Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us (stunning expose)

[sharkbait28]

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

This is a brilliant and infuriating expose of our ridiculously expensive healthcare system.

It's 36 pages but I guarantee it's worth your time...

5 Colins out of 5

 

[Upgrade Dave]

 

[doublejizzle]

Skimmed through the first ten or so pages...ridiculous that hospitals are allowed to price gouge the way they do

 

[thoughtone]

Skimmed through the first ten or so pages...ridiculous that hospitals are allowed to price gouge the way they do

That's capitalism!

 

[Greed]

That's capitalism!

The article included many not-for-profit hospitals. How is that an indictment of capitalism?

That is like using British East India Corporation as an example of a corporation run amok under laissez-faire capitalism.

 

[Greed]

Skimmed through the first ten or so pages...ridiculous that hospitals are allowed to price gouge the way they do

The ObamaCare debate obsessively focused on insurance companies, and when someone would point out that doctors and hospitals are just as money-hungry, it would be dismissed since the AMA had given their implicit endorsement of ACA.

When we debate health care policy, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high?

Sure wish that was a focus in 2009. They really bent that cost-curve. Too bad it was in the wrong direction.

 

[QueEx]

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

This is a brilliant and infuriating expose of our ridiculously expensive healthcare system.

It's 36 pages but I guarantee it's worth your time...

5 Colins out of 5

Thanks! for posting this. IMO, this is a prime example of why the free market sometimes begs for regulation. And, before the resident-defenders-of-the=free-market on this board mis-assume, I am by no means anti-free market or anti-capital -- but I do believe that at the bottom of any system are humans and humans, existing in the state of nature, will consume one another if not contained by some rule of law/regulation. This thread proves, to me at least, that the medical industry has proven it is no exception -- and unless some kind of regulation of its pricing, it will kill the patient long before his dreaded disease gets the chance.



((NOTE: This reply was drafted earlier this morning and has been sitting in the background as I worked on "real business." I note that in the meantime that some have responded similarly, but I am pushing the send button, anyway. No need to waste a good thought.))




,

 

[QueEx]

The article included many not-for-profit hospitals. How is that an indictment of capitalism?

Why would non-profits be excluded in this discussion ? ? ?



.

 

[Greed]

Why would non-profits be excluded in this discussion ? ? ?



.

Taking thoughtone's mindset specifically into consideration, capitalism is about making money at all cost using only the standard of whatever a business is able to get away with. Why would a "nonprofit" fit into that category. Nonprofits promote themselves as altruistic endeavors with higher moral aims that just "making money."

 

[doublejizzle]

That's capitalism!

I would have to agree and disagree. These hospitals were billing people hundreds of dollars for Tylenol
- Billing people for services that should have been under the umbrella of the room itself.

 

[Greed]

Thanks! for posting this. IMO, this is a prime example of why the free market sometimes begs for regulation. And, before the resident-defenders-of-the=free-market on this board mis-assume, I am by no means anti-free market or anti-capital -- but I do believe that at the bottom of any system are humans and humans, existing in the state of nature, will consume one another if not contained by some rule of law/regulation. This thread proves, to me at least, that the medical industry has proven it is no exception -- and unless some kind of regulation of its pricing, it will kill the patient long before his dreaded disease gets the chance.



((NOTE: This reply was drafted earlier this morning and has been sitting in the background as I worked on "real business." I note that in the meantime that some have responded similarly, but I am pushing the send button, anyway. No need to waste a good thought.))

Is the medical industry not heavily regulated relative to other industries, and this horrible result still manifested itself? Is your solution even more directives and limitations for the industry?

Banking and healthcare are the two most regulated industries and the ones that cause the most problems. I would disagree that it's because of not enough government involvement.

 

[Greed]

Just thought I would post my favorite quotes from the articles.

If you are confused by the notion that those least able to pay are the ones singled out to pay the highest rates, welcome to the American medical marketplace.

 

[Majestic Lion]

Taking thoughtone's mindset specifically into consideration, capitalism is about making money at all cost using only the standard of whatever a business is able to get away with. Why would a "nonprofit" fit into that category. Nonprofits promote themselves as altruistic endeavors with higher moral aims that just "making money."

PR statements notwithstanding, some of the biggest money-making entities are non-profits or charities. Best way to wash money there is, actually.

 

[QueEx]

Is the medical industry not heavily regulated relative to other industries, and this horrible result still manifested itself? Is your solution even more directives and limitations for the industry?

In a neighborhood densely populated by children at play, instead of putting up additional no parking signs, perhaps, speed bumps might be the better prescription for that neighborhood, since having an officer with a radar gun and a ticket book permanently on-site, might be cost prohibitive.

