Young woman in UK almost died because of national healthcare system

Discussion in 'Health Care' started by kazenatsu, Dec 18, 2021.

  1. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    I don't know.

    A number of things affect the cost of medical care. As the General Accounting Office noted the Costs of Healthcare:

    1] Technology up to 65%
    2] Consumer Demand up to 36%
    3] Expanding Health Benefits or Insuring more people up to 13%
    4] Healthcare Price Inflation up to 19% (caused by Consumer Demand and insuring more people)
    5] Administrative Costs up to 13% (caused by Technology, Consumer Demand and Regulations)
    6] Aging/Elderly up to 7%

    Medical technology is a different animal because there is no economy of scale. We can contrast it.

    There are 128 Million households in the US, but only 5,324 hospitals.

    31% have one car, 35% have 2 cars and 35% have 3 cars. Altogether, there are 278 Million registered vehicles.

    That's why cars start at $12,000 and up and MRIs start at $500,000 and up.

    If you were producing MRIs for 128 Million households, MRIs would cost $15,000-$20,000 each because now you have economy of scale and you're producing MRIs on an assembly-line instead of by hand or with a team of 2-4 people and you're no longer making them on-demand.

    There are implications from that because medical technology is obsolete within 3-5 years.

    A hospital is not going to spend $500,000 only to have the 2nd generation come out 3 years later and the 3rd generation 2 years after that.

    Instead, hospitals lease MRIs from a supplier/wholesaler because leases are expenses and not assets.

    So you buy 20 MRIs to lease to local hospitals.

    You $10 Million in cash laying around? Nope.

    You gotta borrow from the bank, except the bank isn't gonna give you a 30-year loan knowing those MRIs will be 3-4 generations obsolete within 10 years.

    You'll have to get a 1, 2, 3 or 5 year loan. What do you do with your obsolete MRIs? You dump them on 2nd/3rd/4th World States like Romania, South Africa, Egypt, India, Venezuela, Thailand and such for whatever you can get.

    You have to lease those MRIs at a price that will:

    1) Cover the cost of the MRI
    2) Cover the cost of loan servicing
    3) Cover your operating expenses
    4) Give you a profit

    That affects the prices hospitals charge, because hospitals can run MRIs or PETs or CT scanners or any other technology 24/7.

    Why? Because there's an artificial labor shortage.

    Why? Because hospitals are monopolies.

    In a Free Market System, 50% of the 5,234 hospitals would be closed within a year.

    Would Americans suffer? Nope, because Americans would get better healthcare for less cost.

    A typical American hospital offers Allergy, Anesthesia, Bariatric Medicine/Surgery, Burn/Trauma, Cardiac Catheterization, Cardiology, Cardiovascular Surgery, Colorectal Surgery, Dermatology, Electrophysiology, Emergency Medicine, Endocrinology, Family Practice, Geriatrics, Gynecologic Oncology, Hematology/Oncology, Hepatobiliary, Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, Interventional Radiology, Neonatology, Nephrology, Neuroradiology, Neurology, Neurosurgery, Nuclear Medicine, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Occupational Medicine, Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery, Palliative Care, Pathology, Pediatrics, Pediatric Surgery, Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Podiatric Surgery, Psychiatry, Pulmonary Medicine, Radiation Oncology, Radiology, Rheumatology, Surgical Oncology, Thoracic Surgery, Transplant Surgery, Wound Care, ENT, General Surgery, Gastroenterology, Oral/Dental Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery, Pain Management, Urology and Vascular Surgery to name but a few.

    There are no hospitals in Europe that look like that.

    A typical Euro-State would take Cardiac Catheterization, Cardiology, Cardiovascular Surgery, and Pulmonary Medicine and group them together to create a Polyclinic.

    They would take Gynecologic Oncology, Hematology/Oncology, Radiation Oncology, and Surgical Oncology and group them together to create a Polyclinic.

    They would take Neonatology and Obstetrics & Gynecology and create a Clinic

    They would take Pain Management, Wound Care and Palliative Care and create a Clinic. Would such a Clinic need an MRI? Nope and for the same reason it wouldn't need PET or CT scanners, or nuclear medicine or a NICU (Natal Intensive Care Unit) or a Level I Trauma Center.

    Healthcare in America is like paying for an extra-large pizza with everything on it and getting only a small cheese pizza.

    And the American Hospital Association and Physicians for Nazi Healthcare is the reason why and you can't be like Euro-States because when they wrote Obamacare, they included Sections 6000, 6001, and 6002 to ban clinics and polyclinics which is what Euro-States use to save money.

    You healthcare system is the Feudal Economic System. The AHA are the greater nobles, hospitals are castles, and doctors are the lesser noble vassals.

