What you should be preaching is that single payer systems aren't the end-game solution, but instead is a step towards regulating costs of any number of products to drive down the 1000% mark-up of products and services.
The examples of what goes wrong you listed are accurate, but are already happening here in the US. Furthermore, studies are showing a startling decline in medical school applications due to the disgusting price tag of school and the uncertainty of doctors leading a successful business. Insurance companies drive down pay-outs to doctors who have been forced to find more expensive supplies, equipment, etc, while driving up premiums. This is an example of a short sighted business goal, driven by quarterly percentage aspirations. In effect, we as Americans are not paying for services - we are paying for financial aspirations by unchecked business.
The answer then? Reset the market and then regulate costs. The first step (but not the place to stop) is single payer (oh and over 2000 doctors in the AMA support single payer).
Look at how PG&E exists then use a little imagination.
Posted
Jun 3, 2017
Ollie Amireh
Shouldn't we audit the whole entire system, control costs and make insurance for more severe problems?
Posted
Jun 5, 2017
jV
@Bjcallahan_63896
Agreed, those problems already exist in the US, but regulating pricing is absolutely not the way to fix that. There are some fundamental economic principles that work against you in that position. And of course the 2000 AMA doctors support the single payer system because it further controls their market. The AMA are a massive part of the reason our medical costs are so high.
Research into what it costs in time and financial resources to become and remain a provider of healthcare. A pointless 4 year degree followed by 4 years of unnecessary medical school which 85% of material will be forgotten, followed by several years of residency. By the end i'ts hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual cost and even more in opportunity cost. You must see that this is a massive barrier to entry for health care providers and as such skyrockets prices.
On top of that, it is illegal or extremely difficult in many places in the US to offer alternative methods of health insurance (like community or tradesmen insurance instead of individual insurance, and cash-only clinics).
On top of that ad our breathtakingly broken medical insurance industry (which you have addressed) which handcuffs providers and blinds consumers. Nobody knows how much their care costs and no one cares so long as they are paying a $20 co-pay. True costs are completely obscured and even if they weren't if a person was offered $400 as 40% of a $1000 procedure instead of $500 cash for the same procedure in another county, they would take the $1000 procedure without blinking because the cost to them is $400. Not only that, but if they were even cheaper, the person might still not get the procedure because the doctor isn't "in their network." There is no market for health care in the United States. You get your regional cartel and that's it, no questions asked, no other options. That's why everyone charges whatever they want after reducing and controlling the supply and provision of health care.
Want to fix our broken healthcare system? Some easy solutions:
- Reconnect consumers and providers and the costs of production and consumption of those services. Allow a person pay another person for a service they can provide them. Novel idea.
- Reintroduce apprenticeships for medical providers/eliminate medical licensing and substitute certification instead and allow any organization to develop a certification process (not just monopolistic organizations like the AMA).
- Legalize more and more services for Nurse Practitioners and other providers like them.
- Allow for more alternative methods of risk sharing for medical care recipients like pooling and cost sharing (Liberty Health Share is a great example of this-- www.libertyhealthshare.org/)
Any and all of those measures would improve health care in the US. But try introducing those measures to Congress and see what will happen-- The full fury and rage of a monopoly (AMA and kingpin health insurance companies) with all of their resources will bear down on them so hard and so fast you'll barely even hear about it on the news. All in the name of "protecting consumers." The negative propaganda and slandering will come so fast and so professionally that people will barely understand what they are hating-- only that the news told them a bad doctor would kill them if we supported freer markets in health care provision. And that selfish capitalists with sharp fangs and murderous greed would take over the health care of their families.
The glaring truth is overlooked though: we already have bad doctors. The difference is now they are almost completely protected in the market and don't have to give a crap about their patients. In a true market the bad doctors would go find something else to do poorly and the good doctors would rise to the top. Moreover, in a freer health care market the people who gave up on being doctors years ago, but who would have been excellent doctors and nurses, would come back to the industry because it wouldn't be so cost prohibitive to them anymore. Quality and quantity goes up, prices go down. Magic. Little-to-no bureaucrats who have no idea what they're doing required.
