Excelllent Editorial from Des Moines Register: "Why Tie Insurance to Jobs"?

DesMoinesRegister.com
August 27, 2013
The Register's Editorial: Why tie insurance to jobs?

In many households, one spouse buys health insurance through a job for the entire family. Now United Parcel Service Inc. has announced it intends to cut this coverage for working spouses of nonunion employees next year.

A UPS spokesman said the change is necessary to keep costs down.

Denying insurance to workers’ spouses will certainly create a financial burden for families, particularly if companies don’t reduce the premiums for workers when they implement such a change. Now the family needs to purchase two policies to cover both adults in the home. Also, the health insurance offered by the spouse’s employer may not cover needed services or may impose higher co-payments and deductibles.

Unfortunately, this is how things work in a country that has tied health insurance to employment. We have long recognized that is a bad idea. Your employer doesn’t select and subsidize your homeowner’s insurance or your car insurance.

The practice burdens U.S. businesses and puts them at a disadvantage in a global economy. In other countries, the government facilitates coverage for everyone.

Employer-based health insurance creates problems for workers. They are at the mercy of their company when it comes to which plans are available.

In some ways, the health reform law addresses some of these problems.

Yet the Affordable Care Act is built on a broken system. As the Register’s editorial board wrote for years prior to the passage of the health law in 2010, this country needs a single-payer health care system with coverage facilitated by the government. Similar to Medicare, everyone could contribute through taxation and everyone would be covered. Instead of such a change, Congress cemented in place the practice of tying health insurance to jobs by requiring many companies to offer it.

The long term result will likely be more companies doing exactly what UPS is doing.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013308270030


Comment by Don McCanne, M.D. of PNHP: We already knew that The Des Moines Register held an editorial position in favor of single payer reform, but this reiteration of their position is highly significant.

Much of the activity in support of single payer has faded as attention has turned to implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The prevailing attitude is that, well, we tried and this is the best that we could get. We can work on trying to patch this system, but forget trying to negotiate the major barriers erected by obdurate politicians. Even if current laws and regulations have locked up much of the nation's health care funds, we'll just try to muddle our way through with incremental steps using some future form of magical waivers which we will need since the currently available waivers, including those in the Affordable Care Act, cannot change the basics of the fundamentally flawed, fragmented infrastructure of multiple public programs and private plans, or no plans at all for far too many of us.

What is so important about today's message is that the Register's editorial board sees through this nonsense. "The Affordable Care Act is built on a broken system." Congress has "cemented" into place this highly dysfunctional infrastructure. Incremental steps cannot work when we are heading down the wrong pathway.

As the Register states, "This country needs a single-payer health care system with coverage facilitated by the government - similar to Medicare, everyone could contribute through taxation and everyone would be covered."

The Des Moines Register is back on message. We have to get back on message as well.

http://www.moneynews.com/PatrickWatson/Medicare-healthcare-debt-Social-Security/2013/06/05/id/508119

The estimate makes many assumptions about population, birth rates, life expectancy and so forth. You can quibble, but the number is enormous any way you look at it. What kind of spending creates so much future debt? Here's how it breaks down.

Social Security $16.4 trillion

Medicare $86.2 trillion

Prescription Drugs $21.6 trillion

Add together the original Medicare program and the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, and you'll see that about $108 trillion of the $124 trillion in unfunded liabilities is driven by healthcare for senior citizens and disabled people.

This is the source of the debt crisis: 87 percent Medicare, 13 percent everything else. Is Social Security also a problem? Yes. Do bureaucrats have too many parties? You bet. Do we spend too much on foreign aid, farm subsidies and food stamps? Probably so, but those are rounding errors compared with the Medicare spending. And this doesn't include Medicaid for the poor, or the forthcoming Obamacare program.

The federal debt will remain incomprehensibly huge until healthcare costs generally, and Medicare spending in particular, are sharply reduced. This is a mathematical fact. You can take every other spending category down to zero and we would still have a huge problem.

Waiting will not make the medicine taste any better. And what are our leaders doing? They're kicking the can down the road one more time. It's worked so far

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/is-our-debt-burden-really-100-trillion/265644/

Technically, it's not legal for Social Security to have "unfunded liabilities" since it can only pay as many benefits as it receives in earmarked taxes. Both it and Medicare hospital insurance are prohibited from spending money they haven't collected from specific revenue dedicated to their programs (i.e.: payroll taxes). It is impossible for either to technically be "unfunded", since they cannot legally outspend their funding.

