Hacker News Reader

Comment by ender7 | Hacker News Reader

This Time article seems particularly apropos:

http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medica...

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and health-care-product industries, combined with organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services and HMOs, have spent $5.36 billion since 1998 on lobbying in Washington. That dwarfs the $1.53 billion spent by the defense and aerospace industries and the $1.3 billion spent by oil and gas interests over the same period. That’s right: the health-care-industrial complex spends more than three times what the military-industrial complex spends in Washington.

So, the same root cause as many other problems in this country. As soon as we get the government into purchasing e.g. video games, closet organizers, computer security, vacuum cleaners, etc. we'll have the same problems with those industries we have now with healthcare, education, law enforcement, etc.

Read it this weekend: I'd love to see a response from the health care industry that wasn't hand waiving. If he's right on 50% of his facts, it is disgusting how the system works.

"If he's right on 50% of his facts, it is disgusting how the system works."

There were only a handful of actual statistics in there. The one thing he is wrong about though is that healthcare isn't "roughly 20% of the GDP", rather it's about 17.9%. The furthest out cms.gov gives yearly projections is to 2021, and even then healthcare is only supposed to be 19.6% of the GDP. And I think that might even include things like herbal supplements 'other non-durable medical supplies', I'm not positive about that though.

Source: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...

Facts are more than just statistics. There were numerous statements about (what seems to be) gross, gross overcharging on everything from pens to surgical gowns to diagnostic equipment. There were the exorbitant salaries and let's not forget the chargemaster.

Exactly: that's the part I'd like to see a rebutted (if there is a rational rebuttal). The ad-hoc nature of their pricing model seems crazy.

Isn't 17% roughly 20%? Or rather, isn't 17% roughly a fifth?

Only if you consider ~450 billion dollars to be a rounding error.

Compared to ~15 trillion (15,000 billion)? That seems fairly reasonable.

Is $4.50 a rounding error on $150? To pretty much everyone, yes it is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com