Friday, October 9, 2015

It's Not About Sixty-Five - It's About Medicare

Turning sixty-five doesn't mean anything to me except I would rather not.  The start of billing for Medicare means a lot to me as it's around 13% of the pittance I get from Social Security now.  Maybe for you that is not much.  Here it is a significant hit.  The result of having Medicare is nothing at all but there comes some unusual circumstance in which it really is necessary ... maybe.  It does not seem a prudent risk to throw it even if I can't afford to pay for it.

This is a measure of the chaos lately as any decision is better than no decision at all but the decision on this runs deeper than flipping a switch.  I don't live in this idiot world full of forms made to supply make-work jobs with something to do.  No-one should have to live in it.  The need for them is arbitrary because the need for medical care is obvious.  It's just as obvious it can and, in most cases, will be provided.  All that can come from the make-work jobs is obstruction and expense ... and a giant-size fortune for insurance company executives.

There is an encyclopedic rant on the catastrophic travesty of medicine in a capitalist society but there's hardly anything else in the news and hasn't been for years.  There's been a grand advertising of the rampaging dissatisfaction with health care in the country.  That rampage only rages in terms of cost but does not at once consider the declining quality as American health care is not, on average, the best in the world.

There is almost nothing about the grotesque inefficiency of the system.  The insurance companies made legends for themselves in the nightmares they created with all the forms necessary to authorize the simplest things.  And all of it to create make-work jobs which were never necessary in the first place.  The method of compensating doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc has always been considered a private sector responsibility and that means make-work jobs to pretend to add value.

We see the travesty they made of it and the Affordable Care Act only juggled things a bit, it didn't make any fundamental change to the process.  Maybe it patches in some poor people and there is bitching about the cost of them but there's never recognition the bulk of the cost is taken by the insurance companies and only about 30% to 40% ever goes out in benefits.  There is astronomical overhead in the industry and, given the above numbers, that's not hyperbole.

Health care should be absorbed entirely by the Federal government and it is your right as an American citizen to have it.  There is no more a bill or invoice for it than there is for driving on the road.

(Ed:  doesn't that substitute Federal paper pushers for the ones in the insurance companies?)

No.  Many will be eliminated as the only useful function from insurance companies is the formulation of actuarial tables which predict health trends and requirements based on previous observations.  Those observations will be the most reliable predictors of impact to the Federal budget from those anticipated requirements and nothing else is required beyond ensuring people who require the treatment actually get it.  Consequently there comes a fantastic reduction (i.e. 'fantastic' in the beyond real sense) in staffing required to accomplish the basic need:  medical care for you.

(Ed:  who pays for it?)

You.  The government never really pays for anything in your life anyway.  The only thing it can ever do for you is take less.  You should anticipate a savings in costs due to a substantial reduction in salaries for staff who provided nothing in terms of your recovery from any specific injury.  Don't for a millisecond underestimate the inordinate costs in overhead from insurance companies.   People have died and continue to die from it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what is the value of the 1.3trillion we are paying for ACA. More and more loopholes in who is covered and how much they pay.
Very similar to the lies told about how the lottery will pay for kids college tuition

Unknown said...

It's an inflated estimation of cost of providing medical care for poor people. As we have reviewed previously, the ACA should not cost anything apart from that because the government doesn't pay the benefits.

It's the same as saying the F-35 will cost a trillion and it will ... if it ever goes the life of the program. It hasn't spent that much yet, although one hell of a lot.

I don't have any particular love for ACA because it doesn't solve the problem but nothing will so long as insurance companies are involved with it.

Anonymous said...

Stick your head in the sand if you want but The government subsidizes premiums.
That cost comes from the GAO. That which pays the bills
It expands a broken medicare system And covers those who qualify

Unknown said...

I'm not disagreeing there will be costs although I'm quite sure the estimates flying about are not likely all that accurate. In any case, there's no disagreement the system is broken. From the Socialist Left, we want the insurance companies and middlemen eliminated except for developing the year's actuarial tables such that they can be input to the Federal budget process for the year. Beyond that, insurance companies serve no purpose except obstruction and expense.

The idea privatization is better is based solely on the rationalization of the perfect performance in the private sector relative to the worst of governmental bureaucratic incompetence and cluster fuckage. The system works well in many countries but here medical care is constantly sandbagged by political buggery.