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Insurance certainly costs far too much money, but that's missing the forest for the trees. Insurance is the reason that the market is non-functional and broken.

Insurance certainly costs far too much money, but that's missing the forest for the trees. Insurance is the reason that the market is non-functional and broken. The misdirection inherent in an insurance-centric pricing regime is what's made it impossible for anyone to ever know the actual out-of-pocket cost of anything, and getting that is the first part of getting a functioning market established. We need to stop looking at the individual level and "What can we eek out of people who don't qualify for Medicaid?", and look to the macro-scale effects. Insurance is the wrong model for routine services (indeed, insurance usually functions as a discount program rather than true insurance) and people shouldn't be able to sell it for that purpose due to the debilitating effects it has on the marketplace. Docs and pharamacies should be up front about their real prices. Today, even people who are "posting prices" can't be up front about it because posted prices function as high anchors for insurance negotiations. This is why you can often get a massive "cash discount" if you call about a bill that you're going to self-pay. That's what they'd really like to charge you, but if they don't start out charging the sticker price they quoted the insurer, they're in big trouble. For a market to work, there must be a real pricing dynamic where the consumer can be reasonably well informed about the actual total cost and vote with their feet. Hyperinflated 300% prices, necessitated by insurer demands for large discounts, don't count, they're still not real numbers. Markets simply cannot work without meaningful and accessible pricing information. The medical system will remain a disaster until we can break this dynamic around pricing, and the only way to do that is to fundamentally change the way that medical insurance works, either by nationalizing insurance and/or medicine so that the government writes all the checks and price becomes only indirectly relevant to the public anyway, or by imposing law that mandates price transparency and seriously limits what "medical insurance" and "discount programs" can do, so that we don't immediately descend back into this. IMO this is a textbook case of a market screaming for good regulation. Ideally we would identify the malicious actors (primarily insurers), develop rules and systems that minimize their ability to operate, and allow the free flow of commerce to handle everything else. "Nationalize it" is a clear power grab, but lacking any willingness to do anything else about such a breathtakingly large economic and humanitarian issue, even that would be better than "let's just keep crossing our fingers". It's so sad that the level of conservative dialogue is not "let's find a good minimalist intervention that will get this market working again" but rather "Did someone say 'MURICA wasn't the best at something?!"

afarrell 8y ago
Why doesn't Germany have this problem? Their system is insurance-based. Why can't Blue Cross Blue Shield (a nonprofit) avoid this cost problem but a Krankenkassen can?
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Because a tiny minority of the overall population profits from current inefficiency and if we revamped the whole thing even to massive public benefit some currently wealthy people would inevitably lose out. In America we are happy to burn a dollar as long as a rich person somewhere can make an extra penny. As a nation we have no notion of public ethics and haven't for decades. We believe in every man for himself and rather than resignation we feel pride. Venerating not caring about our fellow man as if it was self reliance. We believe in the dysfunction of the public sphere as an article of faith, implacable as gravity, instead of it being the result of our collective failure to build a system that works. We feel pride in ourselves when we ought to feel shame for all of us.
  - afarrell 8y ago
    > if we revamped the whole thing even to massive public benefit But this doesn't answer the question: what is the revamping that would be done to solve the problem? I get that "We believe in the dysfunction of the public sphere as an article of faith" is true and the answer to my next question "okay cool, so why haven't we implemented that", but I'd first like to know what "that" is. (not that you're on the hook for the time to educate me on a complex public policy issue)
maxerickson 8y ago
Taking away the employer tax deduction for health insurance would do a lot more than banning coverage for flu shots.
- cookiecaper 8y ago
  Do I need coverage from my food insurance every time I take a trip to Trader Joe's, Chipotle, or even Walmart? There is every reason for flu shots to be cheap enough that they don't require a special mechanism of payment. Yes, vaccine is delicate and it must be handled with care ... but the same is true for most foods and many other necessities that we somehow manage to buy and sell without an insurer butting in. The goal has to be making medicine work like everything else we buy, including the daily non-negotiables like food, water, clothing, and energy resources. There's no reason medicine shouldn't or can't work that way in the general case. But as long as we make it about moving numbers around so that Group X is slightly less inconvenienced by this farce, we're playing their game. We need to be talking about how to break their stranglehold, and I don't think just "move it into the government so we can get installed as bureaucrats, who are even harder to get rid than executives!" is necessarily a great macro-scale response (though I continue to believe it's better than doing nothing). I don't suggest taking anything from anyone who is actually involved in the thing here. The only people I want to take out of the equation are the pencil-pushers leeching gargantuan quantities of otherwise-useful time and money away from the public. That so many people find it so difficult to conceive of routine medical care without an insurance carrier of some type is a testament to the work we have ahead of us.

afarrell 8y ago

Why doesn't Germany have this problem? Their system is insurance-based. Why can't Blue Cross Blue Shield (a nonprofit) avoid this cost problem but a Krankenkassen can?

michaelmrose 8y ago
Because a tiny minority of the overall population profits from current inefficiency and if we revamped the whole thing even to massive public benefit some currently wealthy people would inevitably lose out. In America we are happy to burn a dollar as long as a rich person somewhere can make an extra penny. As a nation we have no notion of public ethics and haven't for decades. We believe in every man for himself and rather than resignation we feel pride. Venerating not caring about our fellow man as if it was self reliance. We believe in the dysfunction of the public sphere as an article of faith, implacable as gravity, instead of it being the result of our collective failure to build a system that works. We feel pride in ourselves when we ought to feel shame for all of us.
- afarrell 8y ago
  > if we revamped the whole thing even to massive public benefit But this doesn't answer the question: what is the revamping that would be done to solve the problem? I get that "We believe in the dysfunction of the public sphere as an article of faith" is true and the answer to my next question "okay cool, so why haven't we implemented that", but I'd first like to know what "that" is. (not that you're on the hook for the time to educate me on a complex public policy issue)

maxerickson 8y ago

Taking away the employer tax deduction for health insurance would do a lot more than banning coverage for flu shots.

cookiecaper 8y ago
Do I need coverage from my food insurance every time I take a trip to Trader Joe's, Chipotle, or even Walmart? There is every reason for flu shots to be cheap enough that they don't require a special mechanism of payment. Yes, vaccine is delicate and it must be handled with care ... but the same is true for most foods and many other necessities that we somehow manage to buy and sell without an insurer butting in. The goal has to be making medicine work like everything else we buy, including the daily non-negotiables like food, water, clothing, and energy resources. There's no reason medicine shouldn't or can't work that way in the general case. But as long as we make it about moving numbers around so that Group X is slightly less inconvenienced by this farce, we're playing their game. We need to be talking about how to break their stranglehold, and I don't think just "move it into the government so we can get installed as bureaucrats, who are even harder to get rid than executives!" is necessarily a great macro-scale response (though I continue to believe it's better than doing nothing). I don't suggest taking anything from anyone who is actually involved in the thing here. The only people I want to take out of the equation are the pencil-pushers leeching gargantuan quantities of otherwise-useful time and money away from the public. That so many people find it so difficult to conceive of routine medical care without an insurance carrier of some type is a testament to the work we have ahead of us.