These articles detail succinctly the exorbitant rise in healthcare costs in America and contain some factual statistics......and not as much hot air: http://www.thebubblebubble.com/healthcare-bubble/ http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/29/pf/healthcare-costs/index.htm "in the last decade healthcare costs have "risen three times faster than wages" and since 2001 the number of uninsured Americans has risen by 40%. These numbers are alarming...... or should be to any rational thinking....unbrainwashed citizen of this country. I feel that the rate of costs increases.... and employers reaction to it by burdening their employees with a significant portion of the increases is contributing mightily to our sluggish economic growth and recovery. There is a serious problem here with our healthcare system and it's time to stop being political about it and collectively address it.
It is being addressed tow hospitals have been in the news this week announcining they are closing their obstetrical units and will no longer deliver babies because of declining reimbursement. Services are being cut back to seniors everywhere for the same reason. Don't forget, Medicare was gutted for $700 billion to pay for Obama's salute to himself. Granny may not be able to get a CT scan but they are handing out all the birth control pills you may want. My advice to you would be to leave for a month and go to Mexico. Bribe the right Hefe and get your Mexican citizenship. Cross back over and get the best care available, on the house.
So George..... even though the graphs and stats and data clearly show otherwise all you can focus on is Obama's medical plan? Like the problem doesn't exist otherwise and hasn't for the past 26 years as the graph shows? That is why we are in trouble.......big trouble. No one from the right can get off the fact that there is a democrat in white house and to exacerbate the problem if we did have the GOP in the white house you guys would fight tooth and nail to point out how much better it was than to have a democrat no matter what was really going on in America.
So this is the answer: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/papa-johns-obamacare-john-schnatter_n_2104202.html http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Companies-Plan-Layoffs-Obamacare/2012/11/09/id/463571 And getting to the heart of the matter [/quote]A National Business Group survey found that employers will raise health care rates an average of at least seven percent due to Obamacare, but many are being forced to hike rates much higher. Universities across North Carolina have cited Obamacare as the reason for “substantial” student health care premium hikes; some students in that state will now pay double for insurance. Walmart recently raised health care premiums, in some cases 36 percent, leaving many of its employees unable to afford any health insurance coverage at all.
Our scary "monster corporation" for those out there that put corporations one step above the Nazi's has only 7 full time employees. We may have 300 contract labor crews working for us during the day but we maintain a very small crew including myself. With such a small employee base we pay out the nose for healthcare. Because all such expenses cross my desk and affect my budget I see the real cost to the employer. We currently pay $11,000 per employee for health insurance. This covers medical but no dental or eye care, it does offer prescription cards where we pay roughly $15 per visit to CVS or Walgreen's. To manage the budget and do our best to keep insurance for the employees including myself we have not given raises in five years. Even with this action we are in the hole in our effort to manage our health insurance. Not one employee has bitched or complained to me that they feel robbed because I am honest and open with our cost. It does suck not giving anyone a raise for five years but its healthcare or more jingle in your pocket, if the choice is the pocket then the it soon disappears in some form of deductible. In spite of the current events of business trying to provide health care and its cost we are just happy to be employed plus maintain our insurance with the current economy. If you ask me if I think our government can or will do a better job please forgive me laughing in your face. Please look at the trek record on government management and prove to me it can do this better than the other abominations of programs currently in place.
An interesting note is the owner of our company is Italian and very familiar with insurance provided by the government. We recently spoke about the Obama healthcare act and if we need to transform over to it. His response was that if it is anything like the Italian, French or other European health insurances he will continue to pay for it himself in spite of it costing him more. The reason he gave was that waiting for six months to see a specialist for some health problem was a terrible thing and he did not want this on his conscience if an employee or their family member needed such care...
Gipper, In order for Obamacare to be the culprit responsible for health care premium costs they would need to rise by 13-15 % and do it concurrently for the next 26 years. You have to acknowledge what's been actually happening and what was destined to occur anyway before you can blame any amount of increase on Obamacare.
