Posted with permission from
Michael Snyder
February 25, 2013
The
U.S. health care system is a giant money making scam that is designed to
drain as much money as possible out of all of us before we die.
In the
United States today, the health care industry is completely dominated by
government bureaucrats, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical
corporations. The pharmaceutical corporations spend billions of dollars
to convince all of us to become dependent on their legal drugs, the
health insurance companies make billions of dollars by providing as
little health care as possible, and they both spend millions of dollars
to make sure that our politicians in Washington D.C. keep the gravy
train rolling.Meanwhile, large numbers of doctors are going broke and
patients are not getting the care that they need. At this point, our
health care system is a complete and total disaster. Health care
costs
continue to go up rapidly, the level of care that we are receiving
continues to go down, and every move that our politicians make just
seems to make all of our health care problems even worse. In America
today, a single trip to the emergency room can easily cost you $100,000,
and if you happen to get cancer you could end up with medical bills in
excess of a million dollars.Even if you do have health insurance,
there are usually limits on your coverage, and the truth is that just a
single major illness is often enough to push most American families into
bankruptcy. At the same time, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical
corporations and health insurance company executives are absolutely
swimming in huge mountains of cash. Unfortunately, this gigantic money
making scam has become so large that it threatens to collapse both the
U.S. health care system and the entire U.S. economy.The following
are 50 signs that the U.S. health care system is a massive money making
scam that is about to collapse…#1 Medical bills have become so ridiculously large that virtually
nobody can afford them. Just check out the following short excerpt from
a recent
Time Magazine article. One man in California that had been diagnosed
with cancer ran up nearly a million dollars in hospital bills before he
died…“By the time
Steven D. died at his home in Northern California the following
November, he had lived for an additional 11 months. And Alice had
collected bills totaling $902,452. The familys first bill for
$348,000 which arrived when Steven got home from the Seton Medical
Center in Daly City, Calif., was full of all the usual chargemaster
profit grabs:
- $18 each for 88 diabetes-test strips that Amazon sells in
boxes of 50 for $27.85; $24 each for 19 niacin pills that are sold in
drugstores for about a nickel apiece.- There were also four boxes of
sterile gauze pads for $77 each.- None of that was considered part of
what was provided in return for Setons facility charge for the
intensive-care unit for two days at $13,225 a day, 12 days in the
critical unit at $7,315 a day and one day in a standard room (all of
which totaled $120,116 over 15 days). There was also $20,886 for CT
scans and $24,251 for lab work.#2 This year the American people will spend approximately
2.8 trillion
dollars on health care, and it is being projected that
Americans will spend
4.5 trillion
dollars on health care in 2019.#3 The United States
spends more on
health care than Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K.,
Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia combined.#4 If the U.S. health care system was a country, it would be
the 6th largest
economy on the entire planet.#5 Back in 1960, an average of
$147
was spent per person on health care in the United States. By 2009, that
number had skyrocketed to
$8,086.#6 Why does it cost so much to stay in a hospital today? It just
does not make sense. Just check out
these numbers…“In 1942, Christ
Hospital, NJ charged $7 per day for a maternity room. Today its $1,360.”#7 Approximately
60 percent
of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are related to medical
bills.#8 One study discovered that
approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical
bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.#9 The U.S. health care industry has spent
more than 5
billion dollars on lobbying our
politicians in Washington D.C. since 1998.#10 According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the
U.S. is currently experiencing a shortage of at least 13,000 doctors.
Unfortunately, that shortage is expected to grow
to 130,000
doctors over the next 10 years.#11 The state of Florida is already dealing with
a very serious
shortage of doctors…“Brace yourself
for longer lines at the doctor’s office. Whether you’re
employed and insured, elderly and on Medicare, or poor and covered by
Medicaid, the Florida Medical Association says there’s a growing
shortage of doctors especially specialists available to provide you
with medical care.“And if the
Florida Legislature goes along with Gov. Rick Scott’s recommendation to
offer Medicaid coverage to an additional 1 million Floridians part of
the Affordable Care Act that takes effect next January the FMA says
that shortage will only get worse.”#12 At this point, approximately
40 percent
of all doctors in the United States are 55 years of age or older.#13 In America today, many hospital executives make
absolutely
ridiculous amounts of money…“In December,
when the New York Times ran a story about how a deficit deal
might threaten hospital payments, Steven Safyer, chief executive of
Montefiore Medical Center, a large nonprofit hospital system in the
Bronx, complained, ‘There is no such thing as a cut to a provider that
isnt a cut to a beneficiary This is not crying wolf.’“Actually,
Safyer seems to be crying wolf to the tune of about $196.8 million,
according to the hospitals latest publicly available tax return. That
was his hospitals operating profit, according to its 2010 return.
