js14 wrote:
Wow, you're a genius. Do you know what insurance is? Can you grasp that concept? That's why insured people pay a fee regardless of whether they are sick or not. Considering they don't pay this insurance fee, why would an uninsured person get charged the same at a hospital? That would be unfair. No one would buy insurance. Health care in this country would collapse. Oh wait, that's Obamacare.
You are mixing up insurance with the cost of medical CARE system, they are separate issues. An auto body shop analogy works here: Whether you have insurance or not has no bearing on what the shop should charge. They don't care whether you paid for insurance or are paying out of pocket. They have not benefited from your insurance payments, they spend the same on paint either way.
It would have been better if health insurance was really treated like insurance. You pay out of pocket until something really serious happens and you cannot afford it. Now the prices on nearly everything are so astronomical that it is almost everything, but that is largely due to the insurance system allowed prices to grow with no ceiling.
The CEO of Wholefoods got reamed for talking about it, but I believe if his ideas were implemented a decade or two ago our healthcare would be much cheaper. The insurance system we have now just allowed pricing to get outrageous.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html