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joelfaguilar says

Plumpness, and with it diabetes, are the only main health difficulties that are getting worse in America, and they're getting worse rapidly," Dr. Thomas R. Frieden. That is why health insurance are too expensive.

Not that's a detailed analysis of the ill effects of HCFS in everything from A to Z that Americans consume in their diet. And to insure an endless supply our government subsidizes. God forbid, the Government forbid such poison in our "shelf life" food supply.

Insurance is expensive because they can get away with making an administrative nightmare, and a highly profit investment vehicle that profits dictate the costs rising across the board.

Healthcare is expensive in this country because there's more entities that want a slice of the healthcare dollar than there are healthcare professionals, delivering the actual care.

But it's still always fun to poke at Lard Ass and blame him though. Less the fat fuck jumps on a plane, then hilarity will ensue.

Healthcare is so expensive in USA because it has middle-man called insurance companies which are not in any of the other industrialized countries. They all have single payer system and spend roughly half the amounts USA spends, as a country as well as single persons. They cover 100% of their citizens, 100% of time from birth to death for 100% of illnesses AT HALF USA COSTS.

How would you "prove" this to someone who doesn't believe you? On what grounds do Republicans want repeal, if they don't even know what's broken?

It has many causes.

1. Pharmaceutical industry (compare what they charge for same drugs in Canada)
2. MedSchool cartel (why don't they allow medical schools like law schools?)
3. AMA
4. Middlemen (Insurance industry)
5. Regulations and/or laws that let people abuse the system
6. Lack of safetynets
7. Attitudes: just because I have health insurance, I should get MRI for every other problem. After all, it is paid by someone else.
8. Campaign contributions by leeches

Key points about healthcare (from Mish)

* "Health care" (HC) spending is now 17% of GDP and an equivalent of 50% of private wages and of total government spending, growing at twice the rate of GDP since '00.
* 50% of HC spending is on the sickest 5%.
* 20% is spend on end-of-life services for elders.
* Private HC and total government spending is an equivalent of 100% of public and private wages.
* HC and war spending make up and equivalent of 25% of GDP.
* Out-of-pocket HC costs are now the primary cause of personal bankruptcy.
* HC in the US is unaffordable for most people were they to have to pay for it themselves.
* "The market" is "rationing" care for at least 50 million uninsured people and would for most elders were they to have to bear more of the true costs of their late-life care.

* 50% of HC spending is on the sickest 5%.
* 20% is spend on end-of-life services for elders.

Here's what's left once you filter out the noise. All the other shit we gripe about, is just rearanging decks on the Titanic chair. Regardless of how modern accounting dices it, this is the real issue at hand. As long as we as a society, continue to collectively fight The War on Evolution, its going to come with a big price tag. Humans have been so thoroughly hoodwinked by data, that somehow society came to the lone metric to guage quality of life, is in longevity. Hopefully, when I'm older, they'll have firgured out to lock me in a prison cell, and hook me up to a nutrient tube pumping my broken body full of fuel so I can live to 110. Forcing the younger generations to pay 40% of their wages for our "health" "insurance"

Usually, one buys insurance as risk mitigation in the event one would incur liability. Now, we pay the mob their rent, so that "we're not stepping over dead bodies in the streets" like the fear mongers bill their ppaca boonswoggle

errc says

* 50% of HC spending is on the sickest 5%.
* 20% is spend on end-of-life services for elders.

Here's what's left once you filter out the noise. All the other shit we gripe about, is just rearanging decks on the Titanic chair. Regardless of how modern accounting dices it, this is the real issue at hand. As long as we as a society, continue to collectively fight The War on Evolution, its going to come with a big price tag. Humans have been so thoroughly hoodwinked by data, that somehow society came to the lone metric to guage quality of life, is in longevity. Hopefully, when I'm older, they'll have firgured out to lock me in a prison cell, and hook me up to a nutrient tube pumping my broken body full of fuel so I can live to 110. Forcing the younger generations to pay 40% of their wages for our "health" "insurance"

That's very true. India never had a universal healthcare. Even the private health insurance there is a recent phenomenon due to 'growing' middle class jobs, which provide health insurance. The latter has brought a new healthinsurance industry. Anyway, this whole market caters for less than 3 percent of population there.