I.m willing to come to the middle to discuss this reasonably. This is from the article that I posted the link to above: "Government’s dramatically increased presence as a less cost-sensitive purchaser of healthcare services has helped to greatly inflate the healthcare bubble as the healthcare industry is able to steadily hike prices knowing that the U.S. government will always be a buyer. If the existing and conventional presence of government in U.S. healthcare has already caused costs to soar, entirely new levels of government involvement in the form of President Obama’s 2,000-page Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) are likely to make the situation even worse." That makes sense because American industry has proven before to take advantage of government purchase of goods and services.... sorta like Florida Gov. Rick Scott's former med co. bilking Medicare out of hundreds of millions of dollars. So Obamacare does look like it has a chance to be a detriment.... an add-on problem. If it's not managed properly and profiteers abound and contribute to rising healthcare costs for all I'll be pissed.......as pissed at Obamacare as I am at the forces that have combined for our mismanaged debacle of a healthcare system. Unbridled greed and profiteering need to be eradicated from the equation....... for our present system and for Obamacare as well. Ill vote for anyone who thinks price regulation of this industry is necessary.
I guess to be an Obama supporter you have to have no memory. That health care program was shoved down our throats with the promise it would REDUCE health care costs. It doesn't. The only thing it is reducing is full time jobs. Once again the working stiff is getting soaked so he can dole out to the freeloaders.
Dave, regardless of the topic at hand you continue to blame all of our country's woes on corporate greed and profiteering. Even when agreeing to "come to the middle". At least you are consistent. These corporations are doing what they are supposed to do. They only sell what people are buying and price them as to what people will pay. I continue to maintain that the problem with health care costs in this country is one primarily that is our own fault (the user). We have demanded that somebody else pay for our health care, and having accomplished that, the next step is to demand the best (and therefore most expensive) treatment available...in all of the cases, all of the time. We over-utilize the system, always demand the top stuff, and get less good healthcare out of it than other countries. We over-regulate the providers. When I started out 30 years ago most doctor's offices averaged 3 employees per physician. My older friends remember when there was only an average of one employee per physician. Now days what few private offices are left have about 10 employees per physician just to do the paperwork and follow all the regulations. Oh, yeah...electronic medical records to increase efficiency...right. :roll: I don't have the answers...we may be in a rut that we can't get ourselves out of. But I don't blame 3M for making better and better ultrasound machines each year....I blame the system that makes it necessary for everybody to have the latest and greatest ultrasound image...so that every couple years each hospital and doctor's office has to buy a new machine...usually getting a 5% improvement in image at a 50% increase in cost. The medicolegal system we have fostered plays a role as well in that need to always use the best systems available. This is where I get off the Republican bandwagon...when they start scaring folks by talk of "death panels". We have to either make people pay some of their own freight so they have a fiscal interest in deciding what treatments to get or not get...or we have to somehow have the ability to say "no"....when it only makes sense to do so. Talking the dreaded "R" word here. :wink:
Good insight Stu.....thanks for sharing. It's certainly a complex combination of things that all contribute to our exorbitantly rising costs of healthcare. If it cannot correct itself......then what do you propose? I know you say you don't have the answers.....neither do I. A first step would be for both sides of the aisle to make the acknowledgement of the problem a national emergency..... and address it non-politically and perhaps try to manage the pricing with regulation if necessary. It doesn't seem likely to correct itself.
The X Factor is physician compensation. I just read a report that stated that 37% of doctors earned lower income in 2012 than previous years. 21% lost 10% of income or more. OB/GYN docs and readiology techs suffered the biggest losses and many earn less than $150 K per year. How long do you see that continuing before the doctor shortage, which is already significant, becomes a crisis? You do not go to school for a decade or more to be paid like a GM line worker.
Agreed George.... doctors are not where the problem lies. You guys don't like to hear it.......but in some cases some corporations and individuals at those corporations are raking in exorbitant profits and sums of cash..... in my opinion. Other countries have good outcomes and managed costs. Why can't we seem to get this under control?
I would be interested in knowing which countries have successful managed healthcare and and have the services available that we are accustomed to.
OK, go to whatever country you are referring to (socialized medicine) and get put on a 6 to 18 month waiting list for your cataract surgery. Is that what you are proposing?
I do propose that those without healthcare or without good plans go to the back of the line. But at least they are in line.
But right now, in our healthcare system, there is no consideration for ability to pay. You get the healthcare you need regardless. Are you proposing that Emergency Rooms triage by ability to pay rather than by need?