...

Seventy-five-year projections always sound gargantuan because, well, they're calculated over three-quarters of a century, which is an awfully long time to count anything. But here's the flip side: In 75 years, our economy will be massive. Growing slowly at a 2% annual average, our GDP would be $66 trillion in today's dollars in 2087. That's an incomprehensibly big number, too. Once you run out any number over 75 years, the mind starts to boggle. That's good for scaring people with mind-boggling numbers, but it's not so good for informing. When Republicans say unfunded liabilities come out to $520,000 per U.S. household, they're taking a figure from 2087 and dividing it over a 2012 population to exaggerate. Scary, to be sure, but not very informative.

http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/health-care/

The current system is most definitely broken, and it must eventually be abolished if we want to regain both our health and our freedom.

But Obamacare is the worst possible answer. All it does is perpetuate a flawed system by forcing everyone to become a client of insurance companies, even those who don’t want to or need to participate.

Why should anyone be forced to subsidize the medical care of others? Very few individuals would personally assault their neighbors at gunpoint and steal thousands of dollars to pay for their own medical needs. How could any freedom loving person agree to delegate such criminal acts to the government by supporting a compulsory health insurance system?

There is only one solution that will lead to true health and true freedom: making health care more affordable. Ron Paul believes that only true free market competition will put pressure on the providers and force them to lower their costs to remain in business. Additionally, Ron Paul wants to change the tax code to allow individual Americans to fully deduct all health care costs from their taxes.

TEOTWAWKI wrote:

For those who don't want to watch the video, it basically says "It'll just work itself out."

Mr. Paul is funny that way.

boards of FL wrote:

TEOTWAWKI wrote:

For those who don't want to watch the video, it basically says "It'll just work itself out."

Yes you all are a bunch of compassionate blah blah blah for the children bullshitters but in the end all you got is government force making people support a bloated overpriced healthcare system that in all reality would work itself out IF the government got out of it. Free enterprise works unless you are a brainwashed commie afraid to compete and need a big bully to subsidize your lazy ass mafia style....

Funny when there is a hurricane you guys are the first to jump all over price gougers but if free enterprise was allowed to work and prices were allowed to rise to meet demand then generators Ice machines water food and medical supplies would pour into the devastated areas. Trucks would brave the dangers investors would put the money on the line IF they were guaranteed a return on investment but idiots like the progressives say oh that's wrong people should profit off others suffering...hey seaoat anyone making a profit off your personal hurricane ?

TEOTWAWKI wrote: Ron Paul believes that only true free market competition will put pressure on the providers and force them to lower their costs to remain in business.  

Before I address that quote,  the problem is the cost.

I can speak with first hand expertise about the cost because I'm one of those people who,  as we speak,  is struggling to find a way to afford the cost of health care I need for two cancers when I have virtually no insurance coverage to help pay for it (even though I'm paying $4500 annually for "insurance").  But what I've learned applies regardless if a consumer has insurance or has no insurance.
The problem is simple,  and it's not being addressed by any democrat or republican or tea party or libertarian policy.
The problem is this.  As very expensive medical diagnostics and treatment procedures are becoming even more and more expensive,  at the same time the wages and assets and wealth of Americans is diminishing.
In other words,  the cost of health care is increasing,  at the same time  the money to pay for it is decreasing.  

Now to address Ron Paul's claim in that quote.  That "free market competition will put pressure on the providers and force them to lower their costs to remain in business".

Bull fucking shit.  The providers,  Baptist Hospital,  Sacred Heart Hospital and West Florida Hospital, are ALREADY part of a "free market" and they are already competing hard with each other to get patients in that free market.  BUT THAT IS DOING NOTHING TO BRING DOWN THE ESCALATING COSTS.
So much for Ron Paul's pipedream.

There is no such thing as a "solution" to this crisis.  There is,  however, a consequence of it.  As the costs keep escalating over time,  and they will keep escalating regardless of the political rhetoric,  more and more of us will be losing access to affordable health care.  Period.  End of story.  Learn to live with it.

Bob wrote:

TEOTWAWKI wrote: Ron Paul believes that only true free market competition will put pressure on the providers and force them to lower their costs to remain in business.  

Before I address that quote,  the problem is the cost.

