Biden’s efforts to produce more inflation are nonstop, 24×7. His latest move is a set of regulations to force people into Obamacare despite the fact a District Court already ruled against his proposed regulations.
Biden Attempts to Make Healthcare Even More Expensive
To understand what Biden wants to do, and why the Supreme Court is likely to smack it down, we need to review a District Court ruling from 2020.
On July 24, 2020, CATO reported In a Win for Consumers, a Court Ruling Affirms the Legality of Short‐Term Health Insurance Plans
The ACA dramatically increased health insurance premiums in the “individual” market, where consumers purchase coverage directly from insurers. Yet Congress deliberately chose not to apply the ACA’s regulations to “short‐term, limited duration insurance,” which can therefore offer lower premiums. As ACA premiums rose, many consumers flocked to STLDI plans.
One such consumer was 61‐year‐old Arizona resident Jeanne Balvin. In 2017, Balvin purchased an STLDI plan from UnitedHealthcare for $274 per month. It covered the entire cost of her emergency surgery for diverticulitis, minus a $2,500 deductible. Had she purchased an ACA plan, her premium would have been three times as high and her deductible in the range of $6,000.
Prior to 2016, Balvin could have purchased an STLDI plan that lasted an entire year. In the hope of forcing people into ACA plans, however, the Obama administration imposed a rule in 2016 that required insurers to throw STLDI enrollees out of their plans after just three months. The Trump administration reversed this rule and expressly stated that nothing in federal law prevents insurers from making STLDI plans from offering renewable, and therefore continuous, coverage.
Enter the Association for Community Affiliated Plans, a lobbying group representing private insurance companies that sell ACA plans. Complaining that STLDI plans were cutting into their business, ACAP asked federal courts to remedy that “injury” by reinstating this heartless rule.
On July 17, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of STLDI enrollees. The court found the administration’s reversal of the Obama rule was reasonable, not least because stripping coverage from these patients means they “could be denied a new policy ‘based on preexisting medical conditions.’”
Jam City, Dateline July 7, 2023
The Wall Street Journal comments on Biden’s Short-Sighted New Health Rule
Behold the President’s plan to limit short-term health insurance plans in order to jam more consumers into the heavily subsidized and regulated ObamaCare exchanges. The Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury Departments on Friday proposed rules to roll back the Trump Administration’s expansion of short-term, limited-duration insurance (STLDI) plans. Since 2018 these plans have been available in 12-month increments, and consumers have been able to renew them for up to 36 months.
These plans are especially attractive to young people whose employers don’t provide coverage. Why would a healthy 26-year-old want to pay for maternity, pediatric and other services he probably won’t use in the near future?
The Inflation Reduction Act sweetened ObamaCare’s insurance premium tax credits that are tied to income. As a result, a 60-year-old making just above four times the poverty level has to pay only 8.5% of his income toward his insurance premium while the government picks up the rest. If premiums increase, government is on the hook for more.
But after the Inflation Reduction Act’s enhanced subsidies expire in 2025, consumers will be in for sticker-shock. Hence, the Administration is trying to drive more young, healthy people back into the exchanges by reinstating a four-month cap on short-term plans and prohibiting renewals. Presto: A free market for insurance that competes with the ObamaCare exchanges disappears.
As with his backdoor ban on gas-powered cars, President Biden is limiting health insurance choice and competition in the name of protecting consumers from something they want to buy.
Obamacare is Junk
On June 29, 2023, before the above details emerged, CATO wrote Dear Health Reporters: Prep for Biden’s Proposed Rule on Short‐Term Plans
First of all, ObamaCare is the junk coverage here. Economic research shows ObamaCare’s preexisting‐conditions “protections” have eroded coverage at a cost to sick patients of thousands of dollars per year, and even “currently healthy consumers cannot be adequately insured.” ObamaCare has caused individual‐market provider networks to narrow significantly since 2013, when network breadth reflected consumer preferences. ObamaCare premiums are skyrocketing to the point where Congress is offering subsidies to households earning $600,000 per year. STLDI plans offer more flexibility and choice, protect conscience rights, offer broader provider networks, cost up to 70 percent less than ObamaCare plans, and can even reduce ObamaCare premiums by improving ObamaCare’s risk pools.
