Continued From Last Post

Cancer Can Be Cured and Is Cured. 

 

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Our Health Care

Americans Pay 50 Percent More than Other Countries for Identical Drugs
    As a result of laws and regulations preventing the US government from
reining in drug prices like other nations do, drugs are wildly overpriced in
the US. Overall, Americans pay 50 percent more than other countries for
identical drugs. This year alone, the US will spend more than $280 billion on
prescription drugs. If Americans paid the same prices other countries pay for
the same products, we’d save about $94 billion a year! The explanation given
by the pharmaceutical industry when confronted about this price difference is
that:

        “US profits subsidize the research and development of trailblazing
drugs that are developed in the US and then marketed around the world.”

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    But, as Brill states, should a country with a health-care-spending crisis
really subsidize the rest of the developed world? Who made that decision?

Furthermore, the numbers tell us Americans really do not need to pay such
inflated prices in order to guarantee continued drug research and
development:

        “According to securities filings of major drug companies, their R&D
expenses are generally 15% to 20% of gross revenue... Neither 5% nor 20% is
enough to have cut deeply into the pharmaceutical companies’ stellar bottom-
line net profits. This is not gross profit, which counts only the cost of
producing the drug, but the profit after those R&D expenses are taken into
account... All the numbers tell one consistent story: Regulating drug prices
the way other countries do would save tens of billions of dollars while still
offering profit margins that would keep encouraging the pharmaceutical
companies’ quest for the next great drug.”

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A New Cottage Industry: Medical-Billing Advocates

    A small grassroots-type industry has emerged as a result of shell-shocked
patients reaching out for help to understand their medical bills. Referring
to themselves as medical-billing advocates, they help you not only read and
understand the content of your bills, but also negotiate with the hospital to
reduce the charges. Brill quotes Katalin Goencz, a former appeals coordinator
in a hospital billing department who now runs her own medical-billing
advocacy business from her home in Stamford:

        “The hospitals all know the bills are fiction, or at least only a
place to start the discussion, so you bargain with them.”

    The problem with that, of course, is: what about the people who don’t
realize they CAN bargain with a major hospital? And should we really accept
“bills of fiction” to begin with? Brill writes:

        “Goencz is part of a trade group called the Alliance of Claim
Assistant Professionals, which has about 40 members across the country.
Another group, Medical Billing Advocates of America, has about 50 members.
Each advocate seems to handle 40 to 70 cases a year for the uninsured and
those disputing insurance claims. That would be about 5,000 patients a year
out of what must be tens of millions of Americans facing these issues – which
may help explain why 60% of the personal bankruptcy filings each year are
related to medical bills.”

    Even with the help of a medical-billing advocate (who of course charges a
fee for the service), many uninsured patients still overpay. After all,
getting a 50 percent discount on a test billed at $200, which should cost $15
is not necessarily a great bargain, although it’s certainly an improvement if
we only take fictional numbers into account. The sad thing is, as mentioned
earlier, the overcharges are SO grossly inflated that even if you get the
bill cut in half, the hospital still makes out like a bandit!

   Continued

My Other Blog...  http://CANCERCUREHERE.NET

God Bless Everyone & God Bless The United States of America.

Larry Nelson
42 S. Sherwood Dr.
Belton, Tx. 76513
cancercurehere@gmail.com

Health Care in The USA...Regulated by our FDA

     Continued From Last Post

Health Care in The USA...Regulated by our FDA

Hospitals Profit Despite Receiving Only a Small Portion of Billings
    Most hospitals end up receiving just 35 percent of what they bill, yet
they still manage to make tens of millions of dollars in operating profits
each year. Some hospitals, including Sloan-Kettering and MD Anderson, who are
tougher in their negotiations with insurance companies, end up getting around
50 percent of their total billings, which quite literally amounts to a
fortune. Stamford Hospital reported $63 million in operating profits in 2011,
even though about half of their patient base is highly discounted Medicare
and Medicaid patients. The actual revenue received, which included all the
discounts off the chargemaster, was $495 million.

        “That’s a 12.7% operating profit margin, which would be the envy of
shareholders of high-service businesses across other sectors of the economy,”
Brill writes. “Its nearly half-billion dollars in revenue also makes Stamford
Hospital by far the city’s largest business serving only local residents. In
fact, the hospital’s revenue exceeded all money paid to the city of Stamford
in taxes and fees. The hospital is a bigger business than its host city.”

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Medicare is Part of the Problem

    Medicare was signed into law in 1965. At the time, the House Ways and
Means Committee predicted the program would cost $12 billion in 1990. By the
time 1990 rolled around, the actual cost was $110 billion. This year,
Medicare costs are estimated to hit nearly $600 billion. As if stuck in an
infinity loop, Medicare and Big Pharma (which has successfully manipulated
the political system to their unbridled advantage) drive health care costs
ever skyward.

