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Originally Posted by Couch-Potato
Ugh, I work in Healthcare for a profit and even I suggest we'll move to a government supplemented program soon. Hopefully.
Before you jump down my throat, please note this is not a political perspective, its economic.
Approx 55% of hospitals in the US are failing to make a profit post covid. Reminder to everyone that they are business, for profit, and will cut services and employees if they can't continue to profit. At least 5 hospitals in FL shut down 1st qrt last year.
The trends relate to the increase in cost from vendors (medical and pharma companies), stagnant wages and decrease in headcount at hospitals due to less profit, YOY increases in cost of insurance, etc... Ultimately, run away capitalism requires some taming in key industries that act as the pillars of our society.
I'm also a lifelong sales person, but even I can see that there are industries where we allow unnecessary middle men to profit just to give useless folks a job. Specifically, car sales, mortgage sale, and insurance sales could all be easily purchased online now but we inflate the ins industry bc it's powerful in the US and many folks depend on it for jobs and it would have ramifications on our economy to evolve to a new system.
Don't let politicians feed you anti-american BS when it comes to offering citizens better value in healthcare is my .02c, they're paid to keep the status quo.
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The entire model is broken beyond repair IMO. I'm not smart enough to know the answer. And it goes against my inclination towards letting businesses and the market figure things out on their own. But I lean towards agreeing on some sort of drastic change or expansion of Medicare for All.
Costs are simply out of control. Changing the health insurance landscape with the ACA helped insure more people on net, but it skyrocketed spending and the cost of insurance.
Hospitals are a big problem. They charge 2-4x to private insurers when compared to what they get from Medicare. They get away with it bc they've gobbled up every doctor possible from primary care to specialists. And then hospitals have boards and administrators making tens of millions of dollars that aren't in any way involved in patient care.
We pay more for pharmaceuticals than any other country in the world, by multiple factors. Sometimes 10-fold for the same drugs. They always scream that if we didn't pay more and subsidize the cost for everyone, research money goes down the drain and we are no longer innovators.
And then you flip the script and wonder how getting the govt MORE involved would ever even help anything. Half the reason costs are the way they are is due to burdensome regulation, lobbied loopholes for certain industries and the list goes on.
I truly believe disassociating health insurance from employment could only be a good thing and a start to changing the landscape. But that will be a seismic change that I don't know anyone has balls to pull off.
Hell, I'm getting more depressed about the prospect of any solution just typing this out! I'm saying more govt involvement on one hand while reminding myself that scenario typically only makes things worse. I think we're all just pretty much ****ed when it comes to healthcare spending. Maybe when it hits 25% GDP something will change?