Health insurance should be insurance and not coverage. If you want to, or as a benefit your company provides a Health Savings account...Great. Otherwise, health insurance should be a simple catastrophic plan. Otherwise, pay for basic care. Credit can be made available through the doctor if he so chooses. Other health credit agencies will go into business, perhaps by authorizing voluntary paycheck withdrawals etc.
Costs should be readily available. If a $350 test is $250 down the road, people will switch. The market sets the prices, not the whim of the medical establishment. Basic charges should be posted online and have a menu of services.
Doctors can partner with a local pawn shop for patients who would rather barter than pay cash. Lots of options, none of which include the government.
The standard was lowered by the whole Obamacare mess and people are too foolish to realize this. Yes, Obamacare destroyed our healthcare system.
Right idea but under the insurance modal if the $250 test down the road isn't done by a provider the people won't switch.
I was just to a hospital ER for a broken foot. Hospital is under my plan, not one doctor there accepts my plan. Phhhttt...how does this work? If you have ever been to a hospital and admitted, not everyone seeing you for treatment is under your insurance coverage. And if you are really ill...you don't even get to have a say who treats you!
So ...all that blather said, your idea is sound. I agree with you on it. But it does little good if they don't take your insurance.
“”health insurance should be a simple catastrophic plan. Otherwise, pay for basic care””
I believe so too. We all (if we had any) had Major Medical long before changes were made to the current system and it worked pretty darn good. I worked for a company in the early ‘50’s that covered its employees with Major Medical. I had major emergency surgery at the age of 20 and never saw a bill and paid for the doctor appointments out of my pocket at the time of the appointments. The hospital called my employer and the paperwork was done as I was sent off to surgery. I don’t believe we even had insurance cards to carry.
Years later my husband and I had our own business and carried catastrophic insurance only as that’s all we could afford. We saw doctors once a year for checkups and paid for that from our pockets. Didn’t need them for anything else.
Good thread, Auntie Mame....Must be the weather is keeping you inside? LOL!!