Plus, the whole system encourages confusion and hassles, like the ones you try to explain. It's like the tax code. Too much information and an enormous pain in the backside that we shouldn't have to deal with and in fact have to hire professionals for.
Eventually we will have single-payer, walk-into-the-doctor's-office health care, and we might as well have the Republicans do it to keep the costs down and eliminate the Peter Singers' and Zeke Emanuels' take on human life.
Staying in business. The onerous state mandates and regulations they operate under would make their costs spiral out of control if they didn't carefully monitor their payouts.
Look, as has been mentioned time and time again in various sources, the profit margins in the health insurance industry are tiny, around 3%. It just barely covers their opportunity cost of capital.
This idea that they are reaping giagantic profits by leaving us lousy care is total nonsense.
Plus, the whole system encourages confusion and hassles, like the ones you try to explain.
GOP proposals would greatly simplify it.
Here's one. Instead of allowing you to buy a comprehensive policy from your employer with pre-tax dollars, you would be given a tax credit to purchase a catastrophic policy on the individual market.
To qualify, this policy would have to give you protection against premium increases in the future should you develop a medical condition, but it would only cover the big things. This would give you geniuine insurance, and it would be yours no matter where you work. It would protect you from financial ruin should your health seriously deteriorite.
ER visits for minor injuries, routine doctor visits, etc., would not be covered by your insurance. For that you'd open an interest-bearing medical savings account, to which you would be allowed to contribute dollars pretax. You'd be allowed to keep that money in your account as long as you like (currently you lose it if you don't spend it by the end of the year), but you'd only be able to withdraw without penalty to cover medical expenses.
State regulation of insurance would have to be overriden, obviously, as many states right now effectively prohibit catastrophic policies like the one above. To encourage competition, we would would allow people to buy their policies accross state lines. Insurance companies would tend to migrate to states that had the best regulations.
Eventually we will have single-payer, walk-into-the-doctor's-office health care,
I hope not, and it's not necessary. The choice need not be between single payer and the current system. There is a third way.