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This video, seen at the Heritage Foundation, is innocent enough. Heritage writes:
Now, if only she can convince President Obama to stop proposing even more new taxes, like today’s Soda Tax, yesterday’s Estate Tax hike proposal or the grandaddy of them all, the Global Warming Tax.
What Whoopi doesn’t realize, and which Heritage probably hasn’t gotten around to writing about, is that the soda tax, estate tax and climate change legislation isn’t going to be nearly enough to pay for all the things that “need to get done.” The WSJ reports on climate change legislation that will affect nearly every aspect of people’s lives.
WASHINGTON — House Democratic leaders said Tuesday evening they had reached agreement within their caucus on climate-change legislation that sets easier targets for emissions reductions and renewable-energy requirements than originally proposed.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D., Calif.) has been negotiating with a group of Southern and Midwestern Democrats on his committee who have withheld support for his bill because they feared it would hurt the economies in their states.
Mr. Waxman’s bill calls for capping emissions of greenhouse gases, and requiring companies to hold permits in order to emit such gases. But the original version of the proposal was silent on the degree to which companies would have to pay for those permits, versus being given them free. Utilities dependent on coal and other carbon-intensive industries such as steel plants or oil refineries have been lobbying Congress to give them the permits for free, at least initially. …
Republicans and other interest groups were already turning up the heat on Democrats and the Obama administration ahead of Tuesday’s deal. Earlier in the day, Republicans pounced on a White House document that says regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act “is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. economy, including small businesses and small communities.”
The potential impacts are worrying even some White House staffers who are having second thoughts about how far to take regulations on ‘greenhouse gasses’, possibly on political grounds. The Associated Press reports that the White House has released a memo casting doubt on how affordable such regulation would be.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Environmental Protection Agency proposal that could lead to regulating the gases blamed for global warming will prove costly for factories, small businesses and other institutions, according to a White House document. … The document, labeled “Deliberative-Attorney Client Privilege,” says that if the EPA proceeds with the regulation of heat-trapping gases, including carbon dioxide, factories, small businesses and institutions would be subject to costly regulation.
“Making the decision to regulate carbon dioxide … is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. economy, including small businesses and small communities,” the document says.
Under GWB the EPA ruled that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant, but ever since the Obama administration decided to name it a noxious gas, the gap between what that finding implies and what is politically possible has widened. An AP article on April 30, 2009 argued that the CO2 situation was so serious that the world needed drastic measures to prevent a climate catastrophe. It posited the existence of a cliff of doom which mankind was rapidly approaching.
The studies found there’s a limit to how much man-made carbon dioxide can be added to the air before warming exceeds an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit – the level that many governments have set as a goal. World average temperatures going higher than that may be dangerous, some scientists say.
To keep under that danger level, the world has to spew less than 1.1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide in the first half of the 21st century, according to studies published in today’s edition of the journal Nature.
In the first nine years of the century, the world has already emitted one-third of that amount and is on pace to hit that trillion ton limit in just 20 years, said climate researcher Malte Meinshausen of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and lead author of one of the studies.
A little arithmetic shows that to keep under the supposed CO2 limit the emissions have to be nearly halved from 4.07407E+13 tons per annum to the desired 2.2E+13. “Free permits” aren’t going to hack it. If the Potsdam Institute is to be believed, the economic downturn isn’t doing nearly enough to save the planet; a bigger recession, not recovery would logically be desirable. Even that may not be enough. Human existence itself may be the problem. In 2001 the IPCC, the United Nations Environmental Program sponsored committee, concluded that we may need to engage in “large-scale manipulations of terrestrial ecosystems” and changes to land use to save the earth.
Large-scale manipulations of terrestrial ecosystems have been proposed as a means of slowing the increase of atmospheric CO2 during the 21st century in support of the aims of the Kyoto Protocol (Tans and Wallace, 1999; IPCC, 2000a). Based on current understanding of land use in the carbon cycle, the impacts of future land use on terrestrial biosphere-atmosphere exchanges have the potential to modify atmospheric CO2 concentrations on this time-scale. Direct effects of land-use changes are thought to represent about 10 to 30% of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions (Table 3.1), so there is scope for either intended or unintended changes in land use to reduce or increase total anthropogenic emissions. But the possibilities for enhancing natural sinks have to be placed in perspective: a rough upper bound for the reduction in CO2 concentration that could be achieved by enhancing terrestrial carbon uptake through land-use change over the coming century is 40 to 70 ppm (Section 3.2.2.2), to be considered against a two to four times larger potential for increasing CO2 concentraion by deforestation, and a >400 ppm range among the SRES scenarios (Figure 3.12).
If you believe the “science” behind the claims, then any program remotely adequate for dealing with the problems described will require the putting the world on a war footing that would make life under Stalin’s Russia pale by comparison. Logic dictates that Whoopi needs more, not fewer tax items on her bill. And it’s not enough that she “give back”; for this to work she shouldn’t do well at all. The American dream is really the Green nightmare, the nightmare from which taxes grow.
