why is medical care so expensive?

From: miss guydid (missguydid_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 08/03/04 

Date: 3 Aug 2004 13:52:51 -0700

i dunno but this is what i think.. in order of whatever popped up in
me head...

1. trial lawyers and medical malpractice suits which send medical
insurance thru the roof.

2. too many people don't pay and push cost onto others. take
automobiles or tv sets. we pay ONLY for the car or tv we buy. we
don't allow people who can't afford tv sets to get free tv sets and
have the cost defrayed to us. yet, this is what happens in
healthcare. when someone gets sick and goes to the emergency room,
the hospital HAS to treat that person. no electronics store HAS to
give those who can't afford tv sets FREE tv sets and dump the cost on
those who can afford tv sets. yet, in healthcare, those who can't
afford treatment still get treated and that cost is dumped onto other
patients and the government(which means higher taxes).

3. all medical care must be of same quality. now, there are better
doctors and hospitals with better facilities. however, by and large,
medical care is the more or less the same for ALL patients. therefore,
the insurance companies are burdened with giving the same top quality
care for everyone which sends premiums sky high. think of auto
insurance. they give you more money if your damanged car was
superexpensive. they give you peanuts if your car is a hyundai. but
insurace companies have to offer the same service for EVERYONE, rich
or poor, young or old.
this sets medicine apart from all other businesses. with houses,
cars, tv, cellphones, food, dvd players, etc you get what you pay
for. if you pay for quality, you get quality. if you pay for
junkality, you get junk.
but, in medicine, doctors and hospital must spare no expense and
procedure in treating the patients. medicine only comes in the form
of 'luxury item', as it should.
and since everyone wants the top quality treatment and procedure and
access to the latest technology and drugs, medical costs go up and up.

4. people go on the internet and play amateur medical sleuths and read
stupid *** and think they are sick and go see a doctor when they're
perfectly healthy and drive health cost up.

5. politicians play on our fears and make us demand more extensive
coverage by healthcare providers which send premiums up even higher.
i believe liberals are doing this to the point where premiums become
so ridiculously high--as if they weren't already--that people won't be
able to afford them, and therefore socialized medicine will be the
only option. so the liberal policies for health care is not so much
to reform but to undermine and destroy the private system. they make
private system offer more services; this drives up premiums; people
can't afford the premiusm; then liberals say we now need socialized
medicine. and republicans are afraid to stand up to this lowly moral
bullying because if they tell people hard truth about economics, they
are labeled as heartless bastards. all the left has to do is use
anecdotal fearmongering. there are ALWAYS horror stories in
everything, and michael moore in his next movie will do with
healthcare what he did with war in fahrenheit 911. focus on a single
sad story and bully us into changing the entire system because if you
disagree, it means you don't care about this victim.
of course, such dirty tricks can be used to push any cause. KKK can
focus on a terrible case of black-on-white crime and say this is the
result of desegragation. it's for idiots and suckers but too many of
us are idiots and suckers.

6. our healthcare industry is too innovative. because so much money
is invested in creating new expensive technologies which produce
expensive new drugs and procedures which EVERYBODY wants, the health
cost always outpaces affordability.
in most industries, when a new product comes on the line, it's
expensive and only affordable to the superrich. however, when an
expensive new drug or product is avaiable in medicine, it must be made
available to EVERYONE by the insurance company.
so, we have a medical system that is most advanced but also least
affordable. if it were less innovative, we wouldn't benefit from
cutting edge advances in medicine but health care costs would
stabilize for greater number of people.

7. doctor's association limits the number of practitioners.

what else?