Responses
What you should be preaching is that single payer systems aren't the end-game solution, but instead is a step towards regulating costs of any number of products to drive down the 1000% mark-up of products and services.
The examples of what goes wrong you listed are accurate, but are already happening here in the US. Furthermore, studies are showing a startling decline in medical school applications due to the disgusting price tag of school and the uncertainty of doctors leading a successful business. Insurance companies drive down pay-outs to doctors who have been forced to find more expensive supplies, equipment, etc, while driving up premiums. This is an example of a short sighted business goal, driven by quarterly percentage aspirations. In effect, we as Americans are not paying for services - we are paying for financial aspirations by unchecked business.
The answer then? Reset the market and then regulate costs. The first step (but not the place to stop) is single payer (oh and over 2000 doctors in the AMA support single payer).
Look at how PG&E exists then use a little imagination.
Shouldn't we audit the whole entire system, control costs and make insurance for more severe problems?
@Bjcallahan_63896
Agreed, those problems already exist in the US, but regulating pricing is absolutely not the way to fix that. There are some fundamental economic principles that work against you in that position. And of course the 2000 AMA doctors support the single payer system because it further controls their market. The AMA are a massive part of the reason our medical costs are so high.
Research into what it costs in time and financial resources to become and remain a provider of healthcare. A pointless 4 year degree followed by 4 years of unnecessary medical school which 85% of material will be forgotten, followed by several years of residency. By the end i'ts hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual cost and even more in opportunity cost. You must see that this is a massive barrier to entry for health care providers and as such skyrockets prices.
On top of that, it is illegal or extremely difficult in many places in the US to offer alternative methods of health insurance (like community or tradesmen insurance instead of individual insurance, and cash-only clinics).
On top of that ad our breathtakingly broken medical insurance industry (which you have addressed) which handcuffs providers and blinds consumers. Nobody knows how much their care costs and no one cares so long as they are paying a $20 co-pay. True costs are completely obscured and even if they weren't if a person was offered $400 as 40% of a $1000 procedure instead of $500 cash for the same procedure in another county, they would take the $1000 procedure without blinking because the cost to them is $400. Not only that, but if they were even cheaper, the person might still not get the procedure because the doctor isn't "in their network." There is no market for health care in the United States. You get your regional cartel and that's it, no questions asked, no other options. That's why everyone charges whatever they want after reducing and controlling the supply and provision of health care.
Want to fix our broken healthcare system? Some easy solutions:
- Reconnect consumers and providers and the costs of production and consumption of those services. Allow a person pay another person for a service they can provide them. Novel idea.
- Reintroduce apprenticeships for medical providers/eliminate medical licensing and substitute certification instead and allow any organization to develop a certification process (not just monopolistic organizations like the AMA).
- Legalize more and more services for Nurse Practitioners and other providers like them.
- Allow for more alternative methods of risk sharing for medical care recipients like pooling and cost sharing (Liberty Health Share is a great example of this-- www.libertyhealthshare.org/)
Any and all of those measures would improve health care in the US. But try introducing those measures to Congress and see what will happen-- The full fury and rage of a monopoly (AMA and kingpin health insurance companies) with all of their resources will bear down on them so hard and so fast you'll barely even hear about it on the news. All in the name of "protecting consumers." The negative propaganda and slandering will come so fast and so professionally that people will barely understand what they are hating-- only that the news told them a bad doctor would kill them if we supported freer markets in health care provision. And that selfish capitalists with sharp fangs and murderous greed would take over the health care of their families.
The glaring truth is overlooked though: we already have bad doctors. The difference is now they are almost completely protected in the market and don't have to give a crap about their patients. In a true market the bad doctors would go find something else to do poorly and the good doctors would rise to the top. Moreover, in a freer health care market the people who gave up on being doctors years ago, but who would have been excellent doctors and nurses, would come back to the industry because it wouldn't be so cost prohibitive to them anymore. Quality and quantity goes up, prices go down. Magic. Little-to-no bureaucrats who have no idea what they're doing required.