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Well, he didnt exactly ask the question that way but he gave the answer:<br>
<br>
FRAUD.<br>
<br>
No, not Sigmoid Flexure, the famous idiomatic mind-boggler and cocaine
sniffer, <br>
but the trio of theft, robbery, plunder.<br>
<br>
<blockquote>Why Are US Health Costs So High? Follow the Bills - by
Ralph Nader<br>
<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/01-4">http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/01-4</a><br>
<p>...Health care bills come with hefty levels of fraud. From the
historic study twenty years ago by the then General Accounting Office
of the Congress to the present estimates by the nation's leading expert
in this field, Professor Malcolm Sparrow at Harvard University, fully
ten percent of all health care expenditures are the result of
computerized billing fraud and abuse. That will be $270 billion this
year.</p>
<p>Dr. Sparrow, an applied mathematician, says it could be higher if
the federal government would simply do a more detailed study. He adds
that the enforcement budget should be one percent of the estimable
volume of fraud. In actual practice, the enforcement budget is less
than one/tenth of one percent, even though every dollar of enforcement
brings in at least seventeen dollars back. <br>
</p>
<p>Obviously the corporate fraud lobby is stronger than the
taxpayer/consumer lobby in Washington, D.C. But why the health
insurance companies, a formidable force in their own right when it
comes to protecting its turf against single payer or full Medicare
insurance do not do more to stop fraudulent billing practices, is a
puzzle.</p>
<p>All in all, the health care industry is replete with rackets that
neither honest practitioners or regulators find worrisome enough to
effectively challenge. The perverse economic incentives in this
industry range from third party payments to third party procedures. Add
paid-off members of Congress who starve enforcement budgets and the
enormous profits that come from that tired triad "waste, fraud and
abuse" and you have a massive problem needing a massive solution.</p>
</blockquote>
*<br>
Nader wonders why the insurance companies dont seem to care... it's no
wonder, folks. <br>
Fraudulently inflated billings increase tend to increase insurance
company profits.<br>
There seems to be no end to the Ponzi game, since more suckers are born
every minute.<br>
<br>
Some may see "Single Payer" as a means of controlling the fraud.<br>
<br>
Single Payer is a not much more than a band-aid, a bit of tamed iodine
sprayed on the surface of a deep festering abscess.<br>
<br>
There are many roots to the problem.<br>
<br>
One problem is that there are not enough doctors. The United States
doesnt make enough <br>
doctors and the supply is artificially controlled to make sure that
there arent enough.<br>
<br>
American doctors are overeducated and overpaid for most of what they
do. We<br>
need more soldier level medical personnel and not so many bosses and
administrators and <br>
high level specialists. Specialists are great. And needed. But
giving injections and doing<br>
minor surgery isnt really Rocket Science, folks. (and minor surgery is
when they cut on someone else<br>
other than You.)<br>
<br>
In many countries of the world the people can go to the pharmacy and
buy stuff to treat themselves.<br>
Like in China and Vietnam, for instance. And the medicine costs some
small fraction of what it does in the USA.<br>
<br>
It's amazing that the USA has been such patsies for the charlatans and
Ponzi artists of the medical industrial complex.<br>
And it's enforced by the police state now.<br>
<br>
wj<br>
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