Bloomberg Explains How Healthcare will Bankrupt Us Unless We Deny Care to Elderly

Carlos Hathcock · Mar 1, 2020

Exactly how old does this asshole thinks he is? I'm guessing he's not too far away from that scenario himself.....or maybe does $ 60 billion buy you a little different level of health insurance than you and I have?

prambo · Mar 1, 2020

This almost 73 year old says...

tirwin1 · Mar 1, 2020

Bloomberg has a point but like every other democratic asshole he can't see this is an argument against Medicare for all or any other form of government health care. If Bloomberg or any other person at age 95 wants to spend their own money to treat prostate cancer that's their business. Guaranteeing everyone health care (including illegals) will bankrupt the country and then we're back to death panels or some bureaucrat making life and death decisions. Somehow this country survived the first 200 years without govt health care. Let private insurance sort this out. It will be far from perfect but the better approach is to have decisions made by individuals and not bureaucrats.

Blimey · Mar 1, 2020

I absolutely agree wit him.

Bloomberg at heart is a profound misanthrope like me. The diffference between him and I is I know my views like that would never play well go a woke democratic base.

Darth · Mar 1, 2020

Why not pay for none of it?

Everybody pays for themselves. Why are they my responsibility?

Deplorable Me · Mar 2, 2020

Can we make an exception?

@thewheels · Mar 2, 2020

Healthcare is the epic cluster it is because gubberment got involved.
So letting the government control it will now solve their previous ham fisties?

libertysnake · Mar 2, 2020

I think we have to think about "why" healthcare is as expensive as it is -- and clearly, the cost of healthcare is quickly spiraling out of control in this state. (I personally pay over $900 per month for insurance that isn't even top of the list, from the marketplace.)

Case and point, I have to get some medical supplies for my CPAP machine. If I go through the distributor my health insurance company chooses, it's maybe 50% less than my out of pocket cost just paying for it through a third-party distributor in the US that doesn't work with the health insurance company.

However, what they actually charge the insurance company is something like 300% of the cost vs me going to a third-party distributor. So, while it's cheaper to allow the insurance company to pay 300% or more of the normal cost (since, my after insurance cost is 50% of the cost from a third-party place), it is still a massive waste of money that is probably forcing up the prices of insurance.

One has to question how such an abuse of costs comes to exist. My only guess, since I'm not an expert in this area, is that regulation forces a certain flow of distribution, which causes such an abuse.

I think once we nail down and fix the reasons for the bloat in costs, then we'll see affordable health insurance return. Whether that is remedied via regulation, or removal or revisement of existing regulation, I'm not sure. I just know it has to happen.

spat · Mar 2, 2020

The Democrats all talk about who will pay for healthcare, but not who will provide it.

They look at everything in microeconomic terms, and you can't think like that when discussing the whose market.

They all talk about providing healthcare to more people, but don't mention how we will get more doctors, nurses and hospitals to do it. They act as if they will magically appear once they change who is paying.

Bottom line is that healthcare *must always* be rationed. There is no country on earth without some rationing mechanism.

Would you rather trust a free market, an insurance company that you have alternatives to if they get too bad, or the government to decide who gets what healthcare.

ProgSpear · Mar 2, 2020

Why has nobody noticed that EVERY TIME government gets involved in something, the cost skyrocket. I will point out (again) that the FIRST thing OBambam did was NATIONALIZE all student loans. What has been the rate of inflation of tuition since?

prambo · Mar 2, 2020

Although the graph below doesn't tell the entire reason for an increase in costs, IMHO it is a major driver of the problem - namely, more fucking bureaucrats - many necessitated by .GOV regulations. In addition, drugs developed by pharma, both big pharma and "start ups" (which are mostly bullshit scams) have based their "discoveries" on tiers of research paid for by taxpayers - NIH and NSF for example. This $$$$ should be recovered in some manner.

ProgSpear · Mar 2, 2020

What would healthcare costs be if every third administrator was assigned to changing bedsheets, and the other two thirds were simply fired?

Apeman · Mar 2, 2020

Insurance and drug companies are to blame for the high cost of health care in this country.

The sad thing is there is enough money to pay for free health care for every legal citizen in this country. All the government needs to do is stop giving any aid to illegals and stop giving money away to foreign countries.

I don't know where I stand on free health care. It would be nice not to worry about the rising costs of insurance and copays. If companies didn't need to offer insurance to keep you there you could get a raise instead. State budgets could go down if everyone was covered by the federal government. Problem here is that all the money saved would be wasted on more stupid liberal shit.

Blimey · Mar 2, 2020

prambo said:
Although the graph below doesn't tell the entire reason for an increase in costs, IMHO it is a major driver of the problem - namely, more fucking bureaucrats - many necessitated by .GOV regulations. In addition, drugs developed by pharma, both big pharma and "start ups" (which are mostly bullshit scams) have based their "discoveries" on tiers of research paid for by taxpayers - NIH and NSF for example. This $$$$ should be recovered in some manner.

