Cost of a tetanus shot in the US
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Well they think Fox is a news channel...
Join the cool kids - Come fold with us[^]
LOL So true, Fox is such a load of biased crap. Murdoch is an evil little wretch, which is strange as his mother is a grand dame of the Australian arts and a very sensible woman. Either she flunked the motherhood bit or he's the black sheep, I suspect the latter.
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Nice way to change the argument; first they're buying, now they're renting. Besides, at those income levels they would qualify for several programs. But I don't see what health care they aren't getting? What is it? What broken legs aren't being fixed or strep throat not being diagnosed? They having trouble buying insulin? Beyond that, your friends sound like they need to go to college and/or work multiple jobs. Perhaps they could move to a more cost effective area. There are so many options out there. If my lazy ass 19-year-old son can get a job that pays $150 a week, anybody can. (Even working one full time job, you can make about $1150 a month on minimum wage. Two people sharing rent can pull in $2300. Work a second job and that goes up. Or forget the second job and go to, say, nursing or another trade school; they'll qualify for grants and loans.) Beyond that, there is plenty of room for saving. Even if it's a little, you can save if you have the discipline. Open an online account at ING and put just $10 a paycheck into it. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up. BTW, there census jobs still open. They pay up to $13 an hour in my area. There's also the Post Office or the military (if the people are still young.) Or you can be like my beyond lazy brother-in-law and never work at all and become a welfare leech (and now disability leech due to his wife's illnesses.)
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If socialism is so much better, why does the world come to the US for help in all aspects of life. Any time there is a natural disaster 80% of the aid comes from the US. Any time a dictator invades his neighbors, the US sends 90% of the military force to help push them back. (not just Iraq but look back over the last 100 years) And why if socialized medicine is so great do people from all over Europe and Canada, and the rest of the world come to the US for specialized care. Socializing any aspect of life takes away the drive for improvement. What reward can I possibly get from spending my life working towards making something better when the government thinks what we have is good enough. vis a vis the world coming to the US for better care. Beyond that, as crazy as our tax code is people in the US pay less tax than most first world countries and typically by 20%. No our system is not perfect but socializing is probably not the answer. Improving Medicare/Medicaid would go much further for a short term fix then would buy time to consider the costs of a further reaching program. The problem with what the Obama administration is doing is they are trying to eat the whole elephant in one bite. That also means they don't really know what they are getting into for the long run and if it fails we are all worse off than where we stand today.
Countries come to the US because its the 2nd richest economy in the world. This depends on how you measure these things, the CIA have the EU as richer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29[^] When China is the richest (one or two decades away but pretty much inevitable) then they will come begging at China's doorstep. They used to come begging at Englands doortep 100 years ago. Does the leading counrties wealth prove that they have the best system? No not really. Usually it indicates they have the largest industrial base and the strongest military. To tag socialism as bad because the US is rich is comparing apples with oranges.
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The upper class in England often use similar arguments. Why not try 30 days on minimum wage and you will see how hard and emotionally stressful things get. I think Morgan Spurlock did an episode on that. [^]
Morgan Spurlock is a fraud. When he was doing that, he and his girlfriend were trying to buy expensive items like booze, cigarettes, steak and so forth. Do the numbers; two people on minimum wage can gross over $2000 a month. That's not chump change. Is it fabulous? No, but it's a helluva lot more than my wife and I were making [adjusted] when our first was born a bit over twenty years ago. That said, that's not my argument. My argument is that if these people were as poor as this guy said, then full time on minimum wage would be a step up. I then pointed out that they should get an education so to get a better step up. I have zero sympathy for anyone over twenty-five complaining about about having to work for minimum wage.
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Here's another that shows a more stark difference... http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/spend.php Life expectancy vs Health care expenditure http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/health/spend/cost\_longlife75.gif
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Never mind the lady that was pregnant, couldn't afford pre-natal care, and the had to have a C-section for a 12 lb stillborn due to diabetes. Or the 25 yr old guy that committed suicide due to perceived issues over large medical bills from an accident (Personally I'd have taken the bankruptcy route first) To all those that object to socialised health care - I presume you are against taxes paying for roads too?
