Health Care Cost Solutions

C-SPAN-2 video 1/27/17 to Congressional Staffers

Peter Van Doren tells us about health-care costs in the US, what works and what doesn’t work. He admits that “stylized facts” are really assumptions.

Healthcare expenditures rise with age $3500 under age 19 and over $32,400 over age 84. The overall average is $10,000 a year.  Of 325 million Americans, We spend $millions on a few really sick people.

Most people aren’t sick.160 million Americans or 50% of the population spends close to nothing on healthcare. They spend $264 per year. The sickest 1% or 3 million people spend $107,000 a year or 25% of all health expenditures. The top 5% or 15 million spend 50% of all health expenditures.

The rationale of Obamacare is to force the healthy people to pay for the sick people. “Community rating” is force. The uninsured are not costing us and are not a net burden. So, making everybody insured is just a scam to make us pay for the really sick people.

The Poly Paper says that the low cost premium should be based on age if you’re not sick.  Very sick people live about 4 years.

John Cochran, 2009, University of Chicago Economist says that sick people need health status transition insurance.

Guaranteed Renewable Health Insurance Contracts did exist. Individual insurance that contains health status transition insurance could replace Employer sponsored insurance.

Health mass screening doesn’t really work, they just cost money. Annual physicals aren’t needed. If they find things, don’t take the treatment. For every biopsy, 2% of patients die in a year whether treated or not. Manual self-exams should replace mammography. Non-Prophets make money by scaring people into having lots of screening. Medicaid is unnecessary. If you are over 300 lbs. you won’t live long and you can fix this yourself.

The uninsured don’t cost us money. Watch out for prices hospitals charge. Hospitals charge more for treating 2/3s of the uninsured. Also, we need to cost-reduce treatments.

https://www.cato.org/research/health-care

Comments

This video is a must see for everybody. It answers most of the questions I’ve had about our fractured medical industry.

I think the reason Republicans are pushing medical savings accounts is to cover people when they are really old and really sick. It’s a form of self-insured health status transition insurance.

Patients need to begin demanding cost estimates before they enter the hospital and insist that the bills show the same charge that was quoted.

Patients need to understand the costs and benefits of treatments to get ready for honesty in medicine.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader