E Exactly. Now what is an insurance company? It is a contract for a business to assume a future liability or expense for a current stream of cash payments. If it was so lucrative everyone would do it. If healthcare insureres were underpricing risk then others would enter the market and drive down margins. Like Berkshire Hathaway got out of Super Cat storm insurance because the low premiums due to others entering the market. So we can force insurers to have zero profits and go bankrupt, but even zero profit insurers owned by the policyholders (mutuals) aren't able to do so. The base fact is that healthcare is an expensive bureacratic nightmare and most of it is done through individual doctors offices that are terribly inefficient and this occurs due to a shortage of physicians that has created a cartel of sorts that is like a tapeworm to American society.
In order for doctors to practice they need to do a medical residency. 90% of the costs of a medical residency are borne by US taxpayers through Medicare, Medicaid or the VA. Then as we subsidize the training of 90%+ of doctors in America to the tune of $15 billion a year, how many doctors after that even accept Medicare? LESS THAN 50%!! So we're subsidizing the education/training of the highest paid profession in this country and allowing their licensing power to squeeze the supply so we're waiting in lines like communists waiting for bread to see doctors. Competition and not allowing groups to constrict supply will bring down prices and increase flexibility in medicine.
Single payer is the solution everyone else in the world has, but for some reason, people here think it is a bad idea - yet even Mexico has a state plan for it's people. Insurance companies going "FOR PROFIT" which happened under Nixon and was FORMERLY ILLEGAL has caused this....Either they go back to "NON PROFIT" status or we go Single payer - and yes that means all those crooks in Congress lose out on the Insurance bribes,....err PAC money. DD
there's a board meeting on weekly basis to evaluate certain cases where the treatment should be stopped/changed or pulls the plug , each member of the physicians get paid nicely per case , but the idea is to save more money for the providers, which it does
https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...Berkshire-Hathaway-JPMorgan-Chase-partner-U.S. Seems silly that companies are forced to find solutions to reduce costs and improve quality for their employees. Will this approach bring about some real solutions for society as a whole or just further fracture the healthcare availability and quality?
Henry Kaiser did this almost a 80 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Permanente#Early_years That is what Kaiser Permanente is. All the big companies could pool together to do this. If you don't work for a big company you would kind of be screwed.
This is the kind of thing the government should be doing. Things that work best on a large scale like health care. Its not a luxury its a basic necessity everyone needs.
I think people should be able to buy into medicare. If insurance can't compete with inefficient big government, then they shouldn't exist. We also need to reform the FDA. It's a freaking mess. As inefficient as it gets.
I think people think too much about what should be done with insurance when they should think about what should be done with care. It's the medical professions that charge the exorbitant prices. The insurance companies are only complicit because they provide the market liquidity that makes the exorbitant prices possible. I don't think we can just be like all the other countries in the world and enjoy their success. Their success is in part predicated on the US spending a ton of money to develop the latest technology. If we stop spending what we do, progress will slow all over the world. I think there is a market structure problem in that healthcare conflates wellness care with catastrophe mitigation. Check-ups, preventive care, etc is a much different service than, say, chemotherapy or open-heart surgery. But we use doctors for all of it, and we use a single health insurance plan for all of it. When we get health insurance, we're buying some financial risk mitigation for the big but unlikely expenses and a financing mechanism for the certain but routine care. This should be divided. You'd have a regular healthcare provider of some kind that does your checkups, do routine medications, etc. You can pay for that on a simple subscription basis or a per-service basis -- a free market with no distortion from insurance. You could also buy elective services in a free market, with no insurance. Competitive forces should drive efficiency. There would probably be (like there is now) free nonprofit clinics aimed at serving people who can't afford their own wellness care. There are probably segments of elderly and hospice care that probably fit the same model. There are emergency services: ambulances, ERs. That should be a government expense, though it doesn't have to be federal. You have an ethical imperative to serve whomever is having a health emergency, so just pay with taxpayer dollars, like you would for fire fighters, cops, etc. Then there's the big life-threatening stuff, that may be unlikely but catastrophic if it happens to you. This is just for specialists who don't have regular patients. This is where insurance is appropriate. Insurance is no longer paying for the inevitable stuff, so you only need high-deductible catastrophic coverage. This may still be a problematic issue with questions about how much is a life really worth. But, at least you've reduced the breadth of the problem and you've protected access to routine health services from the costs of someone's bleeding edge cancer therapy.
All big pharama companies are cutting R&D funding. Also 90% research doesn't yield anything useful. A lot of research is funded by government grants which when the tech becomes somewhat promising big phara buys markets and jacks up the price. Its not like researchers will stop looking for cures.
Conversation should be more about reducing cost of healthcare. Not who should be forced to pay for what. If you aren't addressing how to bring down the costs of medical services and drugs then your solution isn't sustainable.
Glad you agree on that, now whose money should we cut first? the doctors and other health workers? the drug manufacturers? Or the hospitals?
you don't forcefully cut anyones pay. reduce medical licensing requirements (barrier to entry) and prices will drop. Similar logic can be applied to drugs. Increasing competition will drop prices and benefit the customer.
I'm more of a Chaucer fan myself, but I promise both of you, if your town was ever on fire, I'd be happy to douse the flames with my hose. Drink up!
