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I agree in principle, though i'll add that part of the problem is that if you insure high cost emergencies only, you incentivize people to transmute their low-c
by darawk 7y ago
I agree in principle, though i'll add that part of the problem is that if you insure high cost emergencies only, you incentivize people to transmute their low-cost non-emergencies into high cost emergencies. The simplest way of performing that trick is to ignore your low-cost non-emergency until it becomes a high cost emergency. This is part of the reason why insurance companies want to pay for regular checkups and things like that. It's also why they want to incentivize healthy lifestyles, to avoid hyper-expensive things like, e.g. diabetes.
The problem with healthcare is that everything is connected. The low-cost regular stuff feeds back into the high cost stuff in a way that means anyone insuring you for the high cost stuff also ought to care about the low cost stuff. It's really a nasty problem.
- AcerbicZero 7y agoThe car insurance industry is by no means the most useful comparison, but it does make some provisions that resolve a number of these issues. By that I mean with car insurance, a reasonable deductible and the knowledge that submitting an insurance claim will likely result in higher premiums, tends to keep people from over-reacting to small things. Most car insurance companies also offer a variation of the "preventive" care at reduced, or even no cost, such as with window rock chips - its far less expensive to fix those rather than replace the entire window. I'm not suggesting copying the car insurance model over to health insurance, but I think there are some worthwhile areas to explore, as I don't see the current health insurance system being sustainable much longer.