Oh bullshit. Every state has prenatal programs and several have excellent programs, so don't spew that crap. In addition, the federal government has Medicaid, CHIP and WIC and several other programs. States have several programs for the needy. And stop the taxes for roads argument. It's idiotic. Nobody is arguing that there shall be no government programs and if you even read any fucking word I said, you'd see that. Look at the above paragraph. What the hell do you think WIC is? And Medicaid and CHIP? Hmm? I'm against the federal government socializing a sector of our economy when the are provably incompetent at it. By treaty, the US is obligated to provide American Indians with health care. It's called the IHS and it's a nightmare. When the federal government provides services under IHS remotely comparable to even the VA system, then then can start talking about being competent enough to handle health care. We have a federalized system for a reason. If Massachusetts wants to have socialized medicine, let them. If Arizona wants to do it another way, let them, but don't force some federal system down everyone's throats, especially for those of us in responsible states where the poor ARE covered and there are ways to get the help you may need. Since you support socialized health care, I presume you want my taxes to pay your mortgage when you get into trouble or fix your car?
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A few weeks back I had a close personal encounter with centrifugal physics when I swung my tennis racquet rather unnecessarily hard and found it not only completely missing the ball but also hurtling straight for my face side-on. A resounding thwack later I found myself spitting pieces of one of my teeth out. As it turned out I had broken one of my front teeth clean in half. Friends insisted that I go to the ER and go I did. They took one look at it and said, well, you've got to go see a dentist. After 1.5 hours of thumb twiddling they gave me a tetanus shot and sent me on my way after depriving me of $100. I walked away thinking, "$100 for a tetanus shot?! Outrageous!". Fast forward a week or two when I find myself staring at a bill in the mail in disbelief. Cost of the treatment is given as $1,087.20 :omg:. I am thinking, this is surely a typo! I log on to the insurance website to see what was submitted for the claim and there I find another claim for $294 apart from the other thousand. The hospital submitted a claim for $1,381.20 and the insurance company actually paid $664.00. Add the $100 I paid and you arrive at a grand total of $764 for one measly injection! While my personal liability was only $100, I find the idea that the hospital thought that the service was worth $1,481.20 a bit mind-boggling. When I did a little googling about this, I found articles where the rationale appears to be that ERs run 24/7 all 365 days of the year and are required by law to treat all patients regardless of whether they have insurance or not and that a good chunk of the service they provide goes uncompensated and are therefore forced to distribute that cost among other patients who do happen to be insured. I am not sure that I find that completely convincing. Does anyone else think there's something broken with this system?
-- gleat http://blogorama.nerdworks.in[^] --
I want to throw some points to think about- I do not get the point of the price at all- We need to buy most medicine- its private - if you dont have money you are not going to get medicine- (Well this is not true - someone is going to come with support as much possible- because of social structure) But, what is the price of a tetanus injection? Its is less that 3 USD that includes service cost- Now, the service can not be so better anywhere in world that it should cost so much (considering most human can be caring to the same level and technology cost is close zero here) The medicine producer companies are still highly profitable here- so it seems production cost must be very low as well- and this injection is available as generic medicine - Thanks
Maruf Maniruzzaman @ Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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A few weeks back I had a close personal encounter with centrifugal physics when I swung my tennis racquet rather unnecessarily hard and found it not only completely missing the ball but also hurtling straight for my face side-on. A resounding thwack later I found myself spitting pieces of one of my teeth out. As it turned out I had broken one of my front teeth clean in half. Friends insisted that I go to the ER and go I did. They took one look at it and said, well, you've got to go see a dentist. After 1.5 hours of thumb twiddling they gave me a tetanus shot and sent me on my way after depriving me of $100. I walked away thinking, "$100 for a tetanus shot?! Outrageous!". Fast forward a week or two when I find myself staring at a bill in the mail in disbelief. Cost of the treatment is given as $1,087.20 :omg:. I am thinking, this is surely a typo! I log on to the insurance website to see what was submitted for the claim and there I find another claim for $294 apart from the other thousand. The hospital submitted a claim for $1,381.20 and the insurance company actually paid $664.00. Add the $100 I paid and you arrive at a grand total of $764 for one measly injection! While my personal liability was only $100, I find the idea that the hospital thought that the service was worth $1,481.20 a bit mind-boggling. When I did a little googling about this, I found articles where the rationale appears to be that ERs run 24/7 all 365 days of the year and are required by law to treat all patients regardless of whether they have insurance or not and that a good chunk of the service they provide goes uncompensated and are therefore forced to distribute that cost among other patients who do happen to be insured. I am not sure that I find that completely convincing. Does anyone else think there's something broken with this system?
