Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty(rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
If you have had any medical procedures lately, you may already be aware of the enormous prices being charged by hospitals. What you may not be aware of is just how expensive this medical treatment is and how relying on private health care may just be reducing our lifespans. I apologize in advance on the length of the following examples, but they are necessary to understand the enormity of the issue.
“Brill’s article begins with the story of a 42-year-old Ohio man named Sean Recchi, who traveled to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He and his wife Stephanie had paid $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, for insurance that covered $2,000 per day of hospital costs. His financial troubles started when MD Anderson told him, “We don’t take that kind of discount insurance.” But he had to go to the hospital. His wife recalled that he was “sweating and shaking with chills and pains. He had a large mass in his chest that was..growing. He was panicked.”
Stephanie asked her mother to write a check for $48,900. Sean waited for 90 minutes while the hospital confirmed that the check had cleared. He was also required to advance MD Anderson $7,500 from his credit card. The total cost for the initial treatment and chemotherapy was $83,900, including a $15,000 charge for lab tests for which a Medicare patient would have paid a few hundred dollars, $283 for an x-ray that Medicare categorizes as a $20 charge, and $1.50 for a generic version of a Tylenol pill.” CommonDreams
Those charges were just the start of the enormous costs that Mr. and Mrs. Recchi would be subjected to while dealing with his illness. His total bill for the beginning of his treatment for cancer was $83,900! If Mr. Recchi had been treated under Medicare for the same procedures and blood tests his cost would have been much less. “Had Recchi been old enough for Medicare, MD Anderson would have been paid a few hundred dollars for all those tests. By law, Medicare’s payments approximate a hospital’s cost of providing a service, including overhead, equipment and salaries.” Time
The hospital in this example is a non-profit division of the University of Texas, but its profits are enormous. ‘ “The hospital’s hard-nosed approach pays off. Although it is officially a nonprofit unit of the University of Texas, MD Anderson has revenue that exceeds the cost of the world-class care it provides by so much that its operating profit for the fiscal year 2010, the most recent annual report it filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was $531 million. That’s a profit margin of 26% on revenue of $2.05 billion, an astounding result for such a service-intensive enterprise.1
The president of MD Anderson is paid like someone running a prosperous business. Ronald DePinho’s total compensation last year was $1,845,000. That does not count outside earnings derived from a much publicized waiver he received from the university that, according to the Houston Chronicle, allows him to maintain unspecified “financial ties with his three principal pharmaceutical companies.” ‘ Time
Not only is this hospital reaping huge financial windfalls on the backs of its patients and their insurance companies, the compensation of the hospital’s CEO, as noted above, is astronomical. And that compensation does not even include the “unspecified financial ties” with pharmaceutical companies. Does that mean that the CEO is allowed to receive kickbacks from some of the companies that his hospital may be using for their medications?
This is just one example, but the Time magazine article linked above delves into other examples of this type of outrageous medical costs charged to patients. If the patients noted in the examples were able to take advantage of a Medicare for all plan, the costs would be a small fraction of what Mr. Recchi was subjected to. It is interesting to note that the Administrator of Medicare for the entire country made a small fraction of what this one hospital CEO took home. “The Medicare administrator made a base salary of approximately $170,000 in 2010.” TheNation
Just what do we get in terms of service and results for these extraordinary charges? “Our private health care system has indeed failed us. We have by far the most expensive system in the developed world. The cost of common surgeries is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany.” Common Dreams Our expensive private health care system does not even produce better medical results than the results achieved under Medicare.
“We now have a shorter life expectancy than almost all other developed countries. A National Research Council study placed the United States LAST among 17 high-income countries.
It wasn’t always this way. Since 1960 there has been a close parallel between worsening life expectancy and increased health care costs as a percentage of GDP. Most disturbing is our growing infant mortality rate relative to other countries. A UNICEF study places the U.S. 22nd out of 24 OECD countries in “children’s health and well-being.” In startling contrast, Americans covered by Medicare INCREASED their life expectancy by 3.5 years from the 1960s to the turn of the century.” Common Dreams
That last factoid on life expectancy is amazing. We are paying far more than any other country in the world for our private health care system, but we are not getting the world-class results for those high prices. Why do we as a nation continue to allow the medical industry to charge these exorbitant rates? The answer is the lobbying money spent on our politicians in Washington and in state capitals all over this country. We have to take over the for profit health care system and replace it with a Medicare for all type system or we will continue to overpay for less. Will Obamacare help this situation? It may, but we won’t know for a few more years if costs are controlled and results are improved.