Update: Oprah to Planet Earth: drop dead. You’ll have to pry her private jet from her cold, dead hands.
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Well, Whoopie does have a point.
I have a point too.
My daughter, who had to go to the emergency room lately, was charged, get this, $273 American dollars for a pill of Tylenol, which she didn’t even take, according to my wife’s testimony, who was there during the entire episode.
I’m not payin’. I may go to court.
Two hundred and seventy three dollars for a Tylenol is a real pisser, I think you will all agree.
Particularily when you didn’t even take the Tylenol.
Where is Doc Jamie Irons on this, the fellow, always flaunting his degrees, who thinks we Americans are not bright enough to be doctors.
Irons, where are thee?
Bob-
Maybe she should just give it back, and get a refund, if in fact that’s what the entire $273.00 bill was for, just the pill and nothing else. I’m sure they won’t mind a little pocket lint.
Wretchard-
I think it’s very premature to think that the Whoopi Goldberg’s of the world will stop supporting the current president because of money issues. In the end, her tax bills, even with the new stuff, are an annoyance that will not affect her standard of living one whit. But with him in office, she gets her entire social agenda promoted. So she’ll do a lot of complaining and then pull the lever for him in 2012.
And certainly Ms Goldberg and the rest of the NPR left have no affection whatsoever for small communities or especially small business. If it isn’t big, urban, and public sector, it’s probably evil, in their minds, entertainment industry excepted, of course.
In all likelihood, they’ll cheer as the government rips into small business the way hounds rip into the bear at a bearbaiting session.
Heh, I’ve paid mega thousands for medical insurance for my family, and I’m charged $273 American dollars for a damned Tylenol, which wasn’t even taken, and I’m told by the Great Jamie Irons, who thinks so much of himself, that we Americans are too stupid to be doctors.
Damn, I’d almost rather go to a Eskimo shaman.
My problem with the whole thing is the dependence on computer models. I don’t think there’s enough data, and I think that the climate is much more complex than we think. When we’re making huge policy decisions based on predictions of the future of the most complex system on the planet…if we spent as much money actually researching the planet’s climate as we do “saving” it, we might learn a lot.
We can’t even predict recessions 10 years in advance, but we can predict the climate? Ten years ago, was anyone predicting that global temperatures would plateau for the next decade? That’s what happened. So, I think we don’t understand what’s actually happening, and we don’t have a good record of prediction.
It’s kind of funny in a sad sort of way. One Mount Pinatubo blows, and according to their calculations, we’re all doomed. This is such a crock, fueled by the anti-capitalist forces. (The dark side)
Bob-
Was it the doctor himself who charged you for this, or was it the hospital/clinic?
Because these days they’re usually not the same.
The doctor or nurse treating your kid may not even know what the hospital charged you for the pill. Many docs nowadays are simply employees of hospitals and clinics, not actual businessmen or administrators. They are almost never aware of the charges that a clinic adds beyond the fees they receive.
Maybe you should direct your ire at the hospital corporation instead of attacking this doctor in particular, or doctors in general. I realize it’s intellectually simple and emotionally satisfying to get angry at doctors – they are the face that you see in person, and therefore an easy-to-identify target vs a faceless bureaucracy at some hospital – but it may not be accurate. If you do the work of getting informed, I think you’ll find that getting mad at the doc is barking up the wrong tree.
The genesis of this high charge is almost certainly the result of some mid-level hospital administrator or accountant with an MBA, not a physician or anyone else who is a trained medical person.
Not really sure what this has to do with Americans in general or doctors specifically being bright. Are you suggesting that because a hospital corporation charged you an exorbitant price for medication that most doctors aren’t very smart? Or are you saying that because a hospital corporation charged you a lot of money for a pill that millions of Americans are therefore bright and hardworking enough to be practicing doctors?
I’m not seeing the train of logic here that takes us from some clinic charging you a lot for a pill to millions of people suddenly gaining the ability to become physicians.
Sorry to get so OT.
That’s a lot of money for a pill, though I’m not sure what Jamie Irons to do with it. What happened at the ER, if you care to describe it?
Looks like a misplaced decimal point…
maybe 2.73 or 27.30
Bob, put another way….
I currently work in a business that engineers, builds, and services small devices.
Let’s say you purchase a device from us and we deliver it , but before he leaves the delivery guy also were to leave a tube of lubricant which cost us 89 cents to make or buy, but for which we then bill you $300.00, because our bean counter saw this as a great area for a profit center.
You do which of the following?
1. Call my business, bitch the billing department out, tell the accountant he’s a piker and a robber, threaten to take your business elsewhere, and tell us you’re returning the lubricant.
2. Get angry at the engineers who designed the device, the skilled machinists who crafted it, and go to Wretchard’s blog to state that most Americans are skilled enough to do the job of the engineer or machinist.
We all know that the first response is what you would do, and that doing the second would not even cross your mind.
