Tag: health-insurance

anyone who really knows me knows that healthcare is my biggest issue. it should be affordable for everyone, as a right, at least in prosperous countries.  but i’ve been becoming to see, that our political system is hopeless. politicians sell out to the highest bidder. i means, we should be able to cover everyone at half the cost like every other developed country does, with less wait times and better care…. but our system is too engrained. all those other countries built their systems from scratch, and we’d be fighting to change a major existing infrastructure, our status quo. what would happen if we did pass medicare for all or a public option? well, people would have care, but we couldn’t force corrupt politicians into making it affordable for the people and government…. it’s very possible that they could bankrupt us. we might get universal care, but they wouldn’t fight the industry, and we could go bankrupt. 

see, the biggest reason we spend more than every other country, is because we let providers charge to much. it’s a fact that that’s the biggest reason. health insurance is also overemphasized, given insurance companies are a pointless middleman that charges thirty percent on the dollar for administrative costs and profit, whereas medicare only charges three percent for adminstrative costs. 

so what should we do? keep what we got, and grow healthcare costs at less than inflation for a set period of time. we can’t just take axes to costs, as it’d shock the system. but we can grow slower than we otherwise would until costs are better managed. plus, we can deemphasize insurance to make it non profit so there’s no profit motive. see, most other countries aren’t single payer anyway… they just deemphasize insurance and make it nonprofit. thus, we’d be in line with most other countries too. 

we can do those two thing without doing medicare for all or a public option. those choices are too risky, given our politicians propensity to be corrupt. we can have half the healthcare industry provided by private sectior as currently exists, but they just dont get charged so much. forty percent of the population gets government healthcare, medicare medicaid CHIP etc, or a small amount of these are insure themselves. these major engrained structures can remain.  

i’m open to addressing the uninsured, the remaining ten percent of people, just not changing the whole system. id be open to getting the poor in states that didn’t expand obamacare, covered with obamacare. that wouldn’t do much to move needles but would be a big help for them. i’d be open to putting well off people who dont qualify for obamacare into a medicaid plan, where their costs are rationed but they receive good care, that way no one is uninsured. id expect rich people to reimburse all their costs if they are in medicaid though, and i’d suppose they’d be able to afford it. 

in case anyone doesn’t realize it, that’s how other countries are half as expensive. they regulate prices. also, existing healthcare through government is regulated. medicare pays a third less than insurance for healthcare costs, and medicaid pays a third of what medicare pays. all im proposing is doing more of this, to be in line with other countries.

every other country covers everyone at half the cost, with better wait times. so it can be done here too. the thing is, they started from scratch and built their healthcare systems from the ground up… not trying to redo a country like ours with a third of a billion people in it. what could happen if we tried to make it universal? the most obvious problem would be that the democrats dont do anything to get costs down first, or they cave when costs are contained with a medicare like pricing system. (which sets limits on how much can be spent) and speicial interests complain about it. the republicans could repeal any taxes that are used to pay for a new system. so it’s definitely possible to bankrupt us based on health care… is what i’m getting at. 

how do other countries spend half as much as we do? they mostly get it down to that level by regulating how much the government is willing to pay for each procedure, they regulate costs. they also minimize the role of insurance, which helps given insurance is a middle man that pays a third just in adminstrative costs instead of the two percent that medicare pays. (some hospitals have more staff to take care of billing than they do nurses, for instance)

if we’re not doing more of these cost containing things, we’re headed in the wrong direction. 

if we dont do anything about costs, we could end up bankrupt switching to something universal. we only have ten percent of folks who are uninsured… which means it’s not earth shattering if we didn’t cover those few extra people. it would be earth shattering to borrow money to pay for it. that’s why the emphasis shouldn’t be on universal care, it should be on getting costs contained. 

sometimes it is wise to be skeptical if a public option or universal plan could work… we’re trying to redo an embedded system, and politicians are good at fucking things up. it’s rational to only focus on getting costs contained…that’s the biggest problem.