I can speak with first hand expertise about the cost because I'm one of those people who,  as we speak,  is struggling to find a way to afford the cost of health care I need for two cancers when I have virtually no insurance coverage to help pay for it (even though I'm paying $4500 annually for "insurance").  But what I've learned applies regardless if a consumer has insurance or has no insurance.
The problem is simple,  and it's not being addressed by any democrat or republican or tea party or libertarian policy.
The problem is this.  As very expensive medical diagnostics and treatment procedures are becoming even more and more expensive,  at the same time the wages and assets and wealth of Americans is diminishing.
In other words,  the cost of health care is increasing,  at the same time  the money to pay for it is decreasing.  

Now to address Ron Paul's claim in that quote.  That "free market competition will put pressure on the providers and force them to lower their costs to remain in business.

Bull fucking shit.  The providers,  Baptist Hospital,  Sacred Heart Hospital and West Florida Hospital, are part of a "free market" and they are
already competing hard with each other to get patients in that free market.  BUT THAT IS DOING NOTHING TO BRING DOWN THE COSTS.
So much for Ron Paul's pipedream.

There is no such thing as a "solution" to this crisis.  There is,  however, a consequence of it.  As the costs keep escalating over time,  and they will keep escalating regardless of the political rhetoric,  more and more of us will be losing access to affordable health care.  Period.  End of story.  Learn to live with it.

Bullshit back at ya...there is no free market, Government sets prices and insurance companies pay them to do it. The Hospitals get paid not by the consumer but by the insurance company. There are so many unnecessary procedures people have just because they don't have to pay for them that they tie up resources increasing demand and with that cost. I know dozens of people that run to the hospital with nothing and wind up on a cat scanner or in an MRI ..they don't pay why should they care....no, free enterprise would work but it isn't allowed..too much profit in insurance hospital and government collusion...Medical industrial complex.

Of course there's the lawyers circling the hospital looking to take a malpractice bite out of an over worked doctor that makes a dumb mistake...

Don't forget the PUSHERMAN with his pills wanting his cut for some symptom masking medicine....

PkrBum wrote:

Medicare $86.2 trillion

Prescription Drugs $21.6 trillion

Add together the original Medicare program and the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, and you'll see that about $108 trillion of the $124 trillion in unfunded liabilities is driven by healthcare for senior citizens and disabled people.

This is the source of the debt crisis: 87 percent Medicare, 13 percent everything else.
And this doesn't include Medicaid for the poor, or the forthcoming Obamacare program.

The federal debt will remain incomprehensibly huge until healthcare costs generally, and Medicare spending in particular, are sharply reduced. This is a mathematical fact. You can take every other spending category down to zero and we would still have a huge problem.

Waiting will not make the medicine taste any better. And what are our leaders doing? They're kicking the can down the road one more time. It's worked so far

It's that simple.
There is no way to cope with these costs.  The federal government cannot print enough worthless money to make that "mathematical fact" disappear.

And about the part I've put in red.  The only way that will ever happen is when the uber expensive diagnostics and treatments are no longer made available to a great many of us.  And it will result in many of us being sicker and dying younger.  
Until we stop listening to the politicians and media pundits and stop being in denial of a basic fact of life,  that our country and our populace as a whole are in a state of decline,  then we will keep being brainwashed by the same politicians and media pundits who themselves are not in personal decline.
And frankly,  I have no interest in listening to what those people are telling me about health care when those same people will always have health care even as the nation is in decline. They have no dog in this fight.

TEOTWAWKI wrote:
Bullshit back at ya...there is no free market, Government sets prices and insurance companies pay them to do it. The Hospitals get paid not by the consumer but by the insurance company.

Double, triple and quadruple bullshit back at you.
I'm a consumer and I goddamn sure am paying the goddamn fucking hospital. And the goddamn fucking hospitals are in competition for my money. AND THEY ALL HAVE THE SAME PRICES.

This "free market" is the solution to everything nonsense is really getting old to me. I'm sick and fucking tired of that lie being told over and over by the goddamn libertarians.

Bob wrote:

TEOTWAWKI wrote:
Bullshit back at ya...there is no free market, Government sets prices and insurance companies pay them to do it. The Hospitals get paid not by the consumer but by the insurance company.

Double,  triple and quadruple bullshit back at you.
I'm a consumer and I goddamn sure am paying the goddamn fucking hospital.  And the goddamn fucking hospitals are in competition for my money.  AND THEY ALL HAVE THE SAME PRICES.

This "free market" is the solution to everything nonsense is really getting old to me.  I'm sick and fucking tired of that lie being told over and over by the goddamn libertarians.  