With
$2.586 billion in revenue of which 99.4% came from patient bills and
0.6% from fundraising events and other charitable contributions Safyers business is more than six times as large as that of the Bronxs
most famous enterprise, the New York Yankees.“Surely, without cutting
services to beneficiaries, Safyer could cut what have to be some of the
Bronxs better non-Yankee salaries: his own, which was $4,065,000, or
those of his chief financial officer ($3,243,000), his executive vice
president ($2,220,000) or the head of his dental department
($1,798,000).#14 Health insurance administration expenses account for 8 percent
of all health care costs in the United States each year. In Finland,
health insurance administration expenses account
for just 2 percent of all health care costs each year.#15 If you can believe it, the U.S. ambulance industry makes more
money each year
than the movie
industry does.#16 All over America, people are reporting
huge health insurance
premium increases thanks to Obamacare. The following example is from a
recent article
by Robert Wenzel…“A California
small businessman tells me that he switched healthcare insurance
carriers in 2012. The monthly premium for him and his wife was about
$400, but when he received his first bill in January of this year it was
for $1,200. He hasn’t been to a doctor in years, his wife has only gone
for minor care.“Apparently
there is some clause in the Affordable Healthcare Act that results in
health insurance firms using a new method to calculate premiums. Those
who have health insurance plans that have been in effect since at least
2010 are grandfathered under the old calculation method, but insurance
carriers are using a new formula for new plans.”#17 Blue Shield of California has announced that it wants to raise
health insurance premiums
by up to 20
percent this year in an effort to keep up with rising
health costs.#18 Aetna‘s CEO says that health insurance premiums for many
Americans
will double
when the major provisions of Obamacare go into effect in 2014.#19 Close to
10 percent
of all U.S. employers plan to drop health coverage completely when the
major provisions of Obamacare go into effect in 2014.#20 According to a survey conducted by the Doctor Patient Medical
Association,
83 percent
of all doctors in the United States have considered leaving the
profession because of Obamacare.#21 Approximately
16,000
new IRS agents will be hired to help oversee the implementation of
Obamacare, and the Obama administration has given the IRS
500 million extra
dollars “outside the normal appropriations process” to
help the IRS with their new duties.#22 During 2013, Americans will spend
more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs.#23 Prescription drugs cost
about 50% more
in the United States than they do in other countries.#24 In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more
Americans
than heroin and
cocaine combined.#25
Nearly half of
all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular
basis according to the CDC. Not only that, the CDC also says that
approximately one-third of all Americans use two or more pharmaceutical
drugs on a regular basis, and more than ten percent of all Americans use
five or more pharmaceutical drugs on a regular basis.#26 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America
is higher
than in any other country in the world.#27 In 2010, the average teen in the U.S. was taking
1.2 central
nervous system drugs. Those are the kinds of drugs which
treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.#28 Children in the United States are
three times more
likely to be prescribed antidepressants as children in
Europe are.#29 There were more
than two dozen pharmaceutical companies that made over a
billion dollars in profits during 2008.#30 According to the CDC, approximately
three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to
emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to
pharmaceutical drugs.#31 According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America’s
five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009
with a combined
profit of $12.2 billion.#32 The top executives at the five largest for-profit health
insurance companies in the United States combined to bring in
nearly $200
million in total compensation for 2009.#33 The chairman of Aetna, the third largest health insurance
company in the United States, brought in a staggering
$68.7 million
during 2010. Ron Williams exercised stock options that were worth
approximately $50.3 million and he raked in an additional $18.4 million
in wages and other forms of compensation. The funny thing is that he
left the company and didnt even work the entire year.#34 It turns out that the financial assistance that Barack Obama
promised would be provided for those with “pre-existing conditions”
under Obamacare
is already being
shut down because of a lack of funding…“Tens of thousands of Americans who
cannot get health insurance because of preexisting medical problems
will be blocked from a program designed to help them because
funding is running low.“Obama
administration officials said Friday that the state-based ‘high-risk
pools’ set up under the 2010 health-care law will be closed to new
applicants as soon as Saturday and no later than March 2, depending on
the state.”#35 In America today, you are
64 times more
likely to be killed by a doctor than you are by a gun.#36 People living in the United States
are three times
more likely to have diabetes than people living in the