To be clear: its not whether there is any regulation, but whether there is effective regulation.

Banking and healthcare are the two most regulated industries and the ones that cause the most problems. I would disagree that it's because of not enough government involvement.

Why am I not surprised



.

 

[Greed]

In a neighborhood densely populated by children at play, instead of putting up additional no parking signs, perhaps, speed bumps might be the better prescription for that neighborhood, since having an officer with a radar gun and a ticket book permanently on-site, might be cost prohibitive.

To be clear: its not whether there is any regulation, but whether there is effective regulation.





Why am I not surprised



.

Wasn't that the fix the ACA was supposed to provide? Cost-curve bending. If Republican regulation wasn't adequate and Obamacare isn't getting the job done, then it's about time to get over the regulation kick.

 

[QueEx]

Wasn't that the fix the ACA was supposed to provide? Cost-curve bending. If Republican regulation wasn't adequate and Obamacare isn't getting the job done, then it's about time to get over the regulation kick.

Are you saying that the ACA was touted as a panacea for all thats wrong in the health care industry ???

If so, point out exactly where that was said.

 

[Greed]

Are you saying that the ACA was touted as a panacea for all thats wrong in the health care industry ???

If so, point out exactly where that was said.

I didn't say that. I mention cost-curve bending in a thread focusing on medical bills.

That was definitely one of the buzz phrases used at the time. If it's not going to work then people need to acknowledge that.

 

[QueEx]

I didn't say that. I mention cost-curve bending in a thread focusing on medical bills.

That was definitely one of the buzz phrases used at the time. If it's not going to work then people need to acknowledge that.

Did you mention it as a panacea ???




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[Greed]

Did you mention it as a panacea ???




.

No, but objectively it is a massive overhaul.

 

[dHustla]

Y'all don't lose me here.

I'm not in the medical industry but I'm interested in this because there has to be a solution to essentially the greedy feeding on the sick.

Disgusting

 

[muckraker10021]

Are you saying that the ACA was touted as a panacea for all thats wrong in the health care industry ???

If so, point out exactly where that was said.

<div align="left"><!-- MSTableType="layout" --><br><img src="http://sg.wsj.net/public/resources/images/Reagan_Ronald-GC57101112004202930.gif" align="left">"Facts Are Stupid Things"
Ronald Reagan -1988</div>


Reagan got it right in 1988 when he said "Facts Are Stupid Things". Little did he know that by the 21st century smart individuals, people who have degrees from prestigious universities affixed to their walls would collectively ignore irrefutable facts and instead promulgate demonstrable falsehoods as reality. This virus has infected most of the sources of credible information that 30 years ago would never engage in fudging truth so obviously. I'm not talking about the unashamed out-in-the-open obvious liars like <s>FOX</s> FAKE News. I'm talking about the so-called mainstream media, print & television with the anchors & reporters who earn millions of dollars a year.


They have been instructed by their paymasters to treat facts as stupid things and in order to preserve their jobs sublimate their intelligence and become pathological morons. This is the sandbox of false equivalency; all the columnists and talking heads on the television suddenly have lost all of their superior cognitive reasoning skills and critical thinking that they learned at NYU, Duke, Harvard, Stanford, Tulane, Columbia, etc. - and none of them can write a column or produce a newscast that factually tells people what the truth is. Such just-the-facts reporting has been pushed from the "mainstream" onto blogs, public broadcasting, & high price subscription electronic newsletters. You watch an hour of Meet the Press or Face the Nation or with some exceptions, read the famous columnists and news reporters at the major media and you would get the impression that the nations problems are unsolvable and that all parties share blame equally; which is total bullshit.

Imagine a mediator telling two parties in a dispute that they should name their proposed solution, and then he’ll take the midpoint between them. This is the position that our facile mainstream media screams at its viewers and readers daily about the RepubliKlans vs. the Democrats

Actual mediators never do this, for reasons which will soon become apparent. This bogus technique makes the parties’ proposals more extreme, as compromise only makes the outcome worse for you.

If the outcome of the process is going to be (X + Y) / 2, that is, then one party has incentives to make X as small as possible, the other wants Y to be as big as possible, and so on as the parties’ bargaining positions spin further and further away from each other.

Well, this is exactly what a “centrist” media does–by saying in advance that they’ll represent the parties’ positions as equally valid, and that the best policy is a compromise between what the parties are asking for, they not only mislead the public, they actually create incentives for the parties to take more radical positions. They manufacture extremism by preaching centrism.

