Oh, My. The Republicunts Will Be Outraged!

[Minimalist]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/.../30757669/

'Jaw-dropping': Medicare deaths, hospitalizations AND costs reduced

The U.S. health care system has scored a medical hat trick, reducing deaths, hospitalizations and costs, a new study shows.
Mortality rates among Medicare patients fell 16% from 1999 to 2013. That’s equal to more than 300,000 fewer deaths a year in 2013 than in 1999, said cardiologist Harlan Krumholz, lead author of a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine.
“It’s a jaw-dropping finding,” Krumholz said. “We didn’t expect to see such a remarkable improvement over time.”

Single-payer is the way to go.

[brewer]

Min, normally I agree with you but not this time. This has nothing to do with single payer. It discusses "fee for service" not the payer of the service. This is validating the improvement in healthcare service and healthcare trends.

[Minimalist]

Medicare has the purchasing power to impact prices.  It's all one system.  Left to its own devices for-profit medical system charges whatever it thinks it can get away with.  The insurance companies exercise some degree of control it's true.... but in far too many cases the costs they care about are their own.  The excess is passed along to customers in the form of rate hikes and co-pays.

Now sadly this is a discussion which is needed and which will not happen while the jesus freaks are running around loose, the amount of money pissed away on end-of-life care needs to be addressed.  And soon.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbell/...are-costs/

Why 5% of Patients Create 50% of Health Care Costs

This is when the discussions about courage and character by lawmakers, practitioners and patients moves front and center.  These patients tend to be newborns with serious issues and the elderly, who are often quite ill.  According to one study (Banarto, McClellan, Kagy and Garber, 2004), 30% of all Medicare expenditures are attributed to the 5% of beneficiaries that die each year, with 1/3 of that cost occurring in the last month of life.  I know there are other studies out there that say slightly different things, but the reality is simple: we spend an incredible amount of money on that last year and month.
Is it worth it?
The answer seems to be no.

[brewer]

Medicare reimbursement rates are not based on purchasing power. The rates are set by the federal government (google Medicare Reimbursement). The providers can either choose to participate in Medicare (and Medicaid) or not. The power (if you want to call it that) comes from the patient volume and guaranteed payment. Some providers are opting out because the reimbursement rate is to low and the regulations to many. Some are starting a "buying club" scenario. I heard it's happening in Phoenix and in other areas but have no direct evidence.

I agree that the US medical for profit costs are way out of line. They gouge the system every chance they get to inflate their profits. The US should probably consider instituting some form of a nonprofit medical system. That won't guarantee no gouging, there are always ways.

The vary nature of Medicare and Medicaid makes it subject to a higher amount of fraud and abuse (by both providers and consumers) than with private payers. The private payers have an incentive to stop the fraud and abuse it cuts into their profits. The same level incentive does not exist with federal payers, medical or otherwise they are not dependent on profits. If the country is moving toward single payer at the federal level it needs to step up monitoring for fraud. The estimated losses in 2011 were between 15 and 57 billion.

Medicare Fraud:

http://www.medicarenewsgroup.com/news/me...7cfba68367

[Minimalist]

The providers can either choose to participate in Medicare (and Medicaid) or not.

See out here in AZ  there are so many old farts that a provider who opted out of medicare would be defunct in no time.  Famed retirement community Sun City is ringed with medical offices and Medicare Advantage plans are all the rage.  I'm in one myself.  Before turning 65 I asked my doctor if his practice was in any of the plans and he just snorted and said "we're in all of them, don't worry about it - take your pick."

I agree that a few years ago there were "boutique doctors" who avoided all insurance/medicare/medicaid clients and tried to tend only to the rich and famous.  I heard about it from my brother in law who is an anesthesiologist and who briefly toyed with the idea but he couldn't make it work and I haven't seen it in the news in a long time. 

One amusing thing I read was a proposal to do away with the procedure by procedure payment model and look at "patient outcomes."  Well, depending on the time scale the outcome is always the same.  We end up dead.  Bad outcome.  Life is a bitch and no one gets out alive.

[Lemonvariable72]

I don't get it, you have God fucking knows how many troops in God knows how many shitholes found the world and yet you still have a healthcare system from the 1800's?

[Chad32]

We have an oligarchy, where the rich care more about their personal wealth than the country they live in. That's why healthcare sucks, minimum wage is low, and politicians talk about burdening the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

[Pyrrho]

I don't get it, you have God fucking knows how many troops in God knows how many shitholes found the world and yet you still have a healthcare system from the 1800's?

Improving the healthcare system will not result in killing more people, unlike sending troops around the world and ordering them to kill people.  So that would be a waste of money.

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To be more serious, it would eliminate a source of money for wealthy people who run the country, to make our healthcare system work properly.  Many of our hospitals are run for profit, and so the goal is to make money, not to improve people's health.

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[Lemonvariable72]

I don't get it, you have God fucking knows how many troops in God knows how many shitholes found the world and yet you still have a healthcare system from the 1800's?

Improving the healthcare system will not result in killing more people, unlike sending troops around the world and ordering them to kill people.  So that would be a waste of money.

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To be more serious, it would eliminate a source of money for wealthy people who run the country, to make our healthcare system work properly.  Many of our hospitals are run for profit, and so the goal is to make money, not to improve people's health.

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And hence it is one of the few examples where socialism is preferable to capitalism.

[Minimalist]

And, on topic.........