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How to Reform Healthcare
The root of the problem is greed and corruption. The superficial crust is high cost. The evidence of needed change is poor outcomes. The ethics are retarded as we apply typical market based approaches to insurance (a non-good). It’s not working. The Koch brothers to Barack Obama are in agreement. Change needs to happen.
Government protects greedy interests. Government helps limit the supply of doctors, of drugs, and of hospitals. How? They pass laws that favor people that bribe them. The government decides how many doctors, how many hospitals, and how much drugs get protected. They make these decisions based on their constituents or lobbyists that pay them a lot of money. In other words, the government is the slave of the corporation. When big government and big business partner, you get the worst of socialism and the worst of capitalism.
Fear drives protectionism. What would happen if we didn’t protect drug companies? What would happen if we didn’t use insurance anymore? Would outcomes be even worse? What if there were too many doctors? A lot of people are very afraid to do anything on grounds it might get worse. However, all evidence shows the US health system is failing. It’s better than third world countries, but a lot worse than other industrialized nations. And, the cost is a total ripoff. Thousands of preventable diseases are killing people. Something must be done.
Fearful people turn into greedy people. We need laws to protect people. Well, why don’t we make laws that protect people and also enrich everyone. It’s a slam dunk for corrupt lawmakers. They limit the supply on the front end, but won’t regulate cost or outcomes on the other end. Their excuse is they are for free markets. Nothing is further from the truth. Thy are for controlled markets on the limitation of supply and do nothing to regulate cost. That’s why any market based reforms you see are minimal in effect. They are “token” reforms. A big change is needed. Everybody knows it.
States can fix the problem easier than at the Federal level. The reason is that there is less corruption at local levels. There are less lobbyists. And, on a smaller level, it’s easier to get agreement on how to do things. Some states have figured this out and are working hard for reform. Other states think they should wait for the Federal Government to tell them what to do. The irony is that the states sitting around for the Federal Government are the ones that hate the Federal Government the most.
Libertarian philosophy doesn’t help. Most of the libertarians don’t like government and so they refuse to do anything to fix market failures. They sit back and blame government for everything. This gives the corrupt corporations free reign to kill and maim for profit at their will. It’s almost as if the libertarians are waiting for the end of the world when they can start over from scratch with a new system. In other words, it doesn’t help fix the system or broken market failure due to the monopoly government partnerships.
Republicans keep touting market based reforms, but actually have nothing of real substance. It’s like they are in a trance. Have they been dupified? Is the bribe money really worth it? How can you live with yourself killing so many people? Republican market based reforms are a total joke. You have to look really hard to find any reform they are working on. Right now, they talk about insurance companies competing. They talk about HSA accounts. They want you to go to the doctor less. They want you to use less services. Huge insurance companies will compete and bring prices down. Well what have they been doing all these years? Americans already use the doctor less than anybody else. Why were you letting insurance not compete in the first place? How can you expect huge insurance companies not to collude when they have been colluding with politicians and hospitals for decades?
Why are Republicans even trying to repeal the ACA? They sat around for fifty years letting the system deny people with pre-existing conditions, letting insurance and hospitals collude, helping to limit the supply of all services, helping companies refuse to do any type of preventative care. Millions are dying. The democrats try to pass a plan to fix it. Oh no, let’s try to stop any reforms. Then, after the ACA is passed, they want to repeal it. Oh yeah, now they want to fix health care? Why didn’t they do it before? If you take them and drag them to do something, well they are going to repeal it and do it right. In other words, let’s repeal it and make is to we can help our constituents make even more money. We didn’t get enough pork in there in the first place.
To strip off the pork, you have to get rid of insurance. Insurance hides the real pricing. Insurance is the enabler that needs removed. Everyone knows this to be the case. If you study any conservative approach, they want people to be able to pay with cash with real prices. They want transparency. They want to be able to see prices come down about 90%. Yes, 90% of the system is fluff. The only way to push the boulder is to get rid of insurance. You can’t get rid of something you can’t see. Insurance is the tricky manipulative force of magic. It doesn’t manage risk. It doesn’t provide service. It doesn’t do anything except make payments. Insurance is like buying a coupon without knowing what the coupon is for. All systems of monopolistic control are to protect the insurance hospital collusion. That’s why so many “smart” politicians are against price transparency and some even have tried to outlaw cash payments.
If you study any liberal ideas on healthcare, you find they are for a single payer system. This is the way to eliminate insurance companies. The idea is that insurance is so corrupt that we have to get rid of it. They are so good at buying politicians and gaming the system, that we just need to get rid of them. No matter the reform we make, they will try to rig it in their favor. The safest approach of the left is to get them out of there. They’re evil so why not? How many people were denied coverage so the United Health Group CEO could make over 100 million a year? Do you have a personal friend that died from no coverage? These guys know how to fix the system. They have known for many years. They own the politicians. Why do we allow them to keep doing this?
The way to fix the system is simple. The idea supported by both sides is to eliminate insurance. The right supports it by direct cash payments and price transparency. The left supports it by having a government single payer system. Either way, the price of healthcare will drop by at least 50%. And, with any luck a lot more than that.
Think about it. Do you want to keep paying double the cost for sub-standard care? We know the problem. Let’s fix it.
The insurance albatross is around all our necks. Companies have to pay lower wages to pay for higher health care. The few big drug companies make more money than all the other 490 companies in the Fortune 500. Yes, that’s more than Exxon and Walmart put together. They make a killing. Where else can you charge 100k for a few dollars’ worth of product?
Again, your friendly politician is taking bribes all over the place to make sure drug companies get rich, while many of us die because we can’t get medicine. We develop the drugs here, manufacture them, and then pay at least 10 times the next highest country in the world. Are we stupid? We can barely make our mortgage payments and make huge payments for medical expenses. Right now we spend about 8k per person on health care. How much more money would we have if we didn’t have to pay 8k per each person in our household. That’s a lot of money. And, it’s mostly fluff you are paying for. Think of the huge economic boom we would have if we could get this drag or economic dead weight off our backs.
Companies are offshoring to get out of medical costs. Some companies go to Canada to avoid our high medical costs. Some low margin companies simply can’t exist here. There is no other cost as high as health care that goes up indiscriminately every year. How are companies to get an extra 1k per employee every year, when they compete in a global environment? They can’t just raise prices to cover it. Most of us aren’t monopolies like health care. We are tired of giving all our raises just to cover the new and increased health premiums.
There is a way to get all this under control. Get rid of the insurance overlords.
There is a proven system. Every developed country in the world has a government run single payer system. It costs half as much or even much less than our system. Everyone gets care. Everyone goes to the doctor more. Everyone is overall healthier. It’s time we stop believing the lie that the US is superior to everyone and always knows best. It doesn’t. Look at any report ranking world health systems. Ours needs to be improved the most.
The US health system is cruel. It has killed millions of innocent people. Is that ok? They didn’t have health insurance. Should we tell them all to just get a better job? The jobs that aren’t here because health care is too expensive.