HappySqurriel said:
I still don’t understand why people fixate on the insurance companies as being the reason why American healthcare is so expensive. Life insurance, home insurance, auto insurance, and the countless forms of insurance that people and companies buy on a day to day basis is affordable with similar profit margins for the companies; and the primary difference between other insurance and healthcare insurance is how healthcare insurance is mandated to operate. Imagine what would happen to auto insurance if it was (almost) always purchased in group plans with little or no consideration for the driving record of individuals, and it was mandated to cover the costs of oil-changes, tire-rotations, new tires and (basically) all general maintenance. Rather than being able to determine how good of a driver someone was you’d have to assume that they were a poor driver (and since they have less of an incentive to drive well you’d probably be correct), and with little to no personal cost to it people would choose to perform maintenance too often and would always choose the premium service, and the cost of auto insurance would go through the roof. If you added a public option to this system it won’t make costs any lower because people would still be getting ultra-sticky racing tires twice a year and driving dangerously because there is no cost associated with their behaviour. If you want to make the system more affordable, have companies pay health benefits into an account where individuals can buy individual benefits on an exchange where companies are allowed to set rates based on people’s lifestyle; in this exchange the purchase of insurance (payout in the case of an unlikely event) and benefits would be treated separately, and individuals would be able to add personal money to their account to buy additional healthcare. What you would probably find in a system like this is that most companies (even tiny companies) would pay some money into healthcare accounts, and insurance covering most of the most costly unlikely health problems would be affordable; and people would have the choice of what benefits they paid for, and the deductible/co-pay associated with those benefits which would result in many very-affordable plans existing. |
Don't forget the fact that health insurance is the only one that is expected to pay for virtually EVERYTHING.
For auto insurance, you do not expect your policy to pay for new tires, oil changes, or gasoline. But on a healthcare policy, you demand free regular checkups to the doctor.
For house insurance, you never demand to have the insurance company pay for a cabinet that needs replaced. But you demand that lab sample is covered.
And so on.
The problem is that healthcare insurance is designed more like a savings plan rather than.....Insurance. Acturarial math dictates that the cost of a policy is the aggregation of likely outcomes that you'll need the plan. Politicians, as well as some insurance holders think that isn't the case, yet that is how insurance works. When people demand far too much from insurance, the prices go up.
If people focused only on purchasing catastrophic HC plans - for cancer, for major hospital bills over $1,000 or more - you'd find that insurance really isn't that bad. But when you want them to pay for everything, then insurance is simply a savings account for your money which isn't smart.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
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