[quote=bubba99]
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 nonsensical. Where do you think the cost comes from – the $15.00/hour janitor that cleans up? Or the $200,000/year doctor?. No it comes from capital and lease costs.
Is your first language english? or are your comments based on just being studid?[/quote]
As to accounting and finance, yes. Did quite well. Went on and got a masters degree. Spent most of the last 30 years working as a CPA, consultant (including medical financing consulting), and as an economist.
As to the costs….well, these are your words.
[quote=bubba99] 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.
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And I was just pointing out that your assertion is false on its face. Some costs are associated with the things you noted. Of course an aspirin doesn’t cost $40. But that’s only a small piece of total medical costs.
Had you said “some” or even “a significant portion”, I probably wouldn’t have responded to that section of your comment. Exaggeration works fine in comedy, it has no place in rhetoric. (Nor does the ad hominem, for that matter.) The breadth, the absoluteness of your assertions render them meaningless. It ignores all costs related to salaries to medical service providers. It ignores R&D costs. It ignores administrative costs. It ignores medical insurance company profits.
Same goes for the assertion about the “access provider” (whatever that means). And the rest of that paragraph is not representative of any segment of the health care industry that I’m aware of.
