In 1972 a massive 7.5 earthquake rocked Managua, Nicaragua. As emergency relief supplies poured in from other countries, almost all of it wound up in the hands of Somoza and his cronies - either being kept or sold and eventually finding its way to markets. As one can imagine, backlash from among pretty much everyone not in the inner circle was intense.
One of Somoza’s deputies later told a story of Somoza calling a meeting to brainstorm damage control solutions to the PR nightmare. The deputy reportedly floated the idea that maybe Somoza’s men could only take half of the supplies, and distribute the rest as intended. Somoza reportedly laughed and said, “You know that’s not possible. Next idea.”
I feel like we’re at that point in the US with pretty much everything, but especially healthcare - just doing it a lot fancier and quasi-legally.
My friend is getting some kind of infusion for some kind of auto-immune disease I can never remember the name of. The infusions go on every two weeks for a while. Nominal cost of each infusion? $78k.
She says the name of the infusion is Soliris. Not sure what that means. I think she has myasthenia. That sounds right.
How is it to the detriment of large insurers to pay more for treatment? Their profits are capped at a percentage of their reimbursements. Higher reimbursements means higher profits.
It’s to the detriment to the insured whose premiums rise year after year.
That’s what I mean. So much of healthcare premiums and payments go to middlemen who add zero value that 1/5th of the US economy is dependent on it now. It’s literally not possible to immediately go to single payer without completely wrecking the US economy for a while.
This would be true if the ~10% of GDP that is currently getting wasted on healthcare (10% is a decent benchmark for what normal healthcare expenditures would look like) were actually getting paid out to workers who had a marginal propensity to save <80%. IRL it’s mostly going to rich people who save the vast majority of the money they get.
A huge amount of US GDP isn’t actually circulating and is actually just ending up in the ever swelling pockets of the aristocracy. That’s why when you do a 500 dollar payment to every citizen it has a much larger effect on the economy than Trumps entire tax cut. Nothing changes at this point consumption wise when you give or take money from the very wealthy. There are roughly zero projects that pencil out as profitable that aren’t getting done for lack of capital. There is a huge glut of capital which is why the price of assets is as high as it is to begin with.
I was able to get a new orphan drug 6-7 years ago that apparently costs $23k/mo if these drug price sites are to be believed. No idea if that is billed or avg price paid but either way I don’t think it was quite that expensive when it came out. This drug’s mere existence seemed suspect to me though. It’s a stronger and purer version of something you can buy OTC for several dollars and there was a much cheaper drug in the same class with an expiring patent. The real difference seems to be the way the trial was set up and the indication (and orphan status) they were able to procure from it. Most of the orphan drugs I’m familiar with (admittedly only several that pertain to a few rare diseases) seem like fancy solutions looking for problems. Not saying any of this applies to your friend or any of the drugs on that list.
Maybe this is the wrong thread to ask this question, but is it possible for COVID to cause the collapse of the US health care system so that it needs to be bailed out by the government? Can that sort of crisis be used to transition towards universal health care? If so, what would that collapse look like?
The collapse is not a financial one. In general, hospitals are getting paid.
The collapse is really a capacity issue. Throwing money at the problem is not really going to help. They need larger facilities and more personnel for as long as this goes on. The former takes a lot of time and it sounds like the latter is complicated by the fact that a lot of people are so frustrated and drained that they do not want to do these jobs even if they’re paid significantly above market.
So the collapse doesn’t really end in anyone going bankrupt. It just ends with more people dying.
Would private prisons need to get bailed out if they were maxed out in capacity?
I believe the higher ups are loving Covid in a general sense as far as the financial aspects - not the workers, ldo.
I’d imagine that they see it as an opportunity to expand in size in order to fight Covid and the increase in folks becoming more reliant on hospital care.
The changes in the Forbes for 2021 give an idea on who is liking covid.
As a dying empire, we treat every crisis as a rent seeking opportunity. The pandemic caused us to shovel $$$ to pharma, business owners, airlines, landlords, etc. The last crisis was the GFC, after which we…gave the banks and bankers all the money. Prior to that, 9/11 led to endless piles of money for defense contractors, Erik Prince types, etc. Its all but impossible to imagine a functioning government that actually solves problems.
This is painfully accurate. Our ruling class exploits every single bad situation to tighten the screws on the rest of society… and they’re going to keep doing it until it blows up.
I recently saw a meme about how the game that best represents the current system isn’t monopoly, it’s Jenga. Everyone takes turns extracting something for themselves at the expense of the stability of the system until it collapses, whereupon all the blame gets heaped on the person who tried to pull the last brick.
I am on my company’s US subsidiary’s benefits governance committee. I am currently reviewing the report on the premiums our US employees pay for health care.
