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Not really surprising. Health care keeps getting better and better and there is an obscenely expensive cure for anything that bothers you. People live longer and longer using more and more expensive health care. It's a vicious cycle.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2FdHek...by-2033-study/
The cost of health care will surpass the price of a median income household in the United States by 2033 if current trends continue, according to a study published in the March/April issue of Annals of Family Medicine.
Researchers ac ulated data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to compare Americans’ incomes and the premiums they’ve paid from 2000 to 2009. The cost of premiums rose by eight percent over that time period compared to just two percent of incomes.
If those trends continue, the average cost of a family premium will be half the income of a median household family, which was $49,800 in 2009, in 2021. Premium costs would exceed the median family’s income by 2033 if trends remain unchanged.
The study’s co-author Dr. Richard Young mentioned 2010 Affordable Care Act slowing the rise of cost and families spending less on health care because of the recession as slowing the trend. However, neither would have a significant impact on stopping the rise of premium costs.
“Even under optimal assumptions about how much the Affordable Care Act will affect the cost of health care, it’s still growing faster than the overall economy, meaning the cost of health related to everything else in the economy is getting worse and worse,” Young said, who is a director of research at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. “If you look at what is being paid by employers for their employees, for an average-wage person, that cost is a huge percentage of their income. And that’s not even getting into the cost of Medicare and Medicaid on the tax side.”
~~What the !!? This is not good...not surprising though.
Not really surprising. Health care keeps getting better and better and there is an obscenely expensive cure for anything that bothers you. People live longer and longer using more and more expensive health care. It's a vicious cycle.
RG was saying that we would save money under obamacare. It would cost less.
How many of these countries with low cost universal healthcare have come up with any new innovative healthcare machines, cures or medicines?
Israel and Germany come to mind.
How many countries with low cost health care have as much money awarded in lawsuits as the USA I wonder.
Indeed.
Repeal it, and the target date would come sooner. Nothing here seems to be changing that.
You do understand the OP simply points out the depth of the problem we are facing, right?
The free market method of rationing scarce goods, i.e. price means that at some point, more than half the population will be unable to afford health insurance.
You do understand our current cost shifting structure, right?
Debunked. Sorry Cosmored. Saying it over and over doesnt' make it a primary cost driver the 99th time. A component, but certainly not a primary driver, as much as you seem to wish it was.
http://www.kaiseredu.org/Issue-Modul...und-Brief.aspx
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BigPharma charges Human-Americans 50% more than it charges "single buyer" countries.
The Repugs' rule that govt cannot negotiate as single buy is a key reason, along with Part D and subsidized "for profit" Medicare Advantage (12% more costly than govt Medicare), for "uncontrolled" health expenditure.
iow, the healthcare deficit is due very much to Repug POLICY DECISIONS, just like the sub-prime bubble was.
Were you to read European newspapers, or magazines, you would probably be more familiar with what goes on, I would imagine.
Here is a place to start.
http://mtbeurope.info/news/2012/1203014.htm
Here is another:
Skin Factory: A Stuttgart Lab's Pioneering Effort to Cultivate Human Flesh
Technological Breakthrough: New Scanner Could Revolutionize Cancer DiagnosisSPIEGEL Online International - 15.04.2011
Ever since American scientists grafted ear-shaped cartilage onto a mouse, Heike Walles has dreamed of cultivating human flesh -- and transforming the world of medicine. Though her lab has finally succeeded, EU laws are delaying the introduction of synthetic skin into clinical practice.
SPIEGEL Online International - 21.01.2011
Scientists in Germany have developed an innovative new scanner that could revolutionize cancer diagnosis. The technology carries out two different types of scans at the same time, making an examination quicker and exposing patients to less radiation. But whether the new device will ever be cost-effective is still an open question.http://www.france24.com/en/20110724-...isease-phobiasThis week we head to the Cité des Sciences in Paris, Europe’s largest showcase of science that will shape our future.
First we look at how mobile phones are being used to fight malaria. Researchers in Israel are adapting the technology inside a cell phone to enable it to detect the mosquito-borne disease quickly and easily.
Next, we explore how virtual worlds can be used to treat patients with all types of phobias.
And finally, we head to Switzerland where a mini-robot has been built to perform a minor operation inside the eye.
Do you actualy read European news?
or did you just pull this out of your preferred ideological narrative?
More importantly, does the fact that innovation happens in these health systems support your belief that socialistic countries can't be innovative?
America's gouging doctors have pushed up their prices so high (with help from the AMA that restricts places in medical schools to keep doctor supply down) that foreign doctors come to USA chasing health care riches.
