re: U.S. ranks last in quality of health care system

quote:

---

Obama is gonna fix it. He fixes everything.

---

It's amazing how President Obama can just reach in and "fix things". It's almost kingly.

There is one simple reason why the healthcare industry is screwed: greed.

I like capitalism. Love it even. I'm a professional with my own office and a nice home right outside the nation's capital. Capitalism has been great to me. However, it has screwed us all in health care.

The first reason its screwed us is the insurance industry. Trust me when I say that there is not a more evil industry in the country than insurance. I've linked below an article from 2009. You can google insurance industry record profits and find hundreds more. I googled this one because it provides a little more data during the middle of the recession. 2009 Insurance Profits

Look at the profits, pure profits, of those health insurers during the recession. Think about how many businesses fell on tough times and how many folks went unemployed. Then realize that most of the big health insurers are profiting to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter. Not per year. Per quarter.

Seems strange right? At the exact time that everyone is struggling, they are making huge profits. Not only are they making huge profits, but they're increasing their premiums as shown in the article to make even larger profits.

And the numbers are even more strange when you think about it. How can United Health Group profit to the tune of $859 million in one single, solitary quarter? This is a nation of 300 million people. That means if every single person had them as health insurance, they would have had to profit almost $3 million dollars off every single one in the quarter. Well of course that doesn't add up. Nobody pays 3 million dollar health premiums.

The reason they're so profitable is because insurance companies don't really care about your little premium. What they care about is aggregating those premiums into investment vehicles. These investment vehicles take time to mature and to become profitable. This is why insurance companies hold onto as much money as they can. This is why they delay claims. This is why they deny valid claims. They don't give a damn about you or processing your claim. They don't care if some claim rep they pay a low hourly rate to has to listen to you complain on the phone. They need to make $500 million dollars this quarter or bust!

It isn't just a health insurance issue either, it's the same with auto and life and so on. Those insurance companies have almost no risk. The only risk they have is if they put too much of their war chest money in the same investments and they go bad. See AIG bailout. These companies have no risk because they are intertwined in everything. You can't legally drive a car in most states without paying them the privilege to insure it. You can't operate a business of any size and expect employees without health insurance coverage. Nobody can afford to go to a doctor without coverage. You can't avoid insurance companies. There is no way to and they know that.

I'll stop there as I need to get back to work, but that's the first big problem. I don't like Obama or Obamacare, but the idea that health insurers need to be regulated is true. You cannot trust a large corporation to regulate themselves. They won't do it. If we continue to give the insurance companies free reign to charge what they want and name their own profit, we're all screwed.

quote:

---

so doctors and CEOs can make exceeding multiples over what they did even 30 years ago.

---

CEO's make more now, but most doctors have taken a cut over the last 30 years.

I'm a doctor and my specialty makes less than what we made in the 1980's

I am curious - what do you think is fair compensation for physicians? Don't forget to think about training and education, risk encountered daily - not just malpractice but also personal risk of injury, making life/death decision, 60 hr/wk, and the delay of almost a decade of financial stability during school/residency in which your investment likely already doubled.

quote:

---

Nothing wrong with enjoying fruits of your labor. but I just don't buy it when some of whine about not getting paid enough.

---

So how much is fair? What do you think market value for a physician's labor and expertise should be? I know plumbers that make more per hour than physicians.

Light reading for those who care

LINK

LINK

quote:

---

But U.S. GP's are the highest paid in the world

---

It would be interesting to see a unit of work-load in that metric. Could the difference be that US GPs get paid more because they work more hours or see more patients? You can manipulate numbers to fit any agenda.

quote:

---

This topic comes up all of the time on Reddit. One overwhelming theme from the non-Americans in the discussion is that this myth about wait times is overblown. They say that, sure, you're risk-evaluated upon entry (meaning that if you're having a heart attack you go to the beginning of the line).

If your a low risk person you'll wait longer than a high risk person. Is that not reasonable? If you're willing to pay money out of pocket you still can...and not have to worry about waiting that long. But if you're content with free/mostly free care, you just have to (potentially) put up with the wait.

---

So you have another two tier health system there where those who are well-off get better care.

Their expectations are different. That's why they don't see waiting as a big deal.

LINK

LINK

LINK

LINK

And another thing, people's priorities are incredibly fricked up. They drive to the hospital in their escalade with their iphone and ipad and their louis viton bag and bitch about their $50 copay to be seen by their cardiologist and have their stress test done.