If Biden tries to eliminate standalone renewal guarantees, he may trigger a lawsuit. The Public Health Service Act grants the federal government no authority at all to regulate those novel insurance products.
13 Years of Obamacare
On March 30, 2023, the Washington Examiner reported Thirteen years of Obamacare Increasing Healthcare Costs.
The Affordable Care Act turned 13 last week, and I was asked to provide testimony before the House Committee on Ways and Means on how the law, as well as several recent expansions of it, failed to make healthcare more affordable. Here is a slightly modified version of what I told Congress.
The ACA has caused premiums to soar. Individual market premiums more than doubled in the first four years after its implementation, yet plans covered fewer doctors and hospitals. By 2021, the average ACA plan premium plus deductible for a family of four was about $25,000.
Since coverage is cost prohibitive, most enrollees need extremely large subsidies to afford these plans. Taxpayers pay for more than 80% of the premium on average and pick up almost all the cost of premium increases over time. This gives insurers significant pricing power and in turn leads to higher premiums — an inflationary spiral.
As government’s role in healthcare has expanded, prices have skyrocketed. Hospital prices have increased more than any other major economic sector, rising three times faster than inflation since 2000.
Both the American Rescue Plan Act and the Inflation Reduction Act expanded the ACA’s already substantial subsidies. Most of the benefit went to people who already had coverage . Families with incomes well above $250,000 now qualify for large subsidies. The expanded subsidies incentivize employers to drop workplace coverage, raising government’s overall deficits. And all the new spending on the expanded subsidies also increases inflation.
The Supreme Court is guaranteed to strike down this latest bit of regulatory overreach by the Biden administration.
Here are some recent Supreme Court smackdowns.
Related Posts
- June 29, 2023: Supreme Court Rules Race-Conscious Admissions at Harvard and UNC are Unconstitutional
- June 30, 2023: Supreme Court Strikes Down Student Debt Cancellation, Cites Nancy Pelosi
- July 2, 2023: The Wealth Tax Idea Is Headed for Sudden Death in the Supreme Court
Don’t expect any relief from nonsensical proposals. By now, it should be clear Biden’s regulatory madness is endless.
For a real, viable solution to negligible health care delivery and extortionary billing, consider removing the medical staff from every hospital and medical office and replacing them with 12 year-olds. They would kill far fewer patients, play less golf, and charge lemonade-stand prices. Health insurance would be either unnecessary and/or available free. Supreme Court solution even easier, only nine eight-year-old replacements needed for considerably more elegant and intelligent ‘decisions.’ Payment with comic books would remain about the same.
The problem with your SCOTUS idea, no 8 year old would be able to appreciate “legal” gifts offered by “free market capitalists” who appreciate their rulings.
This could then evoke a crisis potentially bigger than the ’08 meltdown, free market capitalism might forever be dead!
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The standard American diet (SAD) is killing at least as many people as smoking did…cut the sugar out and carbs way down. The obesity epidemic started when we went low fat/high carb, not to mention the Type 2 diabetes epidemic. Which big pharma is quite happy to medicate profitably. Maybe you want to look up Nina Teicholz (The Big Fat Surprise). Nah, lifestyle change is too much for most people, just gimme the drugs.
If you travel overseas that’s immediately obvious if you buy a pastry, you’re not sick to your stomach 10 minutes later from the sugar overdose.
In America, we have corporate food magnates battling for market share by boosting flavor, sweetness and convenience to attract consumers.
At the same time, they have lobbyists in DC fighting to avoid regulation, because we can’t have “big government regulations” interfering with capitalism.
About 15 years ago, Conagra foods was able to lobby Congress to have pizza defined as a vegetable so schools could “safely” continue stuffing kids with garbage.
And like any other drug, developing a higher and higher tolerance to sweetness leads to increased consumption to get that ‘high’. A decade ago there was talk of adding sweeteners to milk to increase consumption-
link to wcvb.com
My personal gripe: immune system suppressing drugs that can trash your entire immune system advertised on TV as a solution for inconvenient skin rashes – in a time of SARS viruses.
If it walks like a Duck, and Talks like a Duck then it is a Quack.
Doctors are prescribing Techniques, Procedures and Pharmaceuticals that are purported to extend life but at a high cost of declining quality of life.
