I agree with you. I think that we need to get away from the $20 copay. HMO’s have ruined the Health industry. If you have the flu and have to go to the doctor you should just pay for it. Health insurance should really be for serious illness and injury. I carry a $2,500 deductible so I basically pay for everything unless its really serious. I have no problem with that.
I’m just pointing out that there are a lot of ideas out there that we should be looking at to lower the cost of health coverage.
You’re right. Congress actually created the HMO problem when they passed the HMO Act of 1973, which required private employers with 25 or more employees to offer federally certified HMO options IF they also offered traditional health insurance plans to employees. HMOs had been lobbying for it for years, and they basically used the force of government to push their way into the employer-employee relationship. Anyone who thinks that private health insurance companies aren’t screwed up simply doesn’t understand the health insurance industry. The private health insurance companies are protected from competition by almost insurmountable regulatory barriers. The costs of market entry are enormous, and these companies pay politicians to keep the regulations in place. We don’t have a free market in health care, even on the private side. If we had a free market in health care, the cost of care would decrease, like it has with plastic surgery and vision correction surgery.
Because I have pretty serious health issues I spend a lot of time in Doctors offices and hospitals. The biggest problem I see for health insurance costs is that people are programmed to run to the Docs every time they get a sniffle or stub their toe because TV runs all these “Preventative medicine - don’t wait” (Does a 20 year old really ‘need’ prostate exams?) and “Ask your doctor if Snarfblat is right for you” commercials... Oprah and co. tell parents they are abusers if they don’t run their kid straight into the Ritalin factory if he isn’t a docile post turtle etc.
And so we are a nation of hypochondriacs. All the totally unneeded ‘care’ costs a fortune... and it has to be paid for.
Or we could act with a little intelligence and save the Doc trips for when they are truly needed/warranted and bring the costs down.