Does anyone know if medical costs were more reasonable before the government first got involved?

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livingwordunity

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I think of when, for example, I found out that the government was paying over $20 for a small, I think 15 or 20 ounce, bottle of rubbing alcohol. Also, one time when my daughter had to ride in an ambulance the cost was around $4,000 in 2004 that probably wasn’t any more than a half hour trip from one hospital to the next. Fortunately, it was covered by my medical insurance. But seeing how people tend to take advantage of the government by jacking up prices sky-high whenever they know the government is paying for it, can anyone be surprised if the so-called “affordable health care” bill makes medical costs even more outrageously ridiculous than they already are? Ultimately, it’s not the government that will pay for it since the government pays for it by taking money from taxpayers. So, we will ultimately be the ones paying for it. But if the prices get jacked up even higher it means we will be paying more not less. The minute the government touches anything the prices always go through the roof.
 
They were a lot more reasonable before insurance got involved. One reason for the founding of the first insurance companies–and a reason that doctors backed them–was to help ensure that doctors got paid. When everyone paid their own bills, certainly prices were a lot cheaper!

Naturally, government made it even more expensive and billing more complex.
 
JimG said:
They were a lot more reasonable before insurance got involved. One reason for the founding of the first insurance companies–and a reason that doctors backed them–was to help ensure that doctors got paid. When everyone paid their own bills, certainly prices were a lot cheaper!

Naturally, government made it even more expensive and billing more complex.
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So it was like a perfect storm for price gouging - greedy insurance corporations combined with gullible and unaccountable government except that now with the so-called “affordable” care act the insurance company will be a monopoly in partnership with the government, like the fox being put in charge of the hen house.
 
livingwordunity said:
So it was like a perfect storm for price gouging - greedy insurance corporations combined with gullible and unaccountable government except that now with the so-called “affordable” care act the insurance company will be a monopoly in partnership with the government, like the fox being put in charge of the hen house.
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Well, I wouldn’t say it was just price gouging. My mom and dad had a family doctor in the days before insurance. Everybody paid maybe $10 or $15 per visit. He made a good living by having a lot of patients. But costs were also less because there was less medical technology available.

Shortly after I was married, my wife was in the hospital for 30 days. At that time intensive care was $90/day and a regular room was $40/day. There were no CT scans, no MRI’s no PET scans. Lab work was often by hand, not automated as it is now. As it happens, we had no insurance. After she got out, we paid everybody off by paying $100/ mo until it was paid. That would be impossible now, because even the shortest hospital stay is tens of thousands of dollars. Now CT scans are routine, and they charge whatever the market will bear. And with insurance–not the patient–paying, it will bear a lot.

Any more, doctors in private practice feel as though they are employed by the insurance companies, not self-employed, and they are right. Read Dr. Doug Farrago’s blog about this sometimes.
 
Yes, government as primary payer has greatly increased costs but there are other factors. Medical care is much more complex and expensive today. Medical malpractice lawsuits and liability insurance are a huge factor.

Some believe that a government takeover will cut costs but this can only happen if brutal rationing is implemented. The sick and elderly will be refused expensive treatments and just given a “handful of pain pills,” a euphemism for assisted suicide.
 
My father was a grade school drop out share cropper that paid for the hospital births of all 12 of his children in cash - the youngest being born in 1977. My youngest brother just had a child last year that was born a little over 2 months premature - the cost of his stay in the NEO Natal unit was probably well over $100,000. In 1960s instead of facing that cost for a live child my father would have faced a funeral instead.

As the baby boomers age they will devote more and more of their resources to living longer and want to live longer not matter what the cost to them or anyone else.
 
It’s true that there are more treatments available now, and they are more expensive. But it’s also true that people at the end of their lives tend to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on treatments which extend life by perhaps a few months. Whether that’s pushed by patients or healthcare professionals I don’t know, but in some cases it seems like a needless expense just to prolong life for a few extra months.
 
Well…I had a conversation with one of my wife’s relatives about her trip to Europe.

Before she left the States, she found out she needed major dental care that would have cost in the area of $12k to $15k.

She happened to discuss it with her hosts while she was Over There, and her hosts connected her with a dentist who did the work for about $2,000.

Granted, it’s not the U.S., but it is a nationalized healthcare system.

Clearly our high healthcare costs are the result of profit-taking, and the government may well contribute to that: if there’s money to be made, and the consumers can’t pay it, the government will step in and make up the difference.

However, I’d like to see some research into the costs of medical research and development, including that for equipment, supplies, etc. It may be that other countries’ expenses are lower because U.S. healthcare consumers (including govt payers) are funding medical R&D that benefits everyone around the world.
 
on_the_hill said:
Well…I had a conversation with one of my wife’s relatives about her trip to Europe.

Before she left the States, she found out she needed major dental care that would have cost in the area of $12k to $15k.

She happened to discuss it with her hosts while she was Over There, and her hosts connected her with a dentist who did the work for about $2,000.

Granted, it’s not the U.S., but it is a nationalized healthcare system.

Clearly our high healthcare costs are the result of profit-taking, and the government may well contribute to that: if there’s money to be made, and the consumers can’t pay it, the government will step in and make up the difference.

