Medicare pays out $3 for every $1 paid in (Page 2)

Yup, I am the furthest thing away from somebody who is for rationing healthcare or euthanasia, but I totally agree with what you're saying.  Something has to give.

Sounds about right.  My wife is a Oncology NP, and they lose money on every treatment that they give, because the reimbursement for the drugs doesn't cover the cost of those drugs, but they continue to treat the patients for now, even the ones with Medicare, but they are educating the medicare patients about the issue.

There you go - the idea that you will triple your investment depends on a number of factors - all your investments pay out (wasn't there something in the news a few years ago about a financial crisis? that lots of peoples' investments and savings were affected? yeah, I thought so.) and that nothing catastrophic will happen (or that you will be able to cover those costs).

There is a reason that employers are expected to take out your taxes from your paycheck each pay period. Most people are not going to set aside the money they will actually need to pay for a predictable tax bill each year. What makes people think that they will be better at investing for a future that is 40 years or more away?

x2 - I can expect to live into my late 70's statistically speaking, or even into my mid to late 80's based on my family history (at least on my mother's side). I don't see why I would not be able to work at least part time well into that period. I am also in favor of means-testing eligibility. If I make enough money and can save it, I should not need as much support from the government later. Spend it on people who need it.

I saw a study recently that pointed out that doctors die differently that most people - we tend to reject extraordinary measures, because we know first hand that it is unlikely to be beneficial. I have often said if I ever get diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I know I will likely have a 6 month life span at that point. I will not be spending it getting chemo or radiation, because the odds are low and I would rather spend my time and money doing things I like for as long as I can physically do them.

EXACTLY.

I'm not saying on certain things they don't lose money...simple math...revenue minus cost equals profit. Everyone's sad that the revenue side is shrinking, what I'm challenging is the cost side...I don't believe that in an economy that isn't like it was a decade or two ago that cost should stay the same.

And if costs aren't adjusted to make money under the new rules, some will go out of business. It's a choice. 

You know me well enough to know I always use embellished figures. 

OK, how about it would be "a lot" cheaper than Obamacare.  If my premise is correct about the economics of it all then insuring more people for free will do nothing but drive up costs.  Yes more people will be covered, but it will cost more and more which will get passed on to the taxpayers with either higher debt or higher taxes.  The other part will be that insurance premiums will get so high that companies will be forced to not offer insurance and throw even more people on the "free" govt healthcare program.  It's like a big expensive snowball that grows bigger and bigger the further we go down this path, IMHO.

I've been reading several articles projecting premiums to go up 25-116% next year in many areas.  yikes

Granted the source is the Huff Post which is pretty conservative so take these numbers with a grain of salt.
Health Insurance Premium Increases Vowed By Companies For 2014

I respectfully disagree.  The costs are going up because the demand is going up and in many cases the supply is decreasing.  I'm not sure where you're getting that the revenue side is shrinking either.  With people living longer and all the expansion of coverage by the government the supply side is growing a lot.  This results in doctors working harder so they want more money, suppliers are selling more so they're charging more, fewer students going to medical school, etc... It's the law of supply and demand.  You're asking for a system that has had and continues to have a massive increase in demand with little (if any) increase in supply to not raise their prices.  It's impossible and has nothing to do with greed.

Here's a chart that depicts just one small supply component of healthcare; RN's.  Translated, healthcare providers will have to pay nurses more money and or they'll have to work more hours which results in higher costs.

I'm 52 and totally agree. I'd like to see the age of eligibility set to around 70 with no early option. You could easily phase it in start in every two or three years you raise the age one year.

2015 age 66            2015 age 66

2017 age 67            2018 age 67

2019 age 68            2021 age 68

2020 age 69            2024 age 69

2021 age 70            2027 age 70

I would be eligible to collect with this plan  in 2031 and will have to work until then helping to support the system.

I would challenge anyone to go sit and observe an emergency waiting room for a few hours.

I periodically have chest spasms that have a lot of the same symptoms as a heart attack, doesn't scare me but a previous SO was very concerned and asked me to go to the ER. I was uninsured so I said I wouldn't go, not that I would have gone even if I had insurance. Eventually she talked me into at least getting examined by a nurse, blood pressure check and such. So we went. I walked up to the counter and said my SO thinks I am dying, I don't have insurance or money, what can you do for me? They said not much but if you want to wait until there is no one in front of you we can have a nurse look at you. I said ok.

