I can say the same about you, amigo. This is a non-response. Zero? Zero competition would lead to fewer and fewer businesses, yet we see more and more medical-related businesses and they all are very profitable. We have a huge choice of physicians and facilities to choose from. Most of us are not on medicare at all. Our private insurance companies also set the rates that they will pay with these medical providers. There has to be a baseline, for medicare or private insurance. It may be too high or too low, but these things are negotiated. I lost access to my primary care physician for a year when Humana and the Baton Rouge General System were locked in a disagreement over compensation, but they worked it out. Medicare had little to do with it. The private insurance companies that insure doctors from malpractice are often pointed at as increasing the costs of care. I think the problem is much bigger than Medicare alone. I really think this goes to the top of the list. The medicare waste I experienced during the terminal illnesses of both my parents was appalling.
You can look up the words in the dictionary if you need them defined. If you want an example of this I can give you one from my personal experience. My 83 year old mother had broken her hip and lost her mobility. All she really needed was a simple wheelchair do that her sitters could get her around. But the doctor ordered her a metalflake red electric wheelchair that they billed to medicare for $16,000 dollars! Medicare wisely refused to consider more than $8,000 of which they paid $4000 and her private insurance paid $3300 leaving her with a bill for $700. She lived six more months then I was left with a sports-car wheelchair that was impossible to sell because Medicare hands new ones out like candy. Because SHE got no say in it, the chair just appeared! She was a complete invalid and not capable of operating the joystick by herself. She had 24-hour sitters. A standard $600 wheelchair that she could sit in and be pushed by her caregivers would have been fine--even better, the motorchair is heavy and bulky and requires a special vehicle to haul it! A standard folding wheelchair could be carried in any car. A better way would have been to offer us a chair and say "Medicare will pay $XXX and your insurance will pay $XXX. Now you can pick a chair from any of these competing companies and pay for any costs not covered". Then there would be a choice from the patient AS WELL AS authority from the doctor. There would be competitive offerings from other vendors, reducing the prices. Finally, there would be the opportunity for thr family to say "Rather than pay a $750 co-payment for this super-roboto-chair we don't need, we think this ordinary $600 wheelchair will do". The doctors, the medical insurance, the hospital administrators, and the third-party providers are used to playing with huge amounts of money that isn't scrutinized carefully. The guy that sold my mom's $16,000 motorized wheelchair to Medicare and Humana made far more money than the rehab doctor who ordered it for her. Unless he was getting kickback, which I also suspect.
Red I had a similar experiance with my father in his last year. Your last sentence distills the problem with our system. It is also dead on to what I see as a dampening of competition. There may be more companies getting into the health care business but you don't see prices dropping do you?True competition would induce lower prices for goods and services. It is a rigged game and these companies using Medicare as a vehicle are screwing middle class. Based on the deals BHO made with pharma, insurance, hospitals etc it won't change under the AHCA.
It's a double-edged sword and it cuts both ways. Medicare at least makes drug providers negotiate a rate with them. The reason Bush got his Medicare Prescription Drug Plan through a suspicious Congress, was that he had the full backing of the Pharmaceutical Industry who insisted that there be no price negotiations. They charge whatever the market will bear, making huge profits on the same drugs that they negotiated a much lower rate for standard Medicare. They charge us way more than they sell the same drugs for overseas. Why? Because Americans have insurance and the insurance companies also collude to keep rates higher than anywhere on the planet. Insurance companies are all wildly profitable on government contracts, especially when they can set the rates. There is no free market when cartels of the big Pharmaceuticals collude to establish an effective lobbying group that owns Congress. Other countries set base level prices on drugs. There is a balance to be had here in the best interests of the nation. Drugs must be affordable and the drug companies must be profitable, but sometimes corporate greed or government bureaucracy will let the balance get out of whack without proper regulations that set some guidelines for all to observe.
the government isn't involved in Kleenex or toilet paper but the price of Kleenex and toilet paper has steadily risen since their inception. it's called inflation and a currency that gains value over time. Further, show me your evidence that the FED and Medicare are to blame.
Tiger medical costs have risen a a much higher rate than inflation for years. To compare the rise in Kleenex with medical costs is not accurate. Read Red's post above there is a crony capitalism between the fed and medica/pharma/insurance complex that has artifically riaised our costs. Whoever initiated it is almost meaningless at this point but the is fed is a major player.
just read Red's post and your ensuing post and I can see better now what you are talking about. i stand corrected.
Our currency gained value? FED makes everything higher. Not just medical. Medicare forces medical to do things. Not a market.
yes, the value of our currency fluctuates. as i admitted to winston in a previous post, I can see better now what he means by medicare affecting the costs so I will concede that point. that said, the markets do indeed play a part in determining the price also.
