Ray's Blog

My friend Arthur (phenomenal guitarist, designer, clothing printer, & designer clothing retailer) posted a link of a CNN reporter/commentator commenting on Obama holding a “private meeting” to merge the two health care bills vs the promised televised public meetings [seen here]. After reading a few of the comments that suggested that no one has had any better ideas or that he was still better than Bush, I couldn’t resist commenting. Then, after I spoke my peace, I realized that I wanted to share this comment with more people so I decided to post it on my blog.

There are few things that frustrate me in life and one of them is Government Intervention into our lives. Here was my comment — thanks for reading: 

If you have a product that cost $1000 & the government thought this product is so good they are going to give everyone $1000 to buy it, how much would your price increase? If you guessed at least $1000 then you would be absolutely correct!

Why? You have to keep up with all of the additional demand from buyers who didn’t originally have the means to afford it when you set your price point. It isn’t so you can make more money, it is so you can continue to provide the same quality product and service to the massive amount of demand. eg: Colleges raise their tuition every year, Health Care costs are already going up, etc.

The real crisis of cost is that gov health care now (which about 100 million people are on today) only reimburse health care facilities & doctors for about 20 to 25% of their actual cost. That doesn’t include any profit that the doc or hospital wanted. So they are in the RED 75 to 80% for every “gov insurance” patient. How do they break even? YOUR medical costs go up, YOUR INS company has to charge YOU more.

There are only about 12 million people who are “actually” uninsured (those who aren’t self insured or who use other means to pay). Lets do simple math. If every bill was just $1, then the cost of not insuring those 12 million - 0 reimbursement = 12 million dollars. If every bill was $1, then the cost of those who are on current government insurance plans is 100 million - 25 million reimbursed (25% average) = $75 million!! The effect of not fixing our current government health care system is FAR greater (over 6 times greater) than trying to provide INS to those who “can’t afford it”.

This is no longer a matter of “greed” on the part of the physicians, but survival. Why should they go to school for 8 more years than your average college grad if they are only supposed to break even or even be in the RED? That is completely stupid.

How ‘bout we start paying the docs what they ask and then we can talk about TRUE health care reform because ALL of our medical costs will go down!

This is basic basic econ people. It isn’t about R’s & D’s. If you are still seeing that, then you need to be a little more introspective.