalore, given that India's government regulations are at least as burdensome as the USAs? India is a socialist country, after all.
Everyone has health risks. Always. Everyone is liable to need health care at any time. Always. At every time of life. If you're not buying insurance you're not participating in the market, you're not paying for something you know you need.
Just as when you drive a car without insurance.
This is regulation. This is Heritage Foundation stuff. This is not socialism. The constant repetition of "socialism" in regard to this act is the biggest lie of our time. And you, sir, are repeating it.
Did the RNC bring you any more big lies? Or is lies all you got?
If you're poor and can't afford health insurance, then yes, they have a better plan than you do. If you're a teacher or a cop, their coverage might be slightly better. But isn't the quality of the coverage supposed to be a product of the market, with those who can pay more entitled to more?
Fact is, we can't focus on wellness unless everyone is in the pool. If large groups are excluded, if underwriters are in the business of avoiding risk, then you can't do that.
And the way to cut costs is through wellness, through prevention. This is proven. It's fact. Denying it doesn't make it any less true.
Why do you hate the Heritage Foundation and the nominee of the Republican Party, who instituted just this sort of plan in Massachusetts? Is Mitt Romney a socialist? If you think he is, don't vote for him.
People who work in the field tell me that wellness and prevention are the key to holding down costs. You get that by having everyone in the pool in some way. Even the Heritage Foundation realized that, which is why they originally endorsed this kind of plan.
What we had before was a game of picking risks. Insurers would only accept younger, healthier people, dropping them at the first sign of illness. That's not health care.
The result was results no better than Cuba, at a cost 50% higher than those of our trading partners. Business can't handle that.
Medicare, Medicaid and the VA all take on higher risks than the private insurers are willing to take. Yet they deliver care for a fraction of the cost of conventional insurance.
This plan is necessary for private insurance to have a hope of competing with real "socialized medicine." Without it, you would see a faster move toward these public programs, away from the private sector.
It's either the Romney way or single-payer. Your way leads directly to single-payer by pricing people out of the market for care. Once the majority is outside the market, demand for single-payer would overwhelm all objections.
You can't have a society where a small number of wealthy oligarchs live for a century in their castles while the peasants drop like flies. That is unsustainable.
guess that if we went out for a couple of beers we would find we're
Fact is, Massachusetts citizens like what they have. That's the key test. It's fully implemented, nearly everyone there now is covered, and as you say "everyone is working harder for less" --- which means the savings are starting to appear.
Everyone has to be in the pool. Otherwise the market can't function. You must have incentives built-in for prevention and wellness, or you have so much sickness you can't afford to deal with it.
Mississippi is moving toward the system you seem to favor. Life expectancy between rich and poor is diverging at an alarming rate. It's not a good thing.
We need fewer specialists, and more people involved in primary care. We don't need medical temples. We need doctors who are integrated into the community, not gods in lab coats.
This is why doctors' groups opposed health reform so strenuously. They didn't want to lose money. They didn't wan to lose power. But that money and power were strangling the economy.
Funny. You may be happy that teachers' groups are being broken, and unions are being broken, and police groups are being broken, on the rack of economic change.
Now you're going to be broken. That's the way it is. Yet people will still get care.
I also don't think this Internet thing has played out. Not at all. It's because of what I call Moore's Law of Training. There is no Moore's Law of Training. Meaning there is an immense amount to be learned about using this resource, and of course an immense amount of productivity still to be gained from it, in all areas.
Change, in short, is going into overdrive. You want to be invested in change.
and I (Hope) it's to my liking. Hey, hope and change, where have I heard that. he-he