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Because insurance is a private industry and there are few goverment assisted options if you are very poor its very expensive to purchase it by yourself in the U
by anon08142018 8y ago
Because insurance is a private industry and there are few goverment assisted options if you are very poor its very expensive to purchase it by yourself in the US. Private insurance has every incentive to keep raising prices and to keep lobbying the government to stay away from the market.
Your employer can group all of their employees into a single risk pool, so each employee gets a discounted rate. When you purchase insurance on your own you are no longer in a group and so the cost is far more. Doctors are also incentivized to prescribe you drugs you don't need and drugs that insurance covers instead of the correct medication.
My wife had to wait to get surgery on her leg because she just signed up with a new employer and didn't have insurance yet. If she had gotten the surgery without insurance it would have cost somewhere around $100k US.
- TomMarius 8y ago> Because insurance is a private industry and there are few goverment assisted options if you are very poor its very expensive to purchase it by yourself in the US. Private insurance has every incentive to keep raising prices and to keep lobbying the government to stay away from the market. This is proven to be false by Switzerland, where people purchase their private health insurance themselves.
- anon08142018 8y agoYes, lots of things are possible. I imagine there are both cultural and regulatory differences between the health insurance market in Switzerland vs the US.
- TomMarius 8y agoYes, I agree. I suspect it's a regulatory problem, that's why I asked - I'd like to know the specifics.
- anon08142018 8y agoThis link seems to cover a lot of the differences. It sounds like a decent system, but not one that would ever work in the US. The private healthcare companies have too much to money to lose and would use the media to frame such as system as communist and dangerous. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-US-healthcare-system-and-Switzerlands https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-US-...
- TomMarius 8y agoIf that's true, then literally any plans for public hospitals or healthcare insurance are doomed from the beginning, isn't that right?
- anon08142018 8y agoBasically. That is a good summary of the political debate over healthcare for the last few decades in the US.