End of Life Death Management is Big Business. My 89 year old friend went in for a pace maker and came out with a lung cancer diagnosis. She was threatened that she would only last a year without treatment. Chemical therapy just about killed her and it would have if she took the final dosage. Luckily she declined the last dosage. They should have been scanning her throughout the process to see the progress. Low and behold after refusing more treatment her scans she was told the cancer was gone. What a coincidence!!!!
She showed me her bills because she was scared to death…..one half of a MILLION DOLLARS. She had good insurance and it took a while to calm her down. Of course insurance will only allow half of these charges but still 250K is a lot of money for ssix weks of outpatient care.
After they ruined her body she was in a skilled nursing facility for another 8 weeks trying to recover from the Medical Industrial Complex.
Every Pharmaceutical that is made, every hypodermic launched, every CNA who quits from being overworked and under paid signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in medicine is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one cancer treatment is this: a modern brick house for a family in any of more than 30 good neighborhoods. It is 5-10 electric cars, each serving just one do gooder each. It is two fine, fully equipped diesel pusher motorhomes. It is some fifty miles of restored river habitat. We pay for a single medical regimen with a thousand tons of of wheat. We pay for a single procedure with new homes that could have housed more than 5 families. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening medical scare tactics, it is humanity hanging from an IV Tree.
At some point, we might realize that the problem with health care is NOT how to pay for it, but how to deliver a cheap, EFFECTIVE service with incentives to improve one’s health, and lower costs. Yes, we can keep alive a badly deformed baby through endless surgeries and at vast cost, but eventually, there must be a limit. The same is true of the elderly, or car-accident victims… Medicine is marvelous, but will spend every last dime in the quest for life.
Obamacare was NEVER the answer, just a badly adhering band-aid.
With a preexisting condition, the insurance premium is logically the cost of the treatment. Saddling the regular insurance system with that makes no sense, except to make everyone pay more for insurance. Making the healthy pay for the unhealthy is doomed to fail–and it is doing exactly that as people migrate out of the system.
“With a preexisting condition, the insurance premium is logically the cost of the treatment.”
The concept of insurance is to manage a risk pool, not to have premiums directly pay for treatment.
Because I am not sick my monthly premium should be zero, no?
“As government’s role in healthcare has expanded, prices have skyrocketed”
As happened to the cost of college, after government backed student loans were created. Used to be that medical was 4-5% of GDP. Now it is about 20. Considering on patent drug prices, “ask your doctor for…” is rather expensive. A new Alzheimer’s drug was just approved at a cost of $26,000 a year. Medicare is already in bad enough shape without paying out for that.
Not true, the biggest jump in recent healthcare cost to GDP was 2000-2010, under Bush, pre-Obamacare, 2010 to 2020 Healthcare increases slowed.
Our healthcare to GDP has increased almost double every other developed nation by 200% for the last 50 years, is it a coincidence that we’re the only country who’s government doesn’t offer healthcare, nor regulate prices like we do basic utilities?
Instead, we subsidize their profits with taxpayer money, then bitch about social spending for the “poor”.
Take a look for yourself – link to commons.wikimedia.org
The problem isn’t “Libtards”, or “immigrants”, or “government spending”, the problem is monopoly, lack of anti-trust regulation, and most of all, bribery in the form of campaign donations.
Our entire healthcare sector is publicly traded, your life hinges on profitability, if we’re not profitable enough for shareholders & C-suite bonuses, we die without government intervention, Obamacare.
Especially if they qualify, get the drug, then forget to take it.
The ACA was never intended to fix health care issues. It was intended to make sure things would never be fixed. The problem is medical care costs way too much. Not insurance is too expensive. Insurance is expensive because health care costs are high. The best way to reduce insurance costs is to to reduce health care costs. It was off the table since the pharmaceutical industry in the biggest contributor to politicians. Has been for decades. It’s has nothing to do with politics. Both sides of the aisle are well paid off.
Exactly, though it’s not just pharma bribing Congress, during the Obamacare debates UNH alone was shelling out $1 million per day in DC in lobby money.
“The problem is medical care costs way too much.”
And the reason it costs way too much, is exactly the same as is the case for housing: The share of total money spent, which goes directly to caregivers, and those who directly make and design equipment and drugs, (and ditto house builders and those directly involved in building and designing materials and equipment ), is constantly shrinking.
