What I would like to see is catastrophic and pre-existing coverage for all. Beyond that you can decide how much insurance you need or don’t need. My parents used to pay cash for the doctor and dentist. It’s the catastrophic emergencies and pre-existing conditions that bankrupt people.
“What I would like to see is catastrophic and pre-existing coverage for all.”
That would be extremely expensive as every condition is “pre-existing” if you wait until you have it to start paying for the insurance.
As for catastrophic coverage your really just talking about an extremely high deductible and narrow coverage to those very expensive things.
These plans are of course incompatible with plans that attempt to meaningfully cover non-catastrophic medical costs.
” My parents used to pay cash for the doctor and dentist.”
This would be necessary for any market to exist that control costs. Cost are out of control because nobody making the selection of providers do not really cares about the cost due to the fact that they simply are not paying it if they are aware of it at all. Their provider choice is motivated by everything but cost, which of course means costs will go up as fast as possible.
” It’s the catastrophic emergencies and pre-existing conditions that bankrupt people.”
Unfortunately our medical technology has already advanced past the point of affordability and into the area of luxury.
The trouble is there is no way any economy can afford such luxury items for the entire population, just as it can’t afford any other. So the 3 choices are:
1: Allow free markets so that rich people can finance the tech until its technology improves to the point where it becomes more widely available.
2: Using a monetary trick like insurance and loans try to force the entire population to pay for it until they can’t afford anything else they want.(current route).
3: Shut down the market and have the government bureaucrats dictate what everyone can and can’t have based upon what we can afford and what they think is worth funding.(single payer)
Option 2 is what we have been doing for the last 50 years, whereas Option 3 is what much of the western world has shifted to which is why almost all of the R&D that still exist in the healthcare industry is in the USA.
Option 1 is what we did originally for the last 5 thousand years until the late 60’s.