>>>John, John, John.
>>>How you do go on!
>>>It's absurd to blame oldsters for that deficit.
>>>I just saw the bill that Medicare had to pay for my 5 day stay in the hospital in February.
>>>$77K for 5 days in the hospital and that doesn't include MD bills.
>>>That's over $15K per day, John.
>>>Get real!
>
>Bill, Bill, Bill,
>How you do go on!
>It's absurd to blame me for inflated US medical prices.
>If the hospital is charging over $15K per day for hotel services then there's something badly wrong in your medical system. So what do you propose to do about it- apart from taxing the young?
>
>Obama and others have proposed limiting payments to doctors to hold down Medicare costs but as you note, the biggest costs typically are for hotel services provided by facilities, or for equipment and medications. Reformers grab easy answers, straining at gnats and swallowing camels. Which contributes to an impossible deficit bequeathed to those starting their life voyages with ten-ton albatrosses around their necks.

Do you know what a "hospital chargemaster" is? And you know that the chargemaster procedure is generally only regulated in Maryland and only made public in California? This is a rather important piece of the puzzle here that tends to get overlooked.

>If you want to review the reasons for high US costs that have been confirmed every year for two decades to my certain knowledge: you need to start with the reality that US healthcare funding is run as insurance while most are younger and fitter, turning into a taxpayer-funded Ponzi scheme only when you reach the age of 65. IOW there's no underwriting for the more expensive later years because the insurers are excused responsibility while previous taxpayers have preferred to pay the minimum. So the surpluses from salad years are sucked as dividends and the future taxpayer is left with an unsustainable pay as you go/Ponzi model. Figure out how to divert surpluses from the young and fit years into standard underwriting and you deserve a gong. As it is, the ACA exchanges are at risk because not enough young fit people are signing up, turning the plans into havens for the sick and expensive so that underwriting models fail. Start from there and I'm sure you'll agree that today's young, who definitely cannot be blamed for this mess, have every right to protest at such an enormous burden of no conceivable benefit to themselves.