    As opposed to other countries, American laws actually prevent the
government from restraining drug prices. Federal law even prevents the single
largest drug buyer – Medicare – from negotiating drug prices. This is a
perfect example of how Big Pharma has successfully manipulated laws in such a
way that they can operate completely unrestrained in the US, under the flimsy
argument that high prices and profits are required in order to fund costly
research to develop potentially groundbreaking drugs to treat our ever-
proliferating ills.

    The only thing Medicare is allowed to do is to add six percent on top of
the average sales price drugmakers sell the drug for to hospitals and clinics.

    However, Congress does not control what drugmakers charge for their
drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are allowed to set their own prices, and when
it comes to one-of-a-kind drugs like some cancer drugs, the safeguards built
into a free market system disappear, making price setting anything but fair.

    Pharmaceutical companies also give rebates to hospitals to create
incentive to dispense the drug, as the hospital can then make a greater
profit. But since hospitals around the country not only get the same drug at
varying rates, and the “average sales price” Medicare bases its payments on
doesn’t necessarily reflect these rebates, the base price Medicare uses is
oftentimes not very average at all... In some cases, this can result in a
hospital still making upwards of 50 percent profit on what Medicare pays for
the drug!

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    In the example Brill includes in his report, a cancer serum called
Flebogamma costs the manufacturer an estimated $200-300 to collect, process,
test and ship. According to the drugmaker, the average sales price for the
drug is $2,003. Sloan-Kettering bills $4,615 for the drug, which Medicare
then cuts down to $2,123 ($2,003 plus 6 percent).

        “In practice, the average sales price does not appear to be a real
average. Two other hospitals I asked reported that after taking into account
rebates given by the drug company, they paid an average of $1,650 for the
same dose of Flebogamma, and neither hospital had nearly the leverage in the
cancer-care marketplace that Sloan-Kettering does. One doctor at Sloan-
Kettering guessed that it pays $1,400. ...So even Medicare contributes
mightily to hospital profit – and drug-company profit – when it buys drugs,”
Brill notes.

    Further adding to the problem of unrestrained costs is the fact that
Medicare is not allowed to pay attention to comparative-effectiveness
research. What this means is that if two drugs are found to be of equal
effectiveness but one costs far less, Medicare is not allowed to make the
decision to reimburse for the lower priced drug only.

            Continued

 My Other Blog...  http://CANCERCUREHERE.NET

God Bless Everyone & God Bless The United States of America.

Larry Nelson
42 S. Sherwood Dr.
Belton, Tx. 76513
 cancercurehere@gmail.com

 

The Chargemaster: What You Need to Know About, US HealthCare, if You Want to Avoid Medical Bankruptcy

Cancer Can Be Cured and Is Cured.
  http://CANCERCUREHERE.COM

 

US HealthCare

    As Brill discovered, each hospital has an internal price list called a
chargemaster, which contains every single item you may be given or come in
contact with during your hospital stay. That includes the little white paper
cup you get your medicine in, every box of tissue and band-aid, even a toy to
a child (which many mistake as a “gift”) can be billed at upwards of $200.

The problem is, no one quite knows how the prices in the chargemaster are
created.

        “It would seem to be an important document. However, I quickly found
that although every hospital has a chargemaster, officials treat it as if it
were an eccentric uncle living in the attic. Whenever I asked, they deflected
all conversation away from it...

        I soon found that they have good reason to hope that outsiders pay no
attention to the chargemaster or the process that produces it. For there
seems to be no process, no rationale, behind the core document that is the
basis for hundreds of billions of dollars in health care bills... No
hospital’s chargemaster prices are consistent with those of any other
hospital, nor do they seem to be based on anything objective – like cost –
that any hospital executive I spoke with was able to explain. 'They were set
in cement a long time ago and just keep going up almost automatically,' says
one hospital chief financial officer with a shrug.

        ...That so few consumers seem to be aware of the chargemaster
demonstrates how well the health care industry has steered the debate from
why bills are so high to who should pay them... [T]he drag on our overall
economy that comes with taxpayers, employers and consumers spending so much
more than is spent in any other country for the same product is
unsustainable. Health care is eating away at our economy and our treasury.”

    There is no real marketplace as such, as you the buyer is completely
separated from the seller. There’s absolutely no market feedback to regulate
and control the prices that are charged. For the most part the hospitals
charge as much as they want, which plays a large role on why these charges
have gotten so outrageously out of control. This simply doesn’t happen in
countries outside of the US.