If you look at the remaining 97 percent, they have two choices: (a) get a crappy care from a government hospital; (b) pay from your own pocket. Now lets look at the doctors that serve those who pay from their own pockets. Note that these people who pay from their own pocket are a way poorer than those IT workers, new call center workers, whose companies provide some health insurance policy. If Mr X takes his dad to some clinic in some town, if the doctor knows that it is a terminal disease or a disease that makes him bankrupt, the doctor tells the patient's family to take the patient home and give him some morphine and oxygen. It's over.

Why extend life for a month or two? Why make poor people borrow more money to buy some expensive drug that extends the life for another 6 months? Sure, today's terminal illness is tomorrow's curable illness. But I can't live for 1000 years so that a cure can be found!!

In the states, individualism trumpets everything else. If that's the case, why demand others to pay or why increase the cost for others healthinsurance, so that a Tom can extend his life for 6 months or a Dick can have MRI for every minor issue because he bought a policy!

The demands of so-called individualism perverts the society as a whole.

"We're the government and we're here to help"

So its illegal to pull the plug on oneself (no freedom to die), and now you're forced to fork over a kings ransom to garauntee that when you come close to death, we promise to drag it out as long and as sufferable as you could imagine (torture)

The only means to discriminate against a insuree are gender and age. Well, there's smoking too. What a crock that is, we subsidize the high hell out of sugars, the entire population is perpetually hopped up and dependent on the sugars, it causes uncountable rise to public health expenditures, yet we wag our fingers at the smokers. They pay the sin tax

Energy economics works the same with how we fuel our bodies and how we fuel our economy. Sugar and petroleum. They are the cheapest and easiest means of energy, and we abuse the fuck out of them, telling ourselves how cheap of an energy source they are. Yet the true costs are astounding.

We dump sugar by the pound in our gas tank, then we scratch our heads bloody everytime the mechanic hands us the bill telling us we have to replace the motor.

EInvestor says

Healthcare is so expensive in USA because it has middle-man called insurance companies which are not in any of the other industrialized countries. They all have single payer system and spend roughly half the amounts USA spends, as a country as well as single persons. They cover 100% of their citizens, 100% of time from birth to death for 100% of illnesses AT HALF USA COSTS.

For example?

errc says

As long as we as a society, continue to collectively fight The War on Evolution, its going to come with a big price tag.

A CAT scan in Tampa is 8-10x (~$2000) more expensive than one in Japan (~$250).

The one in Japan often comes with a Spa experience before and after for the patient: Massage, Tea, etc. at that price. Japanese doctors routinely order MRIs and CATs, much more often than US doctors do. In fact, in Japan most people over 50 have one or more every year. It's used to diagnose and detect a wide variety of problems there.

It makes no sense that if CAT scans are being ordered all the time, that CAT scans should be expensive.

It's not insurance or law suits, either. Most medical facilities pay less than 5% of their gross towards these things. Nor is it pay; in fact technicians in Japan make more than their US counterparts.

I wonder if anybody has explored the relationship between testing facilities and insurance companies. Or kickbacks and expensive financing. Somebody postulated it's because US facilities constantly churn over machines with needless upgrades, whereas the Japanese maintain their equipment and keep it functioning for decades.

Yeah they are so perfect, while fukushima meltdown happened, they denied it.
They aren't so perfect.

KILLERJANE says

while fukushima meltdown happened, they denied it. They aren't so perfect.

Japan's just an example, you can get MRIs (zero radiation vs a CAT scan) done in Thailand within $250, along with a slew of other nations.

Plus, I think the meltdown had a lot to due with GE technologies.

The intrinsic costs of imaging isn't as high as depicted by our medical facilities.