While the share going to useless dilettantes who contribute nothing whatsoever other than simply being in the way of those more competent, has gone through the roof. Lawyers, “investors”, “landlords”, “executives” insurance salesmen, lobbyists, politicians…. what have you: Layer upon layer of pointless, useless, nothing-but-net-negative dregs. All of whom, left to their in ANY even remotely free society, end users would simply route around and disregard. But due to the dimwitted indoctrinati’s blind faith that Peronite monkeys on TeeVee can solve all their problems because they say so and look “glamorous” in the spotlight, we end up with the kind of disgustingly overgrown, totalitarian governments where exactly the sort of dregs which contribute nothing to anyone’s health nor house, end up with an ever greater share of the money spent.
If you cut everyone’s; except nurses, doctors, technicians and those making and designing drugs and equipment; pay from “health care” to zero, and let all and any punter get in there and compete for sickos’ dollars, health care would once again be perfectly affordable. Ditto housing. But, since both the health care and housing “sectors”, and ditto “education” and all others in our current totalitarian Dumbage, are in reality nothing other than slight obfuscations for the only “sector” left: The transfer-of-all-wealth-and-power-to-useless-illiterate-pointless-worthless-dilettante-dregs sector; the current insult-to-all-and-anything is all we are left with.
Well said Stuki
“If you cut everyone’s; except nurses, doctors, technicians and those making and designing drugs and equipment; pay from “health care” to zero, and let all and any punter get in there and compete for sickos’ dollars, health care would once again be perfectly affordable. ”
Not to interrupt this deep moment, but, is it necessary for a CEO to make 400X median wages, if the sector is so marginally challenged and as much as 35% of the company revenues are taxpayer subsidized?
Again, a friend works in med supply sales, with a 4 year bachelors he makes near half a mil/year, Doctors don’t make that.
Nurses and Doc’s don’t really make that much relative to their required education, I’m talking C-suites, shareholders.
Reference:
link to statista.com.
“Not to interrupt this deep moment, but, is it necessary for a CEO to make 400X median wages”
If it was, then obviously there could not have been any CEOs back when 400x median wages was reserved for The King (Elvis) only….
CEOs today do not get paid from revenue, profits, earnings nor anything else. Instead they get paid based on “share prices.” Share prices are 95% determined by nothing other than money printing and “regulations”/restrictions-on-unfettered-competition. Even at Google, where at least at one point the CEO had done something undeniably useful in his life; the overwhelming share of the wealth those high up have obtained; have come about as a result of money printing.
People not paid according to share prices, simply has to earn their keep. In an economy which, in real terms, have gone nowhere but backwards for 50 years, since every CEO is steering every organisation according to a map of nothing but money printing and Fed second-guessing. Since that’s how “shareholder” value is “maximised” in financialised dystopias. IOW, in real terms, in such dystopias, all “investment” is malinvestment. Can’t be anything else. Hence aren’t. And haven’t been, since 1971.
Result: The total pie in America is smaller than it was in the 70s. And yet; those paid based on “stock” and “asset” performance (CEOs and idiots who think picking random numbers while doing monkey dances on CNBC has something to do with “inveeesting”) have been handed enough in exchange for their net-negative “contributions” to now have more. Ergo: Double whammy for everyone else: Smaller share of a smaller pie. Elementary arithmetic. Though obviously not elementary enough for Dumbagers.
But, but, but … if that was done then people could refuse to sell their own private property to people that they didn’t like. The horror, the horror…
There is nothing cheap about Obamacare. Health insurance costs are through the roof. I’m amazed at how much I have to pay for a plan that doesn’t start covering costs until I reach $8k in expenses. In contrast, my dentist offer a plan for $400 annually that covers cleaning, X-rays and an exam. That a fraction of my monthly medical insurance cost of which I rarely use. I guess I’m paying for all those obese people I see waddling around…
We’re self-employed and had a Christian plan for several years before we went on Medicare. Fortunately we were healthy, but we never felt like we had real insurance again until we went on Medicare. Deductibles are terrible, but so are newer home owner insurance policies. We just bought a second house in Indiana and the deductible is a whopping 7000. The place is worth half of our IL house, yet the premium is 3x as much. It’s an old place, a “registry” house which is now a major liability to own as Erie, Travelers, and Safeco all refused coverage due to the “registry” status.
