This comment came as a response to my healthcare blog
Why is it fair that insurance companies, and ONLY insurance companies (in lockstep with each other... no real competition that I can tell) get to set the amount of money a doctor makes, and why is this so much better than single payer Government setting prices?
This Blog Will Address That Comment
Because from those same doctors offices I've worked at -and since many of my readers are healthcare providers, you know how little they are paid under that existing single payer system for medicare and medicaid patients. So little, that many many doctors here in the triangle have stopped even taking those patients, or limit the percent of those patients they'll take. And, under a national healthcare system this would only get worse.
I think the Government payer system (unless they just run it under the same medicare, medicaid department, and don't add another whole bureaucratic layer), has the real potential to make a mess of a national healthcare system. Doctors would still charge the real costs, get paid less under a new medicare/medicaid like single payer government program, and participants might lose access to doctors as they pullout or pullback on accepting patients.
Here's a novel idea. Why don't they simply let all uninsured people pick their "government" plan (rather like Medicare), make it a cafeteria plan, let people sign up for it a year at a time like regular health insurance. But make them fill out a "certificate of need" each year, so it's more of a gap insurance for people who have lost their income, or have extraneous circumstances...set up an individual prepaid health account per family, just like regular insurance. Charge the family a nominal visit fee $5.00 (like medicaid), and when the money in their prepaid health savings account is gone, they have to go back and reapply for more funds (under some tight guidelines). This is not meant to be a permanent solution to not having insurance.
And leave everyone else alone who are happy with their BCBS, Aetna employer coverages. Then instead of COBRA through the employer, that family would be directly picked up by the Government plan, if there is a need, layoff, changing life circumstances. This would untie the hands of employees during gaps, and would untie the costs of employers for COBRA.
This would be far cheaper than trying to insure every person in the United States - that's just a totally unworkable option it looks like.
I think the Government payer system (unless they just run it under the same medicare, medicaid department, and don't add another whole bureaucratic layer), has the real potential to make a mess of a national healthcare system. Doctors would still charge the real costs, get paid less under a new medicare/medicaid like single payer government program, and participants might lose access to doctors as they pullout or pullback on accepting patients.
Here's a novel idea. Why don't they simply let all uninsured people pick their "government" plan (rather like Medicare), make it a cafeteria plan, let people sign up for it a year at a time like regular health insurance. But make them fill out a "certificate of need" each year, so it's more of a gap insurance for people who have lost their income, or have extraneous circumstances...set up an individual prepaid health account per family, just like regular insurance. Charge the family a nominal visit fee $5.00 (like medicaid), and when the money in their prepaid health savings account is gone, they have to go back and reapply for more funds (under some tight guidelines). This is not meant to be a permanent solution to not having insurance.
And leave everyone else alone who are happy with their BCBS, Aetna employer coverages. Then instead of COBRA through the employer, that family would be directly picked up by the Government plan, if there is a need, layoff, changing life circumstances. This would untie the hands of employees during gaps, and would untie the costs of employers for COBRA.
This would be far cheaper than trying to insure every person in the United States - that's just a totally unworkable option it looks like.
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