Yet the second is precisely what you did in the instance of the emergency room visit. Why would you resopond one way for the ER visit and another in the case of my industy? They’re the same damn thing. There’s something other than logic at work, here.
Its not the pill. Its what your daughter didnt have that she could have had such as a concussion or some other serious trauma. You paid for reassurance.
Old story about the engineer brought back from retirement because the big machine that was the core of the plant stopped working and was costing millions a day in lost revenue. Old guy walked up to the machine, took a hammer and hit it three times. Machine started right up and ran like a top.
Old guy sent a bill to the factory manager for $25,100. Manager called him and said for a bill that size, i need an itemized breakdown. Old guy says ok
Sent this:
Travel and time $100
Knowing where and how many times $25,000
What you paid for was the second part. The tylenol was free.
OK guys…(information from my father, a retired hospital administrator) here is how a tylenol cost 200+ dollars.
All hospitals that recieve, in any form, federal dollars (including medicare) are regulated under the Hill-Burton act. The act specifies, in great detail, how costs are accumulated and charged.
For example, when determining the cost of a room, you have to include the capital cost of the building. Simplistically, one would take the total cost of the building, divide by number of beds and, voila, the capital cost of each room. Not so, large portions of the capital are not allowed. Lobbies, hallways (how do you get from room to room without a hallway?) part of the parking lot, etc.
Other things, like meds, are not regulated. The overprice tylenol includes all the direct charges (storage, handling, RN delivery, dispensing etc) and makes up PART of the delta from above.
Please, this is slightly over simplified, so don’t get too lost in the detail…just note that it is the same sort of accounting that creates $600 toilet seats for USAF transport aircraft.
for those carbon based life forms proposing all these regulations, taxes, extrortion, and rapine; Do they know the source of all those fancy carbon atoms building up the major part of almost every single molecule in their bodies?
Yep. CO2, through the miracle of photosynthesis, is stripped right out of the freaking air! They turn it to sugars for chemical energy and structural components. Then we (or other animals) eat the plants (or the other animal that ate the plants). The food we eat becomes what we’re built of. Ultimately derived from CO2, the stuff of life.
I ALWAYS attack AGW advocates by asking why they hate trees and children. It freaks them out.
As a child I learned the carbon cycle from kindergarten books and 1st grade science. I suppose that’s outa vogue now, having been replaced by self esteem classes.
Bob I recently walked into a docs consultation and walked out about $200.00 poorer and the wait was longer than the consult and resulted in the Doc saying “I concur with the other docs diagnosis.”
Just wait till the health care gets taxed.
ER doctors are paid by the hour, usually work 3 or 4 12-hour shifts per week, and have nothing to do with what the hospital charges for anything. They may order the pill, or the x-ray, or lab test but they don’t determine the cost. Instead of ranting over the cost of a pill maybe you could pause to reflect on the skill and judgment required in determining the problem was small enough to only require a minor painkiller. Were you afraid when you got to the ER and relieved to find things were going to be OK?
#15: a doctor friend of mine used to say he would gladly work for the pay of the lowest-paid bench warmer in the NBA.
removing carbon dioxide will kill the plants that must breathe it right?
Sorry to double post, but I have an axe to grind about CO2 and AGW advocates.
I’m a research biochemist, so I’m reasonable acquainted with the molecular assembly of living systems, metabolic processes, etc. So I have a reasonable familiarity with CO2 as a natural component of our ecosystem. It is both a feedstock and a waste product of living systems. Always remember we are carbon based life forms!
Doing science projects off and on I got into the distilling industry (booze) and have been a part of a couple projects. I really first became aware of the AGW legal issues when I saw several years back that California was regulating winery emissions. That’s when I really noticed the insidious scope of the scam.
Wineries, breweries, and distilleries tend to ferment sugars to ethanol to make their respective products. Not only do they use energy like other businesses, and sometimes alot of process heat, these industries actually turn one half of the sugar they consume as feedstocks into CO2. At Best Only 50% becomes ethanol.
Suddenly my chosen field of entrepreneurial focus is threatened by public opinion, legislation, and snake oil salesmen who are practicing and preaching religious anti-science.
My goal is to save my own money, invest it in my own tools, use my own labor and build my own facilities. Then I want to use my own knowledge and skills to make my own spirits. I want to do this as an entrepreneur for myself, my family, and my community. It could beneficial for all concerned. Especially the tax collectors.
But my dreams are threatened. By idiots who don’t know what they are doing, why they are doing it, or what the consequences will be. All to enrich a chosen few.
Curse them.
Because not only do I see my dream under attack. I see this for what it is. A cover charge to buy into civilization. A way to keep the third world in it’s place. A way to add a surcharge to the severing of natural resources. A way to prevent land use. A way to add a buy-in to anyone who wants to use industrial process heat, even when they own their resources, their land, and their fuel.
This is a back door attempt to re-establish the divine right of kings, updated to naturally include Gazprom and their gluttonous associates, such as Gore, Schroeder, etc.
Curse them and ALL they stand for.