BS to infinity back at ya..You are damned well ready to carry your ass to another country where they don't fix the price and you can score a deal..FREE-MARKET world style HUH BOB-O.

Ron Paul, like Obama and Romney and Bush and Clinton and Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow WILL ALWAYS HAVE EVERY EXAMPLE OF HEALTH CARE AVAILABLE TO THEM.

None of those assholes will ever know what it's like to not be in that position like so many of us out here. They can all suck my goddamn ass and keep their big fucking traps shut.

Bob wrote:Ron Paul,  like Obama and Romney and Bush and Clinton and Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow WILL ALWAYS HAVE EVERY EXAMPLE OF HEALTH CARE AVAILABLE TO THEM.

None of those assholes will ever know what it's like to not be in that position like so many of us out here.  They can all suck my goddamn ass and keep their big fucking traps shut.

unfortunately Bob they are the only ones that can fix this problem in any meaningful way. They can educate and research and legislate..we can only whine.

TEOTWAWKI wrote:
You are damned well ready to carry your ass to another country where they don't fix the price and you can score a deal..FREE-MARKET world style HUH BOB-O.

If I have to go to Singapore or Thailand or Costa Rica or wherever to avoid dying from illness because I don't have the funds to get the needed health care in this country then I will goddamn sure consider doing that.
But I'm one of the fortunate ones. So far I have enough savings and assets to hopefully avoid a medical bankruptcy. Not everyone does.

Bob wrote:

TEOTWAWKI wrote:
You are damned well ready to carry your ass to another country where they don't fix the price and you can score a deal..FREE-MARKET world style HUH BOB-O.

If I have to go to Singapore or Thailand or Costa Rica or wherever to avoid dying from illness because I don't have the funds to get the needed health care in this country then I will goddamn sure consider doing that.
But I'm one of the fortunate ones.  So far I have enough savings and assets to hopefully avoid a medical bankruptcy.  Not everyone does.

But you are availing yourself on the free world market...yup, worry about yourself Bob , that's how the free market woks best..if you wish to put money in someone else's healthcare pot that is your decision ..Not the governments.

There's no fucking free market in healthcare and there hasn't been for a very long fucking time... I'm sick of people saying that. I've listed the countless "laws, regulations, codes, edicts... etc. If there were a free market healthcare system the providers wouldn't price themselves out of business... cmon. Look how expensive computers were... think about it for a minute. Healthcare is a service... it's as simple as that... it ain't a miracle or magic... they need customers.

TEOTWAWKI wrote:
unfortunately Bob they are the only ones that can fix this problem in any meaningful way. They can educate and research and legislate..we can only whine.

Yea and the same cocksuckers who have never been to war are "educating and researching and legislating" to all those who do go to war. You should know that.
If I've learned anything from living 64 years in this society, it's that positions of power and influence and celebrity don't mean shit.

PkrBum wrote:There's no fucking free market in healthcare and there hasn't been for a very long fucking time... I'm sick of people saying that. I've listed the countless "laws, regulations, codes, edicts... etc. If there were a free market healthcare system the providers wouldn't price themselves out of business... cmon. Look how expensive computers were... think about it for a minute. Healthcare is a service... it's as simple as that... it ain't a miracle or magic... they need customers.

That's all just ideology talking. I live in the real world. And in the real world my Pet Scans will cost in the neighborhood of $7000. There are already numerous providers all competing to give me Pet Scans. But the imaging device which does a Pet Scan costs a fucking fortune regardless. Unlike personal computers, they now cost even more today than when they were first invented.
Comparing that to the price of personal computers is apples and oranges. Not everything is determined by "economy of scale". It's a myth.

And this isn't even complete... it doesn't include the insurance corps morphing from the first union risk pools.

This is a story of fascism... of collusion... of exclusion... it was designed purposefully... the system was gamed.

Pivotal moments in American health care history:

--1798: The Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen in 1798 marks the beginning of federal involvement in health care.

--1854: President Franklin Pierce vetoes a national mental health bill on the basis that it would be unconstitutional to regard health as anything but a private matter in which government should not become involved.

--1912: Former President Theodore Roosevelt campaigns as the Progressive Party candidate on a platform calling for a single national health service.

--1920: The Snyder Act of 1920 is the first federal legislation to deal with health care for Native Americans, setting up the beginnings of what became the Indian Health Service.

--1921: The Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921 (Sheppard-Towner Act) provides grants to states to plan maternal and child health services. The legislation serves as a prototype for federal grants-in-aid to the states in the area of health.

