|
Still, the costs that I pay out of pocket, my deductible, without including the cost of the insurance or the cost of Medicare (sometimes people forget that their is a premium deducted from SS or SSI benefits), means I have shelled out, so far this year, $2,936.22.
Being that what we earn in take home, between the two of us, amounts to about $2,800 per month, you can see why any changes in my medical costs, or any change, for that matter, cuts into other expenses.
We shell out about 13% of our take home pay for medical expenses.
Now changing the CPI effects me in two ways. First, it will more than likely decrease my SSI check because the increase in the premium will more than likely be offset by any tick up, under the new way of calculating CPI, in my overall benefits. Second, more cost to the patient because of cutting the benefits paid by Medicare will be passed on to me.
The problem I have with all of this is that nothing that the Obama Administration has done will curtail the arbitrary increase in medical costs. I firmly believe that the medical industrial complex increases the price of all things related to medical treatment because they can. There is no real market reason why health care should be growing almost exponentially year after year.
For as long as I can remember, the buzz coming from the medical industrial complex has been that lawsuits are driving the cost of doing business, that the cost of conducting research is out of control and that all the new tests and procedures are extremely complicated and so naturally more expensive.
And we take it, accepting that medical costs will continue to rise on a rate that will double every ten years or so.
But the real reason that costs keep going up and up and up is because there are no real market pressure between the consumers and the providers. The insurance companies and the government, through Medicare and Medicaid, don't exert the correct market pressures. Add on people trying to keep grandma alive at all costs and that injects another non market input driving medical costs.
So, how do we get the market pressures back into the market place.
One way would be to scrap the profit margins for the insurance companies by getting them out of the equation. The best way to do that would be to have a single payer system where one voice speaks for all the people on the consumer side of the market equation.
All this tinkering around with changing CPI measurements is just folly that will only increase costs for the consumers via higher insurance costs or higher deductibles. Worse yet, not making all treatment available to all consumers.
Again, by not pushing hard for a single payer system, we are operating in la la land when it comes to containing medical costs.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
