How To Reduce Healthcare Costs In America

(I wasn't sure where to put this topic. It's not really news, politics, or media. I guess it's just a random thought.)

In my mind, one of the largest reasons for rising healthcare costs is law suites. It seems that we are becoming sue happy. Some folks play law suites like a lottery, hoping for a windfall. Every time a lawyer comes on TV with an accident or bad drug commercial, he encourages this behavior. Fictitious and unnecessary law suites are causing insurance prices to soar. Get those wild suites and payouts under control and we may see some change.

What if bringing a law suite against someone came with potential consequences? In other words, if you tried to sue someone and lost your case, it would cost you something significant, say, a percentage of what you were seeking. The idea is to make people think twice before suing.

Lawyers encourage suing because they stand to get a large percentage of the award or settlement. What if we capped their share too? Instead of them collecting 45 or 50% of every settlement, let's knock them down to 10%. No wait! That would only cause them to increase restitution amounts. Okay, let's make it a straight dollar value instead of a percentage and cap it with a ceiling.

What say you?

 

To paraphrase some senatorial wit, turning a hundred dollars into a hundred and ten is work, while turning a hundred million into a hundred and ten million is the inevitable. The healthcare industry is 20% of the US economy which means the banks and Wall Street are in charge of the industry. A study of Wall Street traders concluded that, no matter what their religious beliefs or lack thereof, their practices mirrored whatever the market would bear. They have no morals and when they collapsed the entire world economy committing massive fraud Iceland was the only country to throw them in jail.

The US and EU both protested Iceland's decision, but Iceland now has a balanced budget, while the US is twenty trillion dollars in debt to the same assholes who collapsed the economy and Trump is now president.

 

true, malpractice insurance does play a big part of costs,
BUT
there are already checks and balances in place. if you file a frivolous lawsuit, you stand to be on the hook for ALL court costs, receive fines and possible jail time.
often the losing party must pay court costs, so even in legit lawsuits, there is monetary risk involved in filing.

there are already caps on the amount a law firm earns in a settlement, often it's about a third of the settlement and that amount is often dictated by the costs, BUT a judge can award additional $$$$ as punitive damages and "pain & suffering".
so in many ways the high cost of healthcare is why such malpractice suits can be so high $$$$$.

 

Malpractice insurance is part of the cost, but there are also a LOT of people who die or are injured every year due to malpractice, I can't remember the exact ranking but it is in the top ten causes of death in America. So I would say it is an absolutely necessary expense and is also not the main cause of high healthcare costs.

What we really need to do is remove the concept of profit from healthcare, remove the middle man (insurance companies), and remove exhorbitant administrative costs.

In other words, switch to single payer

 

Ah, here we go. Malpractice is the THIRD leading cause of death

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/03/researchers-medical-errors-now-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-united-states/

So we can conclude patients absolutely need the ability to sue for malpractice since it is so widespread. As mentioned above, there are already practices in place that prevent fraudulent suits

 

Agreed, Americans want to have their cake and eat it too. By limiting malpractice suits they lower the cost of healthcare merely by exposing themselves to more risk, meaning, all they are accomplishing is to compel the industry to provide worse healthcare for those who can't afford the best, creating a two teared system. Its the same effect seen in every market where deregulation and lack of enforcement encourages corruption and the only regulations being enforced are those that support deregulation. As a result of insisting the bankers, lawyers, and Wall Street traders run the country, we now have a shortage of doctors because, duh!, the only people making money are the bankers, lawyers, and Wall Street traders. Why spend 8 years to become a doctor and work your ass off when the entire system is set up to support corruption and whoever handles the money?

I have no sympathy left for any of them after they chose to elect Trump and see no point in debating which is the lesser of many evils. Two million women marched in peaceful protest, but that's less than 1% of the population and less than 2% of women. They might as well have spit in the wind for all the good it has accomplished because, in response, the public has merely demanded they have cake and to eat it too, while continuing to insist on electing billionaires and lawyers and bankers and professional politicians and demanding they tough action they themselves refuse to take.

 

many of the costs are there, its a matter of how they're distributed.

of course there are also lots of needless, inexcusable additions to them.

the insurance industry's role in healthcare is useless as tits on rock.

and everything that sells anything to healthcare charges a bonus for sanitary qualifiction that is often multiple times the actual cost of production, even sanitary production, for no better reason then the traffic will bare.

people helping each other is how we bacame human and the only good useful excuse for governments to exist.

the problem isn't that not enough people have insurance; the problem is that anyone should need to have insurance to receive medical attention when they need it.

i'm not so sure its the will of the majority to elect those cleptocrats either.
but i'll grant people who'se lives center around consuming entertainment,
tend to vote for familiar names about which they know in reality almost nothing.

a culture of epicness is really the problem,
nothing seems more epic to entertainment consumers, then a pirate or a mob boss.