Osamacare's premise was a good one - the uninsured get access to healthcare. Like all gov't mandates though, it fell apart when it met the marketplace. 'Forcing' people to subsidize care options for the rest of a given group is ineffective in the long run. (ex: mandatory charge for birth control options for men, or post-menopausal women.) If you want to reduce costs, and make health care more affordable, there's a simple solution, that takes gov't completely out of the equation. Or, mostly out of the equation.
Health care decision are between a doctor and a patient. Period. Not a doctor and a HMO office. Not a doctor and an insurance company. Not a doctor and a bureaucrat. Go back to the era insurance companies offered a 'buffet' of options to group health plans, with associated cost. Patient choose what they want/need at the buffet.
The arguement will then be made this is ripe for corruption. There's some truth to that. But how is it different from osamacare? Unlimited one-size-fits-all medical insurance is a recipe for fraud. How? The more mandatory insurance a company has, the more the employees (and their families) end up using. A broken leg is a broken leg. With osamacare, a stabbed finger chopping onions in the kitchen goes from washing your hands and a bandaid, to a trip to the ER. After all, why not? It's just 'the company's money', right?
So, you eliminate osamacare. Insurance is one again private. Decisions are once again between doctor and patient. How do you reduce/eliminate insurance fraud? Mandatory 20 year sentence for insurance fraud. A doctor that orders testing to cover his ass because his malpractice attorney said he should is one thing. Hauling homeless off the street for unnecessary x-rays and perscriptions is something else entirely.
The issue of the uninsured will always be there. To that I say, too damn bad. You want a nanny state for health care? Look no further than Canada. Their rich and citizens-of-means come to the US for care. Not becuase it's necessarily better, but because they're rich, and don't have to wait in line for 16 months to see a cancer specialist. Reducing the business costs of insurance means smaller companies that do not have plans may decide it's once again an affordable option. That means more potential options for people that otherwise wouldn't have it.
Only because this isn't insurance. It's prepayment for yourself and one other person.
Health insurance would be like car insurance. If something major happened, you'd be covered. But you need to do all the day to day shit yourself, like basic doctor visits and prescriptions.
You can bet prescription prices would drop if they had to convince people to spend $5,000 a month instead of convincing the government to pay for the "bargain" of $3,000 a month per patient.
Osamacare's premise was a good one - the uninsured get access to healthcare. Like all gov't mandates though, it fell apart when it met the marketplace. 'Forcing' people to subsidize care options for the rest of a given group is ineffective in the long run. (ex: mandatory charge for birth control options for men, or post-menopausal women.) If you want to reduce costs, and make health care more affordable, there's a simple solution, that takes gov't completely out of the equation. Or, mostly out of the equation.
Health care decision are between a doctor and a patient. Period. Not a doctor and a HMO office. Not a doctor and an insurance company. Not a doctor and a bureaucrat. Go back to the era insurance companies offered a 'buffet' of options to group health plans, with associated cost. Patient choose what they want/need at the buffet. The arguement will then be made this is ripe for corruption. There's some truth to that. But how is it different from osamacare? Unlimited one-size-fits-all medical insurance is a recipe for fraud. How? The more mandatory insurance a company has, the more the employees (and their families) end up using. A broken leg is a broken leg. With osamacare, a stabbed finger chopping onions in the kitchen goes from washing your hands and a bandaid, to a trip to the ER. After all, why not? It's just 'the company's money', right?
So, you eliminate osamacare. Insurance is one again private. Decisions are once again between doctor and patient. How do you reduce/eliminate insurance fraud? Mandatory 20 year sentence for insurance fraud. A doctor that orders testing to cover his ass because his malpractice attorney said he should is one thing. Hauling homeless off the street for unnecessary x-rays and perscriptions is something else entirely.
The issue of the uninsured will always be there. To that I say, too damn bad. You want a nanny state for health care? Look no further than Canada. Their rich and citizens-of-means come to the US for care. Not becuase it's necessarily better, but because they're rich, and don't have to wait in line for 16 months to see a cancer specialist. Reducing the business costs of insurance means smaller companies that do not have plans may decide it's once again an affordable option. That means more potential options for people that otherwise wouldn't have it.
Insurance itself is inherently a large part of the problem in all aspects of life.
Only because this isn't insurance. It's prepayment for yourself and one other person.
Health insurance would be like car insurance. If something major happened, you'd be covered. But you need to do all the day to day shit yourself, like basic doctor visits and prescriptions.
You can bet prescription prices would drop if they had to convince people to spend $5,000 a month instead of convincing the government to pay for the "bargain" of $3,000 a month per patient.