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Nonprofit Profitmakers

    About the only defense for the chargemaster rates Brill was able to get
was that it has to do with charity. John Gunn, chief operating officer of
Sloan-Kettering told Brill:

        “We charge those rates so that when we get paid by a [wealthy]
uninsured person from overseas, it allows us to serve the poor.”
    If this strikes you as nonsense, you’re not alone. Brill found two major
holes in that argument. The first one is the most obvious: The hospital is
not only charging those rates to wealthy medical tourists or “Saudi Sheiks,”
as Brill puts it. These chargemaster rates are billed to average uninsured
Americans who aren’t poor enough to qualify for the hospital’s financial
assistance program, and don’t qualify for Medicaid.

    So in essence, middle-class Americans are being bankrupted to help pay
for the poor and the elderly while still allowing the hospital to rake in
massive profits and paying their executives some rather astounding salaries.

For example, at Montefiore Medical Center, a large nonprofit hospital system
in the Bronx, its chief executive has a salary of $4,065,000, the chief
financial officer of the hospital makes $3,243,000, the executive vice
president rakes in $2,220,000, and the head of the dental department makes a
not-so-shabby $1,798,000 per year. Similarly, 14 administrators at New York

City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center are paid over $500,000 a year,
including six who make over $1 million.

        “Second, there is the jaw-dropping difference between those list
prices and the hospitals’ costs, which enables these ostensibly nonprofit
institutions to produce high profits even after all the discounts,” Brill
writes.

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        “...[N]o matter how steep the discounts, the chargemaster prices are
so high and so devoid of any calculation related to cost that the result is
uniquely American: thousands of nonprofit institutions have morphed into
high-profit, high-profile businesses that have the best of both worlds. They
have become entities akin to low-risk, must-have public utilities that
nonetheless pay their operators as if they were high-risk entrepreneurs.

        As with the local electric company, customers must have the product
and can’t go elsewhere to buy it. They are steered to a hospital by their
insurance companies or doctors (whose practices may have a business alliance
with the hospital or even be owned by it). Or they end up there because there
isn’t any local competition. But unlike with the electric company, no
regulator caps hospital profits.”

 My Other Blog...  http://CANCERCUREHERE.NET

God Bless Everyone & God Bless The United States of America.

Larry Nelson
42 S. Sherwood Dr.
Belton, Tx. 76513
 cancercurehere@gmail.com

Is This Health care reform?

 Cancer Can Be Cured and Is Cured.
  http://CANCERCUREHERE.COM

 

Is This Health care reform?

Why are Americans Getting So Little in Return for the Highest Medical Bills
on the Planet?

    Americans spend twice as much on health care per capita than any other
country in the world; in fact according to a series of studies by the
consulting firm McKinsey & Co, the US spends more on health care than the
next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K.,
Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia.

    Despite that, we rank dead last in terms of quality of care among
industrialized countries, and Americans are far sicker and live shorter lives
than people in other nations. How is that possible? The short answer is:
We’re being fleeced.

    In the video above, CNN interviews a family blindsided by medical bills
amounting to more than $474,000 after 60-year-old Bob Weinkoff spent just a
few days in the ICU, suffering from difficulty breathing.

    According to a 2011 report by the global consulting firm Milliman, annual
healthcare costs for the average American family of four, if covered by a
preferred provider organization, is a staggering $19,393.1

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    Between 2002 and 2011 alone, the average cost of health care for American
families doubled, and since absolutely nothing is being done to rein in the
absurd overcharges, there’s every reason to believe costs will continue to
skyrocket until the bottom falls out.

    Cancer treatments, in particular, have increasingly become exorbitantly
expensive, even though no one can explain exactly why it has to cost upwards
of $1 million.

    By dissecting the medical bills people have received, journalist and
author Steven Brill says we can see exactly how and why we are overspending
and where the money is going.

Bitter Pill – The Absurd Costs of American Health Care

    In a recent Time Magazine interview,2 Brill discussed his very impressive
11-page cover story, Bitter Pill:3 This is one of the longer investigative
pieces and thankfully Time made it available for free.

        “Simple lab work done during a few days in the hospital can cost more
than a car. A trip to the emergency room for chest pains that turn out to be
indigestion brings a bill that can exceed the price of a semester at college.

When we debate health care policy in America, we seem to jump right to the
issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first
question: Why exactly are the bills so high?”

    In his article, Brill gives numerous examples of shocking markups on many
hospital charges, such as $1.50 for a generic acetaminophen tablet, when you
can buy an entire bottle of 100 tablets for that amount, $18 per Accu-chek
diabetes test strip that you can purchase for about 55 cents apiece, or
$283.00 for a simple chest X-ray, for which the hospital routinely gets
$20.44 for when it treats a Medicare patient.

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    Most need to know that going to the ER can bankrupt you if you don’t have
insurance. One example given in his article was a school bus driver who
slipped and fell on her face and went to the ER. Three CT scans cost her
nearly $7,000. She was just short of qualifying for Medicare and wound up
being billed the full charge, for which Medicare would have only paid $825.
But since she didn’t have Medicare, she got the FULL bill.

