More Fun Facts About Health Care in The U.S.

I wrote a long rant yesterday, but as an addendum, I thought I would include a couple of facts not mentioned:

1. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Health Care Law will save tax payers about $143 billion over the next ten years. The Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act proposed by the Tea/GOP coalition doesn't really want to hear about actual savings and predictably, refuses to say exactly who will lose their jobs, if the law is allowed to proceed. You should ask them.

2. Although the 2007-2009 recession did slow down health care spending a bit, Americans still spent and average of  $8,086.00 per person on health care in 2009. This was only a 4% increase from 2008 but the slower growth is directly linked to the recently unemployed losing their health coverage, having no money, staying sick, you know, dying.

3. Even though the economy actually shrank, from 2007-2009, health care costs, as a percentage of GDP, actually rose by 17.6%. For those of us who actually live from paycheck, to paycheck, this means that approximately $1 out of every $6 we spent was on health care. That's a record increase. Keep in mind that “ObamaCare” was not passed until 2010 and you are free to re-read paragraph #1.

4. Because the folks who lost their jobs to teenagers in Mumbai and China also lost their health insurance, the gummint had to pump an extra $30 billion into federal-state health programs for low-income people. Of course, this was before that job-killing law kicked in, and covered about 30 million of these folks. Again, please see paragraph #1.

5. Despite the recession, or maybe because of it, pharmacorps made out like bandits between 2008 and 2009. Unmoved by the pedestrian issues increasingly plaguing those ant-like folks, whom they (if they actually looked) could barely see, pounding the pavement far below their penthouse offices, these Titans of Pharmaland reacted to the middle class malaise by simply jacking up their drug prices and continuing to pay kickbacks to "primary care physicians," who hawked more crap, instead of cures. Americans spent about $250 billion on drugs (non-recreational) in 2009, representing a 5% increase, from 2008. Makes sense. If you can't afford the cure or insurance refuses to pay for the latest proven treatment, then you go for plan B and take a pill, or a bunch of pills.

The next time you have the money to actually visit your doctor's office and are waiting for minutes, or hours for your doctor or PA to come back from an executive lunch or a botox appointment, look around and see how many pharmaceutical labels you can spot on the walls, on pads, pens, trinkets, notebooks, and on anatomically correct mock-ups of diseased bones or organs for which you have to take pills, because your insurance won't allow your doctor to fix.

6. Insurance companies usually require what they call "step therapy," before they may be forced to authorize what they know will actually cure you. Before you can get the latest drug or therapy (that members of congress receive immediately and for free) you have to start with the out-of-patent,  and therefore cheap, generic, treatment or drug, developed, (or found by accident) 50 or more years ago. If that doesn't work, then insurance companies may authorize a late 20th Century course of treatment. If you still get no relief, and your doctor, usually a specialist by this time, will fight tooth and nail with the insurance company, you may receive the treatment or medicine that she and you knew would have eased your suffering six months ago.

But be careful what you wish for. That new designer drug or treatment is probably not covered or fully covered by your insurance, because it is still under patent and so is, very, very expensive. Check the fine print of your policy. It is there, as I can attest from personal experience. If you already suffer from any kind of nervous condition, high blood pressure, or other ailment that might send you into apoplexy after reading your insurance bill, have someone else break the news to you in a more circuitous fashion.

It's no wonder that at least 27 million Americans are currently on some kind of psychotropic medication. I believe that many of those folks are not really clinically depressed. They are depressed, because some things really do suck and the folks that they elected to make those things better are too busy playing golf, buggering pages, and lining their pockets with corporate cash, to do somethin about it.

Please, somebody give me a rational reason why we should not have socialized medicine?

Sincerely,

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

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