Repeat asking publicly comparison questions between our health care system and the ones they have e.g. in Europe:
- Why does their total health care system that include both public care, and private health care insurance cost 1/3 less than ours?
- Why do the medicines there cost considerably less than here in the USA, sometimes only 1/5 from what we pay here - the same manufacturer the same Medicine, makes no difference if the manufacturer is located there or here?
- Why does the same hospital care given there using the same equipment and equally qualified doctors cost here 3 to 10 times more than here?
- Why do we die younger here than those that have a public health care as part of their health care system?
Yes, we buy car insurance, life insurance, house insurance, travel insurance, etc, etc. However, by nature these insurances are most of the time essential to protect our families from individual disasters. However, regarding the coverage we are talking of a huge variety of insurance policies as our needs are totally different depending on our wealth and the values of the properties that are insured!
Then there is another group of services that we must have but nobody in their right mind has so far suggested that we should buy individual insurances and consequently we do not carry a private military protection insurance, border protection insurance, police protection insurance, bridge crossing insurance, and perhaps we should not need a public health insurance either! This is a category where we all have the same common need - to stay alive and be protected by the country where we live!
To some extent a life insurance and health insurance have similar features but have you ever wondered why a million dollar life insurance costs peanuts compared to a simple all covering health insurance. This makes no sense at all. Let's expand our knowledge a little.
Take the southern coast of Spain. This is an area where most North European, British, German and Russian affluent people end up retiring. It is warm, nice lively and can offer most everything that money can buy in a nutshell. Unfortunately you must understand a little Spanish to make life more comfortable but in all tourist areas english works well.
A private everything covering health insurance in Spain costs US$ 700 per an aging couple per quarter. It covers everything you can imagine, does not kick you out, and there are no co payments. The only thing this couple must pay are their own medicines. And those will cost for a typical aging healthy couple with nothing but normal aging problems about US$ 1,000 a year, less than 1/3 what the same medicines made by the same drug companies will cost in the USA. Whenever hospital care is needed that is provided in private rooms in hospitals that have all the modern tools and are either directly owned by the insurers or the services are leased from others.
The pharmacies are found everywhere. They all are also private and totally independent enterprises cut off from the doctors and hospitals. The abundance of them and the cut off medical establishment and government subsidies make corruption and bribery impossible.
To summarize this aging couple pays totally US$ 4,000 a year (US$ 2,000 per person) for all their health care needs, period. Not a penny more. There is also a public system available for them if they want to use it - it's free if they carry any European passport. Sometimes there would be a line for a few hours and in any case as they carry the private insurance there is no point in wasting these few hours. If asked even the public health care doctor will visit them.
The private insurance can be used also anywhere on the planet for continuous three 3 month, including the USA where these Spanish private insurance companies have even agreements in place with some of the best hospitals in the largest cities.
If we take this by far superior health insurance than any of the US private insurance companies will offer normally and play the math the total cost of our health care without medicines should be no more than US$ 640 billion or less than 5% of our GDP. The Spanish government subsidizes medicines, so make the real cost of the medicines to be US$ 3,000 instead of US$ 1,000. As a summary the total medical care would now be about 8% of the US GDP, and to be generous we can add 2% and we are done. The health care cost in the USA should not be more than 10% of the GDP.
The Spanish private health care is of such high quality that I would take it immediately over any of the current private US insurance schemes. It is plain logical sensible health care where all bells and whistles have been eliminated. It looks like our private health care system has made these bells and whistles to a major part of it all, a smoke screen. Uneducated people are just so dumb that they do not realize that what they think is medial care is just a spectacle made with smoke and mirrors. The actual care is just a tiny fraction of it all.
The political game is approaching crescendo as even the same scaring tactics are used that got us to Iraq. This has nothing to do with anything real. It is the 5% of the GDP that is talking as the health care lobby is the richest lobby comparable with to power of AIPAC in this country, the health care industry is not planning to surrender any of that easy 5% of GDP or US$ 700 billion to the mostly ignorant and uneducated people who do not even understand how much money this US$ 700 billion a year really is.
