Health Care in America

The events of June 19th would provide a perfect background for looking at the single-payer or Medicare for all health systems. Some 38,000 insurance industry execs are gathering in San Francisco for their annual convention (of AHIP), and they will be greeted not just by thousands of protestors, but also by events across the country as part of a national day of action.

I have long wondered why American employees allow health insurance companies to swallow one-third of their care dollars in overhead.

How about doing an investigation of the insurance companies which I think are mostly to blame for the health care mess with their abitrary rules. You might also want to consider doing an article about the impact of very high malpractice insurance costs and lawsuits on attracting and retaining doctors in this country.

Shum and Margaret, these are two very good ideas. I think much has been written on the often arbitrary rules imposed to limit coverage and improve the profitability of insurance companies. I have long been keenly interested, however, in the overhead costs of our health care system. I've had conversations with Cathy about this very issue in the past. I think a powerful story can be reported and written on this topic.

I was reading in the HIM trade magazine On the Record about a coming hospital debt crisis, with hospitals leveraging to the hilt to build big facilities in the face of dwindling Medicare reimbursements. The article only predicts the problem but does not talk about the implications for the hospitals or the potential impact on patient care. This might be a good topic to explore.

I have yet to see substantive data on just *why* healthcare costs are rising so dramatically. It certainly has the earmarks of (yet another) bubble, in my view.

What exactly is so expensive?
Why does procedure X cost 450% more now than it did four years ago?
There's a lack of justification of these costs and I think that needs to be dealt with extensively.

Carson, as someone who recently visited the Emergency Room of a hospital, I can personally attest to the dramatic rise in health care costs. Every person I know who has had to go to a doctor and fill a prescription for one kind of drug or another has felt the brunt of health care's inflationary costs. I asked senior writer Cathy Arnst about your suggestion and here's her immediate reply: "That is a good idea. I'd never thought that much about why the cost is rising so much higher than inflation. I can start working on that next week."

Great idea. Thanks Carson!

I have been involved in health care for over 40 years. I was recently fired from LSU Medical Center in Shreveport for standing up to the administration. This is becoming a real issue in medical care, and I will be giving my insight over the next few weeks. Please go to www.lsu-unofficial.com for my series of articles on the deterioration of our system.

The U.S. is spending a mind-boggling sum of money on research on medicine and health care but it does not get desired returns. For instance, mega-research projects of R&D on AIDS have nose dived causing huge financial losses. This shows that the approach is neither pragmatic nor feasible. The US should stop squandering money on dream projects because its shattered economy can ill afford such misadventures. If the US wants to make its health care system cost effective and efficient, it should import proven inventions in medicines from countries like India that have substantial experience and expertise of R&D in medicine. I am a medical scientist and I have invented medicines that actually cure Psoriasis, Paralysis, R.A.Factor(Rheumatoid Arthritis Factor) in blood and Uric Acid in blood. These are genuine inventions verified and confirmed by clinical investigations.A nd the medicines that have cured these ailments have been tested in laboratories and found harmless. Can anyone guess the cost incurred by me in making these epoch-making discoveries in the core area of medical science? It is not more than five hundred dollars. This may sound quite incredible but it is quite true. This proves that the US is spending an unreasonably huge amount on R&D and healthcare dream projects.

A story on the ability of MLB to let the 'f' word slip into a broadcast, remove clips of it from YouTube easily while it continues to proliferate the thousands of sports related independent web sites. My clip was removed from my site, www.youtube.com/bobmantzradio even though it was used in a news story that I wrote: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/37912-chase-utley-drops-the-f-bomb-at-the-home-run-derby which is supposed to be allowed under MLB rules.

I wrote a follow-up and am awaiting MLB and YouTube's answer to my request.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/39178-i-salute-the-mlbs-ability-to-remove-chase-utley-audio-while-steroids-ran-wild