It’s been my experience that Americans work to achieve. But none of that really has anything to do with the point, which everyone keeps missing.
For way too long now, this “debate” has centered on “coverage”. This of course benefits no one but politicians and health care insurance companies.
We need a change in mindset that addresses WHY medical costs have increased as they have NOT another plan that will only force the costs to increase more rapidly.
The vast majority of health care services and consumables are commodities. Yet the costs for these have risen at astronomical rates even as compared to oil and education. Why? Because the forces of consumer economics as applied to commodities are confounded by the interposition of health care insurance companies that prevent the consumer from affecting the cost. Meanwhile, the insurance companies themselves become another enormous source of expense – and a huge profit center in their own right, which is absurd. The situation created by this idiocy is bankrupting America.
Eliminate the so-called “comprehensive” commodity health insurance plans entirely, as they are directly responsible for the dynamics that have caused this problem. Keep only catastrophic plans for those who feel the need for them, and administer these as group plans through local municipalities (and no more broadly than that). Municipalities have much larger membership pools to bargain with than employers might.
Revert 95% of all monies that were paid by employers to health insurance companies back to employees. Everyone enrolled in a health care plan at work gets an instant annual raise of from $4,000 to $16,000 per employee / family, or more, depending on the cost of the plan they’re in.
Direct the remaining 5% into a state (not federal) level fund that’s distributed to health care providers to recoup costs of providing care to those unable to pay, based on the facility’s need and inversely proportional to the tax breaks they may already be getting in their municipality.
Let the resulting free market economics of direct-to-consumer commodity goods and services force the cost of day-to-day health care, equipment and pharmaceuticals back to a more reasonable equilibrium through profit reduction, cost cutting, salary reduction and efficiency improvements.
This has the benefit of getting medical costs back under control, which should be our real goal. ALL plans to date simply try to “cover the rising costs” without ever ONCE looking at how the current plans allow the costs to skyrocket.
This approach also has the added benefit of making medical insurance coverage more stable – people don’t move nearly as much as they change jobs. Virtually all municipalities have a mechanism for collecting property taxes locally. Premiums can be collected along with those. Renters pay their premium for catastrophic ins., if they choose to carry it, with their car tax.
We can fix the problem if we honestly look at what the real problem is. It’s not “coverage”. It’s the ridiculously high costs, which make “coverage” a virtual requirement for all but the very well-to-do.