Gen-Z and Millennial suffer from obesity and diabetes. The trend is up. Medical
institutes feast on them and the elderly. Healthcare cost are rising because we eat
junk from day one.
Correct. An unhealthy lifestyle and poor nutrition are major factors. Also add in the pharma advertising that a drug is the answer to your medical condition and we have a very unhealthy population. It’s surprising to me that the younger people are in such bad shape. They all seem to have some chronic issue. Food Allergies, obesity, high blood pressure, ADHD. We should be promoting exercise and researching why our youth are so unhealthy. Maybe our water, foods (GMO), the endless list of vaccines, aversion to being outside rather than staring at a screen?
I don’t have the answer but I think we need to be asking these questions.
The test everyone should have to pass to get low cost health care coverage is to do 1 full body pull-up and 1 squat with 1/2 refurbished body weight on a bar. This would allow 50% of the people to have lower costs. Do 10 of each of those and reduce the cost by another half for that group. No smokers, no illegal drugs or it’s higher premiums.
Mark, you are BRILLIANT! ..that’s a GREAT idea!
My wife, whom I discuss above, was frail, weak and barely able to walk as a result of her disease, but 70-80 year old’s will love this!
“Get to it, Gramma, drop n’ gimme twenty or it’s off to the morgue”
Please keep up the great work, fantastic idea there, good thinkin’!
Next up, perhaps we find a way to put all the dead bodies to productive use vs disposal at taxpayer expense, crank out some idea’s Mark, I’m sure you’re brimming…
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Obesity –
39.8% among adults aged 20 to 39 years,
44.3% among adults aged 40 to 59 years, and
41.5% among adults aged 60
U tube : AJ Chef with Dr McDougall, with 99Y Dr Scharffenberg.
Dadvice with Dr Rosansky.
“I don’t have the answer but I think we need to be asking these questions.”
I believe RFK Jr. said that the NIH was tasked with investigating why the percentage of children with chronic issues, jumped in the 1990’s. It’s 2023. Think about all the interests that would be harmed if the NIH announced the cause(s) and those issues were addressed.
Biden flew to Arizona to visit senator McCain before his death. He convinced to him to stab Trump in the back.
“Obamacare is Junk.”
Of course, Obolacare is junk. What else would you expect from a right-wing health insurance scam???? Make no mistake, Obolacare is RomneyCare/DoleCare/HeritageFoundationCare.
You mean left wing Obama and Biden are left wing marxists .
Riiiiiiiight, it must be a new brand of “marxism” to shovel tons of public money into the coffers of rapacious, private health insurance ghouls.
You misspelled left-wing. It would also be fair to call it a product of the Uniparty. Neither side wants to give up those luscious campaign contributions.
“Neither side wants to give up those luscious campaign contributions.”
Bult, but…it’s the evil fascist Republicans, er, wait, no, I mean those damned Libtards, yeah, it can’t possibly be a “divide and conquer”, toss “red meat” to the masses to keep them from focusing on the real problem of legalized bribery, no.
Most people are plain stupid when provoked to think emotionally.
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Most Americans do not need to be provoked to think only emotionally. Especially Democrats, more especially politicians; example Cory Booker.
Good point, he needs to adopt MTG’s reserved demeanor.
I personally prefer to gauge them by how well they dress, sure measure of character.
Ya gotta angrily root for one or the other like a drunk Super bowl attendee, this way we don’t notice which campaign donors they’re really fighting for….wink…wink.
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I will remember the Obamacare debates of 2009 for the rest of my life.
My wife had just been diagnosed with chronic illness, she could no longer work and I was the sole provider, right at the height of the recession.
We were terrified, hearing Fox spew garbage about “death panels” and “government takeovers”, fully knowing we couldn’t possibly afford her treatment & meds without her health insurance.
She has since passed from that illness.
The true problem is cost, the excesses in healthcare, suppliers and pharma in particular, are insane.
I have a friend, works in medical supply sales who makes more than most MD’s, with a bachelors degree, this also applies to pharma sales.
The single most sensible way to induce competition in the sector was the public option, a low cost way for those who cannot afford the insane prices of healthcare & insurance to get coverage.