I sat in the waiting room for over 3 hours. I saw 3 people with sunburns, at least 5 with stomach aches, and over 10 colds come into the ER and be treated. This was in the middle of a weekday (I had the day off). All of the people that went before me were on Medicare due to being poor and a lot of them brought the whole family with them to have everyone checked.

Some people seriously have nothing better to do than to go to the ER and as they pay absolutely nothing there is nothing to stop them from going.

Even people who don't abuse it to that extreme still abuse insurance and healthcare. Got a cold? Eat some soup and sleep, you don't need a doctor. I worked for a local government for 2 years as a supervisor which included approving sick leave. We had amazing insurance, almost everyone in there went to the doctor for every little ache, pain, feeling of sickness, or just once a month to get checked. I never used my insurance at all. Peeved me off that I took lower pay so I could have these amazing benefits that everyone abused.

People don't need to see a doctor near as much as they do in general. Also as a society I don't understand why we are so afraid of death. Keeping someone on a machine for 18 months? Ridiculous IMO, everyone dies, we need to get used to it and stop trying to prevent the inevitable for as long as possible. My wife and I have a strict pull the plug agreement between us. 

I'm just commenting off the cuff.. but are those numbers based on private insurance industry? and private drug companies... and the private sector that continues to drive up the cost of everything? Another reason to regulate the healthcare industry. If the government can run one of the largest militaries in the world, why can't it take care of healthcare as well? 

Oh yeah, and you can put me on the list of people supporting raising the age and I'm currently 39.  I also like Tony's idea of means testing because my goal is to support my own retirement and not ever need Social Security or Medicare.  Yes I "paid into" it, but I really didn't.  It's just a tax I pay to pay for the old dudes/dudettes now.  When I'm old (if it's even still around) I'll just be taking the tax dollars of the younger generation.

Exactly.  Plus you are seeing a decreased incentive for people to enter the medical field.  I'm not sure that we know what will happen to potential doctors in the future.  A lot of the older doctors are making decisions to either open a boutique practice (take only paying customers, not insurance), or getting out of the business all together, as it's a far reach from what they got into medicine to begin  The small practices that you are used to seeing will be harder to keep open, because of the investment needed to  maintain them.

So, will we have less doctors in the future because the incentive is gone?  or will we see an influx of younger doctors, who are willing to enter the field with less payoff.  Will we be seeing our best and brightest in health care, or  will we settle for someone not as smart, but will do the daily grind for less pay. I think this remains to be seen.

 I'm not sure what we  see currently, as I'm not in the medical field directly.  I can tell you that there are some good doctors out there and our pediatricians office is great, but I can also tell you that there are a lot of doctors out there that practice medicine from a textbook, and almost landed  one of my children in the hospital because they couldn't diagnose a pneumonia, after we repeatedly told them that it was very likely pneumonia, his brother had just had it, and he had all the symptoms, except for being able to hear it in his lungs.

No doubt things needed to change in healthcare.  I just wish they went more with the tuwood philosophy, vs. Obamacare.  I think the tuwood analysis is missing one item from Obamacare, which have been referred to as the "death panels".  To truly monitor health care cost via Obamacare, the oversight committee (or whatever they are called), will have to make tough decisions that a lot of people are not willing to make (i.e. pulling  the plug on mom).  If Obamacare doesn't make those decisions, then costs will spiral out of control, just as they are now, and are likely to get worse. 

add me to this list.

The U.S. is 16 Trillion dollars in debt.  They run the military just like the run everything else, on borrowed money.  That's the problem and a one-payer healthcare system will not solve it.

I didn't read the underlying report the article referenced, so I'm not 100% sure.  I believe it's the private insurance industry rates they're talking about.  Also, I have to correct you, the private sector insurance is NOT what continues to drive up the cost of everything.  They're just the boogyman the politicians try to blame it on because they're the one's "raising the rates".  If you have a business that sells bottles of water and your supplier doubles the price per bottle are you the one driving up the cost of the bottle as the store or is it your supplier?  Your customers will blame you because that's who they buy it from, but it's not your fault.  Yes, you could make less profit to "help out" your customers, but then you as a business owner are contributing to the problem by masking the higher supply costs to the end consumer.

