Posted on 12/26/2024 10:03:17 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
America needs a working marketplace where patients are the primary customers.
Consider this: Health insurance is a product so terrible that few Americans voluntarily buy it without receiving a sizable subsidy.
“No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did,” UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty wrote this month. “It’s a patchwork built over decades.”
Today, insurers are accused of pushing up prices for medical care and then denying legitimate claims. Their leaders are said to be greedy or incompetent. In reality, we have a more fundamental problem: Health insurance can no longer pay for or manage modern health care, and the patchwork that Witty described is not fixable. It makes no sense to try.
Instead, Americans need to begin to create a working health-care marketplace that better aligns the incentives of health-care providers with the rapidly changing needs of patients.
Health insurance was meant to work like other kinds of insurance: When policyholders got sick, they would use the collective financial resources of the healthy to cover their costs. But this model was designed to pay for emergencies such as hospitalizations — not to “share the risk” of erectile dysfunction, weight loss, lifelong management of chronic conditions, or the mental health treatment needed by 1 in 5 Americans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 90 percent of America’s health-care expenditure goes toward chronic and mental health conditions.
It’s as if homeowners’ policies expanded from insuring against fires and floods to also covering utility bills and property taxes, or even replacing worn-out furniture.
Yes, some people become extraordinarily ill during their lives. But all of us, even the relatively healthy, now use a lot of health care. It’s no longer an unexpected need — an insurable risk. It has...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Now wait just a doggone minute there! That's hitting close to home.
I remember in 1977 paying ten dollars for a doctor visit, and fifteen dollars for a dental cleaning. Yeah, that was a lot of money then, but only a few hours of work and quite affordable even without insurance.
Hospital stays were not exactly affordable, at $92.00 a day.
It is not just insurance it is the health care companies also.
Then government got involved.
Today they are approaching 20% of GDP.
Coincidence?
Bookmark
My wife’s and my monthly health-insurance premium as quadrupled in the 14 years since Obamacare passed.
The present woke, socialist, crony-capitalist, political hairball known as American health care can mostly be blamed on Obama, Pelosi and the HHS
The Democrats plan was to make 100 million Americans dependent on government, and they have succeeded. We are presently stuck with this system. It can’t be reformed or eliminated.
So let it continue, for now. BUT Trump should give Americans choice.
Create medical “free trade zones” where only cash is accepted and FDA/HHS and trial lawyers have no power. Let this system grow along our present corrupt, bloated medical-delivery system. Give patients and citizens complete freedom.
Watch what happens.....
Insurance isn’t the problem.
What Deep State has done to insurance is the problem.
And consumers’ ignorance about why insurance exists doesn’t help.
All of these articles ignore the elephant in the room. As predicted at the time it was enacted Obamacare ruined what was not a perfect system but was much less onerous. Remember, it was sold as the “Affordable Care Act “ . The commiecrats are enemies of Americans.
The exact same prescription for $358 in the US, costs $27 if you purchase it from the actual maker in Mumbai, India. You just need to plan your purchases and adjust for international shipping and customs time needed. The best key to health is to avoid American institutional medicine and health insurers as much as possible. It is horrible by design.
Government regulations and compliance costs. Start there.
They are now figuring out that when a third-party is involved, the price goes higher? What ivy-league school did these fools attend?
“the biggest problem is the insurance companies get deep discounts that you don’t get if you don’t have medical insurance. You get to pay list price. Lucky you.”
Absolutely. They pay .30 cents on the dollar or less. Some even negotiate with the providers to just write it off their taxes as a loss and get billed nothing. This causes providers to greatly inflate and pad their bills. But you are still paying your copay... And your copay for an office visit is the cost the provider wants to receive anyhow, so the insurance company is coming up with nothing for these visits. Your copay covered the cost and you still have to pay the insurance premium on top of that.
The insurance companies are absolutely making a killing despite their false complaints. It is a huge crooked price fixing scam...
People need to understand how the prices are set.
Almost every price in a hospital is based on the Medicare base price. It doesnt matter if you are on Medicare…that is the base of the pricing system.
So, in essence, the government is setting what it will pay for stuff…and insurance works off that.
“Insurance isn’t the problem.
What Deep State has done to insurance is the problem.”
Yep. The socialists want single-payer.
That is an interesting piece of information.
I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me there would be a class action suit in their somewhere for uninsured patients who are charged more than the Medicare price.
Insurance like Obamacare. The corrupt US healthcare system is not Free Market. It is a partnership of government and insurance corporations, which is definitive fascism.
It’s a industry full of greedy corrupt people who thought it was great idea to constantly increase your car and health insurance premiums as a matter of routine, even though the vast majority of Americans never ever file a claim and have perfect driving records.
It’s a industry full of greedy corrupt people who thought it was great idea to constantly increase your car and health insurance premiums as a matter of routine, even though the vast majority of Americans never ever file a claim and have perfect driving records.
For once, I agree with what the Washington Post has written, at least in the paragraphs at the top of this article. The whole healthcare/insurance program in the USA incentivizes people who do not take personal responsibility for their own health. Too many Americans think they can be obese and immobile, and hope that doctors, pharmaceuticals, and surgery will help them.
There’s not enough money in the USA for all the healthcare that is going to be needed in the next few decades for people with type 2 diabetes. The complications that come from that disease are extreme and worsen over time. Perhaps RFKjr will be able to convince people to take more control over their own situations. Most diseases cannot be reversed by lifestyle changes.
Every time the government mandates another condition that must be included in health insurance, premiums go up. Democrats probably want everyone to have to pay for “gender affirming” treatment coverage. People should be able to buy health insurance coverage based on their needs and choices.
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