Here is a chart that illustrates what I have been saying for a while now.
In 1965, most people paid a large part of their health care costs out of pocket. Over the past 45 years, the system we have has assumed more and more of the cost and consumption has climbed accordingly. This is the essence of the health care cost problem and why the Obama-Pelosi approach will not work. They will have to ration and there is no evidence that government is any better at making these choices than the average citizen who knows what is important to him or her.
More analysis is here.
Tags: health care
well I just made an appointment for L hip pain that my grandmother probably would have let slide until it turned into something worse.
Am I part of the problem?
In Orange County, the busiest hip surgeon has dropped Medicare and takes cash only. His fee for a total hip is $1200 and he has reduced his overhead by closing his billing office. Visa or Mastercard. This is a growing trend. That’s what real reform looks like.
Then there are stories like this one. Seven month wait for an appointment. More here.
Wow. 1200 ain’t bad..
My point is that he was getting paid that much by Medicare with another $50,000 a month in overhead. Drop Medicare and the overhead that it requires (Insurance too) and you can afford to charge low fees. That is what a cash economy looks like. What is starting to happen is that enough docs in a community have dropped all these contracts and the insurance companies can pay their subscriber whatever they want to but he is not bound by it and doesn’t have to deal with them. If a guy like that does 5 hips a day and operated two days a week, that’s $12,000 a week or $600,000 a year. Two or three of them share an office, splitting overhead, which is much less because there is no billing office, and it starts to work. And, it’s a lot more fun.