140 dollars for one tylenol pill

[beachFool]

Betty says her decision to marry me was a good one. I really snowed her, didn't I? She also says that while Tricare/Medicare are government run programs, a lot can be done to them to make them way more efficient.

Sure they could be made more efficient but the savings will be "small in comparison with the total savings that will be needed to slow Medicare and Medicaid spending"' From Choosing Our Nation's Fiscal Future
Also: "Policies that increase the efficiency of health care delivery might promote the wider use of more effective but more expensive treatments."

Efficiency is touted almost as a painless way to solve the Medicare/Tricare funding dilemma.

The truth is that if we as a nation decide that taxes can not be raised to pay Medicare/Tricare then benefits will have to be reduced and vice versa.

There are no easy answers.

 

[Matt J]

The edict that providers must provide care regardless of the ability to pay is the root of this problem. Providers charge paying customers extra to recoup the cost for those who cannot/willnot pay. The governments ability to basically pay what they want is another factor. The medicare/medicaid rate is typically 30-40% of what the provider charges.

Free enterprise only works to the extent that it is indeed free.

Before you go crazy about the inhumanity of refusing care, I did not say I agreed/disagreed with universal care, only that this is a contributor to the problem. Simple economics.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath]Hippocratic Oath - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

I seemed to have missed the ability to pay portion of that.