We've all heard about "medical tourism" in the past, where people go to third-world countries like India and Thailand to get cheap organ transplants and hip implants. But you gotta wonder how safe it is.
Well, it turns out that Americans go to Europe to be medical tourists as well. The New York Times has a story about Michael Shopenn, an American man who got a hip transplant at a private hospital in Belgium for a grand total of $13,660:
That price included not only a hip joint, made by Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings, but also all doctors’ fees, operating room charges, crutches, medicine, a hospital room for five days, a week in rehab and a round-trip ticket from America.The irony of this story is that the hip implant was made in that same town (Warsaw, Indiana) where Shopenn lives. To get the surgery done at home, with a special deal on the implant made possible by some friends who work in the medical implant business, would have cost $88,000. That special deal on the implant? $13,000 -- almost the cost of the entire procedure in Belgium.
The medical-industrial complex is gouging American consumers. We have inferior health outcomes compared to similar countries, yet pay two to 10 times as much as patients in other first-world countries pay for most procedures.
And this kind of medical ripoff is what the Republicans in the House have now voted 40 times to perpetuate.
Conservatives constantly berate American union workers for pricing themselves out of jobs by demanding decent working conditions and living wages. Why aren't they going after multimillionaire insurance and medical device company CEOs who are sabotaging the entire US economy by making American business uncompetitive with the rest of the world with the overhead of drastically overpriced medical care?
6 comments:
Looks like Nikto beat me to it on this one.
From the article (and dedicated to juris)
So why are implant list prices so high, and rising by more than 5 percent a year? In the United States, nearly all hip and knee implants — sterilized pieces of tooled metal, plastic or ceramics — are made by five companies, which some economists describe as a cartel. Manufacturers tweak old models and patent the changes as new products, with ever-bigger price tags.
and...
Dr. Rory Wright, an orthopedist, says joint makers keep prices high "because they can," not because of research and development costs or liability costs.
You think the joint parts themselves are the highest cost component? You are a fucking moron. How much does that orthopedic surgeon charge? How much does the hospital charge? Who sets the reimbursement rates?
Nor does that say anything about PPACA.
Fucktards.
Gosh, looks like the regulators aren't as smart as the traders. Instead of opting for a simple and transparent scheme, progressives always want to go esoteric and counter-behavioral to puff up their moral stances. [Which makes it all the more amusing when they whine about social-conservatives and public moralizing.]
M was arguing that we need to see the full implementation if PPACA to really judge whether it is successful or not.
I wonder if this was what he had in mind?
The students are not fully aware of the situation and many will be surprised that their desire to get a college education is now being impacted by the need to avoid the full implementation of the ACA.
I hope you don't mind that that came from Mankiw's blog. I know how much you learned about economics from your one class using his text.
And just because the retards on ignoring this, let's look at what a hip replacement costs...
First, CBS finds the price varies by a full order of magnitude - yep that's real evidence of collusion amongst the manufacturers of replacement hip parts.
Second we have the 'blue book' price breakdown, which says the hip part(s) are about 1/3rd of the total cost. Terrible cartel these guys are running, isn't it M.
You need a new tag M: fact free post.
I was criticized, somewhat fairly, that I responded to another thread with a non-sequitir link. So here is another link that PPACA ain't all that and a bag of chips.
Of course the faithful won't be disturbed by such evidence.
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