Epifanio Calcara, MD

@mcuban “cash” would be best covered by digital assets that carry over to the next year if not needed. We need 21st century solutions!

A question about your Healthcare costs. If you had an expensive medical issue. Could you afford your deductible.

@TheRabbitHole @stevebrotman We also need to be smarter and more efficient in both manufacturing and services, regardless of government influence. Look at the contribution from foreign sources to the sectors showing less inflationary impact. We can do better!

Everything government touches becomes more expensive and unaffordable.

@bwohlgemuth @mcuban @PtRightsAdvoc Hospitals are permitted to charge higher rates for imaging to offset the costs associated with the uninsured patients. This distorts the market and gives large Hospital Systems an unfair competitive advantage especially in affluent areas.

@epi56 @mcuban @PtRightsAdvoc Will disagree with this. Labcorp just took over our hospital’s testing and it’s been a shitshow to say the least. And costs have gone up.

Props to those who have said that big hospitals are the problem. In this case you are definitely right. Props to Cynthia Fischer at @PtRightsAdvoc You are making a difference! wsj.com/health/healthc…

Mark — I share your interest in market-based healthcare reform. I recently sent you a brief email outlining a patent pending approach to redesigning the infrastructure behind routine healthcare transactions. It may align with your views on pricing transparency and market efficiency.

Single payer COULD cut cost and improve care but there are 2 fundamental issues. 1. All plans proposed have placed the Sec of HHS in charge of the program. You can't have a political appointee in that position and it's hard to de-politiicize HC in this country 2. They assume that they can get providers and specialists to accept whatever rates they set. You are talking about organizations that in most cases, don't even know their costs. Why ? They don't want to know their costs. For lots of reasons to long to dig into here Proponents of M4A have to first get hospitals to the point where they can define all their costs and do a Bill of Materials for procedures. You can't negotiate a price for all Americans if you don't know what your costs are It's Shark Tank 101. So we get a stalemate. Politicians don't do the work needed. Hospitals and providers avoid the work needed Other countries started on their path to universal care decades and decades ago. When healthcare was much simpler technically and fiscally. If senators won't support the Break Up Big Medicine Bill or anything comparable , there is no chance of getting to single payer. Our politicians don't have the backbone to do what is needed. You can call out all but Hawley and warren. No one else has uttered a syllable in support

If we had full price transparency, then competition could be a useful tool to lower costs. More efficient funding of non-catastrophic services (50% of total HC costs) using existing technology would be an easier first step to reform the system. Reform doesn't have to be all or none!

@YottaMindset I agree but Medicare as is without reform and alignment of incentives would perpetuate overspending.

@epi56 "capability to detect fraud." It can do what ever you want it to. Just like every single insurance company. If you dont' want it to detect fraud that's because you designed it that way. It wouldn't even be hard to do.

This is actually the biggest pitch for medicare for all.

@mcuban Breaking up, the big insurance companies may not be sufficient. We have to reform the pricing and reimbursement model so that we introduced transparency, and efficiency.

I don’t think people realize how much healthcare costs are driving big companies to fire and not hire. It costs them $30k per family, per year for premiums and care. Most of that goes to the massive, vertically integrated insurance companies that send weekly bills that no one reviews in details. And it doesn’t include the company overhead to deal with it all. It’s usually the 2nd largest expense after payroll. Which is insane It’s far easier to blame AI than it is to blame Healthcare costs. Want to increase jobs, wages and improve affordability for every American ? Break up the biggest insurance companies. Make divest non insurance companies. They don’t need thousands of subsidiaries. That’s how they game and abuse the system and increase costs for all of us. Call your senator and tell them to support the BreakUp Big Medicine Bill by @HawleyMO and @SenWarren.

Value is missing from our infrastructure. One problem is that catastrophic care insurance is bundled with routine care and processed in the same inefficient way. Wouldn’t it be great to apply technology to simplify routine care similar to how Blue Cross was separate from Blue Shield in the past?

We already have digital solutions to remove most insurance costs from routine healthcare services. If we take a first principles approach rather than adhering to legacy infrastructure we have a reasonable chance of success! Pharmaceutical costs account for 15% US healthcare expenditure, but that’s a great starting point!

Des and Nurses are underpaid. Independent doctors are getting ripped off to the point of barely getting paid after fees The biggest insurance companies are awful for beneficiaries and for employers. One example ? What good is insurance if patients can't afford their deductible?