[Mr. K]

Imagine a doctors office on every street corner.

And each family pays a subscription of $1000 a year for single or $2000 for family

You also pay a per visit fee of something minimal (like $10) just to keep everyone from going there every day to chit chat with the doctor (hey it’s free!)

With a mere 100 families he is making a decent living. and this is just for your daily health needs, 99% of all health care.

Then for catatrophic problems (broken leg, heart attack, etc) you have major medical insurance for about the same price.

And you get to deduct any medical cost from your income, for income tax purposes.

Loser Pays, for malpractrice cases. (cuts 99% of malpractice litigation, i bet)

This covers everyone, keeps the LAWYERS out of it, AND the government and the costs would drop dramatically (most overhead is paperwork)

Comapnies that make drugs, do THEIR OWN testing. The government only verifies that they have done the testing and it is peer reviewed for thoroughness. Companies that fail to do so would then be criminally liable. And for somethign thjat does not show up 40 years from now, hey... nothign is perfect. You gotta know that going in.

Now that Ihave solve health care... what’s next?

[dfwgator]

I have thought for a long time that would be an excellent approach.

[MrB]

Puts too much freedom in the hands of the individual. Leftists would howl.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Anything that makes things private, within realms of sane accountability, is good.

[MissNomer]

That is an awesome idea. Also, your proposal for a per-visit fee makes a really important point about things that are perceived as "free" or at least "already paid for."

If I may point out one tiny thing, though, it's that drug companies DO do their own testing (and yes, it's entirely at their own expense). The FDA may provide advice (if asked specific questions), but they do review (and boy, do they review).

Regarding drug development, an interesting idea floated a while back by another Freeper is the idea of levels of drug approval. While all drugs would have to undergo testing for safety, there could be an approval level just for that, with a higher approval level for proving efficacy. This sort of multi-stage approval system would greatly reduce drug development costs, and thus greatly reduce costs to the consumer. It would also allow doctors and patients to make their own decisions about what works. (Plenty of drug development programs nowadays are for chemical entities that have already been approved in another form or for another indication, in case you're wondering why anyone would want to just prove safety and not efficacy.)