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One thought I had regarding healthcare that I feel would serve to both lower healthcare costs as well as provide something of an economic stimulus would be to expand the private sector role in funding and creating more healthcare options. My first point of contention is this: Do you really know how much your doctor's visit cost? Alot of people do not. Insurance in many ways has distorted the way in which we think about healthcare. Being a believer in the free market, the biggest issue is that there are high initial capital costs associated in someone pursuing a medical career or in opening a company that is in the medical profession. Instead of the focus of government being oriented towards gaining control of the medical field, instead the government should have a dedicated fund towards giving young people a chance to go to medical school. If people knew they could go to medical school and come out without 100-200K on their backs that would be a huge incentive for a surge of new doctors in the United States. Of course, there would be stipulations such as maintaining a certain grade point average during schooling as well as oversight in terms of how the money is being used.
The other major idea that operates on a similar track is to have a pool of funds that would serve as venture capital for entrepenures going into the medical buisness. Say for instance someone wants to create a better form of chemotherapy. Obviously he needs seed money. The government can give money to venture capital firms who then can give that individual the money he needs to go out and build his chemo machine and compete in the free market. When you have more entrepenures creating more products and services, it fuels innovation and drives down prices.
Yes, I realize this has to be paid for somehow and it should come out of savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Yes, I realize this is imperfect and in some ways is a slush fund, but I do feel this solves a couple of critical problems facing our society (Jobs, Healthcare Costs, Government Control). For those paranoid over government control, there's no stipulations in this idea for telling doctors and companies what to do other than abide by existing laws. It's completely free market. However, there would be oversight over venture capital firms in terms of making sure this goes to *Medical* firms.
One thought I had regarding healthcare that I feel would serve to both lower healthcare costs as well as provide something of an economic stimulus would be to expand the private sector role in funding and creating more healthcare options. My first point of contention is this: Do you really know how much your doctor's visit cost? Alot of people do not. Insurance in many ways has distorted the way in which we think about healthcare. Being a believer in the free market, the biggest issue is that there are high initial capital costs associated in someone pursuing a medical career or in opening a company that is in the medical profession. Instead of the focus of government being oriented towards gaining control of the medical field, instead the government should have a dedicated fund towards giving young people a chance to go to medical school. If people knew they could go to medical school and come out without 100-200K on their backs that would be a huge incentive for a surge of new doctors in the United States. Of course, there would be stipulations such as maintaining a certain grade point average during schooling as well as oversight in terms of how the money is being used.
The other major idea that operates on a similar track is to have a pool of funds that would serve as venture capital for entrepenures going into the medical buisness. Say for instance someone wants to create a better form of chemotherapy. Obviously he needs seed money. The government can give money to venture capital firms who then can give that individual the money he needs to go out and build his chemo machine and compete in the free market. When you have more entrepenures creating more products and services, it fuels innovation and drives down prices.
Yes, I realize this has to be paid for somehow and it should come out of savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Yes, I realize this is imperfect and in some ways is a slush fund, but I do feel this solves a couple of critical problems facing our society (Jobs, Healthcare Costs, Government Control). For those paranoid over government control, there's no stipulations in this idea for telling doctors and companies what to do other than abide by existing laws. It's completely free market. However, there would be oversight over venture capital firms in terms of making sure this goes to *Medical* firms.
That is a good beginning. It is worth noting that those nations that do healthcare for half the price, and with better results than the USA, normally have free universities. And some actually use private insurance to do that.
There are a couple of problems, though. The first is that physicans salaries just isn't the only reason why US health care costs are out of control:
It is about 6 %. The biggest single factor is the fractured system. Everyone has their own administrative systems, paperwork, payment modes etc, and the number of people employed in insurance and medical administration accumulates far beyond other countries.
Now this is a statistic I can't support, but I seem to remember reading that America has 2,5 times as many administrative workers in health care as the next country down.
As far the "free market" goes there is no such thing where health insurance is concerned, in most states the insurance companies are under mandates to cover a wide variety of things. You can't just get insurance for catastrophic/emergency events which is what insurance should be to begin with, the insurance companies aren't complaining because it justifies increased fees. Add in little to no competition amongst insurance companies and the premiums are even more.
As nearly everyone requires healthcare regardless of thier ability to afford it, I do not believe this service can be provided by a profit driven privately owned system without creating monopoly based abuses. I want a government sponsored Universal Health CARE System without any private sector involvment in education, insurance, drugs or facilites.
One thought I had regarding healthcare that I feel would serve to both lower healthcare costs as well as provide something of an economic stimulus would be to expand the private sector role in funding and creating more healthcare options. My first point of contention is this: Do you really know how much your doctor's visit cost? Alot of people do not. Insurance in many ways has distorted the way in which we think about healthcare. Being a believer in the free market, the biggest issue is that there are high initial capital costs associated in someone pursuing a medical career or in opening a company that is in the medical profession. Instead of the focus of government being oriented towards gaining control of the medical field...
The problem you don't realize is that it is the insurance companies' control over government policies. There has never been such thing as a free market and there never will be. As far as health care provider costs go, the problem goes much deeper than simply knowing the costs. Kaiser Foundation had an article, couple of years ago (and I may have posted a link to it on C-D), about how larger health insurance companies can distort costs and force the health care providers to charge more for patients carrying insurance from smaller insurance companies and patients who were paying for themselves. The idea is to eliminate competition and create a dependency, both key areas of succeeding in business.
So, how can they afford to do that? Most states have one or two major health insurance players and the providers largely depend on these corporations for customers (patients). So they are willing to take risk on customers and insurance companies that account for a fraction of their business. In other words, monopoly at work.
It must be purely a coincidence that I'm repeating an argument that I made in a health insurance related thread several months ago, but I was thinking of a similar business corruption this morning as I'd just run out of shaving blades. Couple of weeks ago, I'd noticed a "notice" on shaving section at Walmart about reporting anybody other than Walmart selling Schick blades (not sure if it was just the hydro series or all of it, but I may revisit tonight and will take a picture of the notice to post here). In other words, Gillette's biggest threat may now be controlled via Walmart. This is how monopolies come about. Could it be Gillette and Walmart collusion? As a consumer, I would hate to see such monopolization. So, how does one prevent these from happening in a Free Market?
As nearly everyone requires healthcare regardless of thier ability to afford it, I do not believe this service can be provided by a profit driven privately owned system without creating monopoly based abuses. I want a government sponsored Universal Health CARE System without any private sector involvment in education, insurance, drugs or facilites.
The same way the government pays over 40% of the medical costs today, over a trillion of nearly $2.5T in medical costs. I wonder why we even have $2.5T in medical costs per year, over $8K per person.
The same way the government pays over 40% of the medical costs today, over a trillion of nearly $2.5T in medical costs. I wonder why we even have $2.5T in medical costs per year, over $8K per person.
Because the government is paying not the consumer.
It would be paid for by progressive taxation on the population with a 90th percentile deductable. Without any redundant, unsupportable and unjustified administrative overhead and executive salaries or risk free profits the system becomes affordable for all instead of a select few. This would eliminate the need for businesses to provide “health insurance” for employees and allow this money to be reinvested in the business so it could make more profit.
The same way the government pays over 40% of the medical costs today, over a trillion of nearly $2.5T in medical costs. I wonder why we even have $2.5T in medical costs per year, over $8K per person.
Will China loan us the money???
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