-- gleat http://blogorama.nerdworks.in[^] --
It looks like everyone has had a go at this, but here's a bit more: A. For some strange reason many in the US think universal health care == rampant socialism. Although no other 1st world country seems to have this problem. B. For some strange reason many in the US think that for-profit Health Insurance is automatically better than not-for-profit. Considering that the insurers are largely uninvolved in medical research then they have little to do with bringing about any substantial improvement in health care. Also the dividends paid to shareholders of for-profit health insurers are a direct cut into the premiums paid by those insured with them. C. A report from around two decades ago established that US Health Insurers were the least effective in terms of how much of each dollar of a premium actually ended up in health care - that situation hasn't really changed. In other words for your medical dollar in the US you get substantially less than those in most other countries, even where it is coming indirectly out of their taxes (and they have higher taxes as a consequence). Reviewers of US Health Care as it stands now (not the bleeding heart "let's all be socialists" kind, but pragmatists) stated that the simplest solution for the US is two fold: 1. All health insurers must be not-for-profit (not the same thing as non-profit). Even in such a model there are plenty of incentives for organizations to be competitive - especially if they involve the staff / senior management getting bonuses. 2. Standard procedures get standardized charges (this includes all post-operative care etc), set by an industry body / government or some statutory body. If a hospital wants to get more money it can just look to how it can control costs within each standard procedure, but it has to do so without compromising basic patient care or otherwise they end up losing money. In some respects this can lead to a 'production line' approach to some procedures but quite frankly the end results for the patient are usually better.
I just love Koalas - they go great with Bacon.
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I come from Greece. I just verified that a tetanus shot costs 6€ to the hospital. The whole process of doing it, costs max 30' to the doctor, ie (with all charges, even if the hospital was actually not owning the room and had to pay for that during these 30', or even a whole hour (counting the hours the hospital is closed)) max 100€. Total 106€, ie about 140$. Ok, it is normal for the shot to cost more in the states (doctors are paid more etc etc). But from 140$ to 1350$, there is a difference... So no, in the end you don't pay more.
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Oh bullshit. Every state has prenatal programs and several have excellent programs, so don't spew that crap. In addition, the federal government has Medicaid, CHIP and WIC and several other programs. States have several programs for the needy. And stop the taxes for roads argument. It's idiotic. Nobody is arguing that there shall be no government programs and if you even read any fucking word I said, you'd see that. Look at the above paragraph. What the hell do you think WIC is? And Medicaid and CHIP? Hmm? I'm against the federal government socializing a sector of our economy when the are provably incompetent at it. By treaty, the US is obligated to provide American Indians with health care. It's called the IHS and it's a nightmare. When the federal government provides services under IHS remotely comparable to even the VA system, then then can start talking about being competent enough to handle health care. We have a federalized system for a reason. If Massachusetts wants to have socialized medicine, let them. If Arizona wants to do it another way, let them, but don't force some federal system down everyone's throats, especially for those of us in responsible states where the poor ARE covered and there are ways to get the help you may need. Since you support socialized health care, I presume you want my taxes to pay your mortgage when you get into trouble or fix your car?
'Since you support socialized health care, I presume you want my taxes to pay your mortgage when you get into trouble or fix your car?' No. I do support a non-profit health care system that covers everyone - even you. I also support the ability to buy insurance for services over and above what the gvt can provide. Just like insurance policy A != insurance policy B, socialized health care A != socialized health care B. In some countries there is a parallel socialised and private health system. There are plenty of people here in the US that work there arse off at one or three jobs, earn too much to get WIC etc, but do not get employer based healthcare. (On a side issue, We are already paying for others mortgages - with the housing bubble collapse its in the unemployment lines, write downs in our house values etc.)
