'What Happened' Is A Slap In America's Face

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That brings to mind this; note that the original 2009 USN&WP article appears to be off the web. Which given the probable price of bandwith for almost a decade's worth of news magazine content is not an astonishing thing.
I did read it back then and used it as a reference in a number of discussions on Facebook. Both my Facebook account, and the computer I 'save page as' on are now gone for a couple years though the article may be on a CD or one of the dozen USB drive loose around here: I am not going to spend the time to look for it.

http://www.healthbeatblog.com/2009/08/who-is-making-the-biggest-profits-from-us-healthcare-you-might-be-surprised/

He lost in a primary where the rules were set up to make sure he lost. He would have beat her in a straight open vote.


It isn't as easy as you think. Many wanted to register but weren't able to do so in time. Many tried to register months ahead of time. Like everything in the US, the DNC system is a horrible antiquated bureaucratic mess.

I would also say that the system today is undemocratic in that 2 parties control everything. Third parties are denied access to televised debates. They are at a huge disadvantage for that reason alone. The two main parties are entirely dependent on corporate support. It is an arms race of sorts. With that in mind, of course the DNC is going to do everything they can to stop someone like Sanders from wining a primary. He is perceived as a threat to their bottom line.


A lot of the costs go to middle managers. You literally need experts to understand the fuckign billing process alone. The private insurance system is a bureaucratic nightmare. As for the price of drugs though, it really is as simple as greed and lobbying against the interests of ordinary citizens. There are legal clauses that, for instance, prevent government from bargaining for lower prices. Republicans also decided to allow for television advertisements of prescription drugs, causing more arms races.


The problem is the healthcare business doesn't want anything that would save costs. They don't want more preventive care. They make more money from people in crisis. They don't want R&D that goes into finding cures when they can make more money by providing expensive band-aids to chronically ill patients. The incentives are simply dysfunctional.

Last edited by marshall on 27 Sep 2017, 2:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

One more while we're talking insurance companies - back during the ACA debate in 2008 & 2009 and discussion among the Facebook folks I thought for illustrative purposes to create a fictional insurance company of 1 million members and see what kind of cash they would go through in a year. And given that for example San Diego, CA, has a population of 1.391 million (2015) 1 million members is not irrational for a national insurance company.

On with illustrating how much money the insurance company would go through in a year.
One part of what all I did:
Let's say 3% of their members were Seniors or disabled like Kathy who I knew at the time and were on $800 of meds a month.
And given the census bureau says the following I don't see that 3% as outrageous
47.8 million
"The number of people age 65 and older in the United States on July 1, 2015. This group accounted for 14.9 percent of the total population. The age 65 and older population grew 1.6 million from 2014."
That would be $800 x 12 months x (.03 X 1,000,000)
Which is $800 x 12 months x 30,000 people
Which is $288,000,000 (288 million) a year just for them. Conversion says = € 243,313,920.00

Given news articles like this from 2015, and there were similar back when I did this exercise, the amounts I used above are not irrational.

http://www.aarp.org/health/drugs-supplements/info-2016/drug-costs-for-older-adults-still-soaring-cs.html

Now, back to that 288 million. If the insurance company has 1 million members, that means the members each have to pay $288 a year, $24 a month, just to cover that 3%.
And then there are the payouts to the other 97%, not all of them, but enough of them to rapidly eat up a lot more dollars.
Which is why insurance companies invest in a lot of other industries; and especially ones which have generally consistent earnings from year to year such as oil companies - they need more income than only member payments can provide.

Oh, another factor in medical costs, something I just remembered. In late 1980s and early 1990s, my mother who although she was a dietitian wound up working in a chest consultant doctors' office handling their insurance - both received and paid out. During some of those years the office had 3 doctors, some of that time 2 doctors. Their malpractice insurance policy payments were around 2 million dollars a year just for that one office with only 3 or 2 doctors.

I agree with this. I think you'd be much better off with a more proportional system which would grant seats and funding to smaller parties. Ideally you'd also abolish the office of President which is inherently undemocratic (France should do the same).


There's a huge incentive to finding a cure. You would make much more money from curing a disease because people and healthcare providers would pay more for it. You'd also not risk your competition coming up with a cure for the chronic disease you're milking and taking away your livelihood.