Saw this article on YAHOO today in which the questions are starting to come as to how the HUGE savings Obama has proposed are looking. If you read in between the lines ( and actually the words them self) we all know these will be bogus numbers that will fade as time goes by.
For starters, the $ 2 trillion in reduced costs for care, administrative work and other medical expenses were supposed to be savings for the entire economy, not just the government.
That means that even if the savings were realized, much of it — no one knows exactly how much — would not be available to help Congress pay for its health overhaul bills. Those measures have ranged from an $ 856 billion bill by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., to House Democrats' $ 1.5 trillion version, both covering 10 years.
Analysts, though, say there are no assurances the proposals will become reality. The plans lack detail, could take years to perfect and implement, and in some cases could be resisted by practitioners inside and outside the medical profession who don't want to lose money, they say.
The AMA, for example, says money could be saved by forgoing unneeded procedures if doctors could be protected from malpractice lawsuits as long as they followed specified treatments. Trial lawyers are vehemently against limits on such suits, however, and it is unclear what Congress will do when these two well-funded lobbies clash.
Experts also cite the uncertainty of measuring how much money the proposals would save because it would be hard to calculate what medical spending would have been without them. In addition, it would be difficult to enforce the new rules. A medical company, for example, might lose income in one area but raise prices in another to earn the money back.
Robert Reischauer, a former head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and now president of the Urban Institute, put it this way: "There's no way they could make it a number you could write down on a deposit slip for a bank."
Samm
And this came from the same person promised us 2 million new jobs just 7 months ago? LOL
NO BO!!
Scrap obamacare! We can get a overhaul in 2012 when we will not scammed and lied to! CHANGE is coming ...... just not fully till then!
hah
Awesome reasoning.
The "lets do nothing because we don't know how its going to affect us down the line" crowd always impress me.
Elwood Blues
It won't happen overnight. But in countries with universal health care costs are much lower and life expectancies are a little longer.
Why? Because they get people in for regular checkups and catch chronic conditions like arterial disease and diabetes early, when they are less expensive to treat.
The fact is that in the USA we pay nearly *twice* what Europeans pay for health care, and we have both higher infant mortality and lower life expectancy than most European countries. In the table below, im = infant mortality and L = life expectancy. See http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html for mortality and life; see http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/33/38979719.pdf for costs.
United States -- im= 6.4, L= 78.0, cost $ 7290, 16.0% of GDP
Canada --------- im= 4.6, L= 80.3, cost $ 3895, 10.1% of GDP
Austria -------- im= 4.5, L= 79.2, cost $ 3763, 10.1% of GDP
United Kingdom -- im= 5.0, L= 78.7, cost $ 3895, 8.4% of GDP
Denmark ------ im= 4.5, L= 78.0, cost $ 3362, 10.4% of GDP
Finland ------- im= 3.5, L= 78.7, cost $ 2840, 8.2% of GDP
France -------- im= 4.2, L= 79.9, cost $ 4763, 11.0% of GDP
Germany ------ im= 4.1, L= 79.0, cost $ 3527, 10.4% of GDP
Greece -------- im= 5.3, L= 79.4, cost $ 2727, 9.6% of GDP
Italy ----------- im= 5.7, L= 79.9, cost $ 2686, 8.7% of GDP
Norway ------- im= 3.6, L= 79.7, cost $ 4763, 8.9% of GDP
Spain --------- im= 4.3, L= 79.8, cost $ 2671, 8.5% of GDP
Sweden ------- im= 2.8, L= 80.6, cost $ 3323, 9.1% of GDP
Switzerland --- im= 4.3, L= 80.6, cost $ 4417, 10.8% of GDP
USA has 36 days longer life expectancy than these two countries!
Ireland ------- im= 5.2, L= 77.9, cost $ 3424, 7.6% of GDP
Portugal ----- im= 4.9, L= 77.9, cost $ 2150, 9.9% of GDP
According to David Frum (special assistant to president, 2001-2), between 2000 and 2007, the cost of the average insurance policy for a family of four doubled. See http://www.newmajority.com/the-bush-economic-record-blame-healthcare
Some folks blame our high costs on malpractice insurance. But the numbers don't support that. Including legal fees, insurance costs, and payouts, the cost of the suits comes to less than 1.5 percent of health-care spending. See http://www.insurance-reform.org/pr/AIRhealthcosts.pdf and http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/RisingCostOfMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.htm Along those lines, it's interesting to note that a number of states already have "caps and tort reform" yet the insurance companies have not lowered the cost of malpractice insurance in those states. Finally, most malpractice cases occur in state court where the Federal government has no juristiction. See http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/debating-the-cap.html#more
----------- update -----------
In this question: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AirVVzkXd37O1CEFU8feEo3ty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20090916131445AAO0ltM&show=7#profile-info-S4549Rqwaa I estimated the cost of doing nothing. Here's how it worked: according to David Frum (special assistant to president, 2001-2), between 2000 and 2007, the cost of the average insurance policy for a family of four doubled (see above). In 2007 we paid $ 7290 per capita for health care and had a life expectancy of 78.0 years (see above).
Assuming 250 million people with insurance, and the cost of health care doubling again to $ 14580 over ten years in a linear rise, I get $ 9.1125 trillion.
The linear rise is a simplifying assumption that lets me use half the increase for all 10 years. Thus ($ 7290/2 dollars per year per person) * (10 years) * (250 million people).
The linear increase assumption will over-estimate a bit because the real curve is exponential, thus concave upwards. However, that over estimate is offset by assumptions extending the doubling rate to 10 years (it was 8 years in Frum's data) and by keeping the number of insured at 250 million (no room for population growth) and using 2007 costs instead of 2009 costs. So I think it's fair to conclude 8 to 9 $ trillion as a conservative estimate of the cost of doing nothing based on Frum's doubling period.
And that's why people say it's unsustainable. If you try and build a real economic model around it, as prices continue to rise, fewer and fewer businesses can afford to offer a health care benefit; and same with fewer and fewer families. More and more people go into bankruptcy over health care costs and the system breaks down. Nobody knows how to accurately model that kind of catastrophe. My model simplified by assuming everyone could continue to pay, but that's completely unreasonable.
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paul s
2T in health savings? Won't cost a dime? 1.3 - 1.9T? They have no idea. If he said let me drive, and I threw him my keys, I half expect he would climb in the trunk.
Orignal From: Tips: SPIN METER: $2 trillion in health savings? Where?
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