We
had a bit of a stir at the motel last evening. Liz, Arizona, and I
were just chewing the fat about life, the universe, and everything
with other neighbors when a rather large gal a few rooms up from us
had a major grand mal epileptic seizure. I had been trained on how to
tend such a seizure back in 1956 (neat story, happy endings, they’ll
keep), however under the present conditions I’d be completely
useless. Good thing Liz is a CNA and knew just what to do! Still, it
took her and a couple of large, good old boys to keep the poor gal
from tearing herself up on the asphalt while waiting for the EMTs.
During the six months I was ‘not in this world’ after my stroke,
I had broken off 8 of my teeth, shed all but one of my fillings
(broke that one), plus various other things that come with violent,
involuntary muscle actions.
This
‘inspired’ me to revisit my observations of the financial
costs of such these ‘daze.’ The last time I checked around
2001 or 2002, a local ambulance ride was $500. According to the GAO,
it has gone to $2,204
as of 2012. Back in 2001-2, helicopter evac started at $25,000. No, I
decided not to look for present prices. ...probably cheaper to buy
your own!
Why
have prices risen so horribly high?
Try
this on:
(snip)
American
consumers and the U.S. economy were hit with a nearly $1.9 trillion
tax in 2015 through federal regulations, according to a free market
thinktank’s new report.
Competitive
Enterprise Institute (CEI) describes the thousands of ways Americans
are unknowingly taxed by federal regulations in its annual report,
“Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal
Regulatory State.”
“The
federal government has become very savvy in hiding costs by expanding
their reach beyond taxes into regulations,” Clyde Wayne Crews Jr.,
the report’s author, said in a statement. “Unfortunately,
regulatory costs get little attention in policy debates, because
unlike taxes, they are difficult to quantify because they are
unbudgeted and often indirect.”
“But
the impacts of burdensome regulations are very real and increase
costs for consumers and businesses, limiting productivity and a
thriving free market,” he continued.
Federal
regulations hide a $15,000 tax per household each year, according to
the report. The costs associated with these rules often affect
businesses’ prices, workers’ wages, and growth.
(un-snip)
...or
this:
The
Cumulative Cost of Regulations
The
impact of regulation on economic growth has been widely studied, but
most research has focused on a narrow set of regulations, industries,
or both. These studies typically rely on regulatory indexes that
measure subsets of all regulation, on country-to-country comparisons,
on short time spans, or on surveys in which experts report how
regulated they believe their country or industry is. In order to
better understand the cumulative cost of regulation, a comprehensive
look at all regulations across many industries over a long period of
time is imperative.
A
new study for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University uses an
economic model that examines regulation’s effect on firms’
investment choices. Using a 22-industry dataset that covers 1977
through 2012, the study finds that regulation—by distorting the
investment choices that lead to innovation—has created a
considerable drag on the economy, amounting to an average reduction
in the annual growth rate of the US gross domestic product (GDP) of
0.8 percent.
THE
PROBLEMS WITH REGULATORY ACCUMULATION
Federal
regulations have accumulated over many decades, piling up over time.
When regulators add more rules to the pile, analysts often consider
the likely benefits and compliance costs of the additional rules.
But
regulations have a greater effect on the economy than analysis of a
single rule in isolation can convey. The buildup of regulations over
time leads to duplicative, obsolete, conflicting, and even
contradictory rules, and the multiplicity of regulatory constraints
complicates and distorts the decision-making processes of firms
operating in the economy. Firms respond to both individual
regulations and regulatory accumulation by altering their plans for
research and development, for expansion, and for updating equipment
and processes. Because of the important role innovation and
productivity growth play in an economy, these distortions have
consequences for the growth of the economy in the long run.
(un-snip)
Of
course in our lawyer-happy, increasingly hindu ‘medical-care’
country, we’ve got this:
(snip)
Nightmare
stories of nurses giving potent drugs meant for one patient to
another and surgeons removing the wrong body parts have dominated
recent headlines about medical care. Lest you assume those cases are
the exceptions, a new study by patient safety researchers provides
some context.
Their
analysis, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, shows that "medical
errors" in hospitals and other health care facilities are
incredibly common and may now be the third leading cause of death in
the United States -- claiming 251,000 lives every year, more than
respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer's.
Martin
Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School
of Medicine who led the research, said in an interview that the
category includes everything from bad doctors to more systemic issues
such as communication (must speak hindi)
breakdowns when patients are handed off from one department to
another.
"It
boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather
than the disease for which they are seeing care," Makary said.
The
issue of patient safety has been a hot topic in recent years, but it
wasn't always that way. In 1999, an Institute
of Medicine report calling preventable medical errors an
"epidemic" shocked the medical establishment and led to
significant debate about what could be done.
The
IOM, based on one study, estimated deaths because of medical errors
as high as 98,000 a year. Makary's research involves a more
comprehensive analysis of four large studies, including ones by the
Health and Human Services Department's Office of the Inspector
General and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that took
place between 2000 to 2008. His calculation of 251,000 deaths equates
to nearly 700 deaths a day -- about 9.5 percent of all deaths
annually in the United States.
Makary
said he and co-author Michael Daniel, also from Johns Hopkins,
conducted the analysis to shed more light on a problem that many
hospitals and health care facilities try to avoid talking about.
Though
all providers extol patient safety and highlight the various safety
committees and protocols they have in place, few provide the public
with specifics on actual cases of harm due to mistakes. Moreover, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't require reporting
of errors in the data it collects about deaths through billing codes,
making it hard to see what's going on at the national level.
The
CDC should update its vital statistics reporting requirements so that
physicians must report whether there was any error that led to a
preventable death, Makary said.
"We
all know how common it is," he said. "We also know how
infrequently it’s openly discussed."
Kenneth
Sands, who directs health care quality at Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, said that the
surprising thing about medical errors is the limited change that has
taken place since the IOM report came out. Only hospital-acquired
infections have shown improvement. "The overall numbers haven't
changed, and that's discouraging and alarming," he said.
Sands,
who was not involved in the BMJ study, said that one of the main
barriers is the tremendous ‘diversity’
and ‘complexity’ in the way
health care is delivered.
(un-snip)
There’s
a lot more. A hell of a lot more unfortunately. Where’s good old
Dr. Phillips now?
I’ve
got some more linkage in need of formatting, however my left index
finger is getting tired so they will have to be added later!
