inflation is crippling our health care system

D

dukkha

Verified User
With consumer prices rising a steep 8.5 percent since last March, Americans worry about the economy and putting food on the table. Our brothers and sisters try to stretch their dollars to make ends meet.
This means less money left over to pay for medical care. Seeing the doctor for what appears to be a non-emergent health issue—like a mild cough, stomach pain, or even a medication adjustment—becomes even harder when inflation eats into our finances.
There is simply less money left over to pay for medical care. In the face of the financial pressure historic inflation creates, routine health care becomes secondary again to the daily struggles.
In many ways, this is the same situation that occurred at the height of COVID-19 when all health care was focused on the virus.

The sad reality is we see the toll of inflation in the emergency department every day. While patients used to go to the clinic without a second thought for assurance and treatment, patients now come to the emergency department when the pain becomes too severe or the symptoms too worrisome to ignore at home. The conversations with these patients are emotional, and they show us as physicians that inflation is making Americans sicker. And while we as physicians are called to heal, there is no prescription we can write in the emergency department to cure the disease of inflation.

Some may see inflation’s impact on health care and argue for larger government programs like "Medicare For All" or initiatives focused on putting more Americans on traditional Medicaid. These are undoubtedly the wrong approaches.
Attempting to pay for programs like this would require unrealistic and unsustainable tax hikes, compounding Americans’ financial strain by taking away even more of their money.

If the government attempted to expand these programs without raising taxes for the sake of political expediency, it would have to print more money to pay for health care—an approach that would further worsen inflation.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/inflation-covid-health-care-marshall-crowe-bernstein
 
dukkha said:
With consumer prices rising a steep 8.5 percent since last March, Americans worry about the economy and putting food on the table. Our brothers and sisters try to stretch their dollars to make ends meet.
This means less money left over to pay for medical care. Seeing the doctor for what appears to be a non-emergent health issue—like a mild cough, stomach pain, or even a medication adjustment—becomes even harder when inflation eats into our finances.
There is simply less money left over to pay for medical care. In the face of the financial pressure historic inflation creates, routine health care becomes secondary again to the daily struggles.
In many ways, this is the same situation that occurred at the height of COVID-19 when all health care was focused on the virus.

The sad reality is we see the toll of inflation in the emergency department every day. While patients used to go to the clinic without a second thought for assurance and treatment, patients now come to the emergency department when the pain becomes too severe or the symptoms too worrisome to ignore at home. The conversations with these patients are emotional, and they show us as physicians that inflation is making Americans sicker. And while we as physicians are called to heal, there is no prescription we can write in the emergency department to cure the disease of inflation.

Some may see inflation’s impact on health care and argue for larger government programs like "Medicare For All" or initiatives focused on putting more Americans on traditional Medicaid. These are undoubtedly the wrong approaches.
Attempting to pay for programs like this would require unrealistic and unsustainable tax hikes, compounding Americans’ financial strain by taking away even more of their money.

If the government attempted to expand these programs without raising taxes for the sake of political expediency, it would have to print more money to pay for health care—an approach that would further worsen inflation.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/inflation-covid-health-care-marshall-crowe-bernstein
Click to expand...

The cost of medical care has been outstripping inflation for years

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spending-healthcare-changed-time/
 
Health care really is the first to go when the dollars run short.

If only there COULD be some sort of Affordable Healthcare Act which would lover the cost of health care.

But we now know there is no such thing.

So maybe a different approach is in order.

Dial the old time machine back a few generations before Medicare and Medicaid. You will find that it was more affordable to go to the doctor.

Why ? A number of reasons.

Docs used to diagnose things themselves back then. Sure some tests would be needed for more complex maladies but docs had to compete back then since they were in a retail business model.

And lawyers got the bright idea of malpractice ! Well now medicine became adversarial.

While it might be nice to just go back to the future its not so easy. Med schools no longer teach diagnosis.

What we could do is fire CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) ands buy commercial policies instead. These guys are better at affordable than the govt is.
 
dukkha said:
With consumer prices rising a steep 8.5 percent since last March, Americans worry about the economy and putting food on the table. Our brothers and sisters try to stretch their dollars to make ends meet.
This means less money left over to pay for medical care. Seeing the doctor for what appears to be a non-emergent health issue—like a mild cough, stomach pain, or even a medication adjustment—becomes even harder when inflation eats into our finances.
There is simply less money left over to pay for medical care. In the face of the financial pressure historic inflation creates, routine health care becomes secondary again to the daily struggles.
In many ways, this is the same situation that occurred at the height of COVID-19 when all health care was focused on the virus.

