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It's interesting your argument boils down to: "Health insurance in my country is so obtuse and convoluted I would rather not put my basic medical needs in ther
by grecy 3y ago
It's interesting your argument boils down to:
"Health insurance in my country is so obtuse and convoluted I would rather not put my basic medical needs in there, and rather just pay out of pocket for it separately."
Strange approach.
- Gormo 3y agoNot that strange at all, when you consider that one of the primary reasons it's become so obtuse and convoluted is precisely due to the inherent complications of paying for routine services through the model of a risk pool. The common conception of health care has moved beyond just remedying severe illness or injury, but rules and incentives are still calcified around treating it that way.
- FireBeyond 3y agoI have no idea why - and I'm someone who has worked in the health insurance industry - it was ever allowed to be called insurance in the first place. It has only ever resembled insurance in the vaguest possible way (HDHPs are probably the closest thing to actual insurance now). Insurers like to take all the benefits of the insurance model, and as few of the downsides as possible. I mean, look at the model of "first you have to meet your deductible, then you have a co-pay which is your 'contribution' to your health care, but also you have to pay coinsurance which is the your portion of your costs after the deductible". It's a partial amortization scheme for healthcare with a little "benefit of group negotiation" thrown in (when it doesn't actually cost "you" more to go through insurance than out of pocket... "you" because some people, like Martin Shkreli, make money pushing the illusion that somehow insurance companies are magical money fairies who pay providers with something other than the premiums you and I pay, either directly or through an employer...).
- grecy 3y agoI mean, I would lean towards just having a better healthcare system if it were me, but yeah. You do you.
- Gormo 3y agoThe way to have a better healthcare system would be to use insurance for its intended purpose of dealing with catastrophic contingencies, and restore a direct-pay market for routine services.
- grecy 3y agoEvery developed country in the world disagrees with your idea. Why wouldn't you just do what works very well elsewhere?
- Gormo 3y agoWell, apart from not being a fan of the cargo-cult mentality you're applying here, I don't agree with the premise that solution you're implicitly advocating does work very well everywhere else. The insurance model is broken because of political intervention in the first place. I'm not about to give political institutions de facto monopoly power over the most personal and private aspects of my life just to mitigate a public problem that they created to begin with. I want to cut out the middlemen entirely, not just shift dependence to a different, often less trustworthy, set of middlemen.