I dunno why these healthcare preoccupations exist. I think it’s built in from needing to solve lots of problems over many decades.
I lay awake at night and I think, “Why does 25% of my income go to healthcare expenses,” when I never even go to the Doctor? How can that be baseline expense? I make a lot of money now, compared to before. I thought I would be able to dig my way out of the ‘healthcare hole,’ but I haven’t even come close. It makes me confused, but it also makes me mad. It doesn’t seem legitimate.
I think to myself that 25% is what people used to spend on housing (when the housing markets were more robust). I imagine that other people are accumulating resources to protect them in the future with that 25% of income. I must be becoming so vulnerable by throwing that much money into the garbage.
I think that I will never be free because I am doing business in a fixed market where there are no choices. How can anybody be free when they are stuck in markets that are not free?
Why is it like this? How did it come to be this way? What if it continues to get worse?
Maybe I will read this guys book. Are American markets broken?
Yes, the U.S. markets ARE broken. Global markets are broken. The move is to reduce global population and to reduce first world countries to the common denominator of the third world. Everything is broken. Intentionally.
FTC is holding a public meeting today. There is talk of ‘market busting.’ I’m very excited about this. Might not just be healthcare, although healthcare is common cited as the worst example. Maybe they will set the markets free through regulation.
The problem could be solved or at least significantly improved if people would vote and elect leaders who cared about this problem and were not beholden to big companies paying to have their profits protected. Follow the money and just don’t vote for those who are taking in blood money.
That’s where I start to get confused. They say that there’s a ‘sweet spot’ for regulation that allows the markets to functions, but that the landscape is dynamic and changes over time. So, in some decades, the markets get all ‘locked up’ and can’t move. They have to regulate in order to allow them to move. But, they can also get ‘locked up’ in regulations. So, sometimes they have to do the opposite (like in the 80’s maybe?).
I think they are complaining about ‘anti-competitiveness.’ That does feel like an issue in healthcare. I think that’s why they are starting to poke at companies about hospital consolidation - because it makes one player own everything in a geographic area. That leads to a unhealthy, non-competitive landscape.
I think we see a variety of States implementing a variety of different possible strategies. Often, in large complex systems, you don’t actually know what the result will be when you manipulate that system. It’s guess and check, so it might be hard to say which State has the best strategy. Its like diabetes blood glucose regulation. Certain solutions might work in some cases, but not in all. Some solutions are good in the short term, but can hurt you over the long term. Tricky. I’m gonna watch their FTC meeting and see if any useful can be gleaned from it.
It’s worth watching. JDRF speaks at minute 50. The pharmacists show up in FORCE. Pharmacists are really mad.
It must be that when a strategy works at a State level, it works its way up to the Feds.
We seem to have forgotten that we live in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Each one of our fifty states is INDEPENDENT. We elect representatives to the federal government who are supposed to protect us and our rights. This Republic worked for many years because it was government from the bottom up. Today, the Federal Government has assumed so much power (via the income tax which it allots to each state) that we have government from the top down. The Federal Government has very few mandates. One is to protect our borders, fight any invasion via the military, impose tariffs on imported goods, and mediate any inter-state disputes. Everything else is left to the individual states. And this is according to the Constitution. There has been total disregard for businesses becoming monopolies that entire industries have come under only a few umbrellas, such as the pharmaceuticals, the banks, and media. Many have gone outside the U.S. for production in lower-cost, lower environmental fouling regulations. I don’t know if any of this has answered your query but these are all factors that have influenced our quality of life in the U.S. and certainly have changed the marketplace.
When MN sued the insulin manufactures, they lost. I remember the diabetics saying that there no laws against monopolies anymore. I think there used to be. But maybe those laws don’t exist anymore or are hard to enforce.
There’s quite a lot of legal thrashing - back and forth, while everyone struggles to figure out where the lines in the sand are. I don’t know when all this gets settled, but some diabetics told me this week that it could be YEARS before California settles their lawsuit.
I now believe its totally realistic that CA is able to start manufacturing insulin (with a little help from MN) before they settle anything in court. It’s frustrating that everything takes sooo long and seems to never get settled. But FTC is getting dragged into things now. So, the whole thing just seems to be escalating to a Federal level.
The Feds want to do something broad. They don’t want to impose insulin pricing regulation and then be contacted by a million other patient advocacy groups (like cancer drugs or the EpiPen aka serious allergy people). They want to do ONE thing that fixes everything. I don’t know what that would be.
I think we should start placing bets on what happens.
Did you know that here in WA the state started a “public option” health insurance plan a few years ago. It has not succeeded in improving anything as far as I know.
But isn’t a “public option” the ultimate so called solution that a state can attempt?
FTC basically said that the healthcare markets are ■■■■■■ up (in the public meeting this week) and they are investigating. They said they are not trying to interfere with State efforts, but that some of their statements have been used out of context. Totally worth watching that FTC video.
I think the States can do a lot more than just offer insurance. I’ve never believed that was super helpful because it doesn’t address any of the underlying problems. It just gets in bed with the problems as they are. What do you think?
FTC sounds like they wanna punch the healthcare system in the face. Those are fighting words from the Feds.
If you want to hear JDRF, followed by FTC, start around minute 50. It’s great!
But, here’s our FTC commissioner speaking very directly about what she’s up to. She kinda says that she has the will to cleanup the markets, but not the means. Seems like hospitals mergers are the main interest/responsibility. She cites her legal reasoning via specific laws (which is interesting). But she wants people (State Attorney Generals) to reach out to her if they need advice.