Will Obamacare start us down the road to a single payer system? One can hope, but I am not holding my breath. Does it make sense to cut Medicare services and push back the eligibility age in light of the huge national costs incurred in the private health care system? What do you think?
Gene H.
How then do you explain the findings in the case I’ve linked above?
http://scc.lexum.org/en/2005/2005scc35/2005scc35.html and now again for ease of reference
Elaine M.,
I have no experience with Medicare, but I know that Medicaid does not cover all the care that private doctors are requesting. How much of the care your mom is getting is covered by the supplemental insurance (rather than Medicare per se)? Do you think we will all need supplemental insurance if we go to single payer?
What Gene said.
My granddaughter is engaged to a Canadian. When he needs medical care, he gets it with no argument for little or no cost. My granddaughter would be able to get her wisdom teeth pulled right away if she were a Canadian citizen. As it is, they hurt to the point were she has trouble sleeping. She has been trying to get them out for the past two years, but will require an oral surgeon to do it. This is not a simple tooth extraction. Her dad recently got a new job, and with new insurance, she now has a pre-existing condition and cannot get dental insurance. She does not work, and he does not make enough to pay for it himself. If she were on single payer insurance like Medicare, she would be able to get them out and only have to pay a heavily discounted 20% co-pay.
Most doctors in private practice spend almost as much time on the phone arguing with some non-physician clerk as to whether a procedure, medication or treatment is “necessary.” That is why he quit private practice in the clinic and went to work on salary at a big hospital. That pays less, but at least he knows he will get paid regularly. He no longer has to argue with insurance clerks having less than one-third his education.
When I served on the medical ethics committee of a large regional hospital, the chair of the committee passed around copies of a letter. The hospital had received this letter earlier in the week from one of the largest insurance companies in the country. In essence, the letter informed the hospital that if an expected stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) was likely to last more than five days, they would not pay for the ICU stay. If a patient was sick enough to need more than five days of ICU care, actuarial statistics predicted they only had a 17% chance of surviving. Those odds were unacceptable to the company’s underwriters.
In other words; if you are sick enough to need ICU care, and only have a one in five chance of surviving, then just put you in a regular room and make you comfortable until you die. Or save even more money by giving you a prescription and send you home.
Aetna’s Chairman and Chief Executive Mark T. Bertolini’s total compensation rose 20% to $10.6 million last year largely because of greater stock awards, as well as more perks.
Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/aetna-ceos-pay-rose-20-in-2011-on-stock-awards-2012-04-09
Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois paid CEO Patricia Hemingway Hall more than $12.9 million in 2011. That was a 61 percent raise.
Source: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120515/NEWS03/120519922/blue-cross-parents-ceo-pay-climbs-to-12-9-million
That is only two companies. Keep in mind that Patricia Hemingway was the CEO of only one BC/BS operation in one state. There are a total of 35 BC/BS operations, each with its own CEO. BC/BS is a “non-profit” company. My question is, non profit for who? Ummm…..never mind.
nick,
My 95-year-old mother has been covered by Medicare and a supplemental insurance for nearly thirty years. She has never had a problem with “delivery” of medical care. She has been hospitalized, had eye surgery, had treatment in the ER, sees a retina specialist on a regular basis. She has never experienced a problem getting treatment or with medical bills that she cannot afford to pay.
I don’t think either of you understand how universal health care works most countries that have it (which in the West it pretty much damn near every one but ours).
They cannot deny you care.
I will repeat that.
They cannot deny you care.
It is considered a basic human right and is even written in to a few countries constitutions.
The only time denial becomes an issue is 1) organ transplants (which are governed by availability) and 2) when the chances of the surgery/treatment killing you or the benefits of surgery/treatment are so minimal as determined by your doctors and you as to be impractical.
Insurance companies deny treatment all the time . . . even when you beg.
