Under the ACA it is illegal to based a person's premiums on usage. The insurer can base premiums on the group but not the individual. Prior to the ACA, insurers could and increase premiums, deny claims when a person's claims reach a certain dollar amount, and some companies would cut them off all together when their policy came up for renewal.. Thus insurance companies were allowed to deny coverage to people who needed it most and the pre-existing conditions policy protected other companies from offering coverage that would damage their bottom line. What they were doing went against the whole idea of having insurance; that is, paying for major healthcare costs that a person could never afford.You are leaving out one of the biggest causes of the high cost of health care.
Unpaid bills.
People don't pay their bill so the provider jacks up everyone else's bill to pay for the bills the deadbeats don't pay.
Then add in the high cost of the education to become a doctor.
Add in the high cost of equipment and an office to actually practice medicine.
Then add in the greed factor.
All of that causes the high cost of health care and it's not going to change no matter what you want.
I don't like insurance companies but that's the system that has been forced on us. We don't have any choice. Either have insurance or don't have proper health care.
That is the only system we have so we have to work with it.
You don't want insurance companies but you also don't want a single payer government system.
You don't offer any alternative that is based on reality.
That reality is people can't afford to pay their own medical bills. The bills are thousands to millions and no normal person can afford to pay it themselves.
So the reality is that it's either insurance and the mess we have now or a single payer system that has been working for the rest of the world for many, many decades.
You cover a lot of ground here, but most of it seems predicated on the assumption that I oppose insurance, and that's not the case. Insurance is fine. But group insurance isn't really insurance. It's just employer provided (or government provided, whichever) healthcare. Normal insurance has counter-incentives that help prevent abuse, and keep costs down - ie your premiums will go up if you use it a lot. Group insurance has no such counter-incentives.
The problem is that we've been sold the idea that the only way to afford regular healthcare is to get an employer, or the government, to pay for it on your behalf. But that's just dumb when you think about it, and in no way sustainable. Employers, or the government, might like it because it establishes dependency, but it obliterates market incentives and drives prices higher and higher. Which reinforces the self-fulfilling prophecy that healthcare is too expensive to pay for your own.
As others here have mentioned, we need to do away with the tax incentives, and other policies, that promote employer provided healthcare. People should buy their own insurance policies and, if they're smart, they'll get high-deductible, catastrophic policies and pay for as much as they can out-of-pocket. And once people are paying for most of their healthcare costs out-of-pocket, prices will come down.
I agree that employers shouldn't be providing insurance. It's one of the reasons why we have some who have insurance that actually covers health care needs and others don't. It just depends on your employer or union on what type of insurance you can have.
That is totally ridiculous.
I don't believe that people should have to face higher premiums if they actually use the insurance. That's just not fair.
What are you going to say to the couple that has a baby that needs thousands or hundreds of thousands in health care? If they actually use that insurance they can only use it once because that premium will be jacked up so high that the couple can't afford it. So the child dies.
Not a good idea.
Then there's those who are older. They get sick simply because of being older. Cancer, heart problems and many others start after the age of 50. So you're saying that those people can only use their insurance once because once they use it, the premiums will be jacked up so high they can't afford it. So the person dies.
Not a good idea.
Or what about a person like me? I was in a near death accident several years ago. Should I have only been able to use that insurance once? After using it the one time I wouldn't be able to have it anymore because the premiums will have been jacked up so high I can't afford it. So I don't die but I lose the use of my legs, hands and arms. I don't get to have any medications for the pain or to relax the muscles when the nerve damage makes the muscles in my hands and arm spasm uncontrolled or when the herniated disks in my spine are too aggravated and I can't breathe without the feeling of a knife stabbing through my spine?
Your idea of insurance isn't practical. It only considers healthy young people who don't need any health care. Which isn't practical or anything close to reality.
Your idea of the costs magically going down simply because they can't use their insurance isn't practical or anything close to reality.
Your idea is what we had in until Obamacare and still have in many parts of the nation.
People don't have insurance. They don't see a doctor when the problem first starts. They wait until it's life threatening. Then go to the ER where they get the most expensive care that by law doesn't have to actually fix the problem but only stabilize them so they won't die.
Then that person doesn't pay the bill so those of us who are responsible and do the right thing are the ones who pay for it by health care costs much higher than they should be because too many people can't see a doctor and end up getting the most expensive form of health care.
We already did that and still do that. Look at the mess we have now.
Your ideas aren't realistic and would never work.
What insurance companies did was readily pay the small claims even thou there were a lot of them because that made for lots of happy subscribers and thus lots of renewals. The small number of subscribers that had very serious health problems and thus large claims effected their bottom-line. So they cut them off when claims got too high and since their numbers were small as were their voices, it really made good business sense. This is how health insurance companies raked in big profits for over a hundred years and this why they spent millions fighting the passage of Obamacare.
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