Two very good articles with health care cost info

[mnhtnbb]

I recently got into discussion with a friend (I thought she leaned Repub, but we'd never discussed
politics since most of our communications are e-mail about family, trips, life in general type stuff)
about health care reform so I went searching for some info to counteract her Faux news talking points.

She just doesn't want the government involved. The answer to that is that the government is more efficient in delivering health care. Not only is the overhead significantly less for Medicare compared to insurance company overhead, but a very interesting fact I found was the difference between administrative costs:

34% at for-profit hospitals,
24.5% for private, non-profit hospitals,
22.9% for public hospitals

in one study. The conclusion was that the rise of the for-profit hospital chains has contributed
to the rise in the cost of health care! Wow. You never hear the media discussing this.

That information is included in this very well documented article comparing health care systems in the U.S. and other countries.

http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S.%20HCweb.pdf


Another one of her talking points was about "frivolous and expensive" malpractice suits. ( This was one of
Bushie boy's favorites when he wanted to cap awards.)

Well, that's not where the money is:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that while tort reforms could lower malpractice-insurance premiums for physicians by as much as 25 to 30 percent, the overall savings to our health care system would be a minuscule one-half percent.

http://www.aarpmagazine.org/health/health_care_costs.html

I think Obama may have read this article, because here is the AARP conclusion:

Indeed, perhaps the most significant reason Americans are drowning in health care debt may shock you: Americans are getting far too much unnecessary care. Of our total $2.3 trillion health care bill last year, a whopping $500 billion to $700 billion was spent on treatments, tests, and hospitalizations that did nothing to improve our health. Even worse, new evidence suggests that too much health care may actually be killing us. According to estimates by Elliott Fisher, M.D., a noted Dartmouth researcher, unnecessary care leads to the deaths of as many as 30,000 Medicare recipients annually.

[mnhtnbb]

1. C'mon DU. The Freeps are unrec'ing this.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. K&R

what the heck!

[mnhtnbb]

5. Thanks. There is some great info in the U of Maine article, including

this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."

[Warpy]

4. Possibly not

It's too easy to hit the wrong button when it's early and your brain is on autopilot. I did that once yesterday.

[mnhtnbb]

6. LOL. Maybe I'm paranoid?

[ejpoeta]

3. hasselbeck was on this morning complaining about how the government has screwed up

medicaid and medicare and 'bankrupted' it. competition is good, but the government wants to force insurance companies to cover all this stuff. and then she said but they would only let you get one opinion!! shocker, there elizabeth... that's what your INSURANCE COMPANY does. well, maybe not YOUR insurance company.... but mine would. i guess. i don't know, i've never had an illenss that required a second opinion.

[mnhtnbb]

7. See, that is just nothing but Repub talking points. Lies, distortions, half truths.

[John Q. Citizen]

8. i would have to disagree with part of your 'facts" some people are getting too much care, while some

are getting too little care.

Since AARP is an insurance company, i always look at their stuff with skepticism. They are right that mal-practice accounts for a drop in the bucket over all, but did you know that 65% of all malpractice awards come from the same 5% of physicians? So what we have are serial mal practice doctors that the profession refuses to deal with and weed out. If they dealt with their bad eggs they could save a lot of money per physician for mal practice insurance.

That "fee for service" causes unnecessary care and drives up prices doesn't shock me. But what may shock you is that Canada has a fee for service system (just like we mostly do) and they spend half as much per capita as we do on health care and everyone is self insured by the province they live in. They also have better quality of care, live longer lower infant mortality rates, and a healthier population. And no one ever goes bankrupt from medical expenses.

Imagine if we were to self insure and cut out the middle men, and start moving away from fee-for-service?

AARP wouldn't like that though because then they wouldn't rake in the big bucks on the insurance they sell.

[mnhtnbb]

9. Here's another take on malpractice which might be of interest to you

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/opinion/12baker.html?_r=3

[John Q. Citizen]

10. Thanks, that article makes sense to me.

[ellenfl]

11. k&r eom

[mnhtnbb]

12. Shameless kick for the evening.

[omega minimo]

13. Rec +8 Thank you