I, and millions of my fellow Americans who worked hard and planned out healthcare options are pleased w/ our care. I don’t feel robbed except on 4/15 every year. Our CARE is not the main issue..it’s the delivery system. I don’t want our care diminished for a govt. controlled delivery system, and neither do many Americans..possibly most. We fundamentally disagree, let’s just agree on that and move on.
nick/rafflaw:
I have great health care and we cost them a bunch.
I dont wont to have to go begging to some government b-crat for something that isnt the governments to give.
nick,
Poorly regulated healthcare delivered by insurance companies robs all of us and delivers poor care.
rafflaw, I agree. But, there is a HUGE area in the middle between poorly regulated insurance healthcare and the Federal govt. having TOTAL control of our bodies.
nick,
If the insurance companies are soulless, as you suggest, they are not being regulated enough.
Insurance companies, although souless, are regulated by the govt. And, we can sue them. When govt. controls healthcare they “regulate” themselves and your ability to sue. I know attorneys who defend state university hospitals/docs compared to private hospital/docs. It’s 2 different ballgames folks.
Elaine,
Great links. It is especially amazing that these non-profit hospitals pay such exorbitant salaries to their CEO’s.
For hospitals, ‘nonprofit’ stops with CEO’s paycheck
August 29, 2010
By Jay Hancock
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-08-29/health/bs-bz-hancock-hospital-pay-20100829_1_hospitals-executive-compensation-ceos
Excerpt:
Eight top Baltimore hospital executives pulled in more than $1 million each in fiscal 2009, according to newly detailed disclosures from the Internal Revenue Service.
Close to a dozen had personal dues for “social clubs” financed by your charitable donations, tax dollars and health insurance premiums. Many enjoy lavish and opaque executive retirement plans that also put upward pressure on the medical costs that threaten government budgets and the economy.
Don’t say they’re worth it. Don’t say that there’s a “market” in hospital-management talent and that organizations must pay top dollar. And really, don’t start quoting Wall Street salaries to try to make these look reasonable.
Hospitals aren’t Goldman Sachs. They’re not Stanley Black & Decker or Microsoft, either. They’re nonprofits, getting charitable donations and huge government subsidies beyond all the loot they rake in from Medicare and Medicaid. If the newly required disclosures on the IRS “Form 990” put pressure on hospital boards and CEOs to tone it down, it’s about time.
“This is taxpayer-subsidized money. This isn’t money coming from Bill Gates. I bet the hospitals in Baltimore are the biggest property owners who don’t pay property tax,” says Dean A. Zerbe, a Washington lawyer and former tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee. “Don’t cry me a river about how you can’t help the poor, and you take them to court when they can’t pay, when you’re paying your CEOs like nobody’s business.”
After being out to lunch for years on nonprofit executive pay and other abuses, the IRS has begun paying attention and enforcing the law. A little.
Elaine,
Many of these top hospital jobs go to people with extensive connections to politicians or to the Corporate Elite. A friend of mine back in the 70’s got a high paying job with the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation, without any qualifications or work background. His uncle was the President of a very powerful national union that had supported Richard Nixon. And so it goes.
NY Hospital Execs Try to Change Medicaid Rules Behind Closed Doors
Joanne Doroshow
Center for Justice and Democracy
Posted: February 22, 2011 05:34 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-doroshow/rich-new-york-hospital-ex_b_826371.html
Excerpt:
Whatever has been going on behind the closed doors of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team, loaded with self-dealing lobbyists and hospital executives who make Wall Street level salaries, it’s time for New Yorkers to say enough.
Many h
ave already complained about how this Team has been dominated by hospital and industry lobbyists, with consumer or patient advocates mostly excluded. Now we find out that these lobbyists are using this process not to save Medicaid money, but to execute a backroom deal that could create a financial windfall for negligent hospitals, incompetent health care providers and their insurance companies.
Essentially, their proposal (known a Proposal #131, found here), which they may intend to push through the budget process with no public airing, would severely limit hospitals’ liability for killing or injuring patients. Yet we know that many New York hospitals have notoriously bad safety records, especially in low-income communities, and too many babies suffer brain damage at birth as the result of poor medical care. These children, who are often on Medicaid, are able to get off Medicaid because settlements or verdicts pay for their needs.