The good thing about grinding my axe is that it gets sharper the more I do it.
When I look at the “progress” made by the countries that have signed the Kyoto Agreement I wonder why anybody bothered. Canada, one of the loudest whiners about American CO2 excesses, has had massive increases each year since signing, the same for most of EU. If the True Believers are not playing along why should we? In the mean time China’s carbon footprints doubles every couple of years. Anybody willing to tackle that beast?
The Obama administration is in a real quandary, too many promises to too many special intrests. They are faced with trying to balance the costs of carbon-reduction against the “recovery” efforts. The current policy not only kills the Golden Goose but throws away the Golden Eggs as well.
Another thought; what exactly does “Large-scale manipulations of terrestrial ecosystems ” mean? It smells like they want to reset the planet to the Good Old Days (sometime before we supposedly messed things up), the only way to get to that point is for BILLIONS of people to just not be here any more. I wonder who they have in mind to be among that missing population? My bet is that the greenies are not among the missing.
Barry0351: yes. the plants “breathe” it in the sense that they obtain chemical potential energy by harvesting light from the sun and using it to make sugars from CO2. this is the process of photosynthesis. This process fixes the carbon from the CO2 and dumps the oxygen.
more CO2 => more plant growth. in fact many greenhouses and “indoor” gardeners supplement their CO2 with tanks on timers.
more plant growth => more fresh oxygen. win, win if you know what I mean. We breathe O2 and exhale CO2. Plants “breathe” (photosynthesize) CO2 and “exhale O2.
Good stuff this. Although fundamental, It’s not to be underestimated in importance.
Most of the Green advocates I’ve met don’t know what plants are made of.
The taxes that are being levied on phones, porn, cigs, movie tickets, booze, lotto winnings are the just the start…
Welcome to Soviet America….
The government will control the means of production, distribution and prices…
EXPECT rolling brownouts with electricity prices to triple with supply to half…
ALL apart of our Great Father’s plan…
America needs to be humbled, cuckolded….
we dare to consume more than our 4% footprint?
forgetaboutit….
It’s time to transfer america’s excessive wealth back to those who we stole it from…
My problem with the whole thing is the dependence on computer models. I don’t think there’s enough data, and I think that the climate is much more complex than we think. When we’re making huge policy decisions based on predictions of the future of the most complex system on the planet…if we spent as much money actually researching the planet’s climate as we do “saving” it, we might learn a lot.
How true. My understanding of these models is that when you plug in data from the past, say the weather conditions in 1999, the models fail to predict the actual weather that really followed from that date.
But then again, I have always suspected that “saving the planet from global warming” never was an end in itself, it is merely a means to an end. Most governments justify their existence at some level or another by controlling the allocation of scarce resources. What happens when you have a society in which there isn’t an obvious scarcity of any necessities?
Why, you create them by policy. There is no intrinsic reason why the US shouldn’t be energy independent. We have oil we can’t drill for, coal and oil shale we cannot extract, and the technology to build nuclear power plants that no one can get permits to build. For the last twenty years government energy policy can best be described as negligent sabotage.
But it is a golden opportunity for those who view their fellow citizens as ants in their ant farm, to be experimented with in their attempts to show the ants a better way to live.
Current events remind me of the exchange in the movie Cool Hand Luke, where the Boss, after having locked Paul Newman in the “box” says “Luke, I’m doing this for your own good.” to which Newman replies “Boss, I wish you’d quit being so good to me.”
BTW watching that overpaid no-talent idiot Goldberg gripe about paying a few pennies more in taxes is amusing. Rather like a starving French peasant hearing Marie Antionette complain that her cake is not sweet enough.
It was 1953/54 and I was 6 years old. One day in school I did something stupid and put a nice gash over my left eye. My mother came and took me to the local Doc who used the parlor of his house as an office/treatment room (this was a very small town of about 600 souls). He cleaned the wound, put in a couple of stitches, swabbed it with something and charged my mother $10. She paid cash and that was it.
I wonder what it would have cost today? Amazing how much things can change in a single lifetime.
I’m sure Goldburg voted for him. She gets very little sympathy from me.
Bill
The masses of Americans that voted for their messiah GOT what they deserved..
Let me apologize to Bob for having unintentionally offended him. And if I’ve been flaunting my degrees, such as they are, well, that was tasteless and unforgivable (not to mention unjustified).
But I am mystified as to how I gave anyone the idea that I think Americans are unqualified to be physicians. (I’m an American myself!)
What I have a vague memory of writing a while back was that I think the number of Americans that could become good doctors is limited, that is, finite (I’m not sure where the limit is, exactly). But so is the number of potentially qualified people of every other nationality on earth. Partly, this limitation is a matter of preference, and not of “intelligence,” whatever that is exactly.
As to the ridiculously expensive acetaminophen (Bob’s daughter should have been given the generic!): A comment above said the doctor probably was unaware of this charge, and that is likely true. But in the outfit I work for, the doctors are very aware of such costs, and such a thing could never have occurred. We are constantly harassed, furthermore, by our pharmacy people to prescribe the cheapest possible effective alternative. A lot of effort and a lot of research goes into this.
