'A full-blown crisis': Americans brace for a surge in healthcare costs (ft.com)

>Allen is herself a casualty. While she used to pay $487.50 a month, her new healthcare plan, with reduced coverage, has monthly premiums of $1,967.50.

Brutal.

Meanwhile the White House calls it all "fake news".

I was paying around $1200/month last year (a little under that with subsidy).

This year I'm paying $2100/month for a family of five, on a roughly equivalent plan. Except, none of the options in my state allow me to visit the PCP I switched to this year (since none of the plans last year covered my PCP from the year before).

So I guess I'm on a primary care physician merry go round :D

I am at least able to have my main specialty doctor and the drug I take to keep me in remission from Crohn's disease, and my kids' pediatrician is covered.

But I can't imagine what people have to sacrifice to keep any kind of coverage (with high deductible and horrible coinsurance and prescription drug coverage) for their families if they don't have a decent income :(

I read healthcare now amounts to buying a new car every year. (Except, of course, nothing new in your driveway, nothing to resell, etc.)

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Mine has tripled, but last year, I was actually getting some govt help. Not this year. I am fortunate to be able to afford it, but it’s just less than my mortgage.

This month is when all hell breaks loose, because people will get their first invoice at the new rate. They already know how much, but seeing it in the form of a demand, will drive it home.

Obamacare is like the NHS, in the UK. Everyone likes to bitch about it, but woe unto the politician that messes with it.

Where does all that money go to, though?

Is there a rich caste of doctors or pharmaceutical shareholders that don't need to work and live off these dividends? Or is the system so inefficient that most people in it aren't contributing to actual health care?

One thing that I’ve been trying to understand about this discourse:

Is the sum of the increase in costs some people are now paying greater than the subsidies that previously existed?

In other words: was there always a massive bill to be paid here, but it was just previously socialized and hidden in the form of taxes/ public debt? Or does the act of subsidizing it actually decrease the total?

Private equity should be banned from healthcare.

What could go wrong putting a bunch of finance bros at the wheel of a "Pay this amount or suffer/die" industry?

At what point does it become a better financial decision to do telehealth and medical procedures completely in a different country?

Can you be health insured outside of the country you live?

It should be mentioned that the US has very high wages, and even when subtracting substantial health care insurance cost, the income likely remains higher than what people earn in most other countries.

It's weird to me that americans, especially educated professional americans, have become much more quiet in their online presence due to all the crisis they are facing- what we have now is pretty different

In case you are wandering where the money goes. If you need a gall bladder removed or an appendix removed the bill to you might be $10,000-30,000 but the surgeon, for all of their care and time with you, is compensated less than $100.

I have some questions but I don't want to offend anybody. Aren't there any methods to contract the healthcare to lower the prices down? I heard that in UK they have some requirements that the prices must not go higher than... For a given type of service. Also I read a lot of articles that giving a tablet to a hospitalised person costs 20-50 bucks and people are generally running away from ambulances to not pay

Nationalize health care. Doctors should work for the government, hospitals should be owned by the government; for profit health care is a scam.

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The root cause:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Healthcare-administrator...

"Healthcare administrator's growth in the US. Healthcare administrator's growth by 3200% between 1975 and 2010 compared to 150% Physician growth according to Athena Health analysis of data from Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center of Health Statistics, and the United States Census Bureau's Current Population survey in accordance to [26]. Admin: administration; HIPAA: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; HITECH Act: Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act; DRGs: diagnosis-related group's."

The only class of medical services that has become more affordable over the last 50 years is cosmetic procedures and laser eye surgery:

https://healthblog.ncpathinktank.org/why-cant-the-market-for...

I find the US healthcare "system" to be an interesting topic. More nuanced than people think. It honestly seems like the worst way to run anything. Like I honestly cant see who its for, other than maybe US Corporations on the list of approved medical vendors. Like, putting on my "Lives in a free(ish) healthcare country" hat, it looks bonkers from that angle. But even from a more libertarian mode, the whole thing looks daft from that angle too.

Yeah, it sucks living in a society where the people in power have contempt for you and your family, doesn't it.

We desperately need to vastly increase the number of physicians in this country to decrease costs. The AMA is the most powerful trade union in history and has locked the number of new doctors a year for many years now. Restricting supply for a service with inelastic demand skyrockets prices and lines their pockets.

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