Glad you are ok. Thanks for another song to the choir 🤓. Not only for profit medicine, but variable choice in how well facilities perform. Medicare sends an annual data survey in the Fall to help one learn how hospitals perform. Data is shown for both medical out comes as well as patient satisfaction. We’re stuck with mediocrity in the local area. https://www.medicare.gov/care-compare/
Ah yes, health care! We spend 20% of our GDP on healthcare while the next nearest country in cost is Germany at about 12%. Yet we rank around 20th in customer satisfaction. I have personally spent a good portion of my professional career working with these health care institutions constructing, expanding and remodeling facilities. As costs and budgeting is a major consideration I’ve had a ring side seat in their operations. It has been enlightening and frustrating to say the least. I can tell you without a doubt we can get the same or better care for far less. You could start with the extravagantly expensive hospital equipment, much of which is artificially inflated as soon as the word hospital is attached to its intended use. Secondly, or as a corollary, there’s a medical equipment technology race that results in over capacity manly driven by marketing. This means areas of higher populations of demographicly “paying” customers get an abundance of medical advanced facilities while other communities are medical deserts. Another major factor in the cost is their quasi non profit vs their stock/ capitalized value. The large healthcare players operate more like large insurance institutions, in as much as their main game is money management and investment, and healthcare is just a stage for funding this operation. As such there is a perverse disincentive in lowering costs; note I did not say their margins. They do all sorts of pricing/ billing tricks to max their apparent costs, often showing loses, while simultaneously expanding operations, mergers and seeking market share, handling out management bonuses and celebrating their capital growth. A seemingly contradictory story? The average operating overhead for the big players like Blue Cross and Amana is about 32%, but the Veterans Administration operates their healthcare at approximately 3% overhead. Now, granted, the VA may not be the best provider, but with a 30% difference, there’s plenty of room to cut the cost of healthcare in the US. Think about that, that’s 30% of almost $4 trillion dollars!! Or to really hit home, almost $3600 per person per year in America. I’d say there’s room to save, but look whose hands are firmly around those dollars; good luck prying it away.
Rollie I'm glad you survived the accident and heart event so you can keep up the good work you are doing.
Glad you are ok. Thanks for another song to the choir 🤓. Not only for profit medicine, but variable choice in how well facilities perform. Medicare sends an annual data survey in the Fall to help one learn how hospitals perform. Data is shown for both medical out comes as well as patient satisfaction. We’re stuck with mediocrity in the local area. https://www.medicare.gov/care-compare/
Ah yes, health care! We spend 20% of our GDP on healthcare while the next nearest country in cost is Germany at about 12%. Yet we rank around 20th in customer satisfaction. I have personally spent a good portion of my professional career working with these health care institutions constructing, expanding and remodeling facilities. As costs and budgeting is a major consideration I’ve had a ring side seat in their operations. It has been enlightening and frustrating to say the least. I can tell you without a doubt we can get the same or better care for far less. You could start with the extravagantly expensive hospital equipment, much of which is artificially inflated as soon as the word hospital is attached to its intended use. Secondly, or as a corollary, there’s a medical equipment technology race that results in over capacity manly driven by marketing. This means areas of higher populations of demographicly “paying” customers get an abundance of medical advanced facilities while other communities are medical deserts. Another major factor in the cost is their quasi non profit vs their stock/ capitalized value. The large healthcare players operate more like large insurance institutions, in as much as their main game is money management and investment, and healthcare is just a stage for funding this operation. As such there is a perverse disincentive in lowering costs; note I did not say their margins. They do all sorts of pricing/ billing tricks to max their apparent costs, often showing loses, while simultaneously expanding operations, mergers and seeking market share, handling out management bonuses and celebrating their capital growth. A seemingly contradictory story? The average operating overhead for the big players like Blue Cross and Amana is about 32%, but the Veterans Administration operates their healthcare at approximately 3% overhead. Now, granted, the VA may not be the best provider, but with a 30% difference, there’s plenty of room to cut the cost of healthcare in the US. Think about that, that’s 30% of almost $4 trillion dollars!! Or to really hit home, almost $3600 per person per year in America. I’d say there’s room to save, but look whose hands are firmly around those dollars; good luck prying it away.