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Biotech / Medical : Share your aches,pains,experiences,joys and cures. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Shoot1st who wrote (193)	4/1/2007 4:32:58 PM
From: Suma	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1564

It appears that medical insurance and it's incipient problems are not going to be solved very easily. I had lunch today with friends whom I have not seen in 15 years. My how they have aged and I have not (:) They were in Paris recently and had an accident or one of the party did and had to be taken to the ER and get attention. The comment was... it's socialized medicine there and the hospital was dirty,under staffed and they had to cancel the whole trip (going up a canal on a 35 ft.boat they navigated ) and fly home.. A 10 day vacation became a 5 day one. One thing that I know about those with low income. Often prescription medications can be given to you free if you sign on with the RX company that dispenses it.....

To: Shoot1st who wrote (193)	4/8/2007 7:29:57 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1564

When did you get smart? :-) You hit the nail on the head there. What you've hit is the fact thar "free" resources tend to be overused. Also known as the "Paradox of the Commons". US pop in 2005 was 295.5M. census.gov cia.gov 1/8 of the US population is over 65. US pop as of July 2006 was estimated at 298.4M- -probably over 300M now. THAT'S what we know of. In 2005, Medicare provided coverage to 42.5 million people, spending $330 billion on benefits. cms.hhs.gov 330B/42.5M = $8000/recipient/year. This asumes Medicare picks up ALL the cost of medical care, which we know not to be true. That's why Medicare supplumental insurance sells. Also, some retirees rake their medical insurance into retirement and it picks up part of the cost. But coverage of the entire population would cost 8X as much (yeah, simplifying assumptions again; older people tend to be sicker; OTOH, a good percentage of the poulation does not reach 65 and their last year of medical expenses are likely to be high.) So we know are looking at something like $64,000 a year im medical costs to be collected in tax (the siumplifying assumptions would make it lower, say $32,000). This is higher than US per capita`income! en.wikipedia.org whitehouse.gov So ALL your money is taxed away. This does solve the problem, though. Everyone starves to death.