NOTHING about any “health insurance” reform has ever once lowered the cost of health insurance or health care, just as nothing aboouyt federal aid, grants, loans to students has lowered actual total tuition, ever.
Why?
In both cases the Dims (in control of the media) have had everyone focused on the hole (insurance or how much students pay for college) and not the donut (either health care costs themselves, or the exhorbitant college tuitions). By mounting the arguments in that manner the education industrial complex and health care industrial complex have always gotten all the money they wanted, WITHOUT ANY MECHANISM (cash in the marketplace) TO GET THEIR COSTS DOWN. The “reforms” have just protected those two areas of the economy from needing to be more cost effective. Of all sectors of the economy, health care and college education have far exceeded the inflation rates of the economy in general or any other economic sector.
“Insurance costs” are not the donut, they are only the hole. Insurance costs are driven by health care costs, not insures profits. I worked for years in a non-profit multi-employer pension and inusrance outift. Our health inurance plan was self-insured - we managed it ourselves. Our costs were just the adnminstrative costs, a stop-loss insurance and the claims. We kept a reserve for catastrophic claims in a single year, so we could lower how much premiums needed to increase to account for that. Our earnings on our reserve paid our administrative expenses. So it was a well run plan that always met its claims obligations, and the benefits were pretty good as well. In the 80s and 902 when the nation was complaining about the “rising cost of health insurance” it was a smokescreen. It was not the “rising cost of health insurance. Those increases were merely adjustments for the rising cost of HEALTHCARE. Our well run not for profit self-insured plan HAD TO make premium increases that were on par with the national averages.
We need many things to be NOT “insured” coverages, but paid for out of health savings accounts and health savings accounts need to be a generous part of any monthly health insurance premium. The “insured” needs to be mostly the catastrophic stuff - surgeries & major accidents, long term high value medicines (only those above a certain amount or when the total monthly for medicine is above a certain ammount).
Hospitals and insurers should not be allowed in networks or PPOs that bind an individual as to where and where not they can get covered services. All insurers need to be accepted by all health care providers, with no behind the scenes deals between them. The only “deals” need to be between the individual and the health care providers.
When your house has damages covered by insurance your insurer does not dictate who you must use to get the repair. Your insurer assesses the issue and tells you how much your claim benefit will be, that’s it. And that is all a health care provider needs to know - how much the insurer will pay. The difference if any will be your out-of-pocket or out of your health savings account. That’s it. It should not matter that the health care provider would wish your insurer would pay more, so your balance would be less. Getting that balance lower is their job, which they can do FOR YOU, lest everything go back to the health care providers getting everything they can from the insurers and insurance premiums and healh care cosrs continue to refuse to go down.
In the 80s and 902 when the nation was complaining about the “rising cost of health insurance” it was a smokescreen.
I digress. My mom was there when the clinton’s rolled into town. Started pushing her healthcare proposals and then watched all of that morph into HMOs, etc. She said that was pretty much the end of it.
And now, after obamacare went into effect, the drug companies, thinking that they could get their hands on all that federal money raised their drug prices through the roof.
I guess, it is now further proof that the Left/Dem’s use government to enrich themselves, their donors and their friends by forcing government regulations down our throats, for our own good, of course.
It’s no different with education. Government gets involved in the student loan business and prices start going up. obama lets the government take the whole business over and education costs sky rock.