--1924: The Veterans Act of 1924 codifies and extends federal responsibilities for health care services to veterans, who receive aid if they are injured in the line of service.

--1932: The Committee on the Costs of Medical Care report is published and raises concerns about the costs of health care and the number of people lacking medical services.

--1935: The Social Security Act, providing pensions and other benefits to the elderly, is signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. National health insurance is left out of the final Social Security bill because of the opposition of organized medicine and its allies.

--1937: The Technical Committee on Medical Care, a group of federal agency representatives, is convened to advance health care reform.

--1938: A national health Conference proposes federal aid to the states to expand public health, maternal and children's services and hospital facilities.

--1939: The Wagner National Health Act of 1939, FDR's second push for national health insurance, fails as Southern Democrats align with Republicans to oppose government expansion.

--1943: The National War Labor Board declares employer contributions for health insurance to be tax free, which encourages companies to offer health-insurance packages to attract workers.

--1943: The Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill is introduced, calling for broad additions to the Social Security Act, including health insurance measures. The bill never came to a vote in Congress. A revised version was introduced in May 1945 but was never acted upon.

--1945: President Harry Truman recommends a national health insurance program during a special address to Congress. The McCarran-Fergurson Act of 1945 exempts the insurance industry from federal antitrust legislation

--1946: The National Health Policy Hospital Survey and Construction Act of 1946 provides grants to states to inventory and survey existing hospital and public health care facilities in each state and to plan for new ones.

--1948: Truman's National Health Insurance Initiative fails after the American Medical Association criticizes it, and some Republicans compare it to communism.

--1951: Truman creates, by executive order, the President's Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation. The commission was to determine the nation's health requirements, both immediate and long-term, and to recommend courses of action to meet those needs.

--1952: Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower campaigns against national health insurance.

--1954: President Dwight Eisenhower, with the objective of enabling private insurance companies to broaden their coverage, proposes a plan of federal reinsurance for any private company as protection against heavy losses resulting from health insurance. After the first five years, the program would become self-financing with money derived from premiums paid by the insurance companies. The House soundly rejects the plan. Eisenhower calls a conference to try to salvage it and is told the Senate can't fit the plan into its agenda.

--1959: A bill is introduced by Rep. Aime J. Forand, D-R.I., to provide hospital, surgical and nursing home benefits for old-age and survivors insurance beneficiaries using the Social Security administrative mechanism. The program is to be financed by an increase in the Social Security tax. The bill fails.

--1960: Legislation is enacted establishing limited medical assistance for the aged through the Social Security program. The act also provides aid to the states to help "medically indigent" people 65 or older. Participation by states is optional; 25 take part.

--1962: President John F. Kennedy renews his 1961 request that the old-age, survivors and disability provisions of the Social Security Act be amended to provide health insurance protection for the aged.

--1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law the landmark federal health insurance programs known as Medicare and Medicaid.

--1971: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., offers his national health insurance plan. The "Health Security Act" calls for a universal single-player plan to be financed through payroll taxes. President Richard Nixon later advances his own version of a bill, the National Health Insurance Partnership Act. It would preserve private insurance but require businesses to provide coverage to employees or make payments to a government-run fund. It also endorses the concept of health maintenance organizations. The bill fails.

--1973: Legislation is enacted to encourage development of health maintenance organizations.

--1974: Nixon proposes his Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan calling for universal coverage, voluntary employer participation and a separate program for the working poor and the unemployed, replacing Medicaid. Organized labor lobbied successfully to kill the plan, hoping get a better deal after the next elections. That didn't happen.

--1977: The Health Care Financing Administration is created to manage Medicare and Medicaid separately from the Social Security Administration.

--1979: Sen. Kennedy proposes that private insurance plans compete for customers who would receive a card to use for hospital and physician's care. Employers would bear the bulk of the cost for their workers, with the government picking up costs for the poor. President Jimmy Carter's plan, released a month later, proposes that businesses provide a minimum package of benefits, that public coverage for the poor and aged be expanded and that a new public corporation created to sell coverage to everyone else. Neither proposal makes it through Congress.

--1985: The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA), signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, mandates an insurance program giving some employees the ability to continue health insurance coverage from their workplace after leaving the job. In addition, hospice care is made a permanent part of Medicare and extended to states for Medicaid.

--1988: The Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act provides the largest expansion of benefits since the creation of the program and increases premiums. But act causes dissension, in part because long-term services are not covered and more affluent beneficiaries don't need the expanded coverage. The act is repealed before provisions go into effect. The McKinney Act is signed into law, providing health care to the homeless.

