Why healthcare in America is so expensive.

Why do we pussy-foot around the issue of the high cost of healthcare in America?

1. Why do we have an infinite number of insurance pools? If insurance is a State matter, we should have no more than 50 pools. If it is a federal issue, we should have one pool. The effect of infinite pools of miniscule size is to increase the cost of insurance because it minimizes the size of the group over which outlier costs can be amortized. Bigger pools, mean a lower percentage of outliers to be amortized by the entire pool.

It is interesting to note that the only reason that health insurance is employer-based for most is because of government interference. During World War II, the government implemented wage and price controls to prevent runaway costs as manufacturers, essential for the war effort, competed for a limited labor pool. Since defectors couldn’t be wooed with higher wages, employers enticed employees with ever increasing benefits and perks including health insurance.

We all have the option to purchase personal health insurance, but choose to have our employers provide it in the mistaken expectation that it’s cheaper that way. It isn’t.

2. The healthcare special interests: doctors, providers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospitals, insurers, etc. are all heavy political contributors. Each uses their bribes to influence government policies, regulations, and programs to their specific advantage. Every government decision is subject to prior sale.

3. Healthcare providers define the diseases, prescribe the tests, and define the treatment regimens; and then they provide the facilities and procedures to maximize their return on investment to fulfill those “government specified and approved” regimens irrespective of what may actually be required to treat a specific patient.

4. Once established, regimens eliminate competition and efficiency because they don’t have to be justified case by case; simply billed as pre-approved. There is no oversight to question the costs other than that provided by the insurers themselves. Another conflict of interest derives from the fact that typically, the doctors who define and specify test and treatment regimens are the owners of the approved diagnostic resources, giving them non-reviewed authority to control the return on their investment in the diagnostic resources independently of the actual need for any such diagnostics to treat individual patients.

5. Why do we accept that there is one cost for someone with insurance and a different one for those who are paying out of pocket as is the common practice among healthcare providers?

6. 85% of all healthcare costs in America are consumed by patients 65 and older. 65% of those costs are consumed in the final 6 months of life. With Baby Boomers two years away from hitting that magic mark, healthcare providers are frantically trying to assure that they will be paid for all the excessive costs that are about to explode. The issue isn’t to assure that everyone has appropriate healthcare coverage; the issue is that the providers have someone to pay the bill for the regimens they have institutionalized by government mandate purchased with campaign contributions.

Note that the "savings" that are supposed to off-set the $1.25 Trillion cost come from $500 Billion in reductions in Medicare that take effect years before the implementation of the full healthcare plan in 2014. I'm sure it's simply coincidental that Medicare is getting slashed and hacked just as Baby Boomers reach eligibility.

7. Healthcare costs are so high in America for only one reason: government subsidies established, defined, mandated, and implemented as a result of the bribes of healthcare provider special interests at every single point along the healthcare continuum.

There is only one way to minimize the cost of effective healthcare in America, and that is to eliminate all government subsidies, mandates, and competition-limiting regulations.

8. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that grants the federal government any authority to be involved in healthcare. They have no authority to regulate it, define it, subsidize it, or mandate it. The fact that they have been doing so for generations does nothing to legitimize their usurpation of un-delegated authority.

9. No one in their right mind can expect the federal government to manage healthcare. There is no program managed by the federal government that doesn’t suffer criminal mismanagement.
a. Congressional lunchroom lost $2 Million last year alone
b. Taxpayers subsidize every Amtrak passenger to the tune of $423 per trip
c. The Department of Energy, created to minimize US dependence on foreign energy in 1978 now has 24000 direct employees, 100,000 contract employees, a budget of $24 Billion a year and oversees a higher dependence on foreign energy now than ever before. We’d be better-off to liquidate the Department of Energy. The same is true for most federal Departments.
d. Compare the gross inefficiency and waste of the government managed Postal Service with the effectiveness of privately managed UPS and Fed-Ex.
e. Does anyone believe that Veteran medical services (3% of the hospitals in America serving 1% of the population) are in any way adequate?
f. Does anyone in their right mind want healthcare like the federal government provides to Native Americans?

Healthcare is outrageously expensive in America BECAUSE of the interference in it by the federal government. Every activity that the federal government attempts to manage, it is criminally corrupt and grossly mismanaged.

Not only do we have to prevent federal takeover of our healthcare system, we must purge the federal government from every activity not specifically authorized by the COTUS. The sooner we do this, the sooner America will be restored to her proper glory.