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This is exactly the kind of insane logic that belies a misunderstanding of healthcare economics.
It sickens me that people who understand nothing and advocate this foolish notion of "everyone on their own" for healthcare are precisely the ones who get a voice and ruin any chance of a decent system for society. This is not like a bagel or sofa where the prices are transparent, the product purchase is optional/deferrable, and the full liability is personally budgetable. Health insurance IS an exercise in subsidization by definition, and that's the only way it works.
The idea of "Everyone on their own" is one reason why private healthcare insurance is so expensive. Single payer costs so much less than the private insurance system is because single payer can leverage the power of economies of scale where virtually everyone in the country is paying into a SINGLE system. One insurance company might have just 5 million customers paying into it versus 300 million for single payer. Costs go down drastically in the latter case, as each person has to pay less into it as the pool gets larger.
OTOH having a system of dozens of different private insurance companies each with their own complex rules and different ways of doing things makes things drastically more complex and expensive to run. It's not uncommon for a hospital in the US to have a billing department with hundreds of employees working in billing to sort out the mess created by this absurd complexity, almost as many billing employees as they have beds in the hospital. While a similar size hospital in Canada needs just a dozen or so people in billing to operate.
Normally I would be all for a free market approach, but no one sane choses to forgo treatment when their life is on the line.
That is why the prices are so high.
I'll say it again, the first step in fixing this is to throw Pharma and Insurance out of the bargaining table.
They have shown repeatedly that their concern is not this country but their wallet.
They should not be part of the bargaining process, and it gets worse, when they wrote and own it themselves.
Certainly. But corruption has increased those costs to insane levels. Something is wrong.
But it is only the last couple of generations that believes anything other than socialized health care is "insane logic" and anyone that thinks otherwise "knows nothing".
Such is the cost of new and highly technical HC. It is very expensive. There is no basic law that states that the HC of all our people has to be affordable in common terms. It is not cheap anywhere in the world unless there is more serious central controls or rationing. We can do it here if the people so desire. But it will be very costly and can only happen with more central money creation.
We can have our people/gov't own all our means of HC production. Hospitals, facilities, drug companies and docs, and it will still not be cheap. Even without capitalistic or governmental corruption.
The idea of "Everyone on their own" is one reason why private healthcare insurance is so expensive. Single payer costs so much less than the private insurance system is because single payer can leverage the power of economies of scale where virtually everyone in the country is paying into a SINGLE system. One insurance company might have just 5 million customers paying into it versus 300 million for single payer. Costs go down drastically in the latter case, as each person has to pay less into it as the pool gets larger.
OTOH having a system of dozens of different private insurance companies each with their own complex rules and different ways of doing things makes things drastically more complex and expensive to run. It's not uncommon for a hospital in the US to have a billing department with hundreds of employees working in billing to sort out the mess created by this absurd complexity, almost as many billing employees as they have beds in the hospital. While a similar size hospital in Canada needs just a dozen or so people in billing to operate.
Single payer might cost less per patient encounter. But we will see many more encounters.
Much in medicine is left undone for all sorts of reasons. And with more UHC, more will get done. Much of this will be on the positive side, and some on the negative side if abused. But when the HC cost and access issues are eased, more will get done. People/patients will opt to take care of previously lesser medical concerns. And docs might game the system by doing more.
As part of my compensation when I work, I receive employer sponsored health insurance. My employer pays part of the premium that would otherwise come to me in the form of wages or other benefits, or kept by him to invest as he saw fit, to a for profit insurance company that is publicly traded on Wall Street.
I also pay part of the insurance premium, using my wages that I would otherwise spend, donate or invest elsewhere. My employer must offer this benefit in order to remain competitive in terms of attracting competent employees. It is even mandated to a certain degree, depending on your state and the size of your company.
Now, why should we be forced to buy this product from a for-profit corporation that in turn does business with huge for-profit hospital corporations, and restricts my use of practitioners to their contracted panels?
Can anyone please explain to me why the public option in Obamacare, where my employer could have paid premiums into a Medicare for everyone type system instead of subsidizing some other CEOs multi million dollar salary, was shot down?
Ask Obama and the DEMs. Its the law they passed, without regard to employers, employees and the middle class. Just about every problem with ACA today was called out when it was passed.
Single payer might cost less per patient encounter. But we will see many more encounters.
Much in medicine is left undone for all sorts of reasons. And with more UHC, more will get done. Much of this will be on the positive side, and some on the negative side if abused. But when the HC cost and access issues are eased, more will get done. People/patients will opt to take care of previously lesser medical concerns. And docs might game the system by doing more.
I'm sure there will be an initial burst of care demand, due to previous unmet needs, but it should level out as time goes on and people are born into it. The economy should also improve, due to relieving the burden of employers subsidizing health care, which will balance the increase in taxes. I doubt the system will be "gamed" under UHC; when Obamacare was introduced, aggressive enforcement of Medicare fraud was undertaken and saved the system millions as a result. I don't think shady providers are stupid enough to try that again.
I'm sure there will be an initial burst of care demand, due to previous unmet needs, but it should level out as time goes on and people are born into it. The economy should also improve, due to relieving the burden of employers subsidizing health care, which will balance the increase in taxes. I doubt the system will be "gamed" under UHC; when Obamacare was introduced, aggressive enforcement of Medicare fraud was undertaken and saved the system millions as a result. I don't think shady providers are stupid enough to try that again.
We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can benchmark against other systems and use what will work best for us. Australia has a good system as does Germany and a lot of other countries. The ACA was a train wreck from the start. They had a super majority and wasted it.
Such is the cost of new and highly technical HC. It is very expensive. There is no basic law that states that the HC of all our people has to be affordable in common terms. It is not cheap anywhere in the world unless there is more serious central controls or rationing. We can do it here if the people so desire. But it will be very costly and can only happen with more central money creation.
We can have our people/gov't own all our means of HC production. Hospitals, facilities, drug companies and docs, and it will still not be cheap. Even without capitalistic or governmental corruption.
It's never been cheap! But the current costs are exponentially off the scale and only partially due to new and highly technical HC.
As far as "more central money creation", the way it used to work is now no longer politically correct, as shown by the existence of this thread. It used to be that drug companies and medical providers had R&D funded principally by wall street investors. Promising companies had their stock prices go up, as it should be, the money was used to develop new products, as it should be, those products and services were then introduced to the public at reasonable prices.
But today's liberals, including the OP, has big problems with investors making any money at all.
Add to that all the corruption that has creeped in through lawmakers, drug companies, insurance companies, wall street, lobbyists, media, and well, you have insurance policies that are 50% of a person's income and rising.
I agree that is whacked and needs fixing, but ANYTIME I have seen the government step in to handle something like this it has ALWAYS turned into a quagmire, because turning it over to the government doesn't address the main underlying problem: Corruption.
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