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[KG's Supra24]

We definitely have two different angles on this. My premise is somewhat based around the fact I feel healthcare cost are artificially inflated through inefficiency … as are most government programs (agreed) but it’s not in the governments hands. Obamacare isn’t perfect but it’s a start ….

Never heard that. Even if that's true, 102 million sounds like a pretty small amount of money. Can you tell me why they would not want it? Forcing everyone to buy health insurance expands your customer base. The day that the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the stock health care companies shot the moon. Check it out. Wall Street very well knows where the money will be funneled.

I think the insurance industry is part of the group that is riding out the inflated dollars. I think insurance premiums are too high (bc they have to pay for people without insurance) and I think they can get away with spending caps and denying coverage. JM’s example for instance … 64,000 bill and 14,000 coverage … where is the 64,000 in cost and why is insurance only covering a small portion? I don’t have any factual information about the stock market but some thought … The stock going up dramatically means someone made money. Who were those people? Where is the stock price now? Was it an artificial jump? Wall street is always a daylight, the money makers profit from the mainstream wallstreet.
Also, look at what you know about insurance companies. Massive advertisement budgets and around here, the biggest buildings in town. Now, the part of Obamacare that puts limits on how much can be spent on “admin” cost really dives off into a grey area for me. There should be a way to encourage that behavior without any dictation.

I said it was anecdotal. Are you denying that if health care costs go up, more employers will lay off to make up for the costs? That's absolutely inevitable. I can tell you why: preexisting conditions. Obamacare forces insurers to pick up coverage for someone with a preexisting condition. This is more expensive (hugely so) for the ins. company, and guess who gets to pay for that extra? You do.

I think the real cost of this thing still has some “to be determined”. My frustration from that articles comes from the fact I think small business owners will lay off employees for “their team” and their own agenda.
Preexisting conditions – guess who is paying for that now? You do. Using obesity as an example, someone with cardiac issues comes into the ER with no insurance. They get helped (it’s the ER) but can’t foot the bill. They don’t qualify for medicare bc they make too much money. There are not enough Bill Gates and Warren Buffets to pay the hospital bills for these people. So what happens, the hospitals are forced to artificially inflate cost to patients with insurance. Cost to insurance companies go up, your premiums go up. Meanwhile, this person gets sent home immediately (bc of no insurance) and receives no follow up care and more importantly no preventative care. He is back in two months bc of this and the cycle starts all over.

This is not going to happen, and I think you're engaging in wishful thinking here. But now you begin to target where the real problem is. The exponential escalating cost of both drugs and care. That must be stemmed, or any attempt to pay for it will fail, no matter what mechanism that you chose. Anti-competitive measures are codified in law in order to protect the profits of big pharma and the service providers, etc. Those MUST be thrown out in order to make any headway at all. Why is it that one can buy a drug in Canada for $1 that costs $100 here? The answer lies in complex cross-border export laws and such. And those laws must be destroyed. As far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Obamacare does not do anything to address this core problem.

We agree on the core of the problem. Until you mentioned export laws I had not given it a lot of thought. The protections I feel are given to Big Pharma are in the way of patent laws. They are granted a monopoly over a drug until it expires, right before it expires they turn it into a continuous release and snag a new patent to keep the drug in only their hands and not letting a generic market form. Obamacare does address this issue. I’ll check out the export laws.

See, that's where we diverge, and diverge a lot. Pricing of drugs and services if determined by the market, instead of being distorted by governmental intervention, will be just fine. And I know that right now, you're screaming "just look at the prices now!", and you'd be wrong. We have enormous governmental intervention right now, and Obamacare just makes it worse. Price controls have never worked, ever. I refer you to this price list http://www.surgerycenterok.com/ as the way that things can be done, right now. Look at the prices. This is how things work without governmental intervention.

That is likely a system that controls cost and promotes efficiency. They don’t just run with an inflated system. If you looked at their pay structure, I bet it would be based on performance. The inefficiencies in the system now stem from a non performanced based structure. Doctors inflate cost on medicare patients and an insured patients in an attempt to cover for those they don’t get paid for. How do you cap the inefficiency from continuing to grow? I think there are attempts at this in the bill.
Wanted to go into more but don’t have time right now…. We do have a fundamental difference though. I have a hard time not lumping healthcare into “promote the general welfare” along with education, police, fire, etc.