Alas, thanks to Frank Luntz coaching all Fox on-air personalities to brain wash half the country with “government takeover” and Joel Lieberman’s back stabbing his own party, nothing was done about lowering costs, instead, those costs were socialized.
Thanks to Obamacare, my wife got another ten years to live and I am forever grateful, but still, nothings been done about the industry excesses, nothing’s been done about money & lobbying in politics, and Fox news is still garbage propaganda that caters to special interests over journalism.
If Biden does something regarding healthcare and Republicans are agitated, good, color me happy, because 14 years ago, my wife and I were pretty agitated too, in fact, we were terrified.
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“The single most sensible way to induce competition in the sector was the public option, a low cost way for those who cannot afford the insane prices of healthcare & insurance to get coverage.”
There is something you can do: Medical Tourism. If I ever get to the point where I need some serious surgery I’d check out South Korea, Thailand and other private hospitals around the world before I’d enter a US hospital. A US hospital would be my last resort until I get on medicare then I’d happy waste as much money as everyone else because I’m not paying for it.
“There is something you can do: Medical Tourism. ”
For major surgery it’s a good idea, provided it’s a country like the ones you mention. I have a good friend that has done it but the problem is follow ups for minor complications after surgery.
For my wife’s condition, it wasn’t an option, she received weekly/monthly treatments, infusions, MRI’s and blood tests, we knew the costs and they were substantially more than my income – this was when I began researching costs, both here and abroad.
We are unequivocally the most expensive in the world, at twice the % of GDP of the OECD average and at the same time, we have the lowest results – we are also the only country that doesn’t offer some form of government healthcare.
Coincidence?
The entire sector is publicly traded, their priority is shareholder and C-suite profit, adding a single non-profit government option would have forced competition, reduced the excesses in the publicly traded sector.
A taxpayer funded sector that’s publicly traded is NOT capitalism, especially not when they legally bribe our government. Obamacare merely “Robinhoods” the sector instead of drive costs down, BUT, it’s better than nothing at all for the majority of Americans.
U.S. healthcare makes the M.I.C. look like child’s play.
That’s the nature of for-profit publicly traded companies, and our lack of anti-trust enforcement for the sector, or at the very least, a low grade government option similar to the V.A.
This sector is one of the leading causes of our national debt, and as long as bribery is legal, in the form of “campaign donations”, that will not change. (True of banking, insurance, oil, any sector as well)
Last, MPO, please stop targeting Boomers, I’m not a Boomer, but it’s absurd to generalize senior citizens as if they’re oafs living off the dole…a 65-70 yr old pipefitter/carpenter/steel worker with arthritic joints simply cannot perform his/her trade productively, it’s actually very painful, they’ve earned their retirement…. I suspect you’re white collar and perhaps insulated from what that’s like.
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To back my statement of US healthcare quality, note there are only 11 countries listed, we’re at the bottom – link to statista.com
“The true problem is cost, the excesses in healthcare, suppliers and pharma in particular, are insane.”
Karl Denninger has been on a tear about that for ages. Congress has no interest in solving that problem, and no DOJ has interest in prosecuting the companies under existing antitrust law.
It was tragic to watch Denninger form an organization to protest TBTF bailouts, all to watch it dramatically transform into a protest of corporate/high net worth taxes, courtesy the Koch Bros. – Whom have also completely rewritten the definition of “Libertarian” from center to far-right.
He subsequently left the Tea Party, a sad reality in America, where “money is free speech”, the wealthier you are, the more “free speech” you have, Goebbels would love this iteration of America.
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Mitch Mcconnell ensured that the current “supreme” court is an illegitimate joke. All rulings are politically based now.
It’s the dissenting decisions that are political. The SC has ruled correctly on everything.
In the first few years of my retirement (until my insurance stipend ran out) I was on an ACA plan that cost about $1200/month and had a really high deductible. As soon as the employer money ran out … they of course assumed I would continue but I instead went to a Christian HealthShare plan which costs me $259/month. Coverage is about the same but my premium is about 21% of what it was (or you could say I was paying 4.6x what I am now). I do remember 2 same day surgeries in the years when I was on the ACA plan. The coverage worked OK after deductible … but in the first surgery, the hospital bill was $20K (in at 7AM, out at 2PM … this doesn’t include doctors/nurses/anesthesiologists/…). On the second surgery it was $50K. The insurance cut them down, but even the lowered prices seemed absurd to me.
