3 ms·

Overall costs: 2.291 Trillion $7,638 per person per year. That just can't be right. I and 90% of the people I know haven't made a significant trip to the dr or

Overall costs: 2.291 Trillion $7,638 per person per year. That just can't be right. I and 90% of the people I know haven't made a significant trip to the dr or hospital in years. Where the fuck is that money going?

rayiner 13y ago
Sick people, rather than people who are not sick, are responsible for the majority of healthcare spending: News at 7. See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028 (Table 3). 80% of your lifetime healthcare expenditures will be after age 40.
- dclowd9901 13y ago
  Incredible! Even more important, I suspect nowadays, most people live more years after 40 than before. Maybe a goal should be figuring out ways we can push back that age.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> $7,638 per person per year. That just can't be right. I and 90% of the people I know haven't made a significant trip to the dr or hospital in years. Where the fuck is that money going? Even if the people you know were somehow a representative sample, that's not all that surprising. A significant health event can easily cost orders of magnitude more than $7,638, so even if 90% didn't have one in a period of several years, the average cost could still easily be $7,638 per person per year.
coryrc 13y ago
Nursing homes warehousing the elderly past mental decline while waiting for the body to catch up.
greedo 13y ago
Cancer elevates cost dramatically. I had cancer at age 41; I kept track of the full costs (not what my insurance negotiated downward) but stopped after my surgery, chemo and radiation treatment passed the $500k mark. I still go in for tests on an annual basis, so my guesstimate is that my total cost just for my cancer has probably surpassed $1 million. Even if that got negotiated down to $100K, that's still a lot. All it takes is one life threatening event, or a chronic condition to skew things out of what we would normally think is "normal" and rational in expenditures. P.S. Thanks to my excellent doctors, Nathan Green and Richard Pitsch...
TheCoelacanth 13y ago
Try getting even a relatively minor health problem like appendicitis and you can go through several times that much in one day. Healthcare would be much cheaper if only we didn't have to deal with all of the sick people.

rayiner 13y ago

Sick people, rather than people who are not sick, are responsible for the majority of healthcare spending: News at 7. See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028 (Table 3). 80% of your lifetime healthcare expenditures will be after age 40.

dclowd9901 13y ago
Incredible! Even more important, I suspect nowadays, most people live more years after 40 than before. Maybe a goal should be figuring out ways we can push back that age.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> $7,638 per person per year. That just can't be right. I and 90% of the people I know haven't made a significant trip to the dr or hospital in years. Where the fuck is that money going? Even if the people you know were somehow a representative sample, that's not all that surprising. A significant health event can easily cost orders of magnitude more than $7,638, so even if 90% didn't have one in a period of several years, the average cost could still easily be $7,638 per person per year.

coryrc 13y ago

Nursing homes warehousing the elderly past mental decline while waiting for the body to catch up.

greedo 13y ago

Cancer elevates cost dramatically. I had cancer at age 41; I kept track of the full costs (not what my insurance negotiated downward) but stopped after my surgery, chemo and radiation treatment passed the $500k mark. I still go in for tests on an annual basis, so my guesstimate is that my total cost just for my cancer has probably surpassed $1 million. Even if that got negotiated down to $100K, that's still a lot. All it takes is one life threatening event, or a chronic condition to skew things out of what we would normally think is "normal" and rational in expenditures. P.S. Thanks to my excellent doctors, Nathan Green and Richard Pitsch...

TheCoelacanth 13y ago

Try getting even a relatively minor health problem like appendicitis and you can go through several times that much in one day. Healthcare would be much cheaper if only we didn't have to deal with all of the sick people.