If you have a half dozen ways I am all ears. Insurance companies are synergist with the medical industry. the industry raises prices, the insurance companies raises premiums, and everyone makes more money. And we just pay more.
Sure. First off is national tort reform for medical. Students get out of college with a couple hundred thousand in debt. After residency when they start practicing medicine, they also have to deal with malpractice insurance that runs a couple thousand every month for general practitioners to $50,000 a year for surgeons and specialty doctors. Even nurses and hospitals have to carry insurance. While people who were harmed by neglect of a doctor should be met with proper compensation, most lawsuits are frivolous and cost insurance companies a ton of money to defend their clients. Doctors, nurses and hospitals have to include those costs in their fees.
As I mentioned. defensive medicine is practiced by most physicians to avoid law suits. People don't need many of these tests that are performed on them but are ordered by the doctor to protect themselves in the event they are working on patients who are just looking for a reason to sue a doctor and/or their facilities. Just one MRI can cost close to $3,000. Years ago you used to see one doctor for your ailments. Today your family doctor is a referral agent. If you have an ear problem, they send you to an ear, nose and throat specialist. If you have a muscle problem, they send you to orthopedic doctors. They are simply trying to pass the malpractice buck to other doctors and it costs a ton of money.
The largest expense are government programs. Medicare and Medicaid typically pay only 2/3 of the cost for treatment of their patients. Not too big of a deal for an office visit, but a $100,000 surgery or more is a big chunk of change. Like with malpractice insurance, those costs have to be absorbed in other ways such as private pay patients and private insurance. Most people who do get major medical care are our elderly. Notice that whenever a health facility closes, it's in poorer neighborhoods where most of their clients use government programs? There are not enough private pay and insurance patients to make up those losses. So if we want to keep them, they must be funded. I can't remember the last time my Medicare deduction on my paycheck increased.
Red tape: A frequent complaint by insurance companies are nickel dime claims. The cost to see your doctor is let's say $150.00. That's billed to insurance companies that spend close to that passing paperwork back and forth to the doctor. The doctor needs to hire more staff as do insurance companies. The solution to that problem is medical savings accounts. Medical savings accounts are a mandated deduction from your paycheck like SS and Medicare. This way by the time you need treatment for something like an office visit, you simply swipe your card like an ATM card, and it gets deducted from that MSA you've been contributing to for years. As we get older the deduction gets slightly higher.
When I was in the field years ago, we had to have biweekly meetings, mostly to discuss the new government mandates that changed all the time. The government would say for Medicare patients, we need forms XY and Z. We'd order boxes of these forms for not, because by the time they started to use those forms, the government changed it once again. You don't need XYZ forms any longer, now you need to provide PQR forms, and we'd end up throwing hundreds of dollars of forms into the garbage.
Removal of insurance restrictions: Some states do not allow you to buy insurance from companies out of state. You can only buy insurance from companies that have a branch inside the state. That reduces your choices which means it also reduces competition. The more competition you have at anything, the cheaper it becomes.
The elimination of government mandated insurance spending. Commie Care required all insurance companies to spend at least 80% of their premium collections on claims. Insurance companies are not government. When you pay your premium, insurance companies invest that money to help offset claims. Government should not be telling any business how to operate their finances. They know what's best for their company and profits.
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