Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American

[Unicorn_McGriddle]

@Tim James

Unicorn will probably come in and yell at me now. :(

Already got you in another thread, big guy. Read Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 yet? Tim Crouse’s The Boys on the Bus is an excellent companion to that.

[Jafisob]

@wahoo

Other countries pay costs in terms of wait lists and accessablility to services.

Generally true if you are the one of a decreasing amount of people who have health insurance. The portion of people in the US without health insurance have less asscesability to services than people from most other first world countries. With the increasing cost of health insurance and the decreasing levels of job security in the US the majority of people are a pink slip away from less accessibility.

@wahoo

The US also has far more specialists than other countries, and The US also subsidizes drugs for much of the rest of the world and I don’t have a problem with that b/c we can afford it more than other countries.

The US can afford to subsidize other countries? What the heck? The decreasing amount of insured US citizens as well as the current economic situation calls into question what we can and cannot afford. Also recall that in a global economy there is significantly more competition. If we foot the bill for everybody else it makes our costs higher and thus makes it more difficult for the US to compete. This is especially biting for those of us in professions that can be easily outsourced.

@wahoo

Daagar also makes the excellent point that US tends to have too much care which can also drive down results.
Also, realize that cross-country comparisons are very difficult. Americans tend to be in worse physical shape than other countries so our medical costs should be higher. Then you look at how things are classified such as infant mortality and you can large differences in results/expenditures.
to get back to the original question, the # of uninsured drives up the price of private insurance b/c some of the costs of providing medical care for uninsured gets passed to insurance companies who pass it on to customers. Finally, benefits offered by private insurance has increased over time.

My thoughts on potential solutions:
-Mandate that smokers and extremely overweight people pay a significant premium for their benefits in group plans. Everybody else will have lower premiums.
-Commonize and simplify the payment process for medical institutions to recieve payments thus lowering administration costs. Legislate the maximum percent an insurance company can charge for overhead.
-Ensure that even the uninsured pay the UCR or better yet create a national health plan that covers nothing but negotiates UCR for all citizens.
-Best deal provision on drugs for the US. No more subsidizing other first world countries.