The answer is to transition away from an innumerate lunatic media which runs on “compromise” as a cognitive tic, to one that can actually do the math, analyze policy and tell the public which ideas are good for the country and which aren’t. Hence Nate Silver and Ezra Klein and Paul Krugman and David Stockman and Bruce Bartlett and others who simply say to the parties, show me your plan, including all the research, all the math, all the footnotes & spreadsheets and let's factually and scientifically see if what you are proposing can withstand scrutiny in the "reality based world". Please don't hand me a folder full of bumper stickers and if your plan like Paul Ryan's "Path To Prosperity" doesn't add up, and actually turns out to be mathematical bullshit - Were going to go on television and write newspaper articles telling people that your math and your plan is full of shit. This is why the pathological morons at the 'major media' who refuse to do what the people I named are doing react to them as a vampires to garlic.

Now the truth about how the "Health Care Mafia" operates in the U.S. was covered on June 2011 HERE
"Obamacare" despite all the republiklan attempts to destroy it has begun to change how the industry operates and is slowly being implemented since the SCOTUS upheld its legality last summer. The 'cost curve' of healthcare which has been spiraling out of control, representing 18% of the U.S. GDP has slowed. This is nothing to scoff at when you consider the exorbitant increases that exceeded the rate of inflation that occurred during the BuShit years. Also BuShits ridiculous Medicare part D which pays the pharmaceutical companies $1.50 for a pill the the Veterans Hospitals are paying 3 cents for the same pill. Former Federal Reserve Board member Alan Blinder has the details HERE in the Feb. 24, 2013 Wall Street Journal. As "Obamacare" is implemented over the next few years, we will see how much the 'cost curve' can continue to be brought into some proximity with the other industrialized nations. Our current 200%+ health care cost over other nations is not sustainable.



FEDERAL RESERVE CHARTS

you can get all the statistics unfiltered by any pathological morons at the Federal Reserve Site
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/

We’re beginning to see some encouraging trends. Two charts from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggest that Medicare spending is beginning to flatten after years of steady growth. The first chart, the annual rates of change in Medicare spending since 1970, shows an unmistakable downward trend int he rate of growth over the past five years.

Even more promisingly, the second graph charts Medicare spending as a percentage of GDP, again showing a relative flattening after three decades of steady growth.



<hr noshade color="#ff0000" size="8"></hr>

<img src="http://upload.democraticunderground.com/imgs/2013/130314-sc-republican-explains-why-the-gop-opposes-obamacare-medicaid-expansion.jpg">

 

[Upgrade Dave]

I would have to agree and disagree. These hospitals were billing people hundreds of dollars for Tylenol
- Billing people for services that should have been under the umbrella of the room itself.

Part of the reasoning has always been (and I think there's validity there to a point) that they come up with all these charges to make up for all the care given that goes unpaid. Universal coverage where this problem is controlled, if not eradicated, should alleviate this.

 

[Greed]

Part of the reasoning has always been (and I think there's validity there to a point) that they come up with all these charges to make up for all the care given that goes unpaid. Universal coverage where this problem is controlled, if not eradicated, should alleviate this.

If you affect profitability then it also should affect efficiency, access, quality, and innovation.

Universl coverage doesn't fix that.

 

[doublejizzle]

Part of the reasoning has always been (and I think there's validity there to a point) that they come up with all these charges to make up for all the care given that goes unpaid. Universal coverage where this problem is controlled, if not eradicated, should alleviate this.

Yeah, but it is still ridiculous, but since they are allowed to do it, they will. I don't see this as a case of the market demanding it, there is no other choice.

Even in the stores there is gouging. I went in Walmart one day and there was Motrin at once price, and then "Migraine" Motrin for about $2 more. When I looked at the ingredients, BOTH were 200 mg ibuprofen. I laughed, and then picked up the equate ibuprofen that was $4 for 2 bottles of pills.

 

[thoughtone]

If you affect profitability then it also should affect efficiency, access, quality, and innovation.

Universl coverage doesn't fix that.

How is it profitable to keep a patient healthy?

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Yeah, but it is still ridiculous, but since they are allowed to do it, they will. I don't see this as a case of the market demanding it, there is no other choice.

Even in the stores there is gouging. I went in Walmart one day and there was Motrin at once price, and then "Migraine" Motrin for about $2 more. When I looked at the ingredients, BOTH were 200 mg ibuprofen. I laughed, and then picked up the equate ibuprofen that was $4 for 2 bottles of pills.

I wouldn't even consider that "gouging" because you had the option to buy a cheaper and still effective alternative. You don't have that in the hospitals.

 

[Greed]

How is it profitable to keep a patient healthy?