However, this Team is seriously considering a Draconian “cap” on non-economic damages in all medical malpractice cases, an industry-crafted measure that arbitrarily limits compensation and promotes a kind of caste system by branding entire classes of low- or non-earners in our society (seniors, children, women who do not work outside the home, and the poor), as worth less than their wealthier counterparts, and make it difficult for these cases to even make it to court.
But here is what’s even more horrific: they want to target for even worse legal treatment possibly the most vulnerable of all New Yorkers – brain-damaged babies. According to this idea (see our analysis), newborns and moms would be forced into a new liability system that denies them the same kind of rights and recourse that adult men have in this state. Even if the catastrophically-injured babies’ family were able to bring a lawsuit, the sketchy public details about this proposal suggest that they would be condemned to a lifetime of additional suffering as they are forced to deal with a burdensome and humiliating struggle to get bills paid from a unaccountable insurance-funded entity.
What’s more, according to Proposal 131, all insurance consumers would be forced to subsidize this negligence with an insurance surcharge or tax, presumably to be passed onto all individuals and small businesses. So this proposal would not only create a windfall for hospitals on the Team, it would put the state in the shocking position of subsidizing the commission of medical malpractice. This is even though Health Grades, a company that measures health care safety, placed nearly half of New York’s hospitals among the lowest percentile in patient safety, and 7,000 New Yorkers already die in hospitals as a result of preventable medical errors in hospitals each year, with hundreds of thousands more injured
Rafflaw,
Immune to Cuts: Lofty Salaries at Hospitals
By JIM DWYER
Published: March 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/nyregion/16about.html?src=recg.&_r=0
Excerpt:
At Bronx-Lebanon, a hospital that exists only by the grace and taxed fortunes of the people of New York State, the chief executive was paid $4.8 million in 2007 and $3.6 million in 2008, records show. At NewYork-Presbyterian, a hospital system that receives nearly half a billion dollars annually in public money, the chief executive was paid $9.8 million in 2007 and $2.8 million in 2008.
In an urgent search to cut the state’s health care costs and lift revenue, a task force came up with a plan to increase the cost of a hospital stay by $5 and to limit housekeeping services for the disabled in their homes.
One area of plump costs, however, remained undisturbed: executive suites where salaries and compensation run into the millions of dollars, even at the most financially struggling hospitals.
A proposal to allow public financing for only the first $1 million in wages for an executive died before it even reached the task force. “It was classic how it was killed,” said Judy Wessler, director of the Commission on the Public’s Health System, an advocacy group that had suggested the limits.
“We submitted the proposal in writing, met with the state staff members about it, then testified for our two minutes at a hearing,” Ms. Wessler said. “Then in the written summary of all the 4,000 proposals, they twisted the wording of ours so that it would be impossible to implement. Then they said it was not viable, so it wasn’t even put up for a vote.”
State officials acknowledged that the proposal had been drastically changed from its original meaning, but did not explain how that happened. In an e-mail exchange provided by Ms. Wessler, Jason A. Helgerson, the state’s Medicaid director, apologized “for not having had the time to do all we wish to do.” Mr. Helgerson was not available for an interview on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.
The subject of executive wages would have been familiar to the task force, many of whose members came from the health care industry. One had worked as a consultant for Mount Sinai Medical Center, which received $250 million in Medicaid and paid its chief executive $2.7 million in 2008. A co-chairman of the task force, Michael Dowling, was paid $2.4 million in 2008 by North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, which received about $220 million from Medicaid.
UNDER current policies, the State Health Department monitors executive salaries, though much of the compensation data the hospitals provide to the state do not jibe with the tax forms that they must file. In any event, the state does not regulate the salaries, viewing them as decisions that are entirely up to the hospitals’ boards.
Bron,
Regarding Medicare fraud: Guess who is one of the worst medicare fraudsters in this country? None other than the current governor of Florida–Rick Scott. Knowing that, the people of Florida still voted him into office. Go figure.
