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When it comes to health insurance you want to spread the risk over a group of people. Health savings accounts are very nice, except when you have a chronic illn

When it comes to health insurance you want to spread the risk over a group of people. Health savings accounts are very nice, except when you have a chronic illness and need continuous medication and frequent physician visits. Price shopping doesn't work - when you need medical care you need it, and it's the big-ticket items that drive the cost. When you take the kids to the doctor because they have a fever, that kind of visit is a few hundred dollars at most.

seibelj 8y ago
I think you should just read the book. It has a solution for chronic illnesses. Essentially, you have a relatively small group of people with huge one-off bills or longterm chronic illnesses, and the government can help those people. But the problem with American healthcare isn’t those situations - it’s when a hospital charges $500 for a couple Tylenol, because they can. There is no need to moral grandstand. The situation is so beyond messed up and corrupted that we really need to change the entire system from top to bottom.
adventured 8y ago
> Health savings accounts are very nice, except when you have a chronic illness and need continuous medication and frequent physician visits That's covered by the parent's catastrophic scenario, which would be backstopped by the Federal Government. If you have a diagnosed chronic illness, you are no longer operating under any semblance of normal health terms, it's catastrophic. The US could easily segment itself into these two systems (Federal catastrophic program, eliminating most bankruptcies; and a market system, for routine and trivial healthcare items), and it would be a drastic improvement over how the healthcare system works today. Medicaid is 22% of all health coverage today, expand that to 25-30%. Medicare is 15% of the population, expand that to 20%. Use that 50% leverage to aggressively deflate pricing in healthcare (which is a stick the government largely refuses to use). Create a Federal catastrophic program for the other 50% of people. Now to implement this obvious, dramatic improvement, all you have to do is change everything about US politics and remove nearly every politician.

seibelj 8y ago

I think you should just read the book. It has a solution for chronic illnesses. Essentially, you have a relatively small group of people with huge one-off bills or longterm chronic illnesses, and the government can help those people. But the problem with American healthcare isn’t those situations - it’s when a hospital charges $500 for a couple Tylenol, because they can. There is no need to moral grandstand. The situation is so beyond messed up and corrupted that we really need to change the entire system from top to bottom.

adventured 8y ago

> Health savings accounts are very nice, except when you have a chronic illness and need continuous medication and frequent physician visits That's covered by the parent's catastrophic scenario, which would be backstopped by the Federal Government. If you have a diagnosed chronic illness, you are no longer operating under any semblance of normal health terms, it's catastrophic. The US could easily segment itself into these two systems (Federal catastrophic program, eliminating most bankruptcies; and a market system, for routine and trivial healthcare items), and it would be a drastic improvement over how the healthcare system works today. Medicaid is 22% of all health coverage today, expand that to 25-30%. Medicare is 15% of the population, expand that to 20%. Use that 50% leverage to aggressively deflate pricing in healthcare (which is a stick the government largely refuses to use). Create a Federal catastrophic program for the other 50% of people. Now to implement this obvious, dramatic improvement, all you have to do is change everything about US politics and remove nearly every politician.