In addition to its financial woes, health care has personnel issues. There are not enough doctors and nurses for our current health care needs. What will happen when (if) ObamaCare adds 30-45 million more people to the rolls of the insured?
To get rid of administrative overhead:
1) Make the health care insurance market more competitive by allowing purchase across state lines. Competition should help squeeze out waste.
2) Remove the tax breaks for health care. Tax breaks on mortgage payments and health insurance have made home and health over-sized portions of our economy. Young people saving for their first home overpay for the home because of increased demand for that home due to tax breaks, and have overpowered health care plans pushed at them with government backing.
3) A friend in the medical industry made a good point to me: with 1/2 the population insured to the hilt it makes sense for the industry to develop treatment programs that cost hundreds of thousands or even a million dollars. Amounts that only the very few can afford. If there was not this over-insurance, the companies would develop more affordable treatments that they could actually sell. Cars are not built like super-safe luxury tanks. Who could afford them? Obama's program goes in the opposite direction: everyone must insure. Costs will go through the roof or it will be rationed. Standard treatment policies at a lower cost could be written to stop the risk of a 700,000 cost for one illness in the family; rationing made in a cost/benefit decision by the family itself. The policy makers would have to look at what regulations or dynamics is stopping this market innovation. HMO's have not succeeded since they are doctor based restrictions, not treatment based restrictions, on this one.
4) Charity. A kid, a young mother, a young dad, get caught flatfooted and under-insured. With a properly sized government, private charity should step in. There is a hospital that treats children for free for everything they are not insured for, St. Jude. Ronald McDonald houses put up parents for free when they have children in need of extended housing needs. With a less intrusive government, charities would step up to the plate and we would give to them.
5) Preventative care, routine operations, and testing are the most common needs people have. They should be able to insure for those alone instead of the extreme need situations.
6) If you save $200,000, you may have your retirement, college fund, etc., plans wiped out by an illness if you are not insured to the hilt, but you've got the savings. Government forcing us to put our savings in different buckets through tax laws (and then charging a penalty or simply not allowing us to spend when we need it (IRA, pre-paid college, Social Security etc.) are travesties.
I'm blithering, and not an expert, so I'll stop with my ideas. But I'm saying there are free market solutions.
Health care is great. The Federal Government is what is broken. It is beyond repair. A Con-Con is needed. We only need 34 states to call for it and this spider web of failure can be eliminated. They will not fix it themselves..ever. Even if they wanted to it is impossible.
There is no problem with our health care. It is the envy of the world, we have the finest Doctors, the best facilities, the most advanced technologies in all related fields, the best access to services.
To say our health care system is broken is a lie.
There is a difference between 50 million peoples not having access to health care services and not having insurance.
The true problem with having the best health care in history is it is expensive.
The reason it is expensive is because the bills are paid by other people’s money, ie: Insurance companies, and public assistance. Thus, there is no incentive for competitive pricing. The average consumer feels they avoided financial destruction by paying thousands of dollars every year in premiums.
In other words, if you don’t want bad things to happen to you, then you better pay up.
It’s called the protection racket and it’s the second oldest way to make a living. It’s also called extortion.
The entire problem with the health care system is not with health care, it’s insurance. To mandate that everyone has insurance only serves to make matters worse. Like trying to put out a fire with buckets of gasoline.
The true solution is to establish a system that ensures lowering costs while encouraging even more advancements over our already lofty standards. The only way to achieve the desired results is by injecting the patient with the only proven formula that reduces costs and increases quality. The name of this time tested, undeniably successful panacea, is “free enterprise”.
The average family of four taking home around fifty thousand dollars a year after taxes, spends twenty percent of their after tax money on extortion payments. If a medical crisis occurs every twenty years, then they have spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars on paying for it. If the event costs 170,000 dollars then the insurance company gets to keep 80,000 dollars. If the event costs 330,000 dollars then the insurance company looses 80,000 dollars. Insurance companies like these odds. In fact, that is exactly how they make so much money.
Over your lifetime, your extortion...um, premium payments will exceed half a million dollars. Whatever is not spent on medical bills, the insurance company keeps. Any sane person feels some resentment in those facts and has no interest whatsoever in being proactive about keeping the costs down, in fact, some feel that,” the more those bastards have to spend the better!”.
We have a system where the buyer, who gets mugged every month, pays the seller with money from the thief !
Hardly conducive to having a competitive market. In fact it ensures that prices of both health care and health insurance will never go down, instead, it ensures that prices will always go up.
The medicine for this terminal condition is obvious and will have stunning side effects, rapidly soaring the entire economy to heights never before encountered.
Medical care entities bill the patient directly, all invoices will have the option for installments with terms, or payment in full.
Every person could be required to deposit 20% of any gross income into an interest bearing personal health care savings account. The interest calculated is based on the rate of inflation.
This is their money to keep and spend as they like with the provision that if the money is spent for medicinal purposes then it is tax free. Up ton once every year, you may withdraw up to half of the money, but if not used for healthcare care it would be taxed as income.
The action sets to action a new and powerful dynamic.
At first, prices will settle to what the market can bear.
Then, enterprising people will figure ways to dominate the market by lowering prices, making money thru sheer volume as say a Wal-Mart, Amazon, Sears and so many others. This will force some out of business but will lower the prices across the entire industry.
Mean while, the consumers will be flushed with capital on hand and a feeling of security and confidence. The economy will grow with unbridled stride. Large ticket items will be in high demand, Finding enough workers, not jobs, will be the major problem and the poor will enrich themselves. It would mark the beginning of a new frontier of prosperity.
In Earnest,
RavenLooneyToon
For instance, we could pay, on our own, for a broken arm, gall bladder removal, basic heart attack, and maybe even most of the cost of breast cancer...but...we would be wiped out in the event of a very long stay in an ICU.
Also....When we were running our small business, we could have afforded a high deductible health plan for our employees. Yes, it would have left them with a big bill in the case of a horrible illness or accident, but they wouldn't be bankrupt. Because insurance is so highly regulated by our state, this option was not open to us as employers and, over the years, many of our employees lived without any health insurance at all.
It just steams me that our state legislators have put us in the position of having to buy more health insurance than we really need.