5 ms·

>No, we need to get rid of private insurance Insurance works well for rare events. Using insurance for an annual physical (or any other routine thing) is just

>No, we need to get rid of private insurance Insurance works well for rare events. Using insurance for an annual physical (or any other routine thing) is just pissing money away. Cutting insurance out of routine and preventative care will require far less political capital and should have a massive impact on costs. No need to go all the way to eliminating private insurance. A government option would have benefits but there's no reason private insurance can't exist also.

claudeganon 7y ago
It’s possible that there could be some boutique secondary private insurance market, like what compliments the NHS in the UK, although I think given the vast, predatory behavior of US health insurance companies, it’s better that they’re just done away with. It’s not as if they haven’t show themselves to be bad actors, preying on the vulnerable as much as is legally possible, time and time again. Costs and the barrier to care they impose are primary problem in the US. Mixed systems perform far worse at controlling them (look at the history of South Africa’s transition to a mixed system as an example). Given how far things have gone with costs in the US, I don’t see how a “public option” would resolve them, short of the kind of literal government price setting as is done in Japan, in which case, a single payer system is more efficient anyway.
headcanon 7y ago
Seems like a reasonable ask. Gov't pays for preventative care like physicals, flu shots, and STI testing (sort of already happening on the last bit through Planned Parenthood), insurance takes care of traumatic events. Seems to me though the greatest cost in healthcare, and thus causing the greatest amount of contention, are chronic ailments that can't really be classified as preventative or traumatic, and require constant doctor visits to treat. Care for the elderly is a similar story since they make up most doctor visits and are the biggest consumers of medications overall.
- balls187 7y ago
  What if we pay for affordable preventative care, and the government covers the cost of traumatic events?
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    What about chronic diseases that require frequent treatment?
    - balls187 7y ago
      Good question. Along those lines: care and treatment for developmental disorders.
    - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
      What about them? The point of collaborative health care is that risks, benefits, and costs are spread out, to everyone's benefit. There is no magic market finger threatening to push you into bankruptcy and/or an early grave just because cancer picked you instead of someone else, and your co-pays are higher than you can afford. Ditto for chronic congenital conditions. It's all the same. Yes, you're probably contributing to someone else's care, especially when you're young and healthy. So what? You won't be young forever, and you probably won't be healthy forever either. Meanwhile whatever care you need is provided to you at lower individual cost than a privatised system - with the added benefit that it also provides significant employment, supports medical research, and provides private-sector opportunities for specialised suppliers of technology, consulting, and other solutions. The only people who appear to lose out are shareholders. They have to make their money elsewhere. In fact their opportunities are enhanced rather than diminished, because affordable low-risk public health care leaves more money on the table for investment and new business development.
      - kerkeslager 7y ago
        It seems you've interpreted my comment as being against public healthcare, when in fact I am rabidly for public healthcare. I was pointing out that a part-private, part-public solution still doesn't really handle medical care well. We need a fully-public healthcare system.
kerkeslager 7y ago
In a larger sense, insurance only makes sense to cover events that are both expensive and rare. 1. If an event is not expensive, you can just pay for it yourself. 2. If an event is not rare, then pooling resources doesn't increase your ability to pay for it. Annual physicals are neither expensive nor rare. But the larger problem is, illness isn't rare. People get sick, and we need to stop pretending that this is some unusual thing. I really don't see myself staying in the US if we haven't switched to single-payer healthcare by the end of the next presidency. I probably want kids, and I'm simply not going to bring them up in a country where the government and increasingly, the culture itself, cares more about corporate profits than people. We work really hard in this country just to achieve the same standard of living that people in countries with fewer resources have. Healthcare is, in my opinion, the most egregious example of that. It's stupid, and I don't want to inflict it on my kids.

claudeganon 7y ago

It’s possible that there could be some boutique secondary private insurance market, like what compliments the NHS in the UK, although I think given the vast, predatory behavior of US health insurance companies, it’s better that they’re just done away with. It’s not as if they haven’t show themselves to be bad actors, preying on the vulnerable as much as is legally possible, time and time again. Costs and the barrier to care they impose are primary problem in the US. Mixed systems perform far worse at controlling them (look at the history of South Africa’s transition to a mixed system as an example). Given how far things have gone with costs in the US, I don’t see how a “public option” would resolve them, short of the kind of literal government price setting as is done in Japan, in which case, a single payer system is more efficient anyway.

headcanon 7y ago

Seems like a reasonable ask. Gov't pays for preventative care like physicals, flu shots, and STI testing (sort of already happening on the last bit through Planned Parenthood), insurance takes care of traumatic events. Seems to me though the greatest cost in healthcare, and thus causing the greatest amount of contention, are chronic ailments that can't really be classified as preventative or traumatic, and require constant doctor visits to treat. Care for the elderly is a similar story since they make up most doctor visits and are the biggest consumers of medications overall.

balls187 7y ago
What if we pay for affordable preventative care, and the government covers the cost of traumatic events?
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  What about chronic diseases that require frequent treatment?
  - balls187 7y ago
    Good question. Along those lines: care and treatment for developmental disorders.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    What about them? The point of collaborative health care is that risks, benefits, and costs are spread out, to everyone's benefit. There is no magic market finger threatening to push you into bankruptcy and/or an early grave just because cancer picked you instead of someone else, and your co-pays are higher than you can afford. Ditto for chronic congenital conditions. It's all the same. Yes, you're probably contributing to someone else's care, especially when you're young and healthy. So what? You won't be young forever, and you probably won't be healthy forever either. Meanwhile whatever care you need is provided to you at lower individual cost than a privatised system - with the added benefit that it also provides significant employment, supports medical research, and provides private-sector opportunities for specialised suppliers of technology, consulting, and other solutions. The only people who appear to lose out are shareholders. They have to make their money elsewhere. In fact their opportunities are enhanced rather than diminished, because affordable low-risk public health care leaves more money on the table for investment and new business development.
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      It seems you've interpreted my comment as being against public healthcare, when in fact I am rabidly for public healthcare. I was pointing out that a part-private, part-public solution still doesn't really handle medical care well. We need a fully-public healthcare system.

kerkeslager 7y ago

In a larger sense, insurance only makes sense to cover events that are both expensive and rare. 1. If an event is not expensive, you can just pay for it yourself. 2. If an event is not rare, then pooling resources doesn't increase your ability to pay for it. Annual physicals are neither expensive nor rare. But the larger problem is, illness isn't rare. People get sick, and we need to stop pretending that this is some unusual thing. I really don't see myself staying in the US if we haven't switched to single-payer healthcare by the end of the next presidency. I probably want kids, and I'm simply not going to bring them up in a country where the government and increasingly, the culture itself, cares more about corporate profits than people. We work really hard in this country just to achieve the same standard of living that people in countries with fewer resources have. Healthcare is, in my opinion, the most egregious example of that. It's stupid, and I don't want to inflict it on my kids.