Restate the question, I don't get it.

 

[thoughtone]

Restate the question, I don't get it.

If a person never needs medical attention, how can a hospital make a profit off of them?

 

[Greed]

If a person never needs medical attention, how can a hospital make a profit off of them?

Nonprofit hospitals aren't supposed to be making a profit anyway.

I said earlier, they are supposed to be answering a social need with a supposedly higher moral motivation than making money.

How dare you imply they want to "make a profit" off of people like the insurance companies.

 

[thoughtone]

Nonprofit hospitals aren't supposed to be making a profit anyway.

I said earlier, they are supposed to be answering a social need with a supposedly higher moral motivation than making money.

How dare you imply they want to "make a profit" off of people like the insurance companies.

OK, now answer my question that you went out of your way to ask me to restate.

If a person never needs medical attention, how can a hospital make a profit off of them?

 

[Greed]

OK, now answer my question that you went out of your way to ask me to restate.

How are hospitals supposed to make a profit off of healthy people?

The goal isn't to make a profit, so they aren't supposed to make a profit off of healthy people.

Didn't I give you what you wanted?

 

[thoughtone]

How are hospitals supposed to make a profit off of healthy people?

The goal isn't to make a profit, so they aren't supposed to make a profit off of healthy people.

Didn't I give you what you wanted?

The article included many not-for-profit hospitals. How is that an indictment of capitalism?

The article included a lot of for profit hospitals. So as I said, that's capitalism.

 

[QueEx]

Nonprofit hospitals aren't supposed to be making a profit anyway.

I said earlier, they are supposed to be answering a social need with a supposedly higher moral motivation than making money.

How dare you imply they want to "make a profit" off of people like the insurance companies.

Thats not an accurate statement.

Non-profits DO make/earn profits. Entities are classed as "non-profit" for the purpose of being tax-exempt for income tax purposes and are allowed to be so classified if none of the profits of the entity are distributed to any shareholders, members, owners or those who appear to be shareholder, members or owners, etc. (For example, dividends).

Non-profts want profits as much as any for-profit entity, to use for its corporate purposes. Hence, what would be income of a non-profit, revenue in excess of its costs/operating expenses, is not taxed so long as it is put to the exempt purpose (i.e., charitable, religious, educational, scientific, or other purposes) instead of being distributed to owners, shareholders, etc., of the corporation, as would be the case in a so-called "For-Profit" entity.



.

 

[sharkbait28]

Thanks! for posting this. IMO, this is a prime example of why the free market sometimes begs for regulation. And, before the resident-defenders-of-the=free-market on this board mis-assume, I am by no means anti-free market or anti-capital -- but I do believe that at the bottom of any system are humans and humans, existing in the state of nature, will consume one another if not contained by some rule of law/regulation. This thread proves, to me at least, that the medical industry has proven it is no exception -- and unless some kind of regulation of its pricing, it will kill the patient long before his dreaded disease gets the chance.



((NOTE: This reply was drafted earlier this morning and has been sitting in the background as I worked on "real business." I note that in the meantime that some have responded similarly, but I am pushing the send button, anyway. No need to waste a good thought.))




,

You're welcome.

My thoughts;

I'm with you. I find the wide-eyed allusions to a free market solution for Health Care in this thread kind of funny. There's nothing free or competitive about the Health Care industry on the whole and given that the consumer can have little choice or option when he/she most needs urgent care (ie being rushed to this hospital, being sent to that clinic by your gp, being referred to that practice etc etc) it seems extraordinarily absurd to suggest that consumers can have a a "free market" experience in the same manner we routinely decide on what restaurant to eat at Wednesday night.

Stephen Brill makes this point much more eloquently in his article. I think ultimately we're going to have to address a number of factors to make the system better but what seems obvious is that status quo is failing.

There are a number of functional HC models that work very well in the world right now... we should learn from and adopt them.

 

[Greed]

Thats not an accurate statement.

Non-profits DO make/earn profits. Entities are classed as "non-profit" for the purpose of being tax-exempt for income tax purposes and are allowed to be so classified if none of the profits of the entity are distributed to any shareholders, members, owners or those who appear to be shareholder, members or owners, etc. (For example, dividends).

Non-profts want profits as much as any for-profit entity, to use for its corporate purposes. Hence, what would be income of a non-profit, revenue in excess of its costs/operating expenses, is not taxed so long as it is put to the exempt purpose (i.e., charitable, religious, educational, scientific, or other purposes) instead of being distributed to owners, shareholders, etc., of the corporation, as would be the case in a so-called "For-Profit" entity.



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And you think thoughtone was making that distinction?