Now adding more "regulations" on the healthcare industry can force an insurance company to not charge you more, or force a hospital to charge less, but in America they still have the right to refuse the government program.  Hence with the reduction in payments through medicare you have a lot of doctors opting out and refusing to see medicare patients.

Assuming the government completely takes over healthcare 100% it doesn't change the laws of supply and demand.  The pay will likely be far less for doctors and nurses so you will have far less people going to school to be doctors and the supply will go down.  The demand however will go through the roof.  Something will have to give and I just can't see any scenario where it doesn't all spiral down hill quickly under full government control.

Isn't another part of this equation the lifestyle that American's have?  From what I have read we lead the world in obesity. As of 2012, "???????35.7 percent of adults and 16.9 percent of children age 2 to 19 are obese" according to the Center for Disease Control.  The CDC also states that $66 billion of medical related expenses are directly tied to obesity. I would be interested in knowing how much money medicare spends on obesity related problems.

Those numbers are absurd, and America's lifestyle is largely to blame.  Here many of us watch what we eat, calculate wattage, laps, cadence, pace per mile, ave HR, etc, but we are the outliers.  I know people that won't walk their kids 4 blocks to school, but they are sure to drink Diet Coke because they sure don't want the sugary calories.  They are simply that lazy.  My family walks or rides bikes many place around town (library, school, community events, friend's houses), but we get incredibly strange looks.  Almost as if people feel like we should be driving.  While we do have two vehicles, we like getting the kids out on the road.

In my place of employement they have started paying for Weight Watchers because they figure it is less expensive than insurance premium increases related to obese employees.  Of course, they recently installed a gate to make walking to the adjacent Burger King, Starbucks, and Albertsons less of a walk.

This has turned into a rant I suppose, but the Medicare system isn't the only thing that is broken.  Americans are eating themselves into poor health and as a result, diseases like diabetes.  I know that opens the door for comparisions of obese people and their life expectancy, but I feel that it is a major problem in the health care field and one that shouldn't be ignored.  Of course, there is no easy fix.

I know before my grandma passed she did everything she could to stay alive.  Given the option of 3 month or 9 months with pain she picked 9 months.  Why did she do it?  Simple religious belief that if she did not do everything in her power to prolong her life at all costs it would be the same as committing suicide. 

I sound like your dad.  I was stuck in hospital for 3 days.  No pain or nothing and I begged to let me go home but they would not let me go.  I felt like it was such a waste.

Certainly some valid points that contribute to the overall costs of healthcare in the US. 

I'll even go so far as to say my whole supply/demand argument contributes to the obesity because healthcare is so cheap to the actual consumer (talking the free govt. benefits and company paid insurance).  We drove cars that got 7 mpg when gas was $1.50 a gallon and nobody thought anything of it.  However, when gas shot up to $4 a gallon everyone went holy crap, I need a car that gets better mpg and now you can't find a new car that gets that kind of crappy mileage because nobody will buy them.  That's how supply and demand works.  Price goes up and the demand goes down.

If these same obese people have to truly pay for their crappy lifestyle choices at the doctor and it prevents them from buying the new car or sending their kid to college then they will be forced to think twice about their lifestyle choices.

I'm with you.  I recognize that we need a comprehensive solution that provides care for everyone, but the one we have today is not that solution.  Neither the pre-Obamacare private insurance or Obamacare would solve what is happening.

The old system was broken, there's no doubt because costs for individuals who didn't have coverage were astronomical and costs for people with insurance were astronomical to the insurance companies.  So the net effect was more and more people with no insurance and higher and higher healthcare premiums for employers and employees.

I know there's conservatives who didn't think there was anything wrong with the old system, but I'm not one of them.  However, I feel that the Obamacare method to try and fix the problem misses the mark and actually makes the same problem much much bigger.  That problem being the masking of the real healthcare costs from the consumer by throwing millions of people into an already overtaxed healthcare system at little to no cost to the consumers.

I'm curious if anyone thinks I'm out in the weeds on this one.  Typically the argument for Obamacare is geared towards the system is broke and we have to cover all these people, and never really addresses the root cause.