Posted on 09/30/2015 5:21:56 AM PDT by xzins
There are a few major characteristics of health care before Obama Care.
1. It was quasi-private: most was funded by employers.
2. Some was directly paid private insurance.
3. Insurance could only be bought state by state. It could not be bought across state lines. It was non-competitive.
4. Those without insurance were covered by hospitals under Good Samaritan type laws.
5. Hospitals and doctors passed those costs on by increasing costs to insured patients and their insurance companies.
6. Those were passed on to the government by partial deductions by individuals on their tax forms.
7. The rest were totally deducted by insurance companies as a cost of business or by employers as a cost of business.
8. The government ended up eating the cost of the uninsured Americans through lower income tax receipts.
We should not pretend that the uninsured did not have coverage during the time before ObamaCare.
During this time, the payers were insurance companies, employers, and individuals.
Finally, the government ultimately paid by receiving lower taxes on profits by insurance companies, employers, and individuals.
For your comment
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” — Your MSM. “)
America needs to bring back American jobs.
That will mean we bring back healthcare.
We need many, many more jobs here. That is the solution.
Now I'm older and and more doting, with time to digest information
thanx
The government was screwing up our healthcare since World War II
"Pretend" is all that ever justified the in-process federalization of one sixth of the economy. The fact that such control was personal, directed against every single American, just made it irresistible.
I have noticed they are still touting the same numbers for uninsured, as if ObamaCare never existed.
9. a family of 4 in CA could buy pretty good insurance for $450 per month.
Prior to Obamacare, 90% were happy with their healthcare. Now it’s completely turned around with 90% unhappy with their healthcare.
I think your list is correct, but I think there is one YUUUUUUUUUGE point that needs to be added.
The system totally divorced end users from the real cost of the products and services - a dynamic that guarantees spiraling costs and inefficiencies.
The transformation continues. ..
Anything and everything to tear us down off and shove us beneath those who hate and envy us.
Absolutely agree. Most consumers had no skin in the game. The only ones who did were those who directly funded their own insurance.
there is always some good news in unintended consequences. The market place does still speak...........
1) medical sharing accounts which I think will cross state lines
2) Dr’s opting out of gvt programs
3) others?
Absolutely.
In a sense, those who totally opt out of ObamaCare and only buy in if they have a serious medical issue are marginally attached to your idea.
They are the “don’t buy it at all” group.
My policy was approx $100 less before Obama care.
My deductible was $500 before Obama care. Now it’s $2500.
Co-pay went up. Not even co-pay now. Partial payment for the doctor visit, which is not covered now.
Routine procedures which were once covered are no longer covered until deductible is met.....
I could go on.
Basically, medical care is best kept under control of the consumer.
A free capitalist market will make it all as inexpensive and as widely available as it can possibly be... such as a free capitalist market does for anything and everything it is allowed to permeate.
Trump says single payer but he means private with some input from government to support the destitute... which is humane and the status quo in the US for decades.
Modern medicine is ridiculously expensive and a single person may nowadays have dozens of operations, months in an ICU, multiple organs transplanted, multiple electronic devices and high-tech joints implanted.... it cannot be provided for everyone. There must be some way of the individual amortizing this expense over a lifetime.
Or the individual must be able to opt out of all the high tech products and procedures and just pay for bare bones medicine.
The consumer will have to start making more of the big decisions regarding care and how much of his lifetime finances he wants to devote to the care of his corpus.
Lastly, so much is wasted on futile care of the elderly sick in the last weeks of life when it is obvious to all that the end is inevitable.
There must be a way for fewer resources to be spent in such a setting for futile care, and more devoted to comfort and realism at the end of life.
All of medicine is based on microelectronics and computers, including drug manufacturing.
Savings may be dramatic if we allow market forces to permeate all aspects of medical research, teaching, and delivery of care.
I will be even more blunt: Families would decline the radical, hail-Mary-pass, longshot attempts at a lifesaving cure at the end of their loved-one's life, IF they knew that by doing so they would be incurring a huge expense.
The financial reality would force people to choose the most economical, reasonable approach, and force them to accept reality as life dishes it out to us.
That's what I mean when I say 'free market'.
Americans who don’t pay great attention were sold ObamaCare as a means of cutting costs. It was awful, the liberals everywhere said, that each year there was an X% rise in health care costs.
What do we have now?
X+ Lots % rise in premium cost.
Rise in co-pay
Rise in deductible
Loss of Doctor
Loss of hospital
We could go on and on. The point is that the liberals aren’t weeping us rivers over this. They aren’t even mentioning it.
That should be placed on the backs of the insurance companies who provided policies (and still do) that cover everything. My take on end-of-life care is that I want them to keep me alive until I AM THE ONE who says ‘no more’.
I don’t want some bureaucrat making that decision, nor do I want some covert doc or nurse running around pulling plugs. I don’t believe in so-called ‘living wills’ because they are terribly abused.
My closest family will know what I intend, and what not to say to anyone, because I don’t trust the system. If I’m paid up, then the system should deliver what they took my money for.
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