Unable to grasp the root of any problem Cont. - Healthcare

Healthcare chews up nearly 18% of GDP here in the U.S., about 2X its take in the other major industrial economies in the West. What do we get for our "double the price"?

Ripped off, that's what we get. The very name - "Healthcare" - is definitely the greatest misnomer in common usage today. At best it is "Sickcare" and it is more fairly described as "extortion during illness care".

I am not a physician. I wouldn't know a cell membrane from a mell cellbrane. I do possess are radically enhanced ability to count. I had reason to do some research on the outcomes for the standard treatment of various cancers - and, unfortunately there is scant (no) data to support the idea that anything modern medicine does in the treatment of many cancers does anything to extend life by very much, especially in the case of solid malignancies. There is real evidence of life extension for just a few cancers: Hodgkins Lymphoma, Childhood Leukemia, Testicular cancer, Anal cancer, and a few other cancers.

(The Cancer industry has a tremendous advantage in their false promises and exaggerated claims campaign - there are no control groups. No one withholds treatment from a control group in order to make a scientific comparison between treated and non treated populations. However, even with this coup for their propaganda effort there is no hiding the outcomes.)

All of the available data suggests that there has been essentially no progress in extending life via medicine and that essentially all of the gains have been in cancer "prevention" - that is, efforts to bring down the percentage of the population that smokes tobacco (smoking cessation). I did not say that medicine was not extending lives. I said there is no available data that supports the contention that it does. There is a big difference.

There appears to be no discernible benefit to lifespan for cancer surgery or early detection for a number of "cancers" - including prostate cancer and breast cancer.

From the article immediately above:

But it would be wrong to ignore the government task force’s conclusions. Given that slow-growing cancers may not need to be detected early to be cured, and that fast-growing ones may be fatal regardless of when they are found, the fact that its review of the available epidemiological data shows that P.S.A. testing does not save lives from prostate cancer should not come as a huge surprise.

Many practicing physicians know this (or feel this) anecdotally. Read this piece on "Why Doctors Die Differently".

(Sorry to be supplying so many links. This is such a brutal/touchy subject that I felt it better to source every assertion.)

I think you have the idea. For many cancers it does not matter when we are diagnosed - they cannot be "caught in time". In these cases, our fate is ineluctable. No amount of "cut, burn, and poison" (surgery/radiation/chemo) will change the outcome (or the date of the outcome). In fact, these treatments might subtract months or years from our "healthspan", or the time we have to live life. Of course, the Cancer Industry would itself die a quick death if The People actually believed and understood the data (little chance of that happening. Hope springs eternal - especially for "free" healthcare services).

So if all of the above is true, why would the marketplace pay a median (the average is certainly higher) annual compensation of nearly $300k to American oncologists? They have no discernible value - why would we pay them? (A number of other specialty medical fields come to mind regarding no discernible value. Back surgeons, anyone? And their median annual compensation is much greater - about $800k). Well, partly because we have no "marketplace". For most, healthcare is "free" (insurance pays).

There is an old saying in business: "That which is not measured is not managed." For the most part, there is no independent/outside auditor measuring the outcomes of medical treatments. No one is minding the store. There is a never ending stream of propaganda/advertising. (Don't you love those photo layouts of brain scan/XRAY's in TV and magazine commercials? A couple of models are looking pensively at the lit up white board at the mass in your brain as if looking at it will somehow cure you and leave you living happily ever after... and why is it always some old, bald, white guy and a too young to be a physician/beautiful Asian woman as the models in these commercials? Cue the theme music and "GE, we bring good things to life!!!!" Just not to the patient's life.)

OK. This is where I am going with this... Got that? From the article:

Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance. Stephanie got her mother to write her a check. “You do anything you can in a situation like that,” she says. The Recchis flew to Houston, leaving Stephanie’s mother to care for their two teenage children. 

About a week later, Stephanie had to ask her mother for $35,000 more so Sean could begin the treatment the doctors had decided was urgent. His condition had worsened rapidly since he had arrived in Houston. He was “sweating and shaking with chills and pains,” Stephanie recalls. “He had a large mass in his chest that was … growing. He was panicked.”

This medical practice took nearly $84k from a person at the most vulnerable moment in their life for a treatment that does not extend life? The family did not have enough money to stroke the check themselves... obviously, they don't have college/weddings/down payment on homes saved for their children. What resources the family does have is up 1 generation, and they are going to spend it on a treatment that has NO DISCERNIBLE BENEFIT. And Bernie Madoff got a life sentence while these people are "respected" professionals?

Am I the only normal person left?

The answer to all of this is to force people to buy health insurance?

This is what happens when innumerate people control the system and the dominant political party.

This is one of the great failings of technology. We get to know what is going to kill us so far before it does and we get to sit there and think about it while an industry springs up to take complete advantage of us at our most vulnerable moment. That industry is causing the real economic hardship and angst for The People. Any politician or administration that wants to survive the next election has absolutely no incentive to reign in Healthcare costs. Think about it. What would happen to the "economy" if Healthcare spending were suddenly dropped from 18+% of GDP to the 9% of GDP found elsewhere in the West? A contraction of 9% would be in line with the Great Depression and much worse than the Great Recession of 2008-09.

Hence Obamacare.