1) Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals and doctors are below their costs. Therefore, those of us with private insurance subsidize those losses in the form of higher payments in our private insurance claims (in addition to Joe Taxpayer’s Medicare payroll and state and federal income taxes).

Google “medicare cost shift” or “medicaid cost shift” for some fascinating reading on the dirty little secret of the cost shift.

After you have completed your healthcare 101 education would you care to take a wild ass guess what direction the cost shift will traject when Medicaid is expanded to 400 percent of the poverty level and Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals are cut by $500 BILLION?

2) Hospital costs and drug costs are the two primary drivers in healthcare inflation. It defies logic (which is why the democrats insist on using the health insurance boogey-man template) that the 2-3% profit that insurance companies make is a primary driver of sky rocketing healthcare costs in this country – a moot issue with Blue Cross SC since it is a not for profit mutual legal reserve company.

p.s…those government programs suck up a lot of overhead at Blue Cross SC and that helps keeps private policy premiums lower – pray those contracts are renewed or you WILL see your preimium dollar sky-rocket.

Just come full circle for the bumper sticker issue of the week crowd.

But that’s not you, you’ve been on this for years. Oh wait…