However, I’d like to see some research into the costs of medical research and development, including that for equipment, supplies, etc. It may be that other countries’ expenses are lower because U.S. healthcare consumers (including govt payers) are funding medical R&D that benefits everyone around the world.
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If you are paying cash, and shop around, you would be able to get steep discounts off “list price” in the US as well. This is what the Amish, and other groups who don’t believe in insurance, do.

The “list price” is so high because many people have insurance to pay, so don’t care what the price is.

God Bless
 
I don’t think medical cost have been reasonable since the 1950s. 😉
 
bilop said:
If you are paying cash, and shop around, you would be able to get steep discounts off “list price” in the US as well. This is what the Amish, and other groups who don’t believe in insurance, do.

The “list price” is so high because many people have insurance to pay, so don’t care what the price is.

God Bless
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True. A friend of ours is a doctor, and he provides discounts to the Amish because they pay cash. He’ll discount for anyone who pays cash, because it’s so incredibly expensive to process insurance claims whether they’re private insurance or Medicaid/Medicare.
 
livingwordunity said:
Does anyone know if medical costs were more reasonable before the government first got involved?
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Compare medical costs in Canada with the costs in the US. The Canadian government is definitely involved in Canadian medicine.

rossum
 
It would be in interesting study. Difficult to do, but probably could be done. You’d have to control for all the variables, like inflation and medical advances, and try to carve out the influence of govt spending.

Have you done a search? There are probably papers out there that attempt to do this.
 
rossum said:
Compare medical costs in Canada with the costs in the US. The Canadian government is definitely involved in Canadian medicine.

rossum
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I could be wrong but the lower cost of health care in Canada is because the Canadian government is not directly in competition with or under the influence of the private sector under the Canadian health care system. The Canadian government underwrites the cost of health care through taxation, but leaves the provincial governments to determine the costs by fixing the prices of services covered after negotiating with medical professional associations. There is no private health care industry to artificially inflate costs.

The cost of drugs and medical equipment does burden the system somewhat because drug prices are set by more global factors. This is offset a bit by laws allowing generic drugs to be produced after the original developers have had the opportunity to recoup costs. Overall, the result is a workable and relatively affordable system of healthcare, unlike that being implemented in the US which seems to be catering to the interest of corporate profit at the expense of taxpayers.
 
rossum said:
Compare medical costs in Canada with the costs in the US. The Canadian government is definitely involved in Canadian medicine.

rossum
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I don’t purport to be any expert at this, but I think I’m right on a few things.

First, a lot of the Canadian medicine isn’t quite the same as what we have here. For some of them, the basics are the same, but some of the little “touches” aren’t. I recall looking up for somebody one of those emergency inhalers like people with asthma use. Well, the Canadian version was even the same brand, but it was powder instead of spray. They didn’t have the spray version in Canada. It was only available in the U.S.

Also, some of those drugs aren’t made in the U.S. or Canada, either one, even though they might bear the American drug name. A lot of them are manufactured under license in India or some other place, then resold to Canada.

And there are some drugs that aren’t available in Canada at all.

It’s sort of like the Walmart of drugs. Yes, you can buy a cheaper .22 rifle at Walmart, but it’s most likely a slightly “cut-down” version of a better model you can buy in a first rate gun shop that has better wood, better sights, a better finish, and so on, but has basically the same function and general appearance as the Walmart version.

What I think happens is that most drugs are developed in the U.S., and I think by far. They get a patent and can pretty much charge what they want until the patent runs out. But they might make a somewhat inferior but cheaper version for foreign manufacture and sale. Then it goes off patent and everybody and his brother makes a generic version that’s cheap.

In some countries like France, the government is the buyer of American or other drugs. It resells them, but subsidizes the resale in-country.

So, while we all seem to think we are uniquely getting ripped off, we’re actually not. There are a number of Canadian companies you can buy from online or by phone. But there’s a good chance it’s a somewhat different version from the U.S. version; possibly made in the U.K. (and a lot of them are), possibly made in India, possibly made in Romania. Probably all of them are fine, but you wonder just a bit.
 
on_the_hill said:
True. A friend of ours is a doctor, and he provides discounts to the Amish because they pay cash. He’ll discount for anyone who pays cash, because it’s so incredibly expensive to process insurance claims whether they’re private insurance or Medicaid/Medicare.
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This reminded me of something a doctor once said to me about medical costs. He said one of the big reasons medical care is so expensive is that everybody wants somebody else to pay for it, and that process involves a lot of labor and technology.
 
SamH said:
My father was a grade school drop out share cropper that paid for the hospital births of all 12 of his children in cash - the youngest being born in 1977. My youngest brother just had a child last year that was born a little over 2 months premature - the cost of his stay in the NEO Natal unit was probably well over $100,000. In 1960s instead of facing that cost for a live child my father would have faced a funeral instead.

As the baby boomers age they will devote more and more of their resources to living longer and want to live longer not matter what the cost to them or anyone else.
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Amen, one very big factor.
 
I can tell you that in Philippines, there is no national health insurance or government subsidies for the most part. Everyone pays out of pocket, and it is very expensive unless you have a relative or family friend who can provide that service to you for free or at a discount.
 
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