The only way to do health care right within the next decade or two is to bite the bullet and forget our old habits that proudly state: At the end we Americans swill get it always right, but not before we have exhausted every conceivable other option. We are now doing exactly this.
The rest of the world knows how a good health care system works and all of them have come to the same conclusion while we are still searching for the obvious.
For our industry to compete in the same world we have to do it all the same way especially as it has been already proven that their citizens even live longer than ours. No nation can afford to waste 10% of their GDP to nonsense and expect to remain competitive.
As long as we keep burning money in our health care system we are sliding down and soon enough we are a third rate nation with currency dropping towards zero.
Galactic Digest
Re: My fellow shareholders it was your money, US$ 70 million of it, that disappeared in thin air in a flash - open letter to Razer Technology shareholders (ticker RZ)
We here are generally disappointed of the new share issuance on June 3rd, at discount price, to undisclosed purchasers. Of course it is customary here in the USA, enforced by the semi criminal leaches we can call some of the investment bankers.
This type of practice can discriminate heavily against existing shareholders and will cost the issuing company heavily in all kind of service fees and also in an excessive share price discount that the investment bankers require to "secure" the sale of the new shares. This is utter BS, as these bankers would not touch a company with a 10 foot pole if they would not already know that the shares can be sold instantly at the price level discussed with the company. Unfortunately the shareholder opinion of the share price that they are willing to support and is publicly visible is ignored. Of course the investment banker comes with an explanation why the price has to be this or that but when one has seen enough of those analysis and the "know-how" related to a typical subject one does not really know if one should cry or laugh.
The companies never realize that the existing shareholders are by far the best support they have. As long as the shareholders believe on the Company they will gladly finance all the planned expansions that are considered. This like the health care, both actually work the right way in Europe.
The Corporations in Europe have seen time and again their new shares issues to become over subscribed, often even many times over. And if the company tells ahead of the time it can sell even more shares at the issuance price if there is more demand. This would then be beyond the existing "rights" base. As an added feature the, so called "rights" are always traded separately on the stock market before the shares are issued so that those who can not or no more want to participate can sell them to those who want. In reality this feature allows that all existing shareholders can benefit from the company expansion even if they have no money or desire to participate at the moment.
Here in the USA this over allotment is given as a bonus to the investment bankers who seem always to find money to exercise this allotment - hardly expecting to lose money in their own game...
We do not believe a second that nothing will ever leak out from the financial institutions from any new share issue they are handling to a selected small group around them. It happened likely again in case of Razer just by judging from the unusually large 30% price drop following the announcement of the new share issuance. The undisclosed parties paid some US$ 25 million against expansion of the company while the shareholders lost over US$ 70 million dollars at the same time ( two days). Nothing more needed to say that in this and similar cases we have some "undisclosed" problems!
In Europe the share values hardly ever go down in context of a new share issue. The price rather stays the same or more often it goes clearly up as the existing companies are only rarely valued to their real market value. Have you ever noticed that in case of acquisitions the share prices will never go down indicating that the shareholders did not know the value of the real value of the company. The purchaser will never do it to just break even!
With any profitable expansion plan the value of the company is bound to go up, not down - short of war (why else should the companies come to shareholders? There has to something special at hand as otherwise they can always finance smaller things from their cash flow).
When do the USA companies realize that the small shareholders are their real power. To get this idea think a little the last Presidential elections and who financed Mr. Obama to became the President of the USA? Was it a handful of big corporations and investment banks? ..
All Corporations in Europe including the financial institution understand the power of this shareholder "rights issues" - it is the most fair, equitable and least expensive way to finance anything. To be sure, just do the math and you will see that in case of Razer the company lost US$ 70 in shareholder Value! The Razer's board should be ashamed and consider resignation instead of champaign reception for a job well done.
Galactic Digest