If you’re not the central bank printing money, the next best thing is owning a hospital in America.
The unasked questioned here is why is Biden admin interested in pushing for this now?
Well the answer is simple, more money is needed to take care of the aging population and those enrolled in medicare and medicaid and they may as well stick it to young people, most of whom don’t need health insurance anyway. Another huge wealth transfer system trying to be forced down people’s throats for the benefit of aging people that don’t contribute much but take a whole lot in terms of goods and services.
Let’s dissect this issue a little (pun intended):
“One such consumer was 61‐year‐old Arizona resident Jeanne Balvin. In 2017, Balvin purchased an STLDI plan from UnitedHealthcare for $274 per month. It covered the entire cost of her emergency surgery for diverticulitis, minus a $2,500 deductible. Had she purchased an ACA plan, her premium would have been three times as high and her deductible in the range of $6,000.”
Wow, this boomer got $50,000+ worth of expenses paid for by a mere $274/month policy and $2,500 deductible? Sign me up!
Let’s take a look at the true cost of treating Diverticulitis…
Source: link to health.costhelper.com
For patients without health insurance, treatment for diverticulitis typically costs less than $500 for home care and oral antibiotics up to $50,000 or more for surgery. For example, at Drugstore.com, the antibiotic Cipro costs about $177 for 30 tablets and Flagyl typically costs about $180 for 30 tablets, while generic versions cost less than $20 for 30 tablets. If hospitalization with IV antibiotics is required, costs can reach $10,000 or more, depending on the length of the hospital stay.
I recall reading somewhere that 80% of medical expenses come from 20% of the population and a huge portion of that 20% are people over the age of 60. Not surprising one bit…hip surgeries, knee surgeries, dementia, cancers, diabetes, diverticulitis, etc and it will only get worse over the next two decades so expect young people to get squeezed out of healthcare for themselves when hospitals are full of sick elderly. By 2030, there will probably be 83 million people on medicare, fun times ahead.
Now take the great deal good old Jeanne Balvin got and multiply it by 80 million and tell me how this is supposed to work out for everyone in America.
It’s not supposed to.
On the other hand, the costs you found on Wikipedia are only costs in America. Anywhere else it would be a fraction of that. So what’s the real cost? The 50K or the fraction that it would cost in say Canada or Mexico?
The problem has always been that quoted cost is never what gets paid by private insurance companies because they negotiate price. Of course ObamaCare doesn’t or does to a lesser degree because it’s a government entity that doesn’t need to worry about a bottom line because taxpayers pick up costs.
Until the day exists when you can see medical costs on a menu like you can at any other business this will continue until the system goes broke.
If you think healthcare costs are high now wait until we get to the severe imbalance between supply and demand. The elderly/retired will be creating a great deal of demand but there won’t be the supply.
If the law of economics that supply/demand imbalance dictates prices then healthcare costs are about the explode even higher over the next decade. The Biden admin knows this and they are trying to get ahead of it all but I don’t think it will matter.
As for your menu option, you can get that now with medical tourism.
link to medicaltourism.com
If I want medical tourism, I can just go home to Canada and get it since I’m still a citizen. Of course Canada’s population is aging as fast as America’s so the problem may be there too.
Ultimately, we have to stop wasting health care on end of life patients (those in final 6 months of life) unless they spend their own money.
The problem with 95% of end of life patients is the choices their children make.
The 50,000 dollar procedure is a US construct. The medical community colludes with HMOs to rig prices really high. There is no way. I remember the doctor’s office charged the HMO an internal surgery fee for earwax removal. Everyone is ripping everyone else off. Now that the entire country is run and managed by criminals, every industry can feel free to rig, collude and shyster their higher prices. And since government has mandated Obamacare, it’s essentially a ponzi tax.
They’ll keep pounding and threatening to pack the Court until they wear SCOTUS down. If not this time, then next year.
The FDR strategy. There was scoundrel!
The Biden presidency and his administration are rapidly destroying this country, Biden will definitely go down as the worst president in the history of our country.
fully agree
…Ken from wilm de