I feel you CMB but in my opinion, price controls would do what they did in many parts of Latin America - destroy the quality of care. If you want a system where only large hospitals exist and wait times are enormous to see specialists, implement price controls. I'm glad you were only charged $120 because of the law but that doesn't mean it's fair to the doctor. Putting in price controls could seriously harm family-doctors. It will just do what every other set of regulations has done - increase costs for doctors to run their offices and provide a fixed amount if income for medical practices which severely limits innovation and the principle of a free-market where consumers decide (with their money) who provides the best services. A great case would be 23andme.com - a Google-founder backed DNA testing service that is saving lives. $100 for your raw DNA code - something that costs thousands going through licensed doctors. United Health Corp. filed a petition stating that since they are the largest health care provider, they have a natural right to run the most DNA tests. The regulators responded by an attempted shut down. Now, this company did not give any medical services. They ran your DNA through a computer and gave you the code. DNA testing is one of the best ways to analyze your health risks. It is the most accurate form of diagnosis we have yet it is the least available? You might be wondering why that's the case if it gives so much data? It is because it is highly suppressed by big-brother colluding with big-business to make sure to eliminate any innovations which would pose a threat to the current system. Luckily, my family doctor informed us of the opportunity and suggested we run the test for $100. The results led me to realize the cause behind a health issue I'd been dealing with for years and got me off very expensive medications by finding a more natural preventative measure. Now, my doctor is going to be considered a criminal or breaking the law if he recommends his patients get testing they can afford? This mentality needs to stop. A bunch of lawyers in a room are not more capable of running medical offices than doctors are. It's absurd and it's also very dangerous. To sum it up, bureaucrats and big-business should not have the authority to persecute family doctors for things that have 0 correlation to a patient's health. That is the system in place today and unless that changes, the quality of our health care is only going to deteriorate
the FDA has an incestuous relationship to big pharma, which subsidizes 1500 FDA employees , many of whom are former big pharma employees and hold stock options in big pharma companies. Big Pharma are publicly traded corporations, who like tobacco companies have one mandate, increase profits for share holders. There is no money in curing people but there is a fortune is treating people cradle to grave, vaccine to insulin and heart meds. Only a revolution will fix this, and only informed people will act .
The quality of care thing confuses me. How is something like that measured and what does it even mean? If I break my arm or have a baby I don't care about quality i just want to get in and get out. If only paying 1k as apposed to 30k to have a baby means more babies die is that a good deal? Probably unless your the dead baby or parent. But how is quality going to change, is the doctor not going to try to save a life? I wish there was some clause in the aca that lets me sign something that says if something is going to cost more than 30k just let me die so I can get out of having to buy it.
I largely agree with your points. Except for the quote above. I actually find that the quality of care in Mexico is on par or above what I get in the states. We pay more capital gains taxes then a lot of socialist countries, yet we still have to budget for medical care if something happens which could ding us for 10k easily. If you have kids you need to worry about saving up for college because here the tuition is out of control. My opinion is that if we pay taxes at this rate, there should be something that helps the tax payers with health care and education.
OR we can just cut taxes dramatically and stop spending trillions on wars based on lies and preeminent offense. A little social spending may sometimes seem justifiable but right now we're at the point where more americans are on gov't assistance than we have people working full time. More regulations and intervention is just going to kill more jobs and burden working people more. Do we really want to put more burdens on consumers and workers? According to what I have concluded after speaking to many doctors, the medical care sucks because the doctor has to consider the laws and rules before considering anything related to patient health. Since their livelihoods are at stake, they can't jeopardize breaking regulations so people end up with wrong diagnosis. I personally have a bone to pick on this because my medical bills were in excess of $250,000 and the insurance company still wouldn't approve a DNA test. I spent $100 and found out the genetic disorder, at which point I changed my treatment. Why are they banning it, then? Because they want lifelong drug-addicted customers - not healthy patients. We live in a system completely based off bribery.
if we weren't there wouldn't they just steal all the oil rigs and call them their own, we could leave and they could hire mercenaries
well, if they were there oil rigs to begin with.....then again, why do we need to go to such extremes to protect oil rigs yet innovative clean-energy sources are illegal and being persecuted?
it's that old time religion, the one where none of the church's have steeple's and look like banks, not sure what they worship in there but they are an unhappy bunch