This is why health care costs so much...

[Uberjager]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0...1_lnk3%7C66219

Cliff Note's on the article: A family is given a $58 million settlement, because their son has cerebral palsy.

From an AP article:

"Rosenblum said the verdict was driven by sympathy for the parents but was contrary to the evidence. He said the doctor followed proper procedures and attributed the baby's troubles to a rare inflammatory complication that could not be detected before birth."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

[Tim K]

I've been thinking about this very question, and this is certainly a part of the answer.

I think the bigger issue is the steady improvement in medical technology. In recent decades, we've seen amazing advances in what problems we can diagnose and fix.

The first bypass surgery was performed in 1960. I'll bet health insurance then was cheap because we couldn't fix much. Since then we've added joint replacements, organ transplants, and all kinds of other new and expensive technologies.

We all think (maybe rightly) that we all deserve every possible treatment to extend our lives and improve our standards of living. As a result, we as a population use much more health care than we did when our capabilities were less sophisticated. All that capability costs, and the costs continue to increase as we develop more and more technologies to fix those things remaining that need fixing.

There are all kinds of ethical issues surrounding this question, and I'm not smart enough to address them. What does seem clear to me is that health care costs will continue to increase and we continue to increase our consumption.

[Guylee]

I've been thinking about this very question, and this is certainly a part of the answer.

I think the bigger issue is the steady improvement in medical technology. In recent decades, we've seen amazing advances in what problems we can diagnose and fix.

The first bypass surgery was performed in 1960. I'll bet health insurance then was cheap because we couldn't fix much. Since then we've added joint replacements, organ transplants, and all kinds of other new and expensive technologies.

We all think (maybe rightly) that we all deserve every possible treatment to extend our lives and improve our standards of living. As a result, we as a population use much more health care than we did when our capabilities were less sophisticated. All that capability costs, and the costs continue to increase as we develop more and more technologies to fix those things remaining that need fixing.

There are all kinds of ethical issues surrounding this question, and I'm not smart enough to address them. What does seem clear to me is that health care costs will continue to increase and we continue to increase our consumption.

Yeah that's part of it. Another one is the fact that hardly anybody pays for their hospital visits.

Ok so here's the situation. Ordinary people like you and me have health insurance right? We try to stay out of the Emergency Department as much as we can because even though we have insurance, that deductible sucks.

Now imagine that you're either A) a little less than honest or B) on Medicaid. A lot of us honest folk don't realize that free healthcare is only a fake name and social away. Sure, the hospital can ask for ID, but at the end of the day they are REQUIRED to provide you with medical care. As long as you're willing to lie about yourself, that whole hospital visit is free.

Now, I'm not bashing those with Medicaid, but who's pocket is that money coming out of when it gets used? (Here's a hint-it starts with a T, ends with an S, and rymes with Sax Players).

I was talking to one of the guys who does registratoin in the ED and he said that he estimates about 80% of people never pay their bill, and that's just those in the ED. I once responded to a Code Blue for a woman who had been admitted for nearly a year, and who's bill was in the millions.

That's gotta get paid somehow.

[Irving]

Not to mention the fact that doctors are strongly encouraged to test for everything and do it often. The whole "If it saves one life..." mentality means being tested yearly, starting several years before you are statistically likely to develop what you are being tested for as well.

Not to mention that because of the way insurance companies operate, there is no price competition. In fact, there is so little chance of price competition, that most hospitals can't even tell you how much procedures cost "a la cart" because they just make a cursory glance at what kinds of procedures they did that month, take a quick look at roughly how many, and send the insurance company a largely arbitrary bill for the whole months procedures. They don't even bother to break it down per patient.

[rellik74]

Greed

[Uberjager]

Greed

I'm sure that's a huge part of it. How much do you want to bet that they upgrade to a 10k square-foot home?

[Irving]

That's how it is at every single place I've ever worked. You can literally have people calling/sending letters every single day saying how great you are, and none of it means anything at all. They ONLY look at bad surveys. Don't even get me started on how the survey asks people to rate you on a scale of 1-10, and anything below an 8 gets you into trouble. Might as well just make it a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down survey.