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James Capretta (Kaiser Health News): The Medicare Independent Panel Advisory Board has been designed so that the only thing that it can recommend to control Medicare costs is a cut in provider fees.
David Williams (Health Business Blog) defends robot surgeries: Humans are the most likely cause of recent mistakes.
ACSH Dispatch: The FDA pays for a study calling for greater regulatory authority for the FDA.
Milliman: Medical spending reaches $18,074 for family of four, up $1,303 from last year.
18 thou! Wow! No end in sight.
Glad to see somebody is sticking up for the robots.
The FDA wants to expand the size of its kingdom? Surprise!
I believe John Goodman has made this point on more than one occasion: The left only knows two ways to try to curtail health care costs: (1) squeezing the providers and (2) rationing care.
For the forseeazble future they are going to go all out to squeeze the providers. But rationing of care will not be far behind.
I agree with Bruce. Humans are way more error-prone than computers.
According to the Census Bureau, median kousehold income in 2006 was $48,201.
$18,000 is more than one-third of the median incomes, assuming a family of 4.
These increases should have ended already!
Go to:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf.
Look on page 6.
Don Levit
Don,
Keep in mind that a large fraction of the money spend on health care comes from employee benefits. Median household income estimates only look at cash wages. They do not consider total compensation. It includes cash wages, employer health benefits, vacation, and so forth. The relatively slow rise in household incomes may be a result of the fact that even if total compensation is increasing rapidly, the difference could be mopped up by rapid increases in health care costs.
Linda:
You make an excellent point.
Thus, health care costs of $18,000 is to a larger or smaller extent, already in the $48,000 median household incomes.
Even if the perecentage is lowered from over one-third to 20 percent, this is still a significant expense.
In 1970, pension contributions far outpaced health contributions.
Now, it is the other way around, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
We don’t have too much time left to discuss this important issue.
There comes a time when the process must continue on its course.
Go to:
http://www.watsonwyatt.com/research/deliverPDF.asp?catalog=2006-us-0103&r=x.pdf.
Look at Figure 4 on page 12.
Don Levit