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The goal of this blog is to publish my thoughts on a variety of economic and political topics in the hopes that people who find them educational or beneficial will utilize them and/or forward to others who might find them interesting and/or worthwhile to promote to others, possibly including politicians who can push some of these ideas to fruition. The topics in my blog are meant to be of value on a long term basis, not a daily diary or political issue of the day log. If the information posted is useful to you, by all means utilize it and/or forward it as you see fit. If not useful, then merely ignore it. There are no universally agreed upon truisms and too little tolerance between some of those with opposing viewpoints to successfully convince the people with hardened opinions to move away from them. I am an analytical type person who will try to be as factual as I am able.

I disdain the current popularity of name calling and condemnation of viewpoints with no factual alternatives or logical solutions given that I see so often. If you don't have a solution based on fact and logic, then opt out of the discussion because you have nothing to contribute. My background is a degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and 39 years working in middle management jobs for a major retailer. My opinions are forged on the personal experence of life, family, friends, and work as well as triumphs and mistakes that I have made and hopefully learned from. My hope is that this blog helps you.

My first topic will be about personal finance. I chose that one first because most of us work long and hard just to survive but not all of us realize our dreams of becoming financially independent from the labors of our work. Much of our political votes/thinking also focus on the economy and in particular how well we are personally doing financially.

It is relatively simple, without sacrificing the enjoyment of living for 'today' and even at moderate incomes, to retire as a millionaire or multi-millionaire, if you focus on that goal consistently from a young age. It is also simple to ensure that your child or grandchild retires rich. It merely requires a one time gift of just $2,000 invested wisely and the passage of time. Please read my first post on this blog to learn more.


Getting it right on Politics, Economics, and Personal Finance

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Saturday, June 15, 2019

Major Reasons for High US Health Care Costs


The US, compared to the major, wealthy nations in Europe and Canada, have, by far, the highest obesity rates, the highest drug overdose deaths, and the highest rates of teenage births. All of these “self inflicted” factors explode heath care costs for all Americans and have absolutely nothing to do with what kind of health care plans each nations offers. See links:

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/the-world-is-fat/ - US is much higher than Europe and Canada which explains some of our higher health costs and worse health results

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190221083419.htm - American drug overdose death rates the highest among wealthy nations.

https://www.unicef.org/pon96/inbirth.htm – US has much higher rates of teenage births

Another reason for high health care costs is the fact that medical fraud on government health care programs range, depending on which newspaper article you read, between 10 to 25%. That equates to tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars wasted each year. Private insurance companies average less than 1% fraud. We can sve a ton of money by firing the federal workers who handle health care and hiring insurance companies as third party providers to design and administer our government health care programs. Health Care Fraud – Private versus public - https://www.quora.com/In-the-United-States-which-has-a-greater-percentage-of-fraud-committed-Medicare-Medicaid-or-private-insurance and also http://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/waste-fraud-abuse-government-health-care

The final component of high health costs is complex and has no simple solutions. About 25 to 30% of Medicare costs occur in people's last year of life. It is difficult to predict which terminal patients are receiving operations that only worsen their suffering and doesn't stop their soon to be deaths. Some of these patients may be better off with hospice care to relieve their end of life suffering and allow them to die peacefully at home instead of painfully in a hospital. Living medical wills, that cannot be over ridden by relatives, may be one humane way to reduce this problem. See link:


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