United Kingdom.#37 Today, people living in Puerto Rico
have a greater
life expectancy than people living in the United States
do.#38 According to OECD statistics, Americans
are twice as
obese as Canadians are.#39 Greece has
twice as many
hospital beds per person as the United States does.#40 The state of California now ranks
dead last
out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million
people.#41 According to a doctor
interviewed by Fox News, “a gunshot wound to the head, chest or abdomen”
will cost $13,000 at his hospital the moment the victim comes in the
door, and then there will be significant additional charges depending on
how bad the wound is.#42 It has been estimated that hospitals overcharge Americans
by about 10
billion dollars every single year.#43 One trained medical billing advocate says that over 90 percent
of the medical bills that she has audited contain “gross
overcharges”.#44 It is not uncommon for insurance companies to get hospitals to
knock their bills down
by up to 95
percent, but if you are uninsured or you dont know how
the system works then you are out of luck.#45 According to a study conducted by Deloitte Consulting, a
whopping
875,000 Americans
were “medical tourists” in 2010.#46 Today, there are more than 56 million Americans on Medicaid, and
it is being projected that Obamacare will add
16 million more
Americans to the Medicaid rolls.#47 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on
Medicaid. Today,
one out of every
6 Americans is on Medicaid.#48 Today, there are more than 50 million Americans on
Medicare, and
that number is projected to grow to 73.2
million in 2025.#49 When Medicare was first established by Congress, it was
estimated that it would cost the federal government
$12 billion
a year by the time 1990 rolled around. Instead, it cost the federal
government
$110 billion
in 1990, and it will cost the federal government close to
$600 billion
this year.#50 Even if you do have health insurance, that is no guarantee that
medical bills will not bankrupt you. Just check out what a recentTime Magazine
article says happened to one unfortunate couple from Ohio
that actually did have health insurance…“When Sean
Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he
had non-Hodgkins lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him
to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanies father had been
treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the
doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least
eight years.“Because
Stephanie and her husband had recently started their own small
technology business, they were unable to buy comprehensive health
insurance. For $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, they had been
able to get only a policy that covered just $2,000 per day of any
hospital costs. We dont take that kind of discount insurance, said
the woman at MD Anderson when Stephanie called to make an appointment
for Sean.“Stephanie was
then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Seans visit
just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised
would be $48,900, due in advance.”By the way,
that hospital down in Houston made a profit of
531 million
dollars in one recent year.So what can be
done about all of this?Well, the truth
is that the status quo is a complete and total disaster, and every
“solution” being promoted by politicians from both major political
parties would only make things worse.In the end, the
U.S. health care system needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, but we
all know that is not going to happen.Instead, our
politicians and the health care industry will just find additional ways
to extract money from all of us, and the level of care that we all get
will continue to decline.If you don’t
believe this, just check out what Paul Krugman of the New York Times
had to say
recently…“Were going to
need more revenue Surely it will require some sort of middle class taxes
as well.. We wont be able to pay for the kind of government the society
will want without some increase in taxes on the middle class, maybe a
value added tax“And were also going to have to make decisions about
health care, doc pay for health care that has no demonstrated medical
benefits . So the snarky version which I shouldnt even say because it
will get me in trouble is death panels and sales taxes is how we do
this.”Others are
urging us to become more like Europe. But do we
really want
what they have in
the UK?…“Sick children
are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on
controversial death pathways.“Until now, end
of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved
only elderly and terminally-ill adults. But the Mail
can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being
used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.“One doctor has
admitted starving and dehydrating ten babies to death in the neonatal
unit of one hospital alone. Writing in a
leading medical journal, the physician revealed the process can take
an average of ten days during which a baby becomes
smaller and shrunken.”In the end, my
philosophy is just to avoid the U.S. health care system as much as
possible. Most doctors are just trained to do two things – prescribe
drugs and cut you open. In an emergency situation where you are about
to die, those may be your best options, but otherwise I would just as
soon avoid the gigantic money making scam that the U.S. health care
industry has become.