    The Feudal System was a dismal economic failure, so why would it possibly work for a healthcare system?

    In a single-payer system in America, no one saves money.

    All it would do is spread the pain around, and even that wouldn't be so bad except it creates even more pain.

    Only the States have the power to move healthcare from the monopoly/cartel system to the Free Market System.

    Free Market is not about calling hospitals whilst having a heart attack to see which one is cheaper, it's about the efficient use of resources.

    Monopolies are inefficient and Americans are paying the difference between the cost of monopoly and the cost of Free Market care.

    Quite right.
     
  2. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'd be really curious if they could do a assessment trying to estimate how much new regulations (within the last 20 years) have increased the cost of healthcare.
     
  3. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    New technology is a big one. Medical care is getting better all the time, with new procedures and new or better technology. But this costs money.

    We could of course provide much cheaper care if we provided the same type of medical care that they do in Third World countries. But then they would worry about lawsuits for "substandard" care. When you have one hospital, there's a tendency for everyone to get the same level of care. It's hard to tailor quality for two different price ranges.
     
  4. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure if the GAO has attempted to do it, but it has been done by others showing how it increases the cost of health plan coverage.

    If the 50 States permitted Free Market health plan coverage instead of Soviet-style Command Market coverage, then health plans would be affordable for all Americans.

    The States could define catastrophic coverage as any disease (something external to the body like virus, bacteria, chemical agents etc), illness (something internal to the body like diabetes mellitus, fibromyalgia etc) or injury that impairs mobility or prevents one from being gainfully employed.

    And the States could allow people to purchase ER coverage only, in increments of $50,000 from $50,000 to whatever amount insurance companies are willing to insure per year.

    If you did that, then health plan coverage would be affordable for everyone.

    Hell, even a homeless person could panhandle $3.68 to buy $50,000 worth of ER coverage. They slip and fall on ice, they go do the ER get x-rays and a cast no problem.

    State insurance regulations enacted at the behest of the American Hospital Association is why Americans can't afford health plan coverage and an example of how regulations increase prices.

    If you're in your 50s, do you and your spouse need birth-control coverage? Pregnancy/maternity coverage? Neo-natal coverage? Well-baby coverage? Pediatric coverage?

    No, you don't, but your State forces you to buy whether you need it or want it or not.

    That coverage is not free and it drives up the price of your health plan coverage by $10s to $100s of dollars per month.

    People are forced to pay for doctor office visits whether they want to or not, and the majority of people can't even take advantage of it.

    If you don't meet the deductible, you end up paying out of pocket. So, you're paying an extra $120 to $160 a month for something you can't even use.

    Same with prescription drug coverage. You're forced to buy it whether you want it or not.

    The community rating scheme is the other Soviet-style Command Market scheme that drives up the cost of health plan coverage.

    Initially, there were only two health insurance companies, the AHA's Blue Cross and the AMA's Blue Shield. After the 1949 In re: Inland Steel Supreme Court decision, insurance companies realized employer-based health insurance wasn't a fad and was here to stay, because the Supreme Court said so. They jumped in head first.

    The Blue Cross and Blue Shield were barred by law from selling life insurance, but the real insurance companies weren't so they coupled life insurance with catastrophic health insurance.

    The two options available were:

    Option #1
    1) pay monthly premiums for 10 years
    2) never pay another penny until the day you died
    3) you and your spouse (and minor children) were covered until the day you die
    4) when you die, whatever you didn't use goes to your named beneficiaries

    Option #2
    1) pay monthly premiums until the day you die
    2) when you die, you get nothing

    Which option do you think American workers wanted?

    Yeah, Option #1. A $100,000 policy in 1950 would be equivalent to $1 Million today.


    Suppose you used $250,000 in healthcare. That means you have $750,000 to leave to your spouse, children and grand-children and they could use that money to pay for college, technical school, vocational training, start a business, make a down-payment on a house or buy a house out-right.

    Because no one was stupid enough to want to pay premiums until the day they die and get nothing in return, the Blue Cross lost almost 80% of its market share within 2 years.

    The AHA ran to Congress and lobbied for a change in the tax code, which they got in 1954:

    "Premiums paid by an employer on policies of group life insurance without cash surrender value covering the lives of his employees, or on policies of group health or accident insurance...do not constitute salary if such premiums are deductible by the employer under Section 23(a) of the IRS Code." See: Public Law 83-591, August 16, 1954; Internal Revenue Code of 1954, Section 106. For more information see the 1986 Internal Revenue Code.

    From that point on, health insurance no longer existed. What you have is fee-for-service under the community rating scheme.

    The 1986 IRS Tax Code is the operative tax code, so you'd want to repeal that section.

