A question out curiosity if I may - in the USA is health an overall Federal Govt responsibility or is an individual State-by-State responsibility?
atb
David,
You are probably pulling a Kavanaugh here, but seriously, are you the first generation in your family who believes that someone other than yourself is responsible for your health?
Maybe you're asking who is responsible for paying for services. In NY, reportedly, more than a third of the population is on Medicaid (mostly federal funds administered by the state). Medicare is probably another 18%, so over half is coming from the federal government.
Then lump in employer sponsored and subsidized health care plans, more than 2 million federal employees, 1.4 million in the active military, around 9 million receiving VA benefits, and some 20+ million state and local workers. Add to this state and county governments with hospitals and clinics who mainly care for the indigent, there is a very small % of the population who self-pay.
And therein lies a considerable problem driving high healthcare costs. When cost/price is divorced from a product or service, the whole supply/demand equilibrium is destroyed (largely inelastic demand). I've supervised employees whose absenteeism could be predicted by the number of hours accumulated for paid sick leave. Attempts to control this by requiring a doctor's excuse proved ineffective as the relatively low-cost of the co-pay ($5-$10) was more than offset by the perceived benefit of playing hooky for a couple of days.
I've known many old people in assisted care who welcomed being taken to the hospital by ambulance, some a handful of times in a calendar year. Depending on the health care plan (many Medicare recipients have secondary insurance, some which cover nearly all expenses), the assisted-care facility benefits in terms of reduced liability and lower variable expense, the hospitals fill beds with better rates than Medicaid pays, the ambulance service (in our town most always the Fire Dept. which in addition to the ambulance, typically sent a fire truck and, on a slow day, one or more captain's vehicles) and bills the insurance. The patients in return get the close, undivided attention they desperately need.
Mark P and John K,
I have heard that the disinfectant works best when snorted as opposed to injected or consumed orally.
And word also has it that the Russians just sent Trump a large box via USPS containing the first installment of the 33,000 Hillary emails she "lost" or deleted, per his request in a nationally-televised news conference.
