Posted on 03/03/2017 7:19:57 AM PST by nikos1121
The first sentence of Congress' Obamacare repeal should read: "There shall be a free market in health insurance.”
Right there, I've solved the health insurance crisis for 90 percent of Americans. Unfortunately, no one can imagine what a free market in health care looks like because we haven't had one for nearly a century.
On NBC's "Meet the Press" this weekend, for example, Chuck Todd told Sen. Tom Cotton that his proposal to create affordable health care that would be widely available, "sounds good," but "do you understand why some people think that's an impossible promise to keep?”
(The "do you understand ...?" formulation is a condescension reserved only for conservatives, whose disagreement with liberals is taken as a sign of stupidity.)
Todd continued: "To make it affordable, making it wider, I mean, that just seems like -- you know, it seems like you're selling something that can't be done realistically.”
Dream Sequence: Chuck Todd on Russia's "Meet the Press" after the fall of the Soviet Union: "Do you understand why some people think that's an impossible promise to keep? To make bread affordable, making it wider, I mean, that just seems like -- you know, it seems like you're selling something that can't be done realistically.”
It turns out that, outside of a communist dictatorship, all sorts of products are affordable AND widely available! We don't need Congress to "provide" us with health care any more than we need them to "provide" us with bread. What we need is for health insurance to be available on the free market.
With lots of companies competing for your business, basic health insurance would cost about $50 a month. We know the cost because Christian groups got a waiver from Obamacare, and that's how much their insurance costs right now. (Under the law, it can't be called "insurance," but that's what it is.)
Even young, healthy people would buy insurance at that price, expanding the "risk-sharing pools" and probably bringing the cost down to $20 or $30 a month.
In a free market, there would be an endless variety of consumer-driven plans, from catastrophic care for the risk-oblivious to extravagant plans for the risk-averse.
You know -- just like every other product in America.
You should visit America sometime, Chuck! The orange juice aisle in a Texas grocery store knocked the socks off Russian president Boris Yeltsin. (Imagine how cheap a double screwdriver must be in America!)
Just as there are rows of different types of orange juice in the grocery store –- and loads of grocery stores -- there will be loads of health insurance plans and insurance companies offering them.
Americans would finally be able to buy whatever insurance plans they liked, as easily as they currently buy flat-screen TVs, cellphones and -- what's that product with the cute gecko in its commercials? I remember now! CAR INSURANCE!
Evidently, insurance is not impervious to the iron law of economics that every product sold on the free market gets better and cheaper over time.
The only complicated part of fixing health care is figuring out how to take care of the other 10 percent of Americans -- the poor, the irresponsible and the unlucky. And the only reason that is complicated is because of fraud.
Needless to say, the modern nanny state already guarantees that no one will die on the street in America. The taxpayer spends more than a trillion dollars every year on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security disability insurance so that everyone's health is taken care of, from cradle to grave.
Unfortunately, probably at least half of that sum is fraud.
Policing fraud is difficult because: (1) the bureaucrats dispensing government benefits believe there is no fraud and, if there is, it's a good thing because it redistributes income; and (2) we keep bringing in immigrants for whom fraud is a way of life. (See "Adios, America! The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole.”)
Consequently, after the first sentence establishing a free market in health insurance, the entire rest of the bill should be nothing but fraud prevention measures to ensure that only the truly deserving -- and the truly American -- are accessing taxpayer-supported health care programs.
I'd recommend sending as much as possible back to the states, and also paying bounties to anyone who exposes a fraud against Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Anyone caught committing health care fraud should get 10 years. Not in prison, in a Medicaid doctor's waiting room.
But I'm sure you guys in Congress have come up with lots of great ideas for policing fraud in the SEVEN YEARS you've had to think about it. (Hello? Is he breathing? Dammit, I'm not getting a pulse!!)
Then, Congress can start removing all the bad stuff from the U.S. Code, such as:
-- the requirement that hospitals provide "free" care to anyone who shows up (how about separate health clinics for poor people with the sniffles?);
-- the exemption of insurance companies from the antitrust laws (where all our problems began); and
-- the tax breaks only for employer-provided health insurance (viciously and arbitrarily punishing the self-employed).
The goal of "universal health care" is very simple to achieve, just as the goal of "universal wearing of clothing" seems to have been taken care of.
The government can provide for those who can't provide for themselves, but the rest of us need to be allowed to buy health insurance on the free market -- an innovation that has made America the richest, most consumer-friendly country in the world.
It's taken 50 years, but, thanks to Hillary's losing the election, we finally have liberals on the record opposing the Soviet Union. Can't all of Washington come together and end our soviet health care system?
I can't count the number of obese Type 2 diabetics I know with cadillac health insurance plans who don't try to manage their diabetes by altering their lifestyle. They don't bother because the have cadillac health plans. Now if the costs to them went up exponentially, hmmmm....
I have been hit by uninsured drivers. My anecdotal experience is that the odds of someone having valid insurance decreases with the likelihood of their causing an accident. In effect, the good, law-abiding drivers subsidize the bad, uninsured motorists. Even then, the free market has worked properly to ensure most people can have adequate coverage. Beyond that, it’s not mandated that you drive, and public roads are public infrastructure.
Health care is a private industry. Market forces built the best health care system in the world. Government interference has only decreased quality and increased costs.
Before prescribing a fix for health care, you need a proper diagnosis. The problem with health care isn’t service or availability; it’s regulation and liability. The solution isn’t another tyrannical socialist boondoggle ; it’s deregulation and tort reform.