America Is Stealing the World’s Doctors
In a globalized economy, the countries that pay the most and offer the greatest chance for advancement tend to get the top talent. South America’s best soccer players generally migrate to Europe, where the salaries are high and the tournaments are glitzier than those in Brazil or Argentina. Many top high-tech workers from India and China move to the United States to work for American companies. And the United States, with its high salaries and technological innovation, is also the world’s most powerful magnet for doctors, attracting more every year than Britain, Canada and Australia — the next most popular destinations for migrating doctors — combined.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/ma...d=1&ref=health
USA has one of the worst health systems in the world.
no, not the quality of medicine/doctors. Just the overpricing, ripping off of customers, drug monopolies and bureaocracy make it a pretty ty system overall.
Very relevant data there.
Also, as Bouton's graph above illustrates, the VAST majority of healthcare dollars spent are spent an ACTUAL care. So, the thread le should be cost of "Healthcare", not "Premiums". Premiums are a reflection of the cost of the product/service they insure.
Also, RG, any healthy market function/dynamic has been long since removed from our healthcare system. There is so little (relative) out of pocket expense for services, that people don't even attempt to be motivated by what the provider's of service charge. If my copay is $20 for a doctor's visit; and doctor A charges $225, while doctor B charges $85 - I'm going to pick the doctor I like best; I will not be influenced by the cost; if I had a copay for a car, after all; s yes I would drive a Ferrari!
So, IMO, the choices to start getting costs under control are either: Price controls for services (likely), OR figuring out a way so that people are spending THEIR OWN money on healthcare, and not routing it first through a third party payor (govt. or insurance co.) - damn near impossible at this point.
Wtf? I didn't reply.
Last edited by Drachen; 03-14-2012 at 11:05 AM.
"damn near impossible at this point"
"Messieurs, Mesdames", don't bother to "faites vos jeux" because the game is irretrievably rigged to suck $Ts out of Human-Americans pockets, forever. Any solutions are pure fantasy, other than "death panelling" Americans by forcing them into poverty if they try to get care (make them pay) or bypassing care. THAT's about the only was to "reduce (govt) costs". The health-care system certainly won't EVER reduce its prices.
btw, for innovations, it was the French who figured out how to make the training and learning curve for the laparoscopic surgery much simpler. Their techniques have been adopted by US docs.
Copays industry-wide are rising, as are other out of pocket costs, at rates faster than inflation. That is the only thing keeping premiums from skyrocketing.
I know I have personally seen this.
We aren't going to get costs under control until the supply of doctors starts rising relative to demand.
That does not look to happen, which is why we are importing doctors, as already noted.
Demand is rising, and general prac ioner supply is falling.
Hasn't the VA been doing price controls for a while now without the world ending or the vets getting more than adequate healthcare?
I completely agree with your assessment of the cost situation though. Nothing was addressed on Obamacare with regards to that.
Regardless of the actual copay charge; the fact that the copay IS (and that once paid, a patient is an open checkbook for a doctor) is the problem.
What is having the most positive (as in good) affect on premiums right now, IMO, are HRA's and HSA's (with their corresponding high deductible health plans). Our clients who are going that route (who don't offer a traditional plan that just begets adverse selection against both) - are seeing the most cost control success. Unfortunately, it appears Obamacare may end High Deductible Health Plans (year to year it will be tough, if not impossible, to meet the "80%" rule of premium dollars being spent healthcare by the insurance company).
Yes; but that is a relatively small subset of docs. Medicare does the same thing, to an extent. However, to truly control costs, schemes such as in Germany or Japan will have to be the rule of thumb. In those countries, doctors don't enjoy the automatic ascension to upper-middle, and truly upper classes our docs get.
, allow an RN's with a couple of extra certifications to write Rx's, and see patients, and you could control costs rapidly! Docs not gonna let that happen. We've damn near deified them in this country - most people, certainly including the docs themselves, see doctors as a superior person "my daughters dating a DOCTOR!" "We have a DOCTOR in the family!" etc...etc...
Aren't we already doing this? Nurse prac ioner, right? I know they exist because there's one on staff at my kid's ped clinic.
Just a Texas thing maybe?
Yes, this already happens. I have literally never seen the doctor at my doctor's office (not that I go that often). It has been the NP all 3 times I have gone.
Nursing schools are VERY backed up right now though (in the area of a 2 year wait), so making more NPs is a bit difficult.
No my wife is a NP and she has been able to write prescriptions in the 4 states we have lived in, Texas being the current.
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