In the richest nation on earth. Thatās a lot of poor suffering Americans.
What a great country!
Pandemic Swells Medicaid Enrollment to 80 Million People, a āHigh-Water Markā
Pretty good indication we need universal healthcare like the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, Israel, Canada, Austrailia and the Gulf States.
What do you do about the problem of medical care over-consumption and under-supply resulting in price inflation thatās already happening under existing government health insurance systems? What about the costs associated with implementing such a system, just go further into debt to fund it?
The countries/continents you pointed out donāt carry our current debt and structural deficit burdens, not to mention the fact that theyāre in part relying on U.S. obligations to provide for their national defense and thus carry a lower burden in that department as well. They also have their own scarcity issues of medical care along with the fact that they enjoy lower drug prices thanks the fact that American consumers shoulder the lions share of the burden of pharma R & D costs for them.
āUniversal careā isnāt the silver bullet that some make it out to be, there are A LOT of questions that need to be addressed before traveling down that road.
Do you know what cost shifting is? Have you noticed private insurance premiums going up? You are already paying for seniors, indigents and million dollar premature infants.
Its all about priorities or maybe we really aren't smart enough or compassionate enough to pull it off.
Yeah, Iām intimately familiar with the fact that costs can be shifted, however shifted costs donāt mean that those costs VANISH, theyāre still there and what youāre proposing doesnāt solve the problem since it doesnāt address the root cause of rising costs, it EXACERBATES them by further disconnecting the consumer from the cost of service and encouraging OVER-CONSUMPTION, insufficient supply meet artificially induced increased demand.
25 -30% of costs goes into administrative costs and paperwork. Over consumption? Nope. Healthy young families use less than 40% of the healthcare dollar.. 60% goes to seniors , the chroically ill and premature babies.
Besides, doctors prefer to treat you early than wait until its a full blown conflagration... Besides, its cheaper and has a better success rate.
Over consumption is rampant in populations that already have āuniversal careā namely MEDICAID, that drives up costs for everybody else, the consumer is completely disconnected from the cost of service. As far as Administrative costs itās GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE in the market place that are the principle drivers of those and younger populations eventually become OLDER populations and thus costs increase over time, especially when we have to be concerned about huge generations like millenials.
You have to address that problem for any āuniversal healthcareā scheme to succeed in reducing overall costs while maintaining (or hopefully improving) the accessibility and quality of health care.
The system has to reconnect the consumer to the cost of service, MediCARE attempts to address that problem with gap insurance but the system is overly complicated and probably wonāt work with a system that covers the entire population. Along with that the system also has to lower the administrative burden thatās already been placed on it not just shift it to the Federal Bureacracy.
Some sort of premium sharing system is whatās called for, where the consumer actually sees a BILL every month that is commensurate with what they consume, I havenāt seen anything close to that in whatās been proposed. Along with that the system also has to lower the administrative burden thatās been placed on health care PROVIDERS, since theyāve been forced to often carry more administration costs than actual medical care costs. Lastly the system needs to address prescription drug costs which are out of control and the entire system is a MESS.
cis.org
