RSSThe Nation’s Healthcare Dollar 2004
Sixty percent of the private insurance healthcare dollar goes toward physician and hospital services, and fourteen percent goes toward both prescription drugs and administrative costs.
38 Responses to “The Nation’s Healthcare Dollar 2004”
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October 29th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
My Mom works for VA in pensacola. She says they have done studies on preventive healthcare and the money spent to prevent does not justify how many lives are saved. Very few percentage lives are saved to jusify the means of spending the money needed to save those few. This is especially true of cancers.
October 29th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
My dad is a podiatrist. He has seen medicare patients for years, he has been in practice for 40 years. Basically in 1980’s and up he had to raise his prices for everything because medicaid paid less each year for claims. Say in 1980 he asked 300 for orthodics medicaid paid him 260 . Now he asks for 550 and medicaid pays him 275 for the same thing in the 1980’s. Medicaid is why prices for physicians went up and it is the reason insurance went up. Insurance like BCBS pays 90% of the claims doctors ask for. So it evens out what doctors have to pay for employess and overhead and still make what they used to. So if we got rid of Medicaid/Medicare Insurance and Doctors prices would go down significantly.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
The insurance ‘fad’ started in the ’80’s’ for all those too young to know. Before that we were all expected to keep ourselves well, except for the extreme.
You didn’t go just to find out what ‘might’ be wrong with you or could be in the future. It’s become a HOBBY.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Ashau Valley,
Sadly, I must report, with today’s news of additional, stratospheric tax payer bailout packages by central bankers/planners arbitrarily creating new citizen debts on behalf of reckless financial institutions and their elite underlying owners, the education portion of the expense pie will only become smaller moving ahead. Obviously, another handicap for the future U.S. worker/learner.
I listened to Mr. Charles Munger at Cal Tech in March of this year. He’s an interesting gentleman with very strong opinions. He carries a belief system that those of the Asian population may be better wired or suited to compete in a capitalistic system, built upon a strong education system in math and science. As he put it, if the Munger Family was to be uprooted by a better species of people going forward, so be it. With his great wealth, I’m pretty certain he says that with “tongue in cheek.”
In America, the problem seems to be a lack of focus or priorities regarding purpose, i.e., the life long journey and yearning for the learning process. Our people, after so many decades of post WW2 prosperity, have fallen prey to commercialism under the false belief system that everybody should or could be rich. It’s a false belief system and the world wouldn’t function well, if that ever became the case. This must be part of the reason why booms and busts were created!
Of course, the financial wizards who you point to, some of whom have international roots or ties, have taken full advantage of those weaknesses in this cycle, now, haven’t they? And, they will pay less dearly, if at all, versus the rank and file citizens of the good Ole U.S. of A who are going to pay the most.
September 11th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
carlk,
Kudos to Dr.Patrick Byrne and Mr. Perot [in his website video] for pointing out the importance of improving the dismal state of our educational system. For the past 25 years I have attended many Collegiate and high school graduation commencements.
The ratio of academic excellence in science and engineering from native born to those of Asian or East Indian graduates is mind boggling.
If today’s headline in the Chicago Sun -Times stating that public school students will get a monetary reward for a passing grade is the system’s remedy to improve this galatic-sized imbalance, we have a lot more to worry about than getting our financial house in order. Then again. were not the financial wizards who came up with “creative mortgage financing” concepts the best and brightest our business schools had to offer?
September 9th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Hi wfpillow,
I understand exactly where you’re coming from, especially since you’re describing the family which I was born into when you make your case. Quite frankly, I am opposing the expectations of my own parents in this regard.
On the other hand, I am expecting “zero” from social security when I reach the raised benchmark numbers some twenty or so years from now.
My “expectation” may have been set, partially by design-the draconian messages being delivered from top down-but most definitely, by being aware of the mis-allocation and mismanagement of this important source of funds for the benefit of the more elderly, and retired population who really do need it. We can hold our collective body of politicians, past and present, to be accountable for this out of favor evolution.
If I am not mistaken, on a slightly different note, aren’t politican related retirements derived from a more superior, separate source of funds?
What I am sayiing is two fold:
1) The original intent of the trust is not being applied correctly if those taking from it are not needing a “safety net.” This assumes I have the original intent of the trust correct, also.
2) It may be that those individuals who are taking unnecessarily, are indeed taking from their future generation, grandchildren or otherwise, who may really need it down the road.
If this is the definition of American sacrifice, then America has changed vastly, and counter productively to what many have been taught. Just my opinion, of course.
September 7th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Hi to All,
I am sorry to have taken this healthcare subject matter off thread, but with today’s Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac news-burdening U.S. tax payer citizens directly and expressly versus implied guarantees previously-it has triggered yet another thought, beyond the “means” testing of social security question I have proposed earlier.
To expand further on S/S; however, it would seem the original intent, i.e., a social safety net, has exceeded its originial purpose developed during the first Great Depression. Again, many on the doll today, are probably taking what is not life sustaining while they “expect” it just because they can.
I’d prefer the test to be named, “needs based testing” vs. “means” since that the word, “means” could imply some mathematical connotation, similar to “average,” instead of, “Do they have the means?,” which I what I think it means, unless I am wrong.
Anyway, I don’t know if Mr. Perot comments here, but I would love to hear his thoughts on why our politicos in this nation refuse to address solutions for getting control of our nation’s money supply back again, as Milton Friedman had partially proposed. I am providing a an excerpt from a 1996 documentary, “The Money Masters,” where Milton’s solution is mentioned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CzVBu2-8xo&feature=related
I would, “Fight, My Friends,” for a leader who would address the world’s financial scoundrels head on!
Recently, someone who I consider a friend, Dr. Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, has been chosen to sit with Mrs. Friedman on her Foundation, in order to help spearhead educational reform in this great nation of ours.
For those of you who don’t know, Dr. Byrne has also been leading a gallant fight against the criminals on Wall Street with respect to the “Illegal Naked Short Selling,” or “Counterfeiting” of U.S. stock certificates by an international cabal of what can be properly described as, “Money Changers.”
I just wish we could end the “fairy tale” politics distributed to the people of this nation by the “Mortgaged Media.”
It may take another Revolution in the final analysis, but as revolutions throughout history have proven, they are usually worth the sacrifices that are born from them.
Otherwise, I’m afraid, the people of this nation relative to their “windows of opportunities,” after such a long period of witnessing the transferring of important industrial and manufacturing jobs overseas, will no longer be able to keep up on the “interest payments” to a source of power that creates money out of thin air at interest!
September 7th, 2008 at 11:36 am
With all due respect to carlk, “means testing” for not only Social Security but also for other entitlements, disregards the source of those “means.” In other words, if a family has been frugal and amassed a net egg for retirement vs a family with inherited wealth, is the former penalized for its foresight. Generalized “means testing” for whatever “entitlement” seems to border on egalitarianism, i.e. redistribution of wealth according to need rather than financial diligence.