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While its called its called Health Insurance, it should be called health care costs. The US is the only 1st world country without universal healthcare. The thi

While its called its called Health Insurance, it should be called health care costs. The US is the only 1st world country without universal healthcare. The thing is most of us already subsidize the healthcare industry. The hospital has to treat someone in an emergency if they take medicare or medicaid. A lot of times people are using the emergency room as their primary care since they can't afford primary care. The hospital increases the rates it charges everyone else to cover this. You can use data to predict who is going to be more sick and charge them more. However do you want them to die or suffer. I wouldn't. So why not try to fix the big problem instead of all these little ones about data misuse and just cover everyone since you are paying for them anyway.

chimeracoder 8y ago
> The thing is most of us already subsidize the healthcare industry. The hospital has to treat someone in an emergency if they take medicare or medicaid. The "subsidies" run the other way. Medicare reimbursements do not cover COGS, which means that providers cannot sustain themselves solely on Medicare reimbursement rates; they need to take privately-insured patients (whom they charge dramatically more) in order to stay afloat[0]. These costs get passed on to privately-insured patients in the form of higher premiums. [0] Medicare acknowledges this, and in fact, Medicare even runs multiple stipend programs to essentially pay extra to hospitals who don't see enough privately-insured patients that they can make up the difference. If they didn't, those hospitals would close, because you can't lose money on a per-patient basis and still run a practice, even if you managed to recruit doctors, nurses, and staff who agreed to work for free as volunteers.