If it ain't a mess it'll do 'til one gets here.
\\\healthcare costs\\\
Time Magazine article from 2013:
http://time.com/198/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/
$1.50 for a single 325mg tablet of acetaminophen is only the start.
400% markup on a cancer drug. Why? Because they said so.
And because their stockholders or administrators would like to make
more money, and they're in a position to just charge you more.
Pricing as 'what the market will bear' has eaten the healthcare
industry and turned its lopsided market advantages versus its
'customers' into something obscene. No one involved wants to talk
about it. The reality is that the healthcare industry - insurance,
hospital 'systems', administrators, and equipment manufacturers are
slowly but surely strangling the rest of the entire US economy.
They are bribing our elected officials to look the other way.
Other countries of the world are not doing this. That is not a
coincidence.
The simple fact is that someone, somehow, /must/ rein in the
profits of the medical industry so that they are not a drain on the
entire rest of our economy in the US. Otherwise it will continue to
be very good for their stockholders and the administrators of these
companies and very bad for, well, /all of the rest of us/.
Medical bills have been one of the leading causes of bankruptcies,
home foreclosures, and similar personal and family financial melt-
downs for quite some time. The pace of that will only accelerate if
we let it, if we don't do something about it.
Two points from a site dedicated to bankruptcy information (Dec.
2017) (https://www.natlbankruptcy.com/us-medical-debt-statistics/):
About 1 in 10 adults delay medical care.
1 in 5 working-age Americans with health insurance still have
trouble paying off their medical bills.
The Affordable Care Act attempted to start at getting these costs
under control. The lobbyists made sure to crush the public option
and keep things in private insurance. The ACA has been under
ideological attack pretty much since it was signed into law and is
gradually being whittled away. There is no real plan to replace it
with anything functional by those doing the whittling, despite
repeated promises by that party that their solution to healthcare
costs is being developed. They will have it ready for us to look at
Real Soon Now.
Their plan is apparently to make their money while they can and
hope someone else solves this problem or they're dead before the
other shoe falls.
It is interesting to note that the crippling rise of medical costs
was identified by W. Edwards Deming as one of the Seven Deadly
Diseases of American industry back in the 1980's (deadly disease #6
to be precise). So you can't say we haven't been aware of it or
that we don't know the origin of the problem. We know the
consequences and we know that we can do something about them if we
can stop Congress from listening to that industry's lobbyists for a
moment or two.
The healthcare situation, much like the food insecurity
(starvation) situation, is one that people tend to turn away from
though, either because they feel helpless in the face of the
enormity of the problems or because the suffering makes them
uncomfortable - or because of the knowledge of 'there but for the
grace of (something) go I and everyone that I care about'.
Regardless, people that aren't directly faced with it let those who
are handle it on their own - on both the personal and the national
level.
https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=678749817
"All told, the Canos spend about 15 percent of their annual
income on health care"
"Mostly to pay off that health care debt, Robert has taken
several part-time gigs this year - as a substitute teacher, a
nighttime security guard and a sandwich deliveryman for a fast-
food chain in Scottsdale, 40 miles away, where tips are better.
He said he sometimes works up to 120 hours in a week."
So much for 'if you work hard you won't
end up in debt and penniless'.
What happened to "We must all hang together or we shall all hang
separately"? We are all hanging separately.
If this were the 1700's in America the response by citizens being
sold out to this degree by their 'representatives' would probably
have involved hot tar and feathers (or worse). I'm not sure what
the modern equivalent to that really is, but if we don't figure it
out we may just have to resort to 1700's methods to get their
attention and realign their priorities in Congress before it's too
late.
NO CARRIER