Originally posted by: QuantumPion
Originally posted by: Modelworks
Insurance came into existence to pay for unexpected expenses that someone could not normally afford. If you look at the history of medicine, before insurance, people actually paid cash for services. It was no different than paying someone to paint your house.
Somewhere along the way someone realized they could make a bundle and prices increased to the point that insurance was no longer about unexpected expenses but everyday expenses. Imagine if car repair and maintenance increased to the point that an oil change was $500. That is what happened to health care.
They really should just change it from insurance companies to medical brokers, because that is all they are. They act as a go between from the patient to the doctor negotiating for the best price for what the patient can pay. It isn't insurance anymore. The old insurance model cannot work with pre-existing conditions, it just isn't possible. You can't insure a house that is sitting halfway over a river for flood insurance and expect to make a profit. The insurance model only works when you have less claims than you have money being paid in premiums and pre-existing conditions nullify that.
Exactly. The purpose of insurance is to cover your medical expenses if you are in an auto accident or get appendicitis. In an ideal system, if you have a heart condition or cancer or diabetes (e.g. something that is a known condition and requires long-term expenses), you should pay for it yourself using an HSA or loan.
Ideally, you'd have thousands of dollars to put away each for your health care. How many have that?
The problem is that the government has interfered with the health care industry so destructively that the cost of treatments has increased to ridiculous levels that no one can afford, unless they have an insurance plan which pays for it. Thus everyone demands to be covered by insurance for everything. Which causes the prices to become even more astronomical.
You're right. All of the shiny new diagnostic tools, medications, surgical procedures, and education would be really, really cheap if not for that durn Government. Never mind that Government pays for a lot of the research and education via the NIH and the various University systems.
Yes, the answer to to remove Government completely from health care. It would be great to depend on the private sector to do all the research out of the kindness of their heart. It would be even better if only rich people could become doctors. And damned if I want some Government man making sure my doctor is actually an MD and not a hocus pocus naturopath or chiropractor or witch doctor.
There are other major problems with our health care, but these can be easily fixed if the Democrats were interested in actually fixing health care, rather then socialize it for their own power. These two are: health care for poor/old people. Replace medicare/medicaid with government-provided HSA's (or even better, contribution-matched). That way, people will be responsible for the price they pay for care.
LOL. Contribution matched HSAs for old folks? You do realize that the vast majority of the elderly are on fixed incomes. They're too old to work. How much are they going to put in? I have an answer. $0.
Same thing for the poor. They're poor! Net contribution to an HSA: $0.
You HSA pushers act like people just have money falling out of their ass to put in these things. And hell, my wife just got an MRI on her knee. $4000. How long would someone at McDonald's have to put in an HSA for that?
You're probably young, single, fit, and healthy. Remember how you are now and in 30 years after you've lived life and see how you feel about all of this.
Everybody should be paying in, starting from when they start working. You don't need it at 18 or 30 or even 40, but once you hit 50, you start using it. Everyone does.
Everyone gets sick eventually. Its the human condition. And god help you if you have a child born with medical problems.
Second: tort reform. This is self-explanatory but will never happen as long as the lawyers dump billions in contributions to congress to keep themselves in business.
Illinois has tort reform. Hasn't reduced any bills for anyone, not doctors, not hospitals, not consumers.
We don't need tort reform, we need a national EMR. We need people to analyze the data. That way when some shyster lawyer says something, the defense can pull out a statistical analysis showing that the lawyer is full of shit. When the shyster lawyers realize they can't present bullshit anymore, then they'll stop. What is left will be the real malpractice and the bad doctors need to stop practicing.
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