"Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House"

[CoffeeCzar]

This is a scary bill. For people who believe that government intervention into the health care industry has distorted the market and price system, this bill is fundamentally flawed. I'd much rather see health insurance return to measuring risk, instead of being prepaid health health care. I don't understand what the problem is with charging more for people with greater risk. There are only two systems that are coherent and will ever "work" - single payer and a very market-based system.

I'd personally like to see a market-based system where third parties (insurance companies and government) don't pay for the majority of services and I am free, as a physician, to charge my customers what I want for services and they will pay most of their health care dollars out of their own pockets. It may hurt my bottom line, but I will be much happier.

We can either ration via the government or through the price system, and when it comes down to it, I trust the price system much more than I trust the government. Market-based reforms can always be repealed. Government solutions and interventions, politically, never can be. Sadly, if we stay on the current course, we will eventually end up in a single payer system. The only questions is how long.

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[TehDoc]

Have fun paying off the 200k> loan + interest.

 

[FIREitUP]

This is a scary bill. For people who believe that government intervention into the health care industry has distorted the market and price system, this bill is fundamentally flawed. I'd much rather see health insurance return to measuring risk, instead of being prepaid health health care. I don't understand what the problem is with charging more for people with greater risk. There are only two systems that are coherent and will ever "work" - single payer and a very market-based system.

I'd personally like to see a market-based system where third parties (insurance companies and government) don't pay for the majority of services and I am free, as a physician, to charge my customers what I want for services and they will pay most of their health care dollars out of their own pockets. It may hurt my bottom line, but I will be much happier.

We can either ration via the government or through the price system, and when it comes down to it, I trust the price system much more than I trust the government. Market-based reforms can always be repealed. Government solutions and interventions, politically, never can be. Sadly, if we stay on the current course, we will eventually end up in a single payer system. The only questions is how long.

i'm sure you don't mind charging more for those at risk because you aren't at risk. imagine not being able to afford health insurance because it is priced based on risk, then imagine getting sick. your life is basically over either by not getting treatment or having to spend your whole life paying off medical debt. i honestly don't know how anyone could be so callous; this isn't auto insurance.

 

[CoffeeCzar]

i'm sure you don't mind charging more for those at risk because you aren't at risk. imagine not being able to afford health insurance because it is priced based on risk, then imagine getting sick. your life is basically over either by not getting treatment or having to spend your whole life paying off medical debt. i honestly don't know how anyone could be so callous; this isn't auto insurance.

Insurance, by definition, is tool that measures risk. If you don't want to charge based upon risk, then it's no longer insurance. It's prepaid health benefits. This is my point exactly.

Insurance only makes sense when you protect against something that has a low chance of happening. You wouldn't buy groceries with grocery insurance. With medical care, we use third party payers to pay for almost all the care we receive. Little is paid out of pocket other than a copay that is usually fixed. This is very inefficient and leads to massive administrative costs and it hides the consumer from the true price of what they are paying. In addition, it inflates the cost of services if consumers choose to pay out of pocket. Third party payers reimburse artificially low which forces hospitals to charge the uninsured artificially higher rates.

I don't want anyone to go into bankruptcy either. However, we must also examine why health care services are so inflated in the first place - this is the reason people are going into bankruptcy. The answer is everything the government has done to the medical industry since the mid 1960's to encourage the proliferation of the current model of "insurance" in this country. If you want to charge everyone the same rate, cover preexisting conditions and subsidize low-income Americans so they can buy insurance, then I suggest you look at the results of the last 40 years of government intervention into the health care industry and what it has accomplished.

I am not callous. I'm just trying to address the actual problem.