The sad reality is we see the toll of inflation in the emergency department every day. While patients used to go to the clinic without a second thought for assurance and treatment, patients now come to the emergency department when the pain becomes too severe or the symptoms too worrisome to ignore at home. The conversations with these patients are emotional, and they show us as physicians that inflation is making Americans sicker. And while we as physicians are called to heal, there is no prescription we can write in the emergency department to cure the disease of inflation.

Some may see inflation’s impact on health care and argue for larger government programs like "Medicare For All" or initiatives focused on putting more Americans on traditional Medicaid. These are undoubtedly the wrong approaches.
Attempting to pay for programs like this would require unrealistic and unsustainable tax hikes, compounding Americans’ financial strain by taking away even more of their money.

If the government attempted to expand these programs without raising taxes for the sake of political expediency, it would have to print more money to pay for health care—an approach that would further worsen inflation.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/inflation-covid-health-care-marshall-crowe-bernstein
Click to expand...

Well just consider the cursed calamity of a lawlessly hacked in POS tRump atrocity of 2016:

5 Ways the Trump Administration’s Policy Failures Compounded the Coronavirus-Induced Economic Crisis

Last week, the total coronavirus death toll in the United States surpassed 100,000—a grim milestone in a battle that the Trump administration was not adequately prepared to fight. The United States now accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s COVID-19 deaths despite only accounting for roughly 4 percent of its population. The Trump administration’s failed public health response is mirrored by its failure to respond to the economic crisis, which has led to an economic fallout that sets the United States apart from other high-income nations.

With some 37.6 million Americans filing for unemployment insurance since the beginning of March and the official unemployment rate reaching 14.7 percent in April—a level not seen since the Great Depression—the American economy is in a disastrous state, with repercussions expected for years to come. The level of economic and public health pain that Americans are now experiencing, however, was not inevitable, but rather the consequence of a series of policy failures that started well before the coronavirus outbreak. The Trump administration’s past actions weakened the United States’ ability to respond to the pandemic, and its current actions continue to exacerbate the dual public health and economic crises. Although Congress was able to pass a series of stimulus measures that have blunted the economic pain for families, this relief happened in spite of the Trump administration, not because of it.

The weakness of the Trump administration’s economic response to the coronavirus crisis—much like the failure of its public health response—can be seen in comparison with the United States’ international peers. As demonstrated by the experiences of peer nations, a rapid and coordinated public health response could have contained the pandemic more effectively and reduced the mounting economic losses. Instead, it seems as though the United States is getting the worst of both: the highest death toll of any country and what will likely be the sharpest economic contraction in American history.

Cross-country comparisons of unemployment rates illuminate how effective strong worker protections and early testing measures could have been in the United States had they been promoted by the federal government. South Korea, which largely avoided shutting down its economy due to its early and aggressive actions, recorded an unemployment rate of 3.8 percent in April—only slightly above the 3.3 percent figure recorded in February. Australia, which implemented a wage subsidy program equivalent to 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), has seen its unemployment rate increase from 5.1 percent to 6.2 percent over the same time period. Germany, too, only saw a modest increase in its unemployment rate, as it ticked up from 5.0 percent to 5.8 percent. The United States, on the other hand, recorded an unemployment rate of 14.7 percent in April—up dramatically from the 3.5 percent figure in February.

These differences in unemployment rates have massive consequences for the number of Americans currently without employment. Had the United States unemployment rate followed the same trajectory as those of its peers, millions more Americans would still be employed. Based on the percent changes in unemployment rates, between 17 and 18 million more Americans would still have their jobs if the United States had experienced changes in unemployment rate similar to those of Australia, Germany, or South Korea. And even if the United States had followed a slightly worse trajectory, like that of Canada, at least 11 million fewer people would be unemployed. Importantly, while these figures are illustrative in nature, they actually likely understate the hypothetical difference in job loss given the large drop in the labor force as well as official measurement issues."
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/s...inflation-is-crippling-our-health-care-system
 
dukkha said:
With consumer prices rising a steep 8.5 percent since last March, Americans worry about the economy and putting food on the table. Our brothers and sisters try to stretch their dollars to make ends meet.
This means less money left over to pay for medical care. Seeing the doctor for what appears to be a non-emergent health issue—like a mild cough, stomach pain, or even a medication adjustment—becomes even harder when inflation eats into our finances.
There is simply less money left over to pay for medical care. In the face of the financial pressure historic inflation creates, routine health care becomes secondary again to the daily struggles.
In many ways, this is the same situation that occurred at the height of COVID-19 when all health care was focused on the virus.

