I would be fine with something like that. Certainly: Routine doctors’ office visit should be paid in cash. I mean, that much is inarguable. At some level, I don’t care how damn good your insurance is, I believe you should have to pay ten bucks to go see the doctor. You don’t get out of a freaking oil change joint for less than $30, do you? What about your food market? 3-5 items, nothing, and you’re up to $20. What is it about medical care that makes people think they should be getting it for free? Are you/I/they not consuming it? Is not the education of a doctor the single most expensive “trade” a person normally, if not in their lifetime, a consumer of same comes into contact with?
There are many, many ways in which the capital cost of an expensive whizbang machine might be amortized. I could even see (and this is in some ways absurd so brace yourself) a doctor’s office or hospital offering revenue shares in such a machine....to patients.
I think catastrophic insurance should be by far, by MASSIVE far, the normal mode of insurance.
People always talk about the military industrial complex. The medical industrial complex is quite possibly 3x as large. We have been brainwashed into thinking med care is a right and somehow we should not have to pay for it. The fact is that the healthcare industry has ensconced itself into our economy in jaw-dropping ways. Another fact is, that when people do not see money being extracted from them, they think stuff is free. Withholding taxes, anyone?
Do you know that the state of Maine is being sued for importation of prescription drugs? The costs of those drugs sourced domestically is in many cases 20 times and in some cases ONE HUNDRED TIMES the generic substitute cost. (You will see dozens of examples if you watch that vid I linked in my prior post) Why are there laws prohibiting importation of Rx drugs? And perhaps more alarmingly, do you know what the penalties are?
Talking $100 million and 10 years. I kid you not. Why would there be such insane penalties if the protective measures were not being instituted by the drug companies themselves?
Did you know that in most counties, doctors or hospital administrators sit on boards that govern the permits for say, MRI machines. This is a topic known as CON (certificate of need) law (and there could be no better name) Many times, these docs sit on hospital boards and thus have an interest in the scarcity of medical care within their jurisdictions. So, if you want to come into an area and set an MRI lab where, judged on volume, you could provide the service for say $350 when the going rate is $2500, you’re likely to be denied permission to do so. Another example of the ensconced nature of the officially sanctioned monopoly power given the healthcare. It’s unconscionable and in any other business would be a black-letter violation of all the anti-trust and anti-competition laws written in the 20’s.
But like most other aspects of our economy, it’s scam-based.
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Since, as you indicated, medical care is provided by people, a “right” to free medical care is a right to enslave the physician.