If you think options are limited now, under a government monopoly they'd be even more limited. Even the most limited healthcare insurance provides multiple choices over a wide geographic area. You may not be able to choose any doctor you want, but you can choose from a set number. For example, my current plan, and it is nothing spectacular, gives me a choice of about ten different doctors in the town where I live. Another four in the city where I work. This ignores the dozens more that are all within 15 minutes drive from both my work and my home. It's maybe half of the total doctors in the area, but that's still dozens. I can, of course, go 'out of system' for a higher co-pay to any doctor I choose.
Compare to a system run the way we run another government monopoly; public schools. You get assigned a clinic by geographic area. You might be able to choose a handful of doctors from that clinic, but you can't go to another clinic. If your local one doesn't offer a service? Too bad. Of course, my taxes have gone up to pay for this, so I have even less money to try and go outside the system if I want to do so. That's presuming it is even legal to do so without going outside the country.
The way to solve this problem is simple:
Currently, employers spend an average of 3965.00 per employee for single employees on health insurance premiums. Of that, 500 and some odd dollars is provided by the employee. This doesn't include the cost of copays and the like, but we'll leave that out.
There are however, HSA. Healthcare Savings Accounts. These are highly regulated and almost impossible for most people to use effectively. But lets say that you and your employer could choose to put those premiums into a savings account. Let's say further that the accounts roll over from year to year and they are in -your- name. So even if you lose your job, that account is still yours. You can still use it for any doctor or procedure or medicine you want. There would also be no cap on how much you could put into that account tax free.
The two requirements would be this: if you use an HSA you must A) buy catastrophic health insurance and B) Pay taxes on the money if you use it for anything except healthcare *twitch*. A is in case you come down with cancer or other major disease. Such policies are relatively inexpensive. Around 80 dollars a year for several hundred thousand dollars coverage, with a 500.00 premium. Of course, part of that price is due to the low numbers of people that purchase such coverage.
Now, how does this help poor people? Well, here's how. It brings down the overall cost of health care. Much of the cost that drives healthcare upward is the increasingly byzantine nature of insurance/HMOs/etc. A local doctor's office that accepts only cash/check/credit cards charges half of what his competitors that accept insurance charge. Now, that won't hold true across the board, but if there's even a 25% reduction in such costs instead of 50% it makes it more affordable for everyone. And for those who are completely without recourse, we already have medicade and medicare.
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Date: 2006-03-08 04:41 pm (UTC)If you think options are limited now, under a government monopoly they'd be even more limited. Even the most limited healthcare insurance provides multiple choices over a wide geographic area. You may not be able to choose any doctor you want, but you can choose from a set number. For example, my current plan, and it is nothing spectacular, gives me a choice of about ten different doctors in the town where I live. Another four in the city where I work. This ignores the dozens more that are all within 15 minutes drive from both my work and my home. It's maybe half of the total doctors in the area, but that's still dozens. I can, of course, go 'out of system' for a higher co-pay to any doctor I choose.
Compare to a system run the way we run another government monopoly; public schools. You get assigned a clinic by geographic area. You might be able to choose a handful of doctors from that clinic, but you can't go to another clinic. If your local one doesn't offer a service? Too bad. Of course, my taxes have gone up to pay for this, so I have even less money to try and go outside the system if I want to do so. That's presuming it is even legal to do so without going outside the country.
The way to solve this problem is simple:
Currently, employers spend an average of 3965.00 per employee for single employees on health insurance premiums. Of that, 500 and some odd dollars is provided by the employee. This doesn't include the cost of copays and the like, but we'll leave that out.
There are however, HSA. Healthcare Savings Accounts. These are highly regulated and almost impossible for most people to use effectively. But lets say that you and your employer could choose to put those premiums into a savings account. Let's say further that the accounts roll over from year to year and they are in -your- name. So even if you lose your job, that account is still yours. You can still use it for any doctor or procedure or medicine you want. There would also be no cap on how much you could put into that account tax free.
The two requirements would be this: if you use an HSA you must A) buy catastrophic health insurance and B) Pay taxes on the money if you use it for anything except healthcare *twitch*. A is in case you come down with cancer or other major disease. Such policies are relatively inexpensive. Around 80 dollars a year for several hundred thousand dollars coverage, with a 500.00 premium. Of course, part of that price is due to the low numbers of people that purchase such coverage.
Now, how does this help poor people? Well, here's how. It brings down the overall cost of health care. Much of the cost that drives healthcare upward is the increasingly byzantine nature of insurance/HMOs/etc. A local doctor's office that accepts only cash/check/credit cards charges half of what his competitors that accept insurance charge. Now, that won't hold true across the board, but if there's even a 25% reduction in such costs instead of 50% it makes it more affordable for everyone. And for those who are completely without recourse, we already have medicade and medicare.