Und heilt er nicht, so tötet ihn! ‘Sist nur ein Arzt, ‘sist nur ein Arzt.
Humbly,
Jamie Irons
Jamie!
Talk Muricun!
bob,
I feel your pain. A few weeks ago my wireless mouse needed to eat more batteries. At Home Depot I picked up the big pack of 48 AA in the g-d d-mn plastic clamshell. Cutting it open with the very nice blade I picked up at FLETC a year ago I slipped and cut my finger. It was bleeding so I walked over to the closest ER to see if I needed a stich. I told them explicitly that I had no job and no insurance. After a 45 minute wait a young doctor took a look, squirted a little water on it and said I was fine and he would note that I needed the lowest level of care. Before I left I reminded them of my status and asked for the bill if any and was told to just go home. A week later a bill for $1,100 for emergency room services showed up.
They can go hang themselves.
Foont,
I saw a doctor when I was in the Philippine and that was pretty much the same deal. I needed looking at for some minor symptoms and looked me over and we paid him cash something along the lines of ten dollars or so. In fact, it was obvious his whole practice was cash based and he did not have a “backoffice”.
The change occurred when health insurance came to be an expected fringe benefit of jobs. The true cost of treatment (as small as it was or appeared to have been back then) was now removed from the consumer. I get treatment, someone else pays, hey, I better have that sniffle looked at it could be something major.
The 230 analgesic is a symptom of forced itemization and cost shifting, nothing more nothing less.
One hears similar stories with the mortuary business. A funeral home has to itemize costs and I am sure there are artificial caps on certain items so one hears stories of $500 shoes for the body. Of course, one’s knee tends to jerk when one hears of $500 burial shoes which positively feeds back into the regulation loop.
Herb,
It’s a quote from Kafka’s wonderful story, Ein Landarzt, A Country Doctor:
And if he doesn’t heal, then kill him!
Only a doctor, only a doctor…
One sometimes feels like Kafka’s country doctor practicing medicine. But I do feel the same outrage as anyone else when people are overcharged, or receive shoddy services.
Best,
Jamie Irons
Medical costs are socialized away from the consumer. I suspect that if they weren’t, it would be less expensive, but there is a huge cost imposed by the courts that require perfection in all things. Ads on the TV looking for people who have ruptured tendons from some drug or other, chasing heart surgery patients that had a particular drug.
I believe that part of the problem are (is?) the huge administrative costs generated by the insanely small deductibles and copays. Every transaction requires the attention of clerks and paraprofessionals to determine whats payable and for how much and this attention goes on on both sides of the deal. So you have a $50 direct cost treatment carrying $100 in indirect costs. Even if you get a high deduct policy, the burden is still there.
@33. Herb:
You have that right, a short while ago my employer changed the medical coverage that they provide. My son is a diabetic, his doctor did not change nor any aspect of his treatment program. Now I get over a dozen different bills per visit, some for as little as $4.23, instead of the ninety or so bucks that was on the old single bill. Some clerk is processing all those bills and tracking payments etc, the overhead must be staggering. My co-pay is down on medication but each is handled seperately creating more paperwork. I can just imagine what it will look like once the Feds get involved.
As some one else said before;
I have seen public housing,
I will pass on public healthcare.
Anton,
I hear you there. Every visit we make to the doctor generates scads & scads of mail from both the clinic and the insurance company and the mail seems to come and come for months. I never really have an idea as to what mail belongs to what visit.
24. Foont:
It was 1953/54 and I was 6 years old. One day in school I did something stupid and put a nice gash over my left eye. My mother came and took me to the local Doc who used the parlor of his house as an office/treatment room (this was a very small town of about 600 souls). He cleaned the wound, put in a couple of stitches, swabbed it with something and charged my mother $10. She paid cash and that was it.
I wonder what it would have cost today? Amazing how much things can change in a single lifetime.
My son needed 12 stitches in his hand recently- fell out of a canoe in shallow water and sliced his palm on a rock.
$680 for the ER, $400 for the doctor.
I’m glad I had insurance but that is crazy.
aaron re: carbon
(BTW, I agree is it only a scam for power and control)
Elemental make up of the human body (top 10)
Element ↓ Percent of Mass[1]
Oxygen 65
Carbon 18
Hydrogen 10
Nitrogen 3
Calcium 1.5
Phosphorus 1
Potassium 0.25
Sulfur 0.25 0.140
Sodium 0.15 0.100
Chlorine 0.15
The AGW nutters really want the world to return to 1875 population and industrial levels with the ‘common folk’ acting as serfs on their plantation. Believe it. That is somehow more pure and ‘natural’ to their warped sensibilities.
As far as Whoopie is concerned and her crying about how much taxes she pays – Boo Frakkin’ Hoo! I’ll trade places with her any day.
