Rubbish wrote:
fgfrg wrote:
I know it seems hard to believe but there are people who in fact have their own money to buy all the healthcare they need. You can not get ahead with insurance - it's a heck of a lot worse than Vegas odds. Most people put in far more than they will ever get out. It's also one of the reasons health care is so expensive in the US. Free markets and freedom of choice will bring costs way down and quality way up.
You talk as if Insurance companies and the market impact quality. Well insurance does - it lowers it, and apportions it to those who have enough money.
The Healthcare in the US is fine. The drs are great, the hospitals are excellent. Way better than a lot of overseas stuff. I managed hc in the UK, Australia, and the US. If I was going to be seriously ill, the US is where I'd rather be.
Insurance is the problem. Plus the desire to compartment profit margins into blocs. The insurance companies separate states and regions into pools to artificially inflate margins. Do you really think they don't look at patient pools nationally, while the break it down into smaller pools to justify higher profits due to 'risk"? And due to the government limits on their profit margins, they do all they can to increase the base cost of healthcare. So as long as you keep insurance involved, increasing admin fees, refusing reimbursements, you will never drop the costs. And they invented pre-existing conditions to reduce their exposure and maximize their return. They're about profits, not about healthcare.
The cornerstone of a government strategy should be Healthcare, Education, Defense, and Infrastructure. We rip people off in Education deny healthcare, ignore our Infrastructure, and Defend everyone else except our own population. And please, no one from Niger is planting a bomb in NYC.
There are plenty of efficiencies we can apply to our process. The government already pays for 55% of the nation's healthcare via the DoD, VA, Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare etc. Each of these bodies have a different contracting process. So one pharma product may have to contract with 5 + different government departments for the 1 product.
People love to use the VA as an example of failed a government health process, but forget that the VA was being phased out, as they waited for the last Vietnam Vet to die. Now we've decided our business is military based, and we have involved ourselves in non-stop war, we've accumulated an entirely new generation of patients, and the only thing tip top at a VA is the white painted rocks around the parking lot.
Instead of Obama handing of healthcare to the insurance industry, it would have been easier to roll the uninsured into Medicaid. Clear up the contracting inefficiencies, allow the current insurance program to continue and not increase the costs for the 310 million covered, just to 'Help" 10 million who weren't. covered.
Canada have a workable hybrid. We could have easily taken that on. Instead we got a repeal and replace rant from those who had no idea what the challenge was, nor any idea how to fix it.
We seem more intent on preserving business interests than solving healthcare for the citizens of this country.