*****
Rick Scott’s Role in Largest Medicare Ripoff in History: Miami Herald Probe
Sunday, 27 Jun 2010
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/rick-scott-medicaid-hca/2010/06/27/id/363201
Just what was Rick Scott’s role in the largest ripoff of taxpayers in the history of Medicare and Medicaid?
According to an investigative report published in Sunday’s Miami Herald, Scott will have a difficult time distancing himself from the company he once ran and its “notorious legacy of fraud.”
Scott had founded the healthcare giant Columbia/HCA and was the CEO in the mid-1990s when the FBI launched a massive probe of its billing practices.
“Scott resigned in 1997 amid an FBI probe that ultimately led to the company paying a record $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for Medicare fraud,” the Herald stated.
Scott wouldn’t comment to the Herald on the allegations, but did say in a statement that he was never charged with a crime and never questioned by the FBI.
Here are the key points made in the article:
“However, federal investigators found that Scott took part in business practices at Columbia/HCA that were later found to be illegal — specifically, that Scott and other executives offered financial incentives to doctors in exchange for patient referrals, in violation of federal law, according to lawsuits the Justice Department filed against the company in 2001.”
“The doctor payments were among 10 different kinds of fraud identified by the Justice Department in its 10-year probe of the company, records show. Three years after Scott left Columbia/HCA, the company admitted wrongdoing, pleading guilty to 14 felonies — most committed during Scott’s tenure — in addition to paying two sets of fines totaling $1.7 billion.”
“The key question for Scott is whether he can persuade voters that he deserves to be chief executive of Florida while at the same time insisting that he knew nothing about the greatest Medicare fraud in American history as it happened under his nose.”
“Chief among the critics: some 30 whistleblowers — company employees, doctors and contractors — who first exposed the frauds in lawsuits filed against Columbia/HCA between 1993 and 1997. Some employees said they were fired or punished for raising their concerns with supervisors; one said she was instructed by her boss to erase records from her computer at a Miami Beach hospital, court records show. The whistleblowers and their lawsuits helped guide the Justice Department’s decade-long probe of the company.”
“The company also admitted making illegal kickbacks to doctors in exchange for patient referrals — a scheme that federal investigators traced back to the very first hospitals purchased under Scott in El Paso, court records show.”
“From Columbia’s beginning, Scott and his partners sought to increase revenue at their hospitals by seeking patient referrals from area physicians, the Justice Department said. To win over doctors, they offered sweeteners, from lavish trips — fishing in Costa Rica, dove hunting in Mexico — to free office rent, discounted pharmaceuticals, and bogus consulting jobs, according to investigators.”
In addition to the doctor payments, whistleblowers inside and outside the company — from Miami to remote Montana — also questioned Columbia/HCA’s methods of billing Medicare. The questions eventually led to a federal investigation — and $900 million in fines.
About $400 million of the fines came from cheating on direct patient billing — called upcoding — in which Columbia/HCA filed claims stating that patients were sicker than they really were.
Bron,
Respectfully, you are ignoring the the huge costs incurred by the “free market” that you seem to desire. The gentlemen in my article had insurance that cost him 20% of his income, but the hospital wouldn’t accept it! Is this the free market that you are after? As to insurance companies being regulated, they are obviously not regulated enough if they can charge these prices for coverage that cannot even be used!
Elaine,
Thanks for the pertinent links!
Bron,
“I want more choices not fewer. I have more choice and freedom in purchasing a hamburger than I do in purchasing health insurance. If hamburgers were regulated by government like health insurance and medicine are, we would only be able to buy a burger fried on a flat top grill, with lettuce, tomatoes, onion, pickle, ketchup and mustard on a white bread bun with American cheese and it would cost $10. Oh and the beef would be one type only with 15% fat.’
There are thousand of different health insurers in this country. The problem is that millions of Americans can’t afford health insurance.
*****
Medical Bills a Leading Cause of Bankruptcy
10/23/2012
http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/medical-bills-a-leading-cause-of-bankrup-95028/
Excerpt:
Medical debt is one of the main factors leading to bankruptcy. In fact, it’s a contributing cause in 62 percent of personal bankruptcy filings, according to a 2009 study that appeared in the American Journal of Medicine.