The _state_ mandates car insurance, as a condition of exercising the _privilege_ of driving. (Whether that’s a _right_ is a different debate.) That is NOT a federal issue.
Mandating health insurance amounts to demanding a condition of exercising the _privilege_ of existing. ...except that it’s a right to exist, not a privilege, so they can’t burden you with punishable conditions to exist.
Again: the pricing is a matter of supply and demand - if you mandate everyone purchase insurance, then the price WILL go up because you have increased demand.
As for aiding those not covered: bill people. Collect on bills. Make policies for accommodating payment special cases: my heart surgery could be covered by an entirely doable $10/day for the rest of my life. Insofar as there may be a small number of people who absolutely can’t pay, create a targeted solution - oh wait, we have that, it’s called Medicaid & Medicare, adjust accordingly.
You want to decrease costs? Allow inter-state commerce in health insurance. That it’s forbidden is absolutely insane. Fix the tort law issues as well to seriously reduce doctors’ malpractice insurance (costs passed on). Direct service providers to publish real price lists, no more of this impenetrable “we can’t tell you how much procedure X is until we know who’s paying for it”. And at some point you have to declare “enough is enough” and let adults take consequences for their decisions.
But don’t mandate coverage. That makes life into a privilege, punishable for not buying dictated coverage.
It starts with education.
We see this Marie Osmond’s photoshopped, girdled body every night talking about guaranteed losing weight.
The first step is knowledge on just how your body gains or loses weight.
Sure, don’t eat you’ll lose weight, or eat Nutra Systems, you’ll lose weight, but three months later you’ll gain the weight back and then some.
People in this country are walking around with damaged pancreases from all the sugar. They walk around at work all day with a big gulp diet colk, a Mcdonald’s salad in the cup for lunch, then they go home and eat a big meal, and more diet coke.
All they’re doing is replenishing their glycogen tank. They never gain weight, but they don’t lose it either.
Education. You start with education, NOT just changing the diet.
You’re right.
I agree with you 100%
Does anyone know why health insurance companies can’t operate nationwide? What prompted this law?
Look, if you can’t even get well-educated people to modify their behavior, how in Hades do you think you’re going to get people to educate themselves, then act upon what they’ve learned. Insurance has, in some respects, incentivized self-destructive behavior. Seems to me, making folks pay more of the cost for adverse lifestyle choices might promote a willingness to learn and to make better choices.
Quite. At some point the system must defer responsibility to the adults causing their own problems by choice. Smoker? pay your predictable cancer treatment costs up front. Obese diabetic? in 12 months we’re limiting payment for insulin to that required for a normal-weight person; better shed those pounds, mostly by NOT EATING SO MUCH SUGAR.
My diabetic mother noted that a magazine devoted to living with diabetes featured a cover showing a chocolate cake and reference to the page # having the recipe - a full-sugar confection, with friendly directions to check your blood sugar & dose your insulin shots accordingly. WTF?
With one exception, that is the kind of thinking displayed by every other Type 2 I know. Most are well educated, and the majority have awesome private insurance.
Because you appeal to a person’s desire to look good.
Company’s have been providing incentives to be healthy, and in return you get your health insurance free. If you choose not to, you pay more on the company health insurance.
Yes, company’s can do that. A person is over weight, high BP, high glucose etc. you can require them to pay into the plan. I can’t recall the formula, but it’s like 15-20% of the annual cost, they must kick in.
Women join health clubs to lose wt. But guess what happens, they gain weight.
I can talk to a woman about losing wt, and within two minutes there’s five people listening to what I’m saying.
People don’t want to diet on and off or pretend...So, it there’s a desire to get healthy then you provide it.
I agree though, the federal gov’t stays the heck out of it.
Big lobby.
He is, is he?
What's stopping them?
I can tell you that while some costs are higher, they’re not high enough, at least by themselves, to motivate a change in behavior. Neither is the desire to look good, probably due in part to the fact that with so many people now overweight, the concept of what’s unattractive is changing. Money, to my mind anyway, is still the best motivator for folks who need additional incentive.
If it means spending additional money to seriously police, pursue and penalize the fraud in indigent care then spend it, for a generation if necessary, to break the scamming habit and the conditioning. But, return to the system that we had, with the addition of competition across state lines. We’ll all be the better for it.
Damn right, you'll never get a strait answer on what anything costs until the bills start piling up.
So you were diagnosed in November? Too bad, your going to max out your deductibles and co-pays, and then they start all over again in two months.
Beyond mandates, the biggest problem with health insurance is that it is extremely rare that a person sees the cost of the charges for visits.
If an individual had to pay first and be reimbursed, or at least see the itemized charges along with a “reason your bill is so high” portion that they had to sign, there would be screaming and hollering to the heavens.
Um, I’m pretty sure deregulating medical care will result in consumers shopping.
Again health insurance is a financial service, not medical care. Tinkering with insurance regs does nothing to reduce the base cost of any medical procedure, only the negotiated price (and these are not the same things).
It’s a supply and demand issue. Demand is high and supply is low because supply is highly regulated which stifles competition and the entry of new providers.
Insurance is a shell game hiding this basic economic truth and it boggles my mind that everyone is stuck on insurance costs when the real problem is a shortage of providers especially general practitioners.
If all the money thrown at Obamacare over the last eight years had been spent of creating new residency programs and loan forgiveness for doctors moving to rural areas, we would just now start to reap the rewards of thousands of new drs entering practice.
Prices are not listed for the consumer.
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