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Max Baucus (D) Says He Fears Obamacare Is Headed For 'Huge Train Wreck'
- Thread starter mrplunkey
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gjohnson5
New member
To Jnevin and SD , IMHO you both are wrong
SOme information below
Healthcare Costs Soar Above Overall Inflation
John Commins, for HealthLeaders Media, October 22, 2010
The average, per capita cost of providing healthcare services in the United States rose by 7.32% for the past 12 months ending in August, a rate of inflation wildly above the 1.1% overall inflation for the same period, according to new study by Standard & Poor's.
The new numbers are consistent with a trend that from August 2000 to August 2010 has seen healthcare inflation rise 48% while overall Consumer Price Index has risen 26% for the same period, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show.
"Given the last 10 years, no we are not surprised," Maureen Maitland, vice president of S&P Indices, says of the findings in the new report. "If you look at the public data that are out there and have been out there, the national health expenditure data, what we have seen is not only healthcare costs have basically risen over the last 10 years at a 7% rate. But the percentage of GDP has gone up dramatically too, because we are outpacing not only inflation but the rate of growth in GDP."
Clearly this is a national problem , not a state by state problem. The problem of health insurance (which are generally run by banks) costs and benkruptcies, and passing those costs off to consumers is not a state issue. It can't be contained in one state. It really doesn't matter how much people scream socialism. Public Emergency rooms are already federally funded. SD talk about food and transportation. Food stamp and welfare programs are already federally funded. The interstate system is already federally funded. Local infrastructure projects roads / bridges and levees are already federally funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment act.
You can scream socialism all day long , these expenses are already being funded federally either by taxes or by borrowing from another country.
SOme information below
Healthcare Costs Soar Above Overall Inflation
John Commins, for HealthLeaders Media, October 22, 2010
The average, per capita cost of providing healthcare services in the United States rose by 7.32% for the past 12 months ending in August, a rate of inflation wildly above the 1.1% overall inflation for the same period, according to new study by Standard & Poor's.
The new numbers are consistent with a trend that from August 2000 to August 2010 has seen healthcare inflation rise 48% while overall Consumer Price Index has risen 26% for the same period, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show.
"Given the last 10 years, no we are not surprised," Maureen Maitland, vice president of S&P Indices, says of the findings in the new report. "If you look at the public data that are out there and have been out there, the national health expenditure data, what we have seen is not only healthcare costs have basically risen over the last 10 years at a 7% rate. But the percentage of GDP has gone up dramatically too, because we are outpacing not only inflation but the rate of growth in GDP."
Clearly this is a national problem , not a state by state problem. The problem of health insurance (which are generally run by banks) costs and benkruptcies, and passing those costs off to consumers is not a state issue. It can't be contained in one state. It really doesn't matter how much people scream socialism. Public Emergency rooms are already federally funded. SD talk about food and transportation. Food stamp and welfare programs are already federally funded. The interstate system is already federally funded. Local infrastructure projects roads / bridges and levees are already federally funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment act.
You can scream socialism all day long , these expenses are already being funded federally either by taxes or by borrowing from another country.
gjohnson5
New member
We have a huge hole to dig ourselves out of. But IMHO it makes no sense to cut federal funds from those projects and let state budgets handle problem they simply aren't equipped to handle. If healthcare costs have outpaced both the GDP and inflation , how is a state budget going to handle emergency room and critical care costs by itself? Don't think they can and doing so would create a larger disaster then what we have now. Better accounting and more frugal expenditures are needed. Complete elimination of federal programs simply because some people hate the word "socialism" makes no sense
Pipe dream my friend. No government body or politician has incentive to conduct proper accounting and reign in expenditures because they are the "only game in town". Thats why we have 16T debt and havent balanced the budget since the 1990's. Besides, there are votes to be had and elections to be won. And you dont win elections by telling everyone what you arent going to do, which always involves spending. Thats also why Obamacare is conveniently taking effect *after* the 2012 elections. How to pay for it? Nobody knows, nobody cares, just give it to us. Bank bailouts, too big to fail, bloated foodstamp rolls, everything subsidized, blah blah
Elections to be won, votes to be had.
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mrplunkey
New member
It blows me away how Americans don't understand simple math.
Most hospitals operate on a -1% to 1% operating margin. Let's just call it zero (Tennessee is at -1% right now).
20% of their customers are no-pay/self-pay = 0% cost recovery / 100% loss
40% of their customers are Medicare = 90% cost recovery / 10% loss
They make-up the difference with their private pay insurers. So to get them back to even:
40% x ? = 100*20% + 10%*40%
? = 50%
So they have to get a 50% margin (not mark up... margin) on their cost to cover the no-pays and the Medicare short-pays. Private insurance is their premium customer.
Medicare is going bankrupt even with hundreds of billions of dollars a year in subsidies coming from the private sector -- let alone the taxes that employees and employers pay into the system.
Cliffs Notes: Nationalization would fix US health care about as well as bombing Canada would fix the war in Afghanistan.
Most hospitals operate on a -1% to 1% operating margin. Let's just call it zero (Tennessee is at -1% right now).
20% of their customers are no-pay/self-pay = 0% cost recovery / 100% loss
40% of their customers are Medicare = 90% cost recovery / 10% loss
They make-up the difference with their private pay insurers. So to get them back to even:
40% x ? = 100*20% + 10%*40%
? = 50%
So they have to get a 50% margin (not mark up... margin) on their cost to cover the no-pays and the Medicare short-pays. Private insurance is their premium customer.
Medicare is going bankrupt even with hundreds of billions of dollars a year in subsidies coming from the private sector -- let alone the taxes that employees and employers pay into the system.
Cliffs Notes: Nationalization would fix US health care about as well as bombing Canada would fix the war in Afghanistan.
gjohnson5
New member
I will need a closer examination of your numbers and frankly the hospital margins don't itemize the issue. The emergency room expenses are not paid by medicaid , they are paid by Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, so we have another problem with your numbers.
Secondly private insurance is run by a pool. A group of people pay into a pool and when the pool doesn't pay for the expenses then premiums go up. Having said this , I don't see how it makes any difference if the the pool is private insurers or a national system. Same with individual plans, those who qualify for an individual plan have to justify their costs. If you admit that the private insurance pool has been covering most costs why not increase the size of the pool by putting those 20% who are 100% loss into the pool? Yes costs on the pool go up , but the more people in the pool , the less the increase will be
mrplunkey
New member
Medicaid is an entirely different train wreck.
And yes, making a nighmarishly mismanaged pool bigger (i.e. nationalizing health care) is the equivalent of bombing Canada to end the Afghan war.
mrplunkey
New member
And here's a tip:
Baucus is bitching about ObamaCare because his state (and the other frontier states)'s kickback is about to expire.
They got their Medicare wage index set artificially high for five years in return for supporting Obamacare. Now that it's about to expire, those swing senators are going to find problems with the legislation until they get it put back to its artificially high level.
Baucus is bitching about ObamaCare because his state (and the other frontier states)'s kickback is about to expire.
They got their Medicare wage index set artificially high for five years in return for supporting Obamacare. Now that it's about to expire, those swing senators are going to find problems with the legislation until they get it put back to its artificially high level.
jnevin
New member
I wasn't saying bullshit because healthcare expenses are on the rise, I was saying bullshit because you said it needs to be spread across the board. Fuck paying for some morbidly obese piece of shit diabetic's expenses, same with paying for smokers, etc. Why should their unhealthy lifestyles become my financial burden?
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