It is an unfixable problem.
There is far more expense associated with modern medicine.
Think MRIs, Dilaysis, Open Heart Sugery that has become common.
There are no coherent end of life standards. People can be kept alive using medical care over and over for decades. Should we pay for several admissions to the ICU each year for the non verbal, non moving nursing home patient?
There are no coherent standards for when a patient is done for. You have brain mets from your lung cancer or mets everywhere from your breast cancer? A lot of money is going o be spent vs. just letting you go home with some comfort medicines and stop coming to the hospital.
There are no repercussions for irresponsibility. You can’t say, this is the tenth time in three months you skipped dialysis or your skill smoking crack since your last heart attack, funk you, no more care.
Ther is a shortage of physicians. This is not some AMA driven monopoly. The number of people that can successfully pass MD school and the boards is finite.
Lawyers make fortunes from medicine. We should do something about that.
Insurance executives, etc. Make fortunes from medicine. We should do something about that.
Medical administration has grown about 2500% in hospitals since the 1970s. What are we getting from those personnel for that money? How much would we save and how much more efficient would it be without a lot of them?
Drug companies need the incentive of huge profits to come up with medicines. They have massive investment costs. Somebody has to eat this. Right now it is the US and other countires make out like a bandit. We could trim some costs by giving them some legal protections and cutting them from direct advertising to patients, etc. We could have government take over but people punching the clock getting paid the same like the VA gives you VA like results.
Physician salaries…
After we take a look at insurance executives, administrators, lawyer expenses, and cities bankrupt from OT and pensions for LE and FD personnel that make more per hour than many physicians in the city, review the shortage of physicians, and the academic and training requirements and hours worked, I think we will find it’s not the issue. When your daughter gets thrown from a horse and taken to the ER or your wife in a bad car accident, I think you will want the EM specialist and Neurosurgeon and the Trauma Surgeon to be shit hot, high quality, highly paid professionals. I suspect you give two shits that the insurance executive makes four times as much as any of them making policies to approve or pay for as little of their care as possible. OR the other insurance personnel getting rich off their malpractice premiums. Or the lawyer getting rich off them suing the hospital for the meth head junkie shorting at cops they did not save.
Now, some people just have bad genes, bad luck, etc. But when all is said and done a ton of the people eating billions of medical care for their renal failure, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, sepsis, and trauma straight up did it to themselves. They have special programs helping them and even with all that help still won’t take care of themselves. And productive citizens eat the cost in a myriad of ways. You get up, and every aspect of your life is affected by supporting and eating the time and financial costs of supporting a good portion of society. The only solution that would be effective would be to say fuk these asholes and let them die in the streets. Most are not willing to do so. So the problem won’t be solved.
Also, right now EDs and hospitals MUST care for you when you show up. Whether you are a citizen or not. Whether it’s 100% your own damn fault or not. So they get paid NOTHING for a lot of stuff that has real costs. They are eating those costs. Even when those losers get their SSDI, Medicaid, etc. It still loses money.
Let’s say they had 1000 Medicaid / Medicare patients last month, and billed half a million dollars worth of stuff. They got approved for 250k, but asked for more documentation, justification, etc. For example, the guy got repeat X rays of a fracture for various reason but they only paid for one X ray, etc. And ended with 150K. They may have spent 300K, billed 500k, got approved for 250k, and ended up with 150K. Better than none, but did not cover their costs.
And, those surgeons, etc. Must by law care for those patients, can be sued by those patients, and, believe it or not, cannot even write all that stuff they did off as a loss.
So they rape the shit out of paying, well insured patients to cover it.
and I get that the dude who works as a janitor at the school and his wife is a bus driver could never afford the costs of modern medicine when his kid gets leukemia. I want a system of subsidized benefits for people that work.
But should we be paying for the non citizen undocumented worker that gets leukemia?
Should we be paying for the non working junkie that get leukemia?
A band aid would be a basic government health care system, like a civilian VA for citizens. With basic exams, urgent care, a base level of medicine.
Successful, productive citizens can have better insurance and a better care system.
It’s not fair, but plenty of other countries do it. Hell, under the awesome Canadian system plenty come here to pay for a quicker or better care.
Right now we have productive citizens enslaved to pay for non productive ones,
Medical personnel enslaved to care for people,
And a ton of people that are not the patient and are not the medical personnel siphoning off a lot of money.
It is like being on a sinking ship. There is no way to do anything but expedient repairs that won’t work while underway. Some bad weather is coming in. There is no way to get everyone to shore.