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About that "World's Best Healthcare System" the U.S. is supposed to have...

RJ you idiot. Your "bluebook" source (which is what they hope you can negotiate the fee down to today) said $10,091 for the hospital, doctor and anesthesia fees. The bill in 1964 for the same services was $352. You can't get an appendectomy today for $1951. The thing costs at least 19.7% of the median income today vs. 3.8% in 1964.
 
923, this wwil lbe my last post to him on this.

tjmd, EARLIER you said this:

"tjcmd tjcmd is online now
Ricky Peral

Join Date
Aug 2011
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Posts
446
Quote Originally Posted by ThinkingWithMyDeac View Post

I love the wow only 300 dollars, bkf tries that shit all the time. So you mean 5,000 dollars in todays money."

$2,368, and that was staying in the hospital for five days. ThinkWithYourDick what a savings that would be today."

The $10.091 from the industry source was for the doctors and hospital stay just like you posts.

The $352 you have is the same as the $1951.

When you are shown apples to apples, you become totally dishonest. I can't believe anyone is stupid enough to dispute the correlated numbers.
 
I have no idea what is happening anymore, however I do know that what tjmd said was it cost 300 dollars in the 1960's, then using one of the many inflation calculators online I said that would be 5,000 dollars in 2014 dollars, and then he countered with his calculation that it would cost 2,368 in 2014 dollars. After that RJ got out his abacus and I have no idea what happened.
 
I think I had a tonsillectomy in either 1962 or 1963.

Yea ice cream! :)
 
RJKarl said:
923, this wwil lbe my last post to him on this.

tjmd, EARLIER you said this:

"tjcmd tjcmd is online now
Ricky Peral

Join Date
Aug 2011
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Posts
446
Quote Originally Posted by ThinkingWithMyDeac View Post

I love the wow only 300 dollars, bkf tries that shit all the time. So you mean 5,000 dollars in todays money."

$2,368, and that was staying in the hospital for five days. ThinkWithYourDick what a savings that would be today."

The $10.091 from the industry source was for the doctors and hospital stay just like you posts.

The $352 you have is the same as the $1951.

When you are shown apples to apples, you become totally dishonest. I can't believe anyone is stupid enough to dispute the correlated numbers.
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$2,368 is in 2013 dollars what $300 was in 1964 dollars http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=300.00&year1=1965&year2=2014. So paying $300 in 1964 is equivalent to paying $2,368 today. That is approximately what a hospital and physicians together charged for the procedure in 1964. Your website said a "fair" price for the same thing would be $10,091 today. The figure of $1951 coming from your website is apparently adding together the physician and the anesthesiologist fee but leaving out the $8141 hospital charges. Not even you can be this dense. To compare apples to apples you have to express the cost in 1964 as a percentage of the median income in 1964 which is 300/6000 vs the cost today as a percentage of the median income today which is 10,000/51,000. That is roughly 3.8% then vs. 19.7% today. Health care cost a lost less as a percentage of people's income when it was more free market. More people could afford decent health care then.

You seem to be trying to compare $2,368, the cost of a 1964 procedure in today's dollars including hospital and doctor fees with $1951, the cost of only the physician's fees today leaving out the $8141 in hospital fees.
 
You are talking apples and oranges, and you are absolutely fucking wrong. Price increases occurred because the Nixon administration with the 1973 HMO law made healthcare a for profit endeavor. I can't believe US citizens are this misinformed...actually, I can.
 
ONW said:
You are talking apples and oranges, and you are absolutely fucking wrong. Price increases occurred because the Nixon administration with the 1973 HMO law made healthcare a for profit endeavor. I can't believe US citizens are this misinformed...actually, I can.
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Every law makes it worse, ONW. Every government intervention makes it worse. I'm sure the 1973 HMO is no different. I don't know how anyone could get stuck on that particular one, but rave on.
 
Except that in countries with actual complete government control, healthcare is cheaper and just as effective. But rave on.
 
Deacon923 said:
Except that in countries with actual complete government control, healthcare is cheaper and just as effective. But rave on.
Click to expand...

I need to find that article thats shows the gap between costs of Medicare vs. other countries sr. populations. The gap was the same as the non medicare markets in terms of costs. It was an interesting read.
 
Deacon923 said:
Except that in countries with actual complete government control, healthcare is cheaper and just as effective. But rave on.
Click to expand...

If government control made health care cheaper and more effective, health care in this country would be cheaper and more effective since government controls most of it now. You can't possibly make things cheaper and more effective by forcing one person to pay another person's bills. That is why having an appendectomy now can bankrupt the average earner whereas it was easily affordable before people demanded that somebody else pay for it. But rave on about forcing people to pay for other people's chiropractic manipulations.
 
tjcmd said:
If government control made health care cheaper and more effective, health care in this country would be cheaper and more effective since government controls most of it now. You can't possibly make things cheaper and more effective by forcing one person to pay another person's bills. That is why having an appendectomy now can bankrupt the average earner whereas it was easily affordable before people demanded that somebody else pay for it. But rave on about forcing people to pay for other people's chiropractic manipulations.
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Right. The other countries make it cheaper by rate-setting. By using force to tell people what they can and can't charge. And some add single payer on top of that. But t's the rate setting and monopsony power that gets prices down
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
Right. The other countries make it cheaper by rate-setting. By using force to tell people what they can and can't charge. And some add single payer on top of that. But t's the rate setting and monopsony power that gets prices down
Click to expand...