Medical debt differs from other forms of consumer debt, since it usually results from something completely unpredictable – an illness or injury. In addition, illness or injury often prevents a person from working and earning income to pay off the bills. Many American families are just one serious illness or injury away from bankruptcy.
Health Insurance Rarely Helps
Surprisingly, nearly three-quarters of those filing for bankruptcy because of medical debt have health insurance. Most of them are middle-class, well-educated homeowners. Modern insurance policies have so many loopholes, co-payments and deductibles that a serious illness or injury can bankrupt even the insured.
Plus, many people who lost their jobs in the recent economic recession lost their health insurance as well.
Sick and Wrong
How Washington is screwing up health care reform — and why it may take a revolt to fix it
By Matt Taibbi
(This article appeared in the September 3, 2009 issue of Rolling Stone.)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/sick-and-wrong-20100405
Excerpt:
Let’s start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It’s become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn’t be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.
The system doesn’t work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it’s a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they’re sick with incurably expensive illnesses…
Heading into the health care debate, there was only ever one genuinely dangerous idea out there, and that was a single-payer system. Used by every single developed country outside the United States (with the partial exceptions of Holland and Switzerland, which offer limited and highly regulated private-insurance options), single-payer allows doctors and hospitals to bill and be reimbursed by a single government entity. In America, the system would eliminate private insurance, while allowing doctors to continue operating privately.
In the real world, nothing except a single-payer system makes any sense. There are currently more than 1,300 private insurers in this country, forcing doctors to fill out different forms and follow different reimbursement procedures for each and every one. This drowns medical facilities in idiotic paperwork and jacks up prices: Nearly a third of all health care costs in America are associated with wasteful administration. Fully $350 billion a year could be saved on paperwork alone if the U.S. went to a single-payer system — more than enough to pay for the whole goddamned thing, if anyone had the balls to stand up and say so.
Everyone knows this, including the president. Last spring, when he met with Rep. Lynn Woolsey, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Obama openly said so. “He said if he were starting from scratch, he would have a single-payer system,” says Woolsey. “But he thought it wasn’t possible, because it would disrupt the health care industry.”
Huh? This isn’t a small point: The president and the Democrats decided not to press for the only plan that makes sense for everyone, in order to preserve an industry that is not only cruel and stupid and dysfunctional, but through its rank inefficiency has necessitated the very reforms now being debated. Even though the Democrats enjoy a political monopoly and could have started from a very strong bargaining position, they chose instead to concede at least half the battle before it even began.
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/12/paul_ryan_unleashes_budget_plan/ The plan repeals Obamacare and slashes Medicare and Medicaid.
rafflaw:
Insurance companies are regulated by the state and federal government. It really isn’t a free market. Puzzling has written about it many times before on this blog.
We need more freedom in medicine not less. Look at Lasik surgery or any elective surgery that isnt covered by insurance, the prices are within the grasp of average people and the quality is good if you do your homework.
$20 for an x-ray? that doesn’t begin to cover the cost, you have the film, the machine, the salary of the tech, the salary of the person bringing the patient down to radiology, the overhead which includes janitors salaries, cooks salaries, grounds maintenance, building maintenance, doctors salaries to read the x-ray, the medical transcriptionist who writes the doctors notes, etc. I could continue but you get the point.
I could pull sh*t like that $20 fee out of my a$$ all day long and say that’s all you get for a procedure but that doesn’t make it so.
If Medicare is so great why is there so much fraud? Why don’t they have fraud control measures? They probably don’t care since it is my money being spent.
Dr. Ben Carson is talking about medical savings accounts, give people control of the spending and let them pass it on to their heirs if there is money left at the end of their life. And let insurance companies sell across state lines and offer a range of services form catastrophic to comprehensive and everything in between.
I want more choices not fewer. I have more choice and freedom in purchasing a hamburger than I do in purchasing health insurance. If hamburgers were regulated by government like health insurance and medicine are, we would only be able to buy a burger fried on a flat top grill, with lettuce, tomatoes, onion, pickle, ketchup and mustard on a white bread bun with American cheese and it would cost $10. Oh and the beef would be one type only with 15% fat.
Freedom in markets works the same whether it is a hamburger or a heart valve replacement.