Manhattan Contrarian ping
Yes. Capitalism was driven from health care during WWII.
Because, so often government is the problem.
“Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”Source: Ronald Reagan Quotes
For health care, bring on market force:
1. Break most hospitals into two highly competitive entities
2. Convert other hospitals into real estate leasing entities with competing surgical suites and nursing wings
3. Separate out drug coverage so hospital systems can run care coverage systems and cut out insurance company overhead and meddlers.
4. Create interstate drug plans that don’t have to pay want the drugmaker wants for every drug. To qualify for exchange listing and federal subsidies, they would have to most (~80% or more) in all important types (large volume recombinant, small volume recombinant, breakthroughs under patent, etc.). Group and exchange plans to offer time-limited vouchers at plan set amounts for out-of-formulary drugs. Voucher plans would have variable premiums. Plans without minimums (or vouchers) could be vended directly to individuals and families.
5. These plans would be all the doctors (and AI) prescribe for formulary drugs with co-pays equal to manufacturing cost
6. Have drug patents limited by government sourced product revenue and overall domestic government health care spending and not by time [so drug companies have an incentive to minimize government health care funding]
7. Require Kirchoff patent collapse to a single entity upon FDA marketing approval of a covered entity
8. reform medical education, breaking down medicine and dentistry into simpler chunks and start it in the first year of college
9. replace most primary care doctoring with AI
(Insurers would pay human doctors to confirm AI diagnosis, orders for expensive tests[MRI, genetic], prescribe radiation imaging[CT, PET, X-ray]/treatment, and voucher/government co-pay drugs. Other human doctor care would be private pay.)
10. Radioisotope-related care would be at international airport centers
When I was young, BC/BS insurance didn’t cover drugs.
Medicare didn’t cover outpatient drugs for decades.
To lose weight, people could eat soup.
The water in the soup would delay absorption.
To lose weight, people could throw out their tablespoons.
It has nothing to do with “government” per se … but with the basic flaw of third party payments for any transaction.
Health Care and Health Insurance are two different things.
Conflating the two is a disservice.
Care is what you get to help you get better. Insurance is what you pay to offset unexpected it catastrophic financial expenses.
Weight loss drugs are not Health Care for most Fat Pill users.
Avoiding obesity in the first place is what health care should promote.
What insurers might do is to have co-insurance through the insurer and not the pharmacist.
To get a $250 drug with a 20% co-insurance would require prior placement of $50 into your insurer account.
Drug vendors would have a harder time gaming such a system.
Great, less protein, less trt, more weakened immune system until all the hat and glycogen be gone?
Diet and exercise gone. Get injected.
There is the matter of overtime and the PPACA hourly threshold.
In the 1920s, people with high medical costs simply might have asked the boss for more hours.
We already have Medicaid, which provides coverage for the disadvantaged, poor, and disabled, while people with jobs or employer insurance usually aren’t eligible, with rules in place to limit costs.
Government cannot solve all problems but it sure can make thise problems worse.
Governments are not supposed to solve problems. It’s supposed to do what it can to ensure a level playing field so people can solve their own problems.
Healthcare is an economic nemesis. We want a perfect solution to an imperfect problem.
IMHO the reason health care CAN ONLY go up is because we keep learning. For example, if you have zero knowledge about medicine then there’s no cost associated because nobody can or will do anything. The more you know the more you can do, and it needs to be paid for. As science progresses, we learn more and more, leading to more and more possibilities of things we can fix.
At the same time, we’re all afflicted with different problems while there’s a scarcity of people that can assist with each.
So, two questions
1. What is the least fraudulent-ridden approach, driving the most efficiency?
2. Considering peoples’ lives are at stake, how much profit is reasonable?
When life and death are at stake you can gouge people unethically. That said, profit drives innovation, ultimately bringing new solutions at a lower cost for all. How do you calculate the moral and ethical boundary?
I’m so tired of hearing about “free healthcare” in other countries, when there’s no such thing and they’re, to some degree, subsidized by American citizens paying for the full cost of new drugs and technology.
I have elderly family in the UK, waiting ages for care that keeps getting delayed. I don’t have the heart to tell them, they’re calculating ‘cost benefit’ and waiting for you to die.
Then we still die anyway, all at different ages - no ‘equality’ at the end of it all.
The government can’t solve of fix ANYTHING.
This post, like most of our culture, misses the point, misses the point that RFK and a small minority have been preaching for years.
We don’t focus on good diet, good exercise...prevention.
We focus on remedies after we get sick. The #1 cost of Medicaid is preventable: Tobacco, alcohol, drugs, excess sugar, food additives in food found in the Quickie Mart.
Consider: One high cost of Medicaid is Newborn and new mom care. The highest cost of Newborns is being born with the drug addiction of the mom. A highest cost of the mom is preclampsia, which by thesis of Emory U PHD is due to the culture of addicting babies to sugary drinks and those babies grow up still addicted to sugary drinks when they get pregnant and have babies.
A second high cost is doctor’s inducing labor on Friday ... Or chemically delaying delivery til Monday ...so they don’t have to work weekends.
Our society used to have a phrase: Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. Now the phrase seems to be: take no thought for the morrow...eat, drink, be merry.