View attachment 64674

I wonder how much is based on tech, though. The cost of an MRI has gone up infinity in the past 50 years because it used to cost nothing because it used to not exist. The same can be said for a huge host of surgeries such as orthopedics, cancer treatment.

Medical care was cheap a hundred years ago because the best care amounted to nothing more than a pat and well wishing from a doctor who in fact couldn't do a damn thing.

We never question the fact that technology in business, for example, has had costs outpacing inflation because we know technology is just growing, yet we act surprised that even tough technology underpins pretty much everything about medicine it should somehow not grow any faster than inflation. It has, it will continue to.

We will have death panels, we do now as a practical matter. Some places like Canada have attempted to normalize all this by treating everybody equally badly by prohibiting private health insurance. The rich get around it by hopping on a plane and traveling out of country.

There is no room in this economy or any other for a person who averaged 1.5X minimum wage for their career to receive $2M in medical treatment over the last five years of their life. The numbers simply don't work.

libertysnake · Mar 2, 2020

Blimey said:
There is no room in this economy or any other for a person who averaged 1.5X minimum wage for their career to receive $2M in medical treatment over the last five years of their life. The numbers simply don't work.

Well, this is also because -- and I hate to say it -- we need to keep mandated coverage. Everyone has to be paying into the pool. If people are allowed to only get insurance when they're sick, there is no incentive to pay into the pool until it benefits you financially. That's one of the ways we're going to make up that difference so the funds are actually there, by everyone paying their share into the system. (We would also need to figure a way this makes sense so there's still competition between companies, otherwise once you're locked in with a single company it would be impossible to leave.)

That being said, if we're going to mandate coverage, there are a ton of other changes that need to be realistically made to make it an affordable enterprise for regular people again, while bringing in the realistic amount of money it costs to provide the service. Eliminating the bloat is non-negotiable in an overhaul.

GOPerfect · Mar 2, 2020

Wow, look at that I agree with him...

Cooolone · Mar 2, 2020

It makes sense that the guy who thinks it's ok for the Gov't to dictate what you can eat, say, think, read... Also thinks they should decide who lives or dies... Bloombucks form if Govt is controlling every aspect of your life the way he envisioned it. The biggest hypocrite too, just start telling him what he can or can't do with his money and watch the head spin exorcist style for sure!

Blimey · Mar 3, 2020

libertysnake said:
Well, this is also because -- and I hate to say it -- we need to keep mandated coverage. Everyone has to be paying into the pool. If people are allowed to only get insurance when they're sick, there is no incentive to pay into the pool until it benefits you financially. That's one of the ways we're going to make up that difference so the funds are actually there, by everyone paying their share into the system. (We would also need to figure a way this makes sense so there's still competition between companies, otherwise once you're locked in with a single company it would be impossible to leave.)

That being said, if we're going to mandate coverage, there are a ton of other changes that need to be realistically made to make it an affordable enterprise for regular people again, while bringing in the realistic amount of money it costs to provide the service. Eliminating the bloat is non-negotiable in an overhaul.

Even still if you mandate that you'll never get everybody paying in what they take out--same concept as insurance for example.

I see health insurance as fire insurance, but imagine if our world was beset by dragons that just liked to burn houses down an awful lot, constantly. And there were more dragons all the time such that it got to the point where at some point everybody's house is being burned, but the dragons only like to burn old houses down. There just wouldn't be enough resources for us to all live in brand new houses, so some people would have their houses burn down and there just wouldn't be enough money to rebuild it.

spat · Mar 3, 2020

libertysnake said:
Well, this is also because -- and I hate to say it -- we need to keep mandated coverage. Everyone has to be paying into the pool. If people are allowed to only get insurance when they're sick, there is no incentive to pay into the pool until it benefits you financially. That's one of the ways we're going to make up that difference so the funds are actually there, by everyone paying their share into the system. (We would also need to figure a way this makes sense so there's still competition between companies, otherwise once you're locked in with a single company it would be impossible to leave.)

That being said, if we're going to mandate coverage, there are a ton of other changes that need to be realistically made to make it an affordable enterprise for regular people again, while bringing in the realistic amount of money it costs to provide the service. Eliminating the bloat is non-negotiable in an overhaul.

No, the answer is not mandatory coverage.

The answer is that we have to acknowledge that some people will go without, and allow them to experience the consequences of doing so.

prambo · Mar 3, 2020

Also posted elsewhere...YMMV...

BIRTH OF A VIRUS …

fresch · Mar 3, 2020

How about the time I contacted my carrier to report double dipping by the hospital and they could care less.
Lazy, me me, my my, pos people.

Bloomberg Explains How Healthcare will Bankrupt Us Unless We Deny Care to Elderly

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