American health care. It's an entirely broken system.
While I don't necessarily believe in socialized medicine, what we have doesn't work. And it will only get worse. A major problem in health care is non-payment. Hospitals and doctors have horrible collection rates. Some collect as low as in the neighborhood of 20%. What that does, however, is forces costs to climb in an attempt to cover the cost of those who don't pay. A single dose of aspirin, which costs cents over the counter, can cost several dollars if you get it in the hospital. The ramification of this is that as people don't pay, everything will cost more, which will create more non-payment. Simple economics says cost will climb until the supply and demand curves intersect, the problem is that the demand/usage doesn't change despite the increasing cost.
So as costs climb, so does cost to insurance companies, which in turn creates higher cost of health insurance. Health insurance, however, does experience normal economic pressure and demand does drop with increasing cost. So fewer people will be insured every year as fewer and fewer can afford it. Which will create more non-payment. Which will raise the cost of health care. Which will decrease the number of insureds. Lather, rinse, repeat. Fortunately, I don't think it'll get to the point that health care ceases to exist, because at that point even politicians would be affected.
Beyond that, there is a huge amount of waste in the system today. Administrative costs of health care in America are astronomically higher than they are in other countries. For example, in the billing department of hospitals there is a full time staff of many people to keep up with the paperwork of billing each seperate insurance company or private payor. Each company has their own forms and documentation that has to be filled out in their own particular manner in order for them to even consider paying the claim. Across the border to the north, it takes one person to do all the billing for an entire hospital. Because it is standardized. One form. One location. What if America were to mandate that all health insurance companies accept one single form, like the Medicaid form? It would certainly cut out some administrative cost.
What if health insurance were an industry that was mandatorily non-profit and could not be traded on the stock market - so that health insurance companies would be responsible towards patients instead of stock holders?
What if health insurance were a mandatory benefit all companies with >15 employees had to include (not just offer, but include) for all employees (not just full time, but ALL)?
What if congressman and senators had to get their own private insurance and were not given free care?
What if we find a solution before the system collapses?
3 comments:
good rant. We've been thinking a lot of about since Aaron decided to go into medicine.
"What if congressman and senators had to get their own private insurance and were not given free care?"
What if the government health plan that they receive was the same as Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, or any other government health care that the average population can receive?
What you are proposing would put people out of work. And I'm not talking only about the billing department staffers. What about the poor marketing exec who makes the ad for the big name hospital? And all those hard working stock brokers? What about their needs? Why put ugly poor people above them?
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