Here is a good summary of this idea:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/08/legislating-low-prices-cutting-costs-or-care

Some excerpts about what is happening in Japan, where price and wage controls on health care are tight:

The consequences of Japanese price regulation have been summarized as “cheap stuff is profitable and expensive stuff is unprofitable. A doctor who sees a few extra patients and prescribes drugs for them makes money; coronary bypass surgery at an urban hospital loses money.”[14] Even though the Japanese are four times less likely than Americans to suffer heart attacks, they are twice as likely to die from them.[15]
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Specialties offering little scope for such incomes—namely surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics—have suffered severe shortages of doctors.[23] The scarcity of obstetricians has caused many maternity wards to close, with the number of childbirth facilities declining from 4,200 in 1993 to 3,000 in 2005. This has forced longer commutes on pregnant women giving birth.[24] In one notorious case, a woman miscarried in an ambulance on the way to a ninth hospital after a three-hour search driving from one hospital to another searching for an opening. Another pregnant woman died after being turned away from 19 hospitals.[25] These are extreme, but not isolated incidents. In 2007, of 368,266 patients with severe disease or injury who were transported to emergency hospitals by ambulance, 58,996 (16 percent) were rejected by at least one hospital due to lack of physicians.[26]
Click to expand...
 
tjcmd said:
Here is a good summary of this idea:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/08/legislating-low-prices-cutting-costs-or-care

Some excerpts about what is happening in Japan, where price and wage controls on health care are tight:

Specialties offering little scope for such incomes—namely surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics—have suffered severe shortages of doctors.[23] The scarcity of obstetricians has caused many maternity wards to close, with the number of childbirth facilities declining from 4,200 in 1993 to 3,000 in 2005. This has forced longer commutes on pregnant women giving birth.[24] In one notorious case, a woman miscarried in an ambulance on the way to a ninth hospital after a three-hour search driving from one hospital to another searching for an opening. Another pregnant woman died after being turned away from 19 hospitals.[25] These are extreme, but not isolated incidents. In 2007, of 368,266 patients with severe disease or injury who were transported to emergency hospitals by ambulance, 58,996 (16 percent) were rejected by at least one hospital due to lack of physicians.[26]
Click to expand...

I don't think it's the case with surgery or pediatrics but we've had many areas lose obstetricians over the last decade plus. What I've read/heard is that it's related to their malpractice insurance rates. Not being in the field I have no idea if that's the real reason.
 
The Mangler said:
I don't think it's the case with surgery or pediatrics but we've had many areas lose obstetricians over the last decade plus. What I've read/heard is that it's related to their malpractice insurance rates. Not being in the field I have no idea if that's the real reason.
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Googling for a while reveals this:

About half of all american babies are born on the Medicaid dole today. Medicaid payment to OB doctors varies but averages $885 for normal vaginal deliveries including all pre and post natal care. Malpractice insurance varies greatly from low Medicaid states like Minnesota to high ones like Florida. In Florida it can be $100,000 or more per year, depending on the specific location. South Florida is probably the worst. In some areas an OB would have to take care of 120 or so Medicaid mothers just to cover malpractice expenses. Commercial insurers pay the OB doctor about $2900. OBs have been going to low Medicaid areas, not surprisingly. The ones left in Medicaid areas often work for hospitals which, if they still do OB at all, are forced to take pretty much all comers and lose money on OB which they try to make up on other services (cardiology still pays good) and by trying to charge non Medicaid people outrageous sums for ob care (few insurers are tricked by this anymore).
 
Malpractice insurance rates really need to be challenged. They are obscene and falsely inflated. The rate of claims has been virtually the same for the past 40-50 years at under 1/4 of 1% of healthcare costs:

"According to research conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health in 2010, medical liability costs totaled about 2.4% ($55.6 billion) of the annual health care spending in the United States in 2008. Of the $55.6 billion, $5.7 billion was paid in medical malpractice claims payments (less than one-quarter of one percent of annual health care spending).

Malpractice insurance premiums are unconscionably high. They make loanshark's interest rates look like acts of kindness. They are totally unjustified and have been for decades.

As the Harvard study shows if you have $2,000,000 practice it is likely you would have $5000 in malpractice claims.

It's a total lie to say malpractice cases are a major (or even minor) reason increasing cost of healthcare.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/medical-malpractice
"he report found that in 2011:

The number of malpractice payments on behalf of doctors (9,758 payments) was the lowest on record, having fallen for the eighth consecutive year;

The inflation-adjusted value of payments made on behalf of doctors ($3.2 billion) was the lowest on record. In actual dollars, payments have fallen for eight straight years and are at their lowest level since 1998;

The average size of medical malpractice payments (about $327,000) declined from previous years;

Four-fifths of medical malpractice awards compensated for death, catastrophic harm or serious permanent injuries -- disproving the claim that medical malpractice litigation is "frivolous";

Medical malpractice payments' share of the nation's health care cost was the lowest on record (just 0.12 percent of all national health care costs); and

Health care costs rose again amid the decline in medical malpractice litigation -- debunking the claim that the litigation is tied to rising health care costs or that patients should expect dividends from reduced litigation.

The total costs for medical malpractice litigation for doctors and hospitals (as measured by liability insurance premiums paid) have fallen to their lowest level in two decades. They amounted to 0.36 percent of national health care expenditures in 2010, the most recent year for which such data is available. "

Under TEN THOUSAND winning cases in the ENTIRE nation.

The insurance companies and doctors uses fears and lies to keep costs up. There is no quantifiable justification for their claims.
 
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