What makes health care so expensive, before and during Obamacare, are (1) government, including the US Congress blocking the sale of insurance across state lines and all the other restrictions imposed, (2) the fact that facilities’ customers are insurance companies including taxation-extorted money (government supposedly having unlimited deep pockets, and (3) other government-caused distortions of the market.
Not so long ago I went to an urgent care clinic for what felt like a flu that refused to go away. Dumb move. Breast implants and other cosmetic surgery procedures cost WAY less that the total of the bills they sent for that one short visit and one prescription.
Health Savings Account paid it all.
The point is, the competition in cosmetic surgery, which government does not pay for, and company-provided insurance does not pay for, means that the “price point” is much lower than for the other kinds of maladies.
When I was a kid, before the War on Poverty, before Medicaid, food stamps, blah blah, my very poor parents took me to a local affordable doctor who took care of us. Dr. Ron Paul reminds us that in his first workplace as doctor, a Catholic hospital, everybody was treated regardless of ability to pay.
I’m in my retirement years, but I refuse to send a penny to the AARP. They advocated for that mess. Experienced politicians always over-promise, Ron Paul being the only pure exception I know of, plus probably one in my wife’s Honduras, a mayor that died under suspicious circumstances. Many of them lie, lie, lie, like Obama did, promising everybody could keep their doctor, their plan, as it was, and nothing would cost more except there would be more for less. Ha ha.
You cannot count on Obamacare for a lung transplant, even if it were to continue on. You have some maladies, and the politicians promised you all the medical attention you need, they LIED.
They have lied about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, insurance, health care, food, EVERYTHING. Just think: (1) ALL freebies MUST be paid by somebody, they are NOT free, (2) NOT ONE politician or government workers contributes a penny to paying for them, because what they are taxed for comes from tax extortion, (3) ALL freebies are subject to the whims of the ones who give them, and politicians cannot guarantee what the next batch of politicians will do, and (4) they are all subject to temptations of corruptions.
Care will be rationed, one way or another. That’s another thing. Innovation in treatments is stymied by FDA rules that hold back new treatments for years. To meet their written requirements, it now takes tens of thousands of years to complete the studies. So many of the medical breakthroughs of the past could not happen today.
Did Pasteur have that much money and could he wait before sharing his discoveries and helping people? Or Dr. Lister? And even then, even the big companies have the risk of seeing ONE desk jockey at CDC or FDA telling a researcher or a company that they have to do another round of research.
Meantime, people who need help RIGHT NOW cannot even offer themselves for a research project. Even for TERMINAL diseases.
Oh, yeah, but the FDA does not stop a Kevorkian or other “doctor death” from administering or prescribing a drug to KILL the patient.
And what is wrong with letting the millionaires freely avail themselves of new experimental treatments at their own risk? That pays for the initial cost of a breakthrough. Oftentimes, as results come in from the first patients using a new drug or treatment, the costs would go down per “unit” or treatment, and the poor could have access to it earlier.
Plus, the information for what natural remedies are out there is often obfuscated because PATENT laws make innovative drugs so expensive, from GOVERNMENT-enforced monopoly pricing, which drives ads in medical journals, free samples pushed out to doctors’ offices, and emotional commercials in TV ads and in browsers.
The recent hoopla over the price increase for the epipen is a good example.
Plus all those cancer treatments? My wife knows of someone in her home country who was cured with a treatment of pure essence of marijuana. Until recently the drug war medical industry-government complex has hidden some of these facts from public knowledge, some were just enforcing their own ignorance out of hubris.
So, get government out of the way, decriminalize all the drugs so people can make decisions with their doctors, kill all the laws against even doctor-shopping, neuter patent laws and regulations from blocking treatments, and THAT Is how medicine becomes more affordable.
To do otherwise is to follow Venezuela down the path of socialist ruin.
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