[quote=SK in CV][quote=bubba99]Health insurance is a mis-nomer. Fire insurance is “insurance”, health care is not. In your neighborhood, most have fire insurance, and few if any will actually place a claim for a fire – this is the definition of insurance.
Health care is “access”. Almost everyone in a healthcare pool will require some “health care” during the premium period. The penality for not having access is rates 50% to 100% higher for direct pay medical care.
The expense is coming from huge amounts of embedded capital costs, the interest on those capital expenditures, and profit on those assets. Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) is the real driver of medical “Access” cost.
The access provider borrows from its huge cash flows to buy equipment and buildings from its non-regulated subsidiary, pays interest to the non-regulated sub, and we get stuck with double the “cost”. The bankers are robbing us in a more creative way.
A non-profit hospital does not mean that no one makes money, only that the expenses equal the huge amounts of revenue. The more capital, the more non-profit![/quote]
This is nonsense. Beginning with the very first sentence.
Health insurance is insurance. It is built on a model significantly different than life or professional liability or auto insurance. It is still insurance.
Health care is health care. Access is access. One is dependent on the other. That does not make them the same thing.
The expense comes from a huge variety of sources. My wife is a health care provider. She has no embedded costs. No capital costs. No interest. Her insurance is under $500 a year. For most physicians, those costs are only small price drivers. Embedded costs, capital costs, interest and insurance are only some of the costs of providing health care. Some providers and some health care costs are affected by those things. As others are affected by huge research costs. And some operate with virtually no costs at all.
A non-profit hospital does not mean that expenses equal the huge amount of revenue. That is both an absurd and non-sensical assertion. Sometimes they will make money, sometimes lose. And while non-profit hospitals are subject to hundreds, thousands of regulations, many of them identical to for-profit facilities, the main distinction between for profit and non-profit, is that non-profit does not have owners that will ever reap financial benefit from profit. There are no shareholders.[/quote]
I read your response, and I have to ask “did you ever take accounting or finance?’ and if you did, did you fail the course?.
So your wife is a health care provider with no embedded cost. You missed the point. Hospitals do have “big” capital costs. Physicians are not the big driver of health care costs. Hospitals, and equipment are.
Using your words “nonsensical”, do you really believe that an aspirin costs $40.00 – now that is non-sensical. Where do you think the cost comes from – the $15.00/hour janitor that cleans up? The $200,000/year doctor?. No it comes from capital and lease costs.
The use of the word “insurance” for a product that provides 100% of is policy holders a claim each year is probably not insurance. Not like car, fire, professional liability or any other type of insurance product I can think of. Call it insurance if it helps you feel better about what your wife gets paid by health carriers, but don’t confuse it with a product that expects a nominal set of losses in a actuarial group of policy holders. It buys access to doctors, and hospital facilities at much lower rates than I can get as an un-insured individual.
But if your wife took out a loan from you to buy MRI equipment and pro-rated it out to each patient visit, you too would be part of the FIRE problem. Again for the financially challenged, a non-profit does not need to show a profit to make money for its many lenders and vendors. The costs and profits are transfered to the leases for equipment and buildings.
Doctors are not the drivers behind the “huge” increases in medical care costs. My doctors biggest expense is filing and refiling the many “insurance” claims and paperwork necessary to get paid for patient “access”.