    Congress could withhold Medicaid funding from States who did not repeal the insurance regulations to allow Americans to buy health plan coverage a la carte like they do for home-owner's insurance, renter's insurance, auto insurance, business insurance etc etc.

    Once you did that, we're back to paying premiums for 10 years, never paying another penny for the rest of your life and the chance to create generational wealth and pass it on.

    For the Middle Middle Class, Lower Middle Class, Lower Class and Working Class Poor, that would be a boost up and alleviate a lot of economic and social problems in the US.

    And if the premiums for 10 years are too steep, you pay a lesser amount for 20 years or an even lower amount for 30 years (that's how it was prior to 1954.)

    Just think of the lower classes of Whites and Blacks and even the Spanish-speaking Native Americans who get more love than the English-speaking Native Americans who can die in peace knowing their children and grand-children have a chance to be better-off.

    Unfortunately, Liberals prevent us from helping those who need help the most.
     
  5. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    But universal care is not the answer.

    In 2019, Germany spent €403,444,000,000 on healthcare for 85 Million people.

    €403,444,000,000 is $455,891,720,000 for 85 Million people.

    That's $5,363.43 per person or $1,769,932,560,000 or a price tag of $1.8 TRILLION in the us.

    Of course, that assumes the US will do what is necessary to become like Germany and that means getting rid of hospitals.

    Right?

    Polyclinics—clusters of general practitioners who work together to form more specialized primary care centers—were used extensively and quite successfully in the former German Democratic Republic. However, many politicians in West Germany initially disliked the idea of polyclinics because they associated them with communist ideology. It took a while for many people to understand that polyclinics offer significant advantages with regard to communication, coordination, and cooperation.
    See: How Germany is reining in health care costs: An interview with Franz Knieps pp 30-31.

    Clinics and Polyclinics. Yes, Germans still call them "hospitals" for the same reason I refer to Ohio State Route 264 instead of calling it Bridgetown Road. Growing up, it was 264. It became Bridgetown Road as of late. I'm not the only one who keeps calling it "264" just like there's a lot of people who still refer to Rossville even though it was annexed by the city of Hamilton in the mid-1960s and no longer exists.

    The Germans (and Euro-States) group medical specialties by function.

    To understand how that creates tremendous cost-savings, consider the impact of technology.

    The Cincinnati Metropolitan Statistical Area is 11 counties with a total population of 3 Million. There are 17 hospitals and 15 hospitals offer open-heart surgery.

    By contrast, Berlin, Germany has a population of 8 Million and there are only 3 cardio-pulmonary clinics.

    That's why it only costs Germany $5,363.43 per person.

    You see, monopoly results in redundancy and redundancy is expensive and increases costs, and even more so because medical technology is expensive due to the lack of economy of scale.

    You don't need 15 hospitals offering open-heart surgery for a population of 3 Million. You only need 2, maybe 3 at most.

    The cost to lease the technology for open-heart surgery, the cost to maintain, service, staff and operate it is expensive and in this instance, redundant and that is what bloats the cost of medical care in the US.

    Won't those people lose their jobs? Yeah, so what?

    My function on this Earth is not to bleed through the eyeballs paying for over-priced medical care so people can have jobs.

    Besides, they won't lose their jobs.

    Hasn't there been a perennial shortage of nurses for the last 3 decades?

    Yeah, well, monopoly creates artificial shortages because resources are improperly utilized.

    Those nurses would just work somewhere else, and under better conditions, because nurses complain about 12-hour shifts and being over-worked blah, blah, blah (and that was before STUPID-19) so nurses would be working 8-hour shifts under better conditions and getting time off and still being paid good money.

    It's like imaging centers. There's no need for hospitals to have dozens of diagnostic imaging systems that are improperly utilized.

    You can have your MRI, or PET/CT Scan done at an imaging center for far less than what hospitals charge.

    Here in Ohio, hospitals wouldn't accept imaging results from "outside sources" and forced people to pay 10x more than what the Free Market says they should be paying to have the imaging done in their hospitals and Ohioans rebelled. The AHA reared its ugly head and tried to block the legislation, but Ohioans won and that was a major victory in healthcare.
     
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  6. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The case of a 27-year-old woman, who died a day after being diagnosed with cervical cancer and after claiming she wasn't listened to by doctors, has been described as "shocking and traumatic" by a coroner.

    Porsche McGregor-Sims, an events manager from the U.K. city of Portsmouth, died at Queen Alexandra Hospital on April 14, 2020, a day after being diagnosed with stage 4 cervical cancer, Hampshire Live reported. Prior to her diagnosis she had suffered from abdominal pain and bleeding for 15 months.

    Woman, 27, Dies of Cancer a Day After Diagnosis: 'Shocking and Traumatic' (newsweek.com)
     

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