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"The rates that insurance companies pay are negotiated based on what they believe a hospital’s true costs are. But then those rates are jacked up an average of

"The rates that insurance companies pay are negotiated based on what they believe a hospital’s true costs are. But then those rates are jacked up an average of 30% to 50% to make up for money that hospitals lose in treating patients who don’t have private insurance — which is the majority of them. So to make up the difference, they overcharge patients who are insured. This practice is called cost-shifting." I think this article makes a pretty good argument for Universal Healthcare

jiggy2011 15y ago
The best argument for private healthcare is that it creates competition which drives prices down. If you are being charged random amounts of money for the same stuff based on seemingly arbitrary factors then that would suggest this is not happening as it should.
- dbcfd 15y ago
  The current healthcare model doesn't promote competition. Providers must inflate prices to cover costs, since they know they will be reimbursed by insurance based on the insurers pricing model, not their own. Private healthcare would have to start providing actual costs to insurers, and insurers would have to accept that those costs include losses from people without insurance for competition to take effect.
dantheman 15y ago
There are many objections to universal healthcare, but not healthcare reform (Healthcare Reform != Universal Healthcare). The government has broken healthcare in the US through all sorts scams and tax incentives (why is employment tied to healthcare, wage controls in the 1940s), the solution is not to give the government more control. We can already see this with the medicare "doctor fix" and other broken government programs that actually encourage spending. A better solution would be to allow nonprofits to hold large amounts of money, i.e. save during the good times, and to allow them to operate across state lines.

jiggy2011 15y ago

The best argument for private healthcare is that it creates competition which drives prices down. If you are being charged random amounts of money for the same stuff based on seemingly arbitrary factors then that would suggest this is not happening as it should.

dbcfd 15y ago
The current healthcare model doesn't promote competition. Providers must inflate prices to cover costs, since they know they will be reimbursed by insurance based on the insurers pricing model, not their own. Private healthcare would have to start providing actual costs to insurers, and insurers would have to accept that those costs include losses from people without insurance for competition to take effect.

dantheman 15y ago

There are many objections to universal healthcare, but not healthcare reform (Healthcare Reform != Universal Healthcare). The government has broken healthcare in the US through all sorts scams and tax incentives (why is employment tied to healthcare, wage controls in the 1940s), the solution is not to give the government more control. We can already see this with the medicare "doctor fix" and other broken government programs that actually encourage spending. A better solution would be to allow nonprofits to hold large amounts of money, i.e. save during the good times, and to allow them to operate across state lines.