Health care costs 43 years ago. I was emptying drawers in

[sinkingfeeling]

an old desk in my shed today and came across a bunch of medical Bill's from 1970s.

One was for an injured ankle. The ER charge at Ohio State University Hospital was $24. 3 X-rays totalled $21.50. Orthopedic supplies came to $9.40.

My running balance from my local MD shows each office visit was $10. Various lab tests were $15 and $20.

A visit to a Westlake, CA ER in the fall of 1976 for strep throat carried these charges. Primary ER fee $15, exam was $21.35, lab culture was $12 with $3 for supplies.

Wonder what's happened.

[pbmus]

1. Healthcare went public...

[Sneederbunk]

2. I remember in the 50s

my grandmother wanted to be discharged from the hospital because it was costing her $12 a day.

[asiliveandbreathe]

3. In the 70s I worked at New England Telco..I do not remember paying anything for healthcare...

was a benefit..when divestiture happened, I chose to go to the parent co. AT&T..100& health benefit as well...I retired after 30 years in '98 - it wasn't until 2000 I started to pay..$54 a month...now on BC/BS Advantage AZ - I pay $135 for Medicare part B, and $39 for bc/bs...

I am so thankful people have ACA for their needs, including pre-existing conditions..which they cannot afford to lose...

[SpankMe]

4. My mother just turned 80

She was born (of Greek immigrants) here in the US in 1939.

They checked in to the hospital. Her mother gave birth to her. And when they checked out, her father (my grandfather) paid the clerk $9 (as if checking out at a grocery store) and that was it!

[LogicFirst]

5. Lots of things happened.

Doctors, nurses, and support staff all got pay raises in order to keep surviving.
Med schools became more expensive, as professors and staff got well-deserved pay raises.
MRI equipment along with other testing equipment had to be purchased.
The list is endless.

[LanternWaste]

10. "Lots of things happened" indeed.

14 pharma companies boasted profits in excess of $1 billion dollars in the second quarter; a price which cannot be negotiated by Medicare as done in other countries (The CBO found that just by giving low-income beneficiaries of Medicare Part D the same discount Medicaid recipients get, the federal government would save $116 billion over 10 years).

Med schools realized that the cost can more easily come from the drive in price that is unrelated to the cost of production.

Further, more people in the U.S. are treated by specialists, whose fees are higher than primary-care doctors when the same types of treatments are done at the primary-care level in other countries. Specialists command higher pay, which drives up the costs for everyone.

Doctors are afraid they will get sued, so they order multiple tests even when they are certain they know what the diagnosis is (a 2010 Gallup survey estimated that $650 billion annually could be attributed to defensive medicine).

The list is endless, indeed.

[hunter]

12. Insurance companies decided the size of their revenue streams...

... was more important than the cost of medicine.

The bigger the revenue streams, the more the people running the insurance companies get paid.

Somebody has to pay for those mansions, monster staffs, vacation homes, and private jets...

[snowybirdie]

6. Still have my daughter's

and my hospital Bill for her birth in the early 60s. $350.00 for labor, delivery and care for a four day stay! No health insurance, but our savings were just about that amount.

[CrispyQ]

7. We let the corporations turn every aspect of our lives into profit centers.

They did it with the help of legislators who are more indebted to their campaign contributors than they are to the constituents who voted for them. Nothing will ever be fixed until we get money out of our electoral system & I don't see that happening.

[hunter]

13. Same thing happened in education.

Universities decided they had to be more like Disneyland than places of higher learning. They started "competing" for students who had money and those willing to go into shocking debt. They started to manage themselves like corporations.

Basic classrooms, teachers, and student housing are cheap. Previously, if a college stumbled upon a brilliant undergraduate student who might benefit from hyper-expensive labs they could bump them up to the big leagues where their input would be appreciated. Now the parents of every dull kid demand the same "opportunity." Colleges have to compete with one another in many dimensions beyond rigorous academics, and they have to cater to the wealthy. The cost of education has skyrocketed.

I graduated from a world class university with zero debt. My own children were not so fortunate.

Some conditions of my university education were a little spartan. Off-campus housing was absolutely wretched, but it was cheap. I used to be a little jealous of students in the dorms but looking back the dorms were not much better. In some ways they were worse.

I had quite a bit of access to cutting edge technologies as a non-brilliant undergraduate, various university computers and labs, etc., but I'd earned that, perhaps as a mostly harmless, sometimes useful, entertaining fool, but that was good enough for me. (For illustration I first logged onto the internet in the later 'seventies.)

Now it all has to be bought.

[uponit7771]

8. Historically the doctors and hospital groups could set their own prices and they got REALLY greedy.

... that's it in a nutshell.

Oh, then pharma said let us get ours.

[Ms. Toad]

9. My 1st year salary (at a job that required a college degree)

was $10,500 in 1978.

That same job today pays $37,000 - a 350% increase.

Obviously the health care costs are rising faster than inflation, but part of it is just inflation associated with the passage of time.

[hunter]

14. I was making $11,000 a year in 1978. Gasoline was essentially free.

The following year, when I was back in school, my share of the rent was $80 a month.

I did, of course, fuck it all up, but landed on my feet eight years later.

In 1988 my very hard won university degree was worth $24,000 a year.

California prices.

[UpInArms]

11. GHWB and the push for privatizing

healthcare

[GulfCoast66]

15. But you don't mention outcomes...

My dad had surgery for a heart issue 43 years ago.

It killed him 30 years ago in his young 50’s.

With his condition today he would be looking at normal lifespan.

Same with all types of cancers etc. I don’t disagree the system has become too profit centered or really disagree with any other post in this thread. But all the new treatments are expensive.

The only reason life expectancy has not gone up more is the lack of treatment for the poor, and maybe more importantly lifestyle choices that have actually caused white male life expectancy to decrease!