by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:

As the debate “rages on” note what the ****-faces in this article buried way down in the text.

In 2015, an analysis by the Ann Arbor-based Center for Health and Research Transformation, a nonprofit health care research organization, concluded that Michigan had lower per capita costs than Wisconsin and Indiana, both of which did not regulate hospital services. Michigan’s per capita hospital cost was $2,624, compared to $2,975 in Indiana and $3,107 in Wisconsin.

What?

How often in your life have you needed a hospital?

Needed.

Once?  Twice?  If more than that you’re either ridiculously unlucky or you have something really, really serious going on and it’s your issue, whether you like it or not.

Do you understand that figure?  Somewhere between $2,500 and $3,000 per year is being spent per person — man, woman, child and infant — for hospitals.

I broke my leg when I was a kid by falling down the stairs (really.)  I also had a (worthless) attempt to correct an eye muscle condition made.  Since that time I’ve never been in a hospital in my 56 years as a patient.  As a visitor to others, a few times — but I avoid those damn places like they are distributors of the plague, because to a large degree they basically are.

But many people do not.  Further, while the debate here is whether CON laws make health care more or less expensive nobody talks about why there’s over $2,500 on a per-capita basis stolen from the American consumer per year.

Folks, we will get nowhere until that number has three digits in it, not four.  It both can and must, or the federal budget will collapse within the next four to five years.  People bitch about drug prices and that is a problem but the 900lb Gorilla in the room is found right here; consider that for a person who either has a minimum wage job this is more than 10% of their gross.

Remember that the CPI supposedly claims that health care is ~6% of the economy.  Hospitals alone are more than that on a per-capita basis; in fact they’re about 10%!  This is just one of many pieces of proof, which is irrefutable, that you’re being screwed, blued, tattooed and lied to when it comes to these matters.

One piece of many.

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