Just wait until the real meltdown comes. Us rednecks might be hunting her type for food, they are nice and tender (soft) with good fat content. (Just kidding and engaging in some hyperbole)
Anyone ever read “A Boy and His Dog” by Harlan Ellison?
@18 aaron
Bravo – my sentiments exactly.
Video: EPA memo says greenhouse effect not proven as if most of us didnt know that…
Anton wrote:
“The current policy not only kills the Golden Goose but throws away the Golden Eggs as well.”
I nominate that for quote of the day.
Bob, first off, was that the total bill or just itemized to the Tylenol? The total bill was probably hundreds more, I would think, because $273 would be a real cheap visit, nowdays. The real cost to the hospital for an ER visit might be $200-500 per visit depending on the hospital and city. Think of all the nurses, orderlies, technicians and technologists behind the scenes not to mention janitors,etc.. Add in unbelievable liability insurance costs etc.. If an illegal immigrant or other uninsured person is the patient the hospital will likely not be paid anything for the visit. If the patient is on welfare the government might pay $120 so the hospital has to eat the rest. And if that nonpayer gets an expensive CT or MRI scan, or lab tests the cost is even higher. Somehow the hospital has to cover the cost. Soooo a piece of the non-payer’s bill is tacked on to yours: cost shifting they call it, as 31 mentioned. Will a government-run national system be better? I doubt it. They’ll do what they do now, pay only a small part of the real cost. If that is the only payment the hospital can get under a national system quality will have to go down to the keep cost down to equal payment levels.
Most Americans I know would have tried tylenol before going to a clinic let alone an ER. The real point is that the treatment cost is what we equate to what should have been charged. Those who think this way rationalize that there must be an easy way to reduce the cost of health care by simply using common sense and outlaw gouging.
There may be nothing more than greed that led to Bob’s daughter being charged an egregious sum of money. Odds are that there is more to the story. My own children have told me stories to save me the trouble of a complicated reality.
The complicated reality of health care is that it makes up 17% of GDP and for the most part is way overrated in terms of what it adds to our society. Most hospital based physicians have little or no clue as to is on the bill a patient receives. When asked to explain it they resort to a defensive tact of justifying the services rendered rather than the cost. Even they know that the costs are outrageous. But in the back of their mind there is a primitive sense that if the system is changed that they will be the ones taking home less money. This is reality. For everyone involved in this jury rigged system as it teeters on the rusting gyroscopes of outdated political promises there is a sense of impending doom. Change is bound to come and gravity is a force that they know to be afraid of. They are certainly not stupid.
I know a girl, a waitress with no insurance, who was involved in a car accident. A bad one with two fatalities. She seemed to be okay, though, but she had banged her head. So the doctors pleaded with her to remain in the hospital overnight for observation. Shaken, afraid, having seen two friends die, and reliant on the advice of professionals (who were truly concerned for her welfare), she agreed to stay.
The bill came in at a little over $10,000.00. That’s a lot of money for her, it has been financially devastating and ruinous. She fought in court, but only wound up running up legal bills as well. She was fine the whole time, too. Minor concussion.
Watch out for the emergency rooms; get and keep yourself insured.
Realize that if she were insured, that same hospital bed would be charged to the insurance company for much, much less. If you walk in there uninsured, your costs far more than double. It’s justified by actuaries, who add in the cost and probability of getting bills paid from the uninsured. So, if you are uninsured they charge you more. Lots more.
Jamie gets pulled into the discussion because he said one time Americans aren’t smart enough to get through medical school.
I’ve argured we need more doctors.
He said we don’t have enough smart folk to pass the courses.
My daughter had a fall, and we thought a broken bone.
I think most of the doctors are very competent, by the way.
We just need more of them.
And I think we have plenty of talent here in America to fill the need.
But the billing is insane.
Going one comment further, we could handle a medical school in Boise, Idaho now. It is big enough, the Boise area, now, to handle a medical school.
Rather than spend $8 billion dollars on a fast train from LA to Vegas, for instance, I propose finally building a medical school here.
I think, despite Dr. Irons opinion, we could find the talent right here in Idaho to fill the classrooms.
We could do it. It takes a lot of doing, but we could do it.
Beats the Desert Debtor, from LA to Vegas.
Bob @ 44
See me @ 12; you paid $237 to know her bone wasnt broken.
Another thing is multiple billing arrangements. If Selfinsured Gotrox or LOTM Uninsured shows up they get billed at the standard rate card. If an insurance co intervenes, they get billed off an agreed rate card or a flat discount. Its like airlines; 250 people on an airplane paid like 50 different fees for the same trip.
The complexity adds to the cost.
Bob, calm down, take a reality check. Harry Reid doesnt want a Medical School in Idaho. He wants the train from LALA to Lost Wages. What Harry wants Harry gets.
After my first daughter was born, our OB/Gyn doctor decided to retire from her practice. She was tired of paying $80K per year for malpractice insurance (not ALL insurance, mind you, just malpractice). And that was just one expense out of hundreds. Tort reform would go a long way to reduce medical costs….
