Hospitals are charging us $140,000 for a hip replacement, and $50,000 for knee surgery that costs them at most $10,000. Why ? Because they can. And there is nothing you can do about it. We have become slaves to our hospital systems. They treat us like garbage, and charge us whatever they want. The emergency waiting areas bear striking similarities to district courts and jails complete with security guards ready to arrest you should you get upset because no doctor has looked at your injury for an hour since you checked in. You never expected to be robbed of your life savings by hospitals, did you?. But this is the reality today.
There is so much over regulation in our healthcare system that there is no such thing as competition. We can easily reduce cost of operating healthcare by removing costly and protectionist policies for this industry. Government needs to be out of primary healthcare, but continue to provide its Medicare mandate. The healthcare and drug industries need less protectionism, more competition, and easy entry for new players. This will create market potential and result in major savings for consumers. New drug patents should be reduced from 20 years to 5 years, and require unique inventions not minor variants. These simple reversals will bring our healthcare system back down to earth, making it viable and vibrant. This is one case where we need to go back to policies that worked and reduce the over-reach of government and FDA. People are being scared by interest groups and politicians that such policies will end Social security. Far from it. Social security is a contract with the American people. Social security works, and will continue to be viable if we start taking air out of the heavily protected healthcare bubble today.