    Even with insurance you can be decimated. The featured story reviews a
man in his 50s who had insurance, developed pneumonia and was hospitalized
for one month and came out with a nearly $500,000 bill. After insurance
coverage, their bill was still over $400,000. This was in part due to the
hospital’s policy of not just double billing for items but TRIPLE billing.

Lab tests are another large cost and hospitals generate over 70 BILLION
dollars every year from this service, while the largest lab tester in the
country, Quest Diagnostics, only generates ONE TENTH of those charges, and
they most likely do far more tests.

    As an example, according to Stamford Hospital’s latest expense report,
which each hospital is required to file with the federal Department of Health
and Human Services, the hospital’s total expenses for lab work in 2010 were
$27.5 million. Its total charges were $293.2 million, meaning it charged
patients about 11 times its costs for lab work.

                 Continued

My Other Blog...  http://CANCERCUREHERE.NET

God Bless Everyone & God Bless The United States of America.

Larry Nelson
42 S. Sherwood Dr.
Belton, Tx. 76513
 cancercurehere@gmail.com


 

Teens Susceptible to Hepatitis B virus Despite Vaccination as Infants

    Continued From Last Post

Cancer Can Be Cured and Is Cured.

  http://CANCERCUREHERE.COM

Teens Susceptible to Hepatitis B virus Despite Vaccination as Infants

What You Should Know About Hepatitis B Virus

    Hepatitis B is often called "the silent killer" because as many as 95
percent of those with the disease exhibit no symptoms at all, until it's too
late. The disease can progress unnoticed for years in some cases, and
patients oftentimes learn they have chronic hepatitis B once they develop
severe liver damage Hepatitis actually means liver inflammation. Ironically,
hepatitis B vaccines have actually been shown to induce liver inflammation
associated with hepatitis.9 The "A," "B" and "C" designations refer to the
type of hepatitis virus involved. Symptoms of hepatitis A and B are very
similar, and include:

        Abdominal pain
        Fever
        Fatigue
        Joint pain
        Jaundice (yellowing of the skin and whites of the eyes)

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    Fortunately, in most cases the hepatitis B infection will resolve on its
own provided you have a well-functioning immune system. Symptoms can be
relieved by:

        Resting
        Avoiding foods that weaken your immune function, such as
sugars/fructose, grains, and processed foods. Healthful foods that help boost
your immune system include fermented foods and organic vegetables. (For a
list of the top 12 most beneficial foods for robust immune function, please
see this previous article)
        Optimizing your vitamin D levels
        Drinking plenty of pure water
        Avoiding alcohol and drugs

    If you recover completely from hepatitis B infection, you’ll acquire
life-long immunity. A diagnosis of chronic hepatitis B, on the other hand,
will typically include some form of antiviral medication, and depending on
how far along your disease has progressed, you may even require a liver
transplant. Even if you have been vaccinated as a child, it’s important to
remember that you may not be protected from these risks, and could still be
infected via IV drug abuse, sexual activity with an infected partner, a blood
transfusion with contaminated blood or even getting a manicure or pedicure…

You Have a Choice Regarding Hepatitis B Vaccination

    If you're an expecting parent, it's important to know that the hepatitis
B vaccine is given to virtually every newborn in the hospital — many times
without parents' consent — shortly after the child is born.

    Please carefully review the reward-to-benefit ratio well before your
deliver. If you conclude like many concerned health care professionals, that
subjecting all healthy newborns to hepatitis B vaccination within hours of
birth is both risky and unnecessary and you decide it is not appropriate for
your baby, you can amend the "consent for medical treatment" forms you sign
upon entering the hospital before giving birth by writing on the form that
you do not give consent for your baby's hepatitis B vaccination in the
newborn nursery. You should let any nurses or other medical staff taking care
of you and your baby know this directly as well.

  Your Solution For Disease FREE Health.  

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    However, there are reports that some newborns are being vaccinated in the
newborn nursery against the parent's wishes. So it is a good idea to keep
your newborn with you at all times or have a family member stay with the baby
while in the hospital.

    That said, it is important to be tested for hepatitis B if you're
pregnant, as it's possible to have a chronic infection with no symptoms and
not know it. If you are pregnant and are a carrier for the hepatitis B virus,
your baby could be at risk for being infected during childbirth.

    And although hepatitis B vaccines may be "mandated" for your child to
attend school or day care, most states offer different legal vaccine
exemptions (medical, religious, and philosophical). On NVIC.org, you can
research your state's specific vaccine laws and requirements and find out
what kind of exemption to hepatitis B vaccination you are allowed to exercise
in your state for your child to attend daycare or school.

Thank You Dr. Mercola

My Other Blog...  http://CANCERCUREHERE.NET

God Bless Everyone & God Bless The United States of America.

Larry Nelson
42 S. Sherwood Dr.
Belton, Tx. 76513
cancercurehere@gmail.com