It’s All about Health Care
The deficit, that is. Here is Ezra Klein:
Spending on Social Security is expected to rise, but not particularly quickly. Spending on everything else is actually falling. It’s health care that contains most all of our future deficit problems. And the situation is even worse than it looks on this graph: Private health spending is racing upwards even faster than public health spending, so the problem the federal government is showing in its budget projections is mirrored on the budgets of every family and business that purchases health insurance.
How to lower health care costs? Sure, some of it can be accomplished by allowing market forces to operate as intended, but what other measures are on the table? It seems like a several-pronged approach is needed because costs won’t decline all that quickly without some sort of blunt instrument.
Bringing these health costs down is imperative to fixing the health care system.
Don’t pay for services.
Sick people die.
Costs go down.
Problem solved. Next issue?
the fact that private health spending is also increasing would indicate that the problem is not just the government, but rather several factors in the market that are making prices higher
This can not get any worst.
Seyyed, yes — this seems to be a relatively intractable problem.
Agreed with Seyyed. And if this is right, then at what point does everyone compromise? Where do we draw the line so that EVERYONE benefits? Not just the rich…and not just the elderly, disabled, and poor.
Hahah, Dr. Steve getting draconian in here!
If the government doesn’t provide healthcare and people choose to purchase it, I don’t see a problem.
On target!
The simple fact of the matter, when distilled down to its essence, is that we cannot afford to pay for the product that was delivered as a result of not reading or understanding “what’s in the bill”.
Further complicating the longterm prospects of this bankrupting law is the change in the demographic and the voting pattern of the American Electorate. When you are robbing Peter to pay Paul, Paul will never vote for someone who has Peter’s interests at heart. Sadly, all the Peter’s will eventually leave for a better climate and take with them their money and their jobs.
From an economic perspective the law is fiscally nymphomaniacal as it does not address the demand side of the supply-demand equation but obliterates the supply side with crippling fee reductions, burdensome and costly regulations whose implementation schedules will make hash of revenue streams, and a fee schedule from Medieval times.
All this, not to mention the coming 26.5% reduction in the CMS fee schedule to physicians and hospitals.
Sheer lunacy from a naive utopian mindset imposed on a nation of 310 million individuals who are held to no accountability for their healthcare decisions.
How might this scheme fail? Let me count the ways!
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