“First of all, he fails to address the question of whether Insurance companies are a fiscally prudent and effective way to deliver quality health care.”
— Don’t mix meanings here, Our Paul, insurance companies deliver insurance, not health care.
— Since when is it the government’s responsibility to make sure a company is fiscally prudent or effective. Most of us think that market conditions, when left to themselves, do a better job of keeping companies effective and prudent then governments.
Our government was founded on the principle that the state tends not to care for the well-being of the nation if it has more to gain from protecting its own well-being. This is in the nature of all things. We wish not to give the government the power to tax us for health and would prefer to limit this corruptible beast’s ability to further corrupt an already near broken system.
Insurance companies, with malpractice coverage and having to cover for doctors who inflate their prices precisely to take advantage of the bureaucratic nature of insurance companies, in an unintended manner, have led to the sharp rise in the cost of health-care. Hospitals have also built into the system an incredibly inflated cost to healthcare.
Just a few weeks ago we were billed $500 for the use of an ultrasound machine. This machine costs about $100,000, give or take. That means that by the time 200 people have had an ultrasound its been paid for. Each machine is used by a hospital 5-15 times a day. In just over five weeks, at most, the machine has paid for itself. Then add to it the cost of maintenance, the techs salary, and the doctor who will read the ultrasound you will have a machine that pays for itself in two months or much less. How are such profits justified? Not to say that we were using the machine due to catastrophe. The opposite. We were paying to have a look at the health of a child in my wife’s womb.
The market seems to have created the conditions in which hospitals, doctor’s visits, and clinics costing much more then they should. The major issue is that insurance companies, due to the syndicate nature of the business, has artificially dictated the price of being insured against catastrophe and everyday maintenance of a human body. This has to be addressed and government control of the national health service is not the sort of solution that leads to choice, freedom or competition. Instead it is another syndicate dictating cost and reaping benefits for its bureaucrats.
