The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah!

Doctor salaries and the cost of medical school are part of the problem. Doctor's deserve good compensation, but not $500,000 a year.. They can do fine on half that... Besides we want people to become physicians because they want to help people, not because the pay is outrageous.

 

Hard to point to 1 sole cause, but given historical things that have happened in medicine since 1990, I would say a combination of the following. Other things have contributed, but I would argue these are the biggest.

1. Cardiology improvements. Many physicians would argue the 1 drug of statins as being the "penicillin" of our generation. All the other major heart drugs really started to take off in the mid to late 90's and became mainstream treatments that even older doctors started to use regularly. Combine with the movement to widespread use of vascular surgical treatments such as stents that have virtually replaced more invasive operations such as bypass surgery. The cost differentials here are enormous.

2. Outpatient surgery. This alone has drastically brought down the cost of healthcare. While the idea was present for some prior to the 90's, better use of drugs such as propofol and more acceptance of not needed hospitalization after every surgery have drastically decreased cost of medical care. Really, even 1 night in the hospital costs a fortune.

3. Breast cancer treatment. Might seem to a small thing, but when you realize how many women are diagnosed with some form of breast cancer the overwhelming numbers make you realize just how big an issue it is. Publicity about screening and what to do prior to the 90's was no where near as large as it has grown to today, helping to make Breast cancer probably the 2nd or 3rd best screened for cancer in the USA. That with better medical treatments and less aggressive surgical techniques have improved recoveries, hospital stays, and overall cost of healthcare.

4. Medical Supplement & OTC medication boom. The term medical supplement did not even really exist prior to the early 90's. The bill past then allowed them to NOT have to listen to FDA guidelines as long as they didn't "promise medical benefits". Since then the business has boomed. So many patients today opt for the medical supplements over the prescription drug because it is natural/organic/etc. Not saying the patient is wrong, but every situation is different and should be approached as such. Those are not covered by insurance. Combine with so many more drugs moving to the OTC aisle such as heartburn and allergy meds with the rise of the $4 dollar prescription, the nations prescription drug costs have slowly moved to the patient from the insurance company.

 

Yay, the beloved government will take care of me. I feel so much better already. I have so much faith in it.

 

Will you fly in a plane, wear a seat belt , get a polio vaccination, drink water from a tap, eat meat without reservation, drive across a bridge, not feel compelled to have a private army, not spend your days keeping the hordes from over running your borders, not have to look at 10 million indigents and mentally handicapped on your streets, or drive on streets... all things the government does to take care of you now and pretty damn well.

 

Not to mention the free education leading him to write these wonderful posts!

 

Obamacare is the last gasp incredibly complex scheme to keep the useless private insurance company middle men involved in the system. Consumers just can't afford their premiums that go not only for health care, but for supporting the added costs of huge CEO salaries, marketing and other useless overhead, and large profits for stock holders..

The entire simple pooling the risk scheme is one that could probably be managed by a few mangers with some computers. There are no Steve Jobs and rugged inventors involved

 

sigh.

Socialized medicine/universal healthcare/a single-payer system doesn't even look like that.

For a more accurate model of what most other sane countries are doing---

I introduce to you, the simple monopsony model! (One-buyer)



Set marginal cost=demand or VPN as profit-optimizing point, pay W2 to attract Q2 of laborers. Drives down doctor pay, pharmaceutical costs, all that good stuff.

You can argue for and against this preposition, but alleging that socialized medicare is in many ways a "death panel" conduit because it infringes on private markets through price controls, and therefore leads to explicit rationing is patently false---governments imbued with monopsony powers can drive prices down for all things for everyone. You can bleat about handing government more power---except in this case, it's to help its own citizens, instead of expanding the prison state or the military that could theoretically kill civilians, things most people are perfectly fine with for some strange reason (on a somewhat related note, the market for defense jets in the US is a monopsony, although I doubt you'll bleat on and on about market interference for that). Whether or not monopsony is fair for the employees (in this case doctors) might be a valid point to examine, or whether it harms the innovation drive of patents due to lower premiums on drugs can be something else to look at. You are simply looking at the wrong set of issues, because quite simply you are looking at the wrong model.

For the first point, I can compare physician salaries across countries, and the returns to education and etc. to show the extreme position of American doctors. For the second, I can hope the following happens more often---

It's kind of annoying the Econ 101 types who bleat about basic economic concepts don't understand economics beyond simple demand and supply graphs, so they can compel people to listen to their fatalistic and inaccurate models, and have absolutely no qualms about it.

 

Obama admin raiding medical mar1juana is a great start for the violent takeover. Welcome your masters with open arms.

 

The contrast of posts #42 and #43 could not be more hilarious and telling about the state of our national discourse (and D&D as a reflection of that.) LMAO.

 

Better track record than wall street.

 

Are you just getting that number out of nowhere? The average salary for a physician is nowhere near 500K. To reach that scale of pay you have to be extremely specialized, and if you are, you deserve that salary. I agree that the cost of medical school is out of hand tuition is projected to increase over the next 3 years while we lost subsidized loans last year. For the level of training and the services provided, I don't see how you can say they are over paid. Saying "well you can live for half that" is not a good point, anybody with a high salary can live very well on less than what they make, that isn't the issue.

 

Then by your logic Police, Military, Firefighters, and the city service officials should all be considered entitlements as well. Why can't we as cities hire 3rd party officials to do all these jobs as well?...

Until those positions are outsourced to the private sector, I think medicine/doctors/health care should be considered to be equal to the police, firefighters and so on...

 

D&D stands for debate and discussion.
Sorry Hightop, it doesn't stand for dumb and dumber.

 

Q1-Q2 = doctor shortage

 

Funny you should mention that---

Given that, it may be possible that under a monopsony model, the optimum amount of employment may actually be higher than that suggested by the market clearing model, if only because, in terms of comparisons, the average cost curves would be clear of muck like this---

mhmm.

 

Most doctors earn no where close to $500,000 a year.

Anesthesia $220,100
Family/GP $173,860
Internist $189,480
ObGyn $210,340
Pediatricians $165,720
Psychiatrist $167,610
Surgeon $225,390

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos074.htm

 

Maybe we need to train more doctor. 8 years for med school is too much. It isn't that in many other countries who have better life expectancy than us.

 

Is that net (after insurance and office costs?)

Doctors I know are some of the smartest and hardest working people on the planet. They certainly deserve as much as oil company execs.

 

What about food? Is it a right for every human being to be able to eat a meal (preferably 2 to 3) everyday? Guess eating is an entitlement under your view.

 

Yeah, because letting your insurance company take all of your money and not pay out your benefits is totally looking out for your best interest.