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I want to throw some points to think about- I do not get the point of the price at all- We need to buy most medicine- its private - if you dont have money you are not going to get medicine- (Well this is not true - someone is going to come with support as much possible- because of social structure) But, what is the price of a tetanus injection? Its is less that 3 USD that includes service cost- Now, the service can not be so better anywhere in world that it should cost so much (considering most human can be caring to the same level and technology cost is close zero here) The medicine producer companies are still highly profitable here- so it seems production cost must be very low as well- and this injection is available as generic medicine - Thanks
Maruf Maniruzzaman @ Dhaka, Bangladesh.
I agree with you Maruf. In France a titanus ampoule costs 3.6 USD. Only production and retail costs. No hidden costs, research and capital costs were amortized long ago (some other vaccines cost more than 100 USD). The shot by a nurse is 4.1 USD. No hidden costs : it is in her consultation room, she foots any renting, heating ... bills of her office. On the contrary she returns a part of these 4.1 USD in her annual revenue taxes. I went once to a physician to have a titanus shot. I had to insist to pay him ; it was contrary to his etiquette to be paid for a shot; I explained him that one week before it took him 45 min to try to cure me for 29 USD (28 USD paid by my insurance anyway).
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A few weeks back I had a close personal encounter with centrifugal physics when I swung my tennis racquet rather unnecessarily hard and found it not only completely missing the ball but also hurtling straight for my face side-on. A resounding thwack later I found myself spitting pieces of one of my teeth out. As it turned out I had broken one of my front teeth clean in half. Friends insisted that I go to the ER and go I did. They took one look at it and said, well, you've got to go see a dentist. After 1.5 hours of thumb twiddling they gave me a tetanus shot and sent me on my way after depriving me of $100. I walked away thinking, "$100 for a tetanus shot?! Outrageous!". Fast forward a week or two when I find myself staring at a bill in the mail in disbelief. Cost of the treatment is given as $1,087.20 :omg:. I am thinking, this is surely a typo! I log on to the insurance website to see what was submitted for the claim and there I find another claim for $294 apart from the other thousand. The hospital submitted a claim for $1,381.20 and the insurance company actually paid $664.00. Add the $100 I paid and you arrive at a grand total of $764 for one measly injection! While my personal liability was only $100, I find the idea that the hospital thought that the service was worth $1,481.20 a bit mind-boggling. When I did a little googling about this, I found articles where the rationale appears to be that ERs run 24/7 all 365 days of the year and are required by law to treat all patients regardless of whether they have insurance or not and that a good chunk of the service they provide goes uncompensated and are therefore forced to distribute that cost among other patients who do happen to be insured. I am not sure that I find that completely convincing. Does anyone else think there's something broken with this system?
-- gleat http://blogorama.nerdworks.in[^] --
Even though I live in the US right now with an H1 visa, I'm from another country where health care is "free"(no, it's not Canada), yes, we pay taxes there to get it, but I don't have to worry about getting a bill for something that even if I have to pay for the shot will be less than 20 dollars. 1,000 USD for a shot? they're robbing you. I'm the only not US citizen working for the company, I hear arguments from both sides and who ever thinks that getting free health care is wrong, well, you're wrong, health care is a right not a privilege, and that's where the US is mistaken thinking that the insurance companies can control if you can receive treatment when you need it, otherwise, sell your house to get it, that's simply stupid, it's not socialism or communism to think it's your right to have it, if it's communism why you have free schools? that's communism!!! how can you be tolerating that too? pay for your education too, oh yeah, I know the answer, "we already do it paying taxes"... it's the same for health care, don't tell me that you don't pay 100 dollars or more every month for the insurance, why pay that money to a company that only cares about profit and not your health? a company that declines your application to get a treatment because it's too expensive? when you can keep paying those 100 dollars (or more) in taxes to get "free" health care? Here the complain about paying more taxes, well, you're now paying taxes so high for things like the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, you could stop both wars, save billions or trillions and get free health care, arguments like "I don't want the gov't telling me what to do" are wrong with nothing to back them up, sorry guys, the gov't is already telling you what to do. And for those so proud of having canadians coming to the US to get a surgery, let me tell you a story of at least 3 persons in the company I work for (and I know there are many many more like these), they went to my country to get treatment because the insurance company didn't want to pay for it and getting the treatment here was between 60 to 80 thousand dollars, they needed surgeries or therapies before the illness would become worse, they paid for the exact same treatment they had here less than 8 thousand in my country, they're fine now, they say they got one of the best treatments that not even before in the US they had, even one of them told me that he was paying for the treatment here in the US and had already paid around 20 thousand without getting any results, went to my country, got the treatme
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Hired Mind wrote:
Welcome to the backwards bizzaro world of the collectivist, where private monopolies are bad, but monopolies enforced at the point of a gun, are just great!