--1990: The Americans with Disabilities Act provides a broad range of protections for the disabled.

--1993: President Bill Clinton proposes the most ambitious reworking of the health care system since Medicare and Medicaid, aiming squarely for universal coverage. But he cannot persuade fellow Democrats in control of Congress to adopt it. The proposals drew strong opposition from the health care industry and employers. The Childhood Immunization Act supports the provision of vaccines for children eligible for Medicaid, children without health insurance, and Native American children.

--1996: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act improves continuity of health insurance coverage in group and individual markets for people who lose their job. The act also promotes medical savings accounts and improves access to long-term care services and coverage.

--1997: The State Children's Health Insurance Program is established to help provide medical care to children in low-income families that are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

--2003: President George W. Bush signs a law adding prescription drugs to Medicare.

--Jan. 19, 2010: Republican Scott Brown's upset in the Massachusetts Senate seat opened by Sen. Kennedy's death deprives Democrats of the 60 votes needed to move legislation forward. The effort to reconcile health overhaul bills passed by the House and Senate is stalled.

--March 2010: Democratic leaders in Congress employ parliamentary maneuvers in hopes of enabling passage of Obama's plan with a simple majority in the Senate. A showdown vote is set in the House for Sunday.

Hopefully everyone remembers how this ended... backroom deals, congressional bribes, forced uninformed votes... etc.

Bob wrote:

TEOTWAWKI wrote:
unfortunately Bob they are the only ones that can fix this problem in any meaningful way. They can educate and research and legislate..we can only whine.

Yea and the same cocksuckers who have never been to war are "educating and researching and legislating" to all those who do go to war.  You should know that.
If I've learned anything from living 64 years in this society,  it's that positions of power and influence and celebrity don't mean shit.

Then let me know what time the revolution is and what channel it's on Bob.

Bob wrote:

PkrBum wrote:There's no fucking free market in healthcare and there hasn't been for a very long fucking time... I'm sick of people saying that. I've listed the countless "laws, regulations, codes, edicts... etc. If there were a free market healthcare system the providers wouldn't price themselves out of business... cmon. Look how expensive computers were... think about it for a minute. Healthcare is a service... it's as simple as that... it ain't a miracle or magic... they need customers.

That's all just ideology talking.  I live in the real world.  And in the real world my Pet Scans will cost in the neighborhood of $7000.  There are already numerous providers all competing to give me Pet Scans.  But the imaging device which does a Pet Scan costs a fucking fortune regardless.  Unlike personal computers,  they now cost even more today than when they were first invented.  
Comparing that to the price of personal computers is apples and oranges.  Not everything is determined by "economy of scale".  It's a myth.

Pet scans are too damned dangerous for me Bob....and expensive. I am sure they sold you on the dire necessity of it though.

http://www.radiology-info.org/nuclear-medicine-positron-emission-tomography/pros-consside-effects.html

$7000 what ?..

A relatively new medical procedure, PET imaging is expensive with an average cost ranging between $900 and $1400.

TEOTWAWKI wrote:
Then let me know what time the revolution is and what channel it's on Bob.

As long as those in positions of power and influence and celebrity do not have to make the same sacrifices all the rest of us do, there will be no revolution starting from the top.
And even if the brainwashed masses wanted to start a populist revolution from the bottom, it's not even possible in a country like the United States of today. Your and my little peashooters are not gonna conquer the U.S. Government and the most powerful military machine in history.

A "revolution" can now happen only after the country has collapsed and the revolution starts from the ashes of that collapse. That's not going to happen in your and my lifetime so it's of no importance to me.

Bob wrote:

TEOTWAWKI wrote:
Then let me know what time the revolution is and what channel it's on Bob.

As long as those in positions of power and influence and celebrity do not have to make the same sacrifices all the rest of us do,  there will be no revolution starting from the top.
And even if the brainwashed masses wanted to start a populist revolution from the bottom,  it's not even possible in a country like the United States of today.  Your and my little peashooters are not gonna conquer the U.S. Government and the most powerful military machine in history.  

A "revolution" can now happen only after the country has collapsed and the revolution starts from the ashes of that collapse.  That's not going to happen in your and my lifetime so it's of no importance to me.

There's already a revolution Bob..91% of the American people are against attacking Syria..that's a big deal Bob that is an awakening giant....I hope they make that giant really angry.