3 ms·

That sounds interesting. Can you explain more about the bubble angle?

Daniel_Newby 13y ago
Government officials find something popular, promise unlimited amounts of it to get votes, then create a program to deliver it with total disregard for economic consequences. Last decade they bought votes with easy mortgages. After all, even an idiot could see that home ownership was a sound investment. They won two or three rounds of elections with mortgage policy. This decade it is health care for all! Even an idiot can see that health care for everyone is a sound investment. Just look at these scary charts of runaway growth of medical costs. And the votes roll in. In reality, most health care consists of vaccines, blood pressure pills, diabetes pills, and the occassional antibiotics. That gives most of the benefits and costs almost nothing. Most of the costs come from ludicrous end-of-life procedures on old people, most of the rest comes from ludicrous $500k courses of treatments for this like multiple sclerosis and stage 29 recurrent cancer. These are lifestyle choices for well-off people who would rather pay a doctor than leave an inheritance. Trying to extend this lifestyle to every waitress will destroy the economy. It's no different than last decade's plan to put every hairdresser in a $700k mansion.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- mjn 13y ago
  As far as "ludicrous end-of-life-procedures for old people", I agree Americans spend far too much on those, but the bulk of that is people who are 65 or older, which is outside PPACA's purview, since they are already covered by Medicare [1]. If you want to argue for Medicare to reform how it treats end-of-life coverage, I'd support that, but anyone who argues that Medicare should spend less on end-of-life heroics runs into hysterics about "death panels" refusing to pay for an extra 10 days of granny's life support. PPACA is trying to fix a fairly different problem, the under-65 segment, where end-of-life treatment is a much smaller proportion of costs. [1] About 80% of Americans who died in 1997 were covered by Medicare at the time of death: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1282187/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1282187/
  - tocomment 13y ago
    To eliminate the problem of end of life heroics would it be possible to add something to Medicare like you get x dollars you can leave to your family if you forgo the heroics. Where x is day 10% of the cost of the heroics? Then people have an incentive to save money but death panels aren't needed. Of course this is assuming the heroics rarely work.

Government officials find something popular, promise unlimited amounts of it to get votes, then create a program to deliver it with total disregard for economic consequences. Last decade they bought votes with easy mortgages. After all, even an idiot could see that home ownership was a sound investment. They won two or three rounds of elections with mortgage policy. This decade it is health care for all! Even an idiot can see that health care for everyone is a sound investment. Just look at these scary charts of runaway growth of medical costs. And the votes roll in. In reality, most health care consists of vaccines, blood pressure pills, diabetes pills, and the occassional antibiotics. That gives most of the benefits and costs almost nothing. Most of the costs come from ludicrous end-of-life procedures on old people, most of the rest comes from ludicrous $500k courses of treatments for this like multiple sclerosis and stage 29 recurrent cancer. These are lifestyle choices for well-off people who would rather pay a doctor than leave an inheritance. Trying to extend this lifestyle to every waitress will destroy the economy. It's no different than last decade's plan to put every hairdresser in a $700k mansion.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
mjn 13y ago
As far as "ludicrous end-of-life-procedures for old people", I agree Americans spend far too much on those, but the bulk of that is people who are 65 or older, which is outside PPACA's purview, since they are already covered by Medicare [1]. If you want to argue for Medicare to reform how it treats end-of-life coverage, I'd support that, but anyone who argues that Medicare should spend less on end-of-life heroics runs into hysterics about "death panels" refusing to pay for an extra 10 days of granny's life support. PPACA is trying to fix a fairly different problem, the under-65 segment, where end-of-life treatment is a much smaller proportion of costs. [1] About 80% of Americans who died in 1997 were covered by Medicare at the time of death: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1282187/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1282187/
- tocomment 13y ago
  To eliminate the problem of end of life heroics would it be possible to add something to Medicare like you get x dollars you can leave to your family if you forgo the heroics. Where x is day 10% of the cost of the heroics? Then people have an incentive to save money but death panels aren't needed. Of course this is assuming the heroics rarely work.