HB closing: don't let my gloomy outlook on this dissuade you from going into health care. It's never been an occupation for those who want to make money. You have a sense of how important it is to help people... and that still stands.

Hank Brown does not want to discourage anyone from going into the health care industry.

Guy in red: "you don't have to look at me like I'm not for profit; I'm only for helping people that need insurance"

There are some tensions in the room.

Q: Our country has economic incentives whether we are greedy or not - fee for service model: more revenue for more expensive treatment.
Consumer demand in US is to ask for more than what we need to be sure we're ok - we get more expensive treatments, and restrictions on HC are like rationing... how can we restrict what we ask for without diminishing quality of care? There are many countries with longer average life expectancy than ours.
HB: first off, make sure you look at life expectancy between ethnic groups, eg Japanese even in Europe and America live as long as indigenous Japanese, which is longer than the rest of us.
That said: in Us these things ARE higher: obesity, smoking car accidents. There are probably some things we can do to improve. Look at the Mayo clinic: no fees for service, it's physicians on salary with other incentives.

Health care determines 25%-35% of life longivity. Drug usage and obesity affects this. Including smoking, violence, and automobile accidents.

Somebody is talking about cost effective? Just wondering, on what has government done that is cost effective?

JS: insurance isn't always a great thing to have. his $10k bill for flying him from the scene of an accident was retroactively negged by his insurance company as unnecessary. choice of insurance co. to pay or not pay for procedures seems arbitrary and in need of regulation/protection for patients
HB: yes. big problem; agreed. nonprofits may have same motivation: higher expenses take away motivation to give compensation.

It seems healthcare is a business and not a service.

Of course, it is a business and a service.

Q: as an alternative to running private insurers out of business, how about making them non-profit competitors.
A: yes. part of our problem is the way we set up medicare and medicaid. More it costs, the more you pay, less it costs, less you pay. We never had non-profits compete.
Q: How about we keep it in the primary care sector.
A: You're referring to gross margins. Net profit is next to nothing anyway. Wide variety of figures in the press.

Quit smoking if you believe people are becoming very wealthy by picking on poor people.