(and that was in 1983!)
Well, if you are going to the Emergency Room, just take your own bottle of Tylenol with you.
In Australia there’s a notice in the ER which says (I’m just trying to recall the numbers now) that if you don’t have either the government medicare-issue card or some other form of insurance you’ll be charged $500 for the consultation and $5,000 per night if you use one of the intensive care facilities. Some number like that, but the orders of magnitude are correct.
The health care system in Australia is what could be described as “universal”, but it is really one where the public system provides a baseline and people with a little more money can buy private health insurance on top of it. We do and so do a lot of others, just because they want faster care and a better choice of doctors and procedures than the public system can provide. The use of private insurance has unloaded the public system to a degree, allowing it to focus on the older and those who for whatever reason, have opted to remain in medicare alone.
One of the problems with the ER’s here I’ve been to is that they are often overwhelmed by patients (even those with private cover) who use as first port of call during the hours when a GP is either unavailable or some kind of trauma, fainting or other drastic symptom manifests itself. If there were a mass casualty event the ER would be absolutely unable to cope with the numbers, I think.
Three children of my friends have either gone or finished medical school in Australia. One is from New Zealand and couldn’t get a ‘place’ there and so studied in Oz. There’s a number of ‘places’ in the education system and they’re allotted by selection. Curiously enough, two of those headed to medical school actually asked me to ‘coach’ them for the dreaded selectio interview. We met up in a cafe with their parents and we did a pretend interview. I had no idea if I did the right thing but they seemed happy and their parents were similarly pleased. About a month later, the doorbell rang and it was the family with a cake they had baked as a thank you gesture. It turned out both had gotten their ‘places’ and at least partly ascribed their success to a good interview result. I think they would have made it anyway.
I’ve been rambling on a bit. Just wanted to let people know what the ERs are like in Oz.
It’s too late for Obama to turn back the tide. Congressional Dems want high taxes because they and their families benefit (ala Murtha) from them. Obama has neither the leadership nor ability to threaten these guys.
So taxes on everything are a done deal, as Dems are the party of coastal elites and Hispanics/Blacks, none of whom are significantly affected by taxes, and women, who ARE but will support Obama/Dems out of cultural biases up to a point.
Obama and Dems won on the basis of women. How far can they be taxed and how far can they see a deterioration of their standard of living? I think as long as Obama and Dems insure that they are better off than MEN, most women will support them.
It’s often not absolute increases in standards of living but relative ones that drive people. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was aghast at her servant’s cars at her own private chapel “What’s the point of being rich if ordinary people have nice things too?”
Democrats are busy making sure ordinary people don’t have nice things too. Coastal elites will support this, ala Oprah and Whoopie. Women will happily pay huge tax bills and take lower standards of living, often significantly lower, as long as they maintain superior social/cultural positions re: most White men, and higher earnings. Just as Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy would have gladly halved her income just so long as her servants were far poorer (and could not afford nice things).
Don’t overlook social competition. The “Green” movement has at it’s core the ability to make certain groups (White men the most targeted) significantly poorer than others. Heck there’s a commercial in the US where a guy’s son (and attractive female clerk) patronize him over “Green choices” and the son “makes his father a better man.”
“that it is the same sort of accounting that creates $600 toilet seats for USAF transport aircraft.”
Seeing the paperwork involved I’d say that $600.00 for a toilet seat is a real bargain. As a business decision, I’d ‘no-bid’ at the price.
My experience as an uninsured patient is that my bill has been significantly discounted with a cash payment. Also got the hospital to write off more than half of the charges from my heart attack last year after my worthless insurance policy refused to cover the costs. For Robohobo – were you referencing that cinamatic classic “A Boy and His Dog” starring Don Johnson circa early 70′s?
The so called science behind the claims of the global warming alarmists is weak or non-existent:
(1) No signature “hot spot” at 10 km above the equitorial regions.
(2) Ice core data- amazing isotope measurements!- shows CO2 increases after warming has started; it’s not the cause of warming but an effect. The oceans are a much larger sink for CO2 that the air.
Anyone who has watched a pot of water boil- hey, I am a chemtist, it’s part of my job!- knows that warm water holds less dissovled gases than cold water.
(3) Temps aren’t rising! Global temps rose from 1920-1940, cooled from 1940-1975 (hence the mid 70s global cooling scare), warmed from 1975-1998, and have cooled since 2000. There is a reason that the debate is now trying to being framed by the alarmists as “climate change” and not as “global warming”.
(4)The effect of CO2 as a greenhouse gas on global warming is about a far as it can be; a 20% increase of CO2 from the levels at now will result in a negligible increase in tempertures, less than 0.1 C.
In the Devonian period of ~ 400 million years ago CO2 levels were over 2000 ppm compared to the 380 ppm today. No runaway greenhouse occured, it was the age of plants!
Designating CO2 as a pollutant is absurd. Thee EPA ruling needs to squashed ASAP before even more damage is done to the economy from misallocation of resources.
