Pete's BLOG-Day 26, 408. More U.S. outrageous medical stories

Today is Friday, March 8, 2013. My stats today: 10 minutes of yoga, 10 minutes of lifting weights and 58 minutes of walking = 3.2 miles for a March total of 18.2 miles. My weigth was 163.4 pounds.

QUOTE from Jim Doyne: "If you kick the very person responsible for any of your troubles, you wouldn't be able to sit down for a month." (I like this one).

My THOUGHTS today are some more facts on the outrageous medical system in the U.S. Here are some more goodies.

- Ronald DePinho's, president of the MD Anderson, total compensation as president is $1,845,000. (That does not include outside earnings where he maintains unspecified 'financial ties with his three pharmaceutical companies'".) His salary is 3 times the salary of the president of the U. of Texas.
- In the U.S., people spend almost 20% of the gross domestic product on health care, compared with about half that in most developed countries.
- We spent $60 billion helping people clean up from Hurricane Sandy - we spent almost that much LAST WEEK ON HEALTH CARE.
- We spend more every year on artificial knees and hips than what Hollywood collects at the box office.
- We spend 2-3 times that much on medical devices like canes and wheelchairs, in part because a heavily lobbied Congress forces Medicare to pay 25% to 75% more for this equipment than it would cost at Walmart
- Health care is eating away at our economy and our treasury. And the health care industry seems to have the will and the means to keep it that way. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and health-care product industries, combined with organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services, and HMOs, have spent $5.53 billion on lobbying in Washington. That dwarfs the $1.53 billion spent by the defense and aerospace industries and the $1.4 billion spent by the oil and gas interests over the same period. So the truth is, the health-care-industrial complex spends more than 3 times what the military-industrial complex spends in Washington.

QUESTION: Do we really have to pay 1.8 million dollars to the president of a non-profit?