In Canada, there is no monopoly. Health services are provided by a conglomerate of sources, many are private companies/hospitals/doctors, and the govt. just pays for it all using tax dollars, while also regulating prices. The biggest fear of monopolies is price fixing, and since the govt. foots the bill here, that isn't a concern.
Hired Mind wrote:
Canadians who profess that they're getting "better" health care with a nationalized health system are not paying attention. Do you realize that MRI waiting times are shorter for DOGS in Canada than they are for humans? Why is that?
You imply there is a direct link between a nationalized health system and long wait times, but that is in accurate. Your point 1 about baby boomers is happening here too, except they all get the health services they need instead of just the ones with insurance. That is one of the reasons we have a shortage of health care professionals, and as such some wait lines like MRI are long. That's a cherry picked item though, and most services aren't like that. Fixing it is the focus, and that will happen soon. I personally know 4 people who left their jobs to become doctors or nurses because of the shortage. The money is there to be had, thus an influx of resources are on their way.
In Canada, the people put their money back into their fellow country-men. There is a caring attitude and no one questions that their tax monies are going to the wrong places. And, that's why Canada has free medical care for their citizens. But, also, Canadians pay a higher tax rate then in the US. For that matter, the people in the UK pay a much higher tax rate and have free medical care for their people. The US is a different matter. Here, we have an attitude that we don't want to pay for what we don't need and don't care about paying for others. Unfortunately, this grew out of the baby boomers (the Me generation). We have become greedy with our money, don't want our taxes spend on "unnecessary" expenditures. This is a sad situation. Those without funding want those with the money to pay for health care for everyone. Those with money don't want to part with their money to pay people who can't pay. (You can see the party lines forming). The Democrats want to raise taxes to pay for necessities for everyone and the Republicans say that if you want it, you will have the funding. The Democrats are the socialists and the Republicans are the conservatives. (If I did not know better, I would say that GOP stands for Greedy Old Party.) In the last 10 years, we have seen the parties become more polarized. Could it be the undoing of the US.
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A few weeks back I had a close personal encounter with centrifugal physics when I swung my tennis racquet rather unnecessarily hard and found it not only completely missing the ball but also hurtling straight for my face side-on. A resounding thwack later I found myself spitting pieces of one of my teeth out. As it turned out I had broken one of my front teeth clean in half. Friends insisted that I go to the ER and go I did. They took one look at it and said, well, you've got to go see a dentist. After 1.5 hours of thumb twiddling they gave me a tetanus shot and sent me on my way after depriving me of $100. I walked away thinking, "$100 for a tetanus shot?! Outrageous!". Fast forward a week or two when I find myself staring at a bill in the mail in disbelief. Cost of the treatment is given as $1,087.20 :omg:. I am thinking, this is surely a typo! I log on to the insurance website to see what was submitted for the claim and there I find another claim for $294 apart from the other thousand. The hospital submitted a claim for $1,381.20 and the insurance company actually paid $664.00. Add the $100 I paid and you arrive at a grand total of $764 for one measly injection! While my personal liability was only $100, I find the idea that the hospital thought that the service was worth $1,481.20 a bit mind-boggling. When I did a little googling about this, I found articles where the rationale appears to be that ERs run 24/7 all 365 days of the year and are required by law to treat all patients regardless of whether they have insurance or not and that a good chunk of the service they provide goes uncompensated and are therefore forced to distribute that cost among other patients who do happen to be insured. I am not sure that I find that completely convincing. Does anyone else think there's something broken with this system?
-- gleat http://blogorama.nerdworks.in[^] --
Next time, buy a travel to Brazil. Probably, by this cost you can travel here, take the tetanus shot for free and still have some fun at the beach :-D