The Heartland Institute sponsored a terrific conference on this issue in NYC in March and have a one day conference in Washington DC on June 2. Most of the presentations from the 2nd International Conference on Climate Change from March (Al Gore didn’t accept the invitation to speak) are available from the Heartland Institute web site:
http://www.heartland.org/
The so-called science behind the alarmists position is bad enough, the economic “solutions” proposed to solve this non-crisis are even worse.
Even if nothing legislatively happens this year, the supporters of “Cap and Trade”, “Carbon Tax” etc., have to be held accountable for thier terrible judgment.
54. Kingston53: “were you referencing that cinamatic classic “A Boy and His Dog” starring Don Johnson circa early 70’s”
That was the semi-satisfying movie.. As usual, the book is much better and Ellison as always an excellent writer…
“A boy loves his dog”
You think that $237 Tylenol is expensive now, wait until it’s free.
“Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.
In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide “ice caps” near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
“The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,” he said. ”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
One of my favorite bar tricks is to ask an AGW-ist what they thought the cause if the ice caps melting. They naturally were quick to answer AGW, so I correct myself; “Oh I’m sorry, I meant the ice caps on Mars”. This usually ends in denials or stunned silence.
I totally agree that the whole climate change thing is a power play by those who want to play god. You know the news has been full of this or that will kill you, don’t go outside. It is pathetic. Every crackpot in the world is an alarmist and it makes people feel important. I am cool with that but eventually it will become an excuse to diminish the value of life. Sooner or later it is time for the big scythes to come out. Are you a reaper or a sower? Eventually it will come out that anybody who pushes these theories are just misanthropes and believe in genocide. I am not waiting around to be downsized. Maybe Al Gore would like to volunteer.
I had my own Tylenol moment in 1992. I had my gall bladder removed laparoscopically. In the late evening I had some mild discomfort and requested a Tylenol. My nurse said that the Doctor had prescribed a narcotic and she could not give me a Tylenol without his authorization.
The nurse called Dr. Arthur Lerner at 12 midnight who said OK. Having previously argued with the nurse I told her to stuff it when she came back. No cost resulted.
Dr. Lerner- White Plains, NY Hospital. Great man and surgeon.
If you want to see an inflated bill for a routine office visit, go to Stanford. It doesn’t matter if they’re a PPO on your plan. I’ve never before seen such bloated invoices! UCSF, on the other hand, has been consistently fair in their billing.
One of the reasons I bought our current house is it’s a few blocks from an excellent ER. We do CPR and other life-saving techniques on a regular basis at home and only whisk the kid to the ER when she needs morphine and a heart monitor. We’re the people who come racing in dragging an incoherent teenager and they open the door and she’s in a bed and on monitors within seconds. A good ER is a truly fine community of amazing people.
My daughter’s friends who are graduating from high school next month have radically changed their college plans. Most are looking for jobs and hoping to be able to afford some community college, with the possibility of attending “real” college later. Culinary school is very popular. Only a few had their scholarships actually materialize. The ones who had planned to become doctors are choosing other paths — who wants to work in socialized medicine?
I see that Spaceweather.com has resorted to displaying a magnetic image of the sun since there aren’t even sunspecks. We’re in for an interesting ride.
I can tell you one reason the prices for one Tylenol are so high.
My brothers is a pharmacist. Here is a typical situation he has encountered.
A pharmacy buys a drug for $11. A customer comes in with a prescription and they sell him the drug for $14. But the customer is on Medicaid or uses private insurance, and the pharmacy bills them. Medicaid or the insurance company refuses to pay $14 and only pays the pharmacy $10. So they are in the hole by $1.00, plus all the manhours it took to both to fill the prescription and try to get paid.
Do you think they turn out the lights to save electricity or have to skip lunch to be able to dispense medicine at a loss? No. When someone comes in and has that prescription and is paying for it himself they charge him maybe $17 for it rather than the normal price of $14.
And this same thing happens all through the industry in many ways. It is not just the freeloaders and the problem patients (example: In Austin Texas, they found that just 7 people accounted for thousands of ER visits) it is the fact that the Fed Govt and the insurance companies insist on essentially spreading the cost of the care over uninvolved people.
Kingston53 & Orphaned Son….
The Harlan Ellison story. It is a short story published in a couple of places but first in the compilation “The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World”. Great story. I have always owned dogs and they have connections with us that are divine. My dogs get me through the recent dark days. All that was brought on by Jonah Goldberg @ “Katz and Dogs -
The magic of doggy goodness.” by Jonah Goldberg http://tinyurl.com/oqg89t
58 Annoy Mouse,
Typically, I will say AGW is soooo bad the effects have spilled over to Mars, but I like your approach better.
Imagine how many more doctors would be available if we stopped regulating them at the state and national level?
Every state “licenses” their Doctors. Can you say with a straight face that a Doctor in CA is not qualified to practice in OR? But unless they are “licensed” they cannot practice medicine in the other state. Ditto at the national level.
Point is that we have a regulatory cost that is hard to justify.