The sad reality is we see the toll of inflation in the emergency department every day. While patients used to go to the clinic without a second thought for assurance and treatment, patients now come to the emergency department when the pain becomes too severe or the symptoms too worrisome to ignore at home. The conversations with these patients are emotional, and they show us as physicians that inflation is making Americans sicker. And while we as physicians are called to heal, there is no prescription we can write in the emergency department to cure the disease of inflation.

Some may see inflation’s impact on health care and argue for larger government programs like "Medicare For All" or initiatives focused on putting more Americans on traditional Medicaid. These are undoubtedly the wrong approaches.
Attempting to pay for programs like this would require unrealistic and unsustainable tax hikes, compounding Americans’ financial strain by taking away even more of their money.

If the government attempted to expand these programs without raising taxes for the sake of political expediency, it would have to print more money to pay for health care—an approach that would further worsen inflation.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/inflation-covid-health-care-marshall-crowe-bernstein
Click to expand...

Additionally, consider the following details, and if someone is not happy with American healthcare they are free to leave and go elsewhere:

Pandemic Or Not, America Has The Best Health Care In The World

When Trump fell ill with COVID-19, there was absolutely no contemplation of moving America’s head of state to another country to receive healthcare services. This might be surprising, considering the oft-quoted World Health Organization ranking of our healthcare system at 37th globally. Wouldn’t we want our president to be treated in the country with the very best healthcare?

The problem, of course, is that international comparisons in healthcare often mislead. This was true before the pandemic, but it has also been true in the midst of it.

First, these international comparisons often fail to consider how the U.S. population is different – more diverse and much bigger – than many of the world’s countries, particularly European countries, whose size is often similar to that of U.S. states. Indeed, there are more Californians than there are Canadians and slightly more North Carolinians than there are Swedes.

Secondly, and more critically, the focus on the prevalence of various diseases or longevity (which is influenced by a host of cultural and lifestyle factors) in international comparisons is misplaced. A better metric is survival rates, or specifically how patients fare when they are sick. After all, doctors cannot enforce healthier lifestyles, but they can help heal us from sickness.

And in America, they do a fine job of this.

Before COVID-19’s travel restrictions, it was very common for elite foreigners to travel to the U.S. for medical care. One McKinsey and Company study estimated that 60,000 to 85,000 foreign patients made this trip each year, and the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, counted more than 50,000 Canadians crossing the border in search of care in 2014. This came about despite WHO’s ranking of Canada ahead of us, at 30th.

America’s medical system was, in some ways, better prepared for a pandemic than other nations. While we have a relatively low physician-to-population ratio, and fewer total hospital beds per capita than other comparable countries, the U.S. is home to more ICU beds per capita than any other nation, according to an analysis of 2012 data. Perhaps this is because we are used to treating a relatively unhealthy and overweight population, a population at higher risk for a COVID-19. Ironically, our healthcare system enables many people to live longer and better lives in spite of their comorbidities, chronic conditions, and poor lifestyle choices. From the outside, our lack of health might reflect poorly on our healthcare system, but it is exactly because of the high quality of care available in the U.S. that so many Americans can afford to live in the unhealthy way that they do."
https://www.iwf.org/2020/11/24/pandemic-or-not-america-has-the-best-healthcare-in-the-world/
 
As salaries rise, and prices rise, deductibles stay the same. So lets say you were making $50k, and your salary rose by 10% to $55k, and you were spending $45k, and your expenses rose by 10% to $49.5k, your deductible was $5k, it would still be $5k. Where a severe health problem would have sucked up all the extra money, it would now leave you $500.

The real problem is for those who do not have health insurance, and expect the rest of us to just support them.
 
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