That the current BObamaCare system can't possibly work for an average healthy working-age person shows how unstable its underpinnings have become. It’s crucial to remember that the system as currently constructed benefits both its providers (at least at the corporate level) and its heaviest users. The largely unrestrained prices inside the American healthcare system mean that taxpayers and employers spend trillions of dollars more than they should based on pricing in other advanced countries. That money goes to hospitals, insurance companies, drug and device companies, the executives and bureaucrats inside the system. Some of it even sloshes down to doctors and nurses.
But here are also hidden transfers happening within the system. Men subsidize women, the healthy subsidize the sick, and the young subsidize the old, and, yes, the stoic subsidize the whiny. A lot of medical care, much more than most people realize, is of marginal utility and effectively optional. Some people are heavy users of healthcare, others are light users. Insurance means that the cost of treatments plays no role in those decisions. But without a huge number of people who use essentially no care each year, the system’s pricing would be exposed for the insanity it has become and the patients inside it would have no chance of paying for it whether they truly need it or not.
What most healthy people under 60 need: a chance to see fee-for-service doctors once in a while combined with a catastrophic insurance backstop should expenses reach, well, catastrophic levels due to cancer or some other rare nasty. That catastrophic number will be different for different people. But the actual cost of providing such insurance is fairly low, on the order of $1,000 to $2,000 a year for healthy people under 60. That would put it in the range of $1 million to $2 million of life insurance, depending on when it kicks in. Combine that cost with a fee-for-service (concierge) that costs $1,500 to $3,000 a year depending on the region and you get something close to the actual annual cost of medical treatment for a generally healthy person, in the range of $3,000 to $5,000 or so including catastrophic insurance.
Our health-care system as currently constructed does everything possible to ensure that healthy people cannot use it that way. When the additional cost was about $3,000 extra per year and employer-subsized and the care was reasonable, most people didn’t bother to opt out. The time and effort to do so wasn’t worth the trouble. But paying $15,000/yr for care that feels worse than nothing simply seems wrong. At this point, we would opt out. The move to concierge will have its own momentum.
Many frontline physicians — internists, cardiologists, pediatricians — hate the current system and the way it restricts their autonomy. They would happily move to a solo or small group practice fee-for-service model if they thought they could survive without insurance.
For decades, the federal government and the insurers and hospital companies have done everything they can to consolidate care and make it impossible for patients and doctors to opt out. They have succeeded too well. They have created a system that is massively costly and unresponsive. Fixing the system appears impossible, it will be incredibly painful, given the financial and political power behind our current healthcare structure, changing it may seem impossible. But we need to keep talking about its problems, if only to stand up to the monumental gaslighting from tens of billions of dollars in annual hospital, insurance, and drug company ads pretending the system is working. How many more years can these trends continue?
Supplemental Info:
https://freebeacon.com/culture/medicines-descent-into-madness/
But here are also hidden transfers happening within the system. Men subsidize women, the healthy subsidize the sick, and the young subsidize the old, and, yes, the stoic subsidize the whiny. A lot of medical care, much more than most people realize, is of marginal utility and effectively optional. Some people are heavy users of healthcare, others are light users. Insurance means that the cost of treatments plays no role in those decisions. But without a huge number of people who use essentially no care each year, the system’s pricing would be exposed for the insanity it has become and the patients inside it would have no chance of paying for it whether they truly need it or not.
What most healthy people under 60 need: a chance to see fee-for-service doctors once in a while combined with a catastrophic insurance backstop should expenses reach, well, catastrophic levels due to cancer or some other rare nasty. That catastrophic number will be different for different people. But the actual cost of providing such insurance is fairly low, on the order of $1,000 to $2,000 a year for healthy people under 60. That would put it in the range of $1 million to $2 million of life insurance, depending on when it kicks in. Combine that cost with a fee-for-service (concierge) that costs $1,500 to $3,000 a year depending on the region and you get something close to the actual annual cost of medical treatment for a generally healthy person, in the range of $3,000 to $5,000 or so including catastrophic insurance.
Our health-care system as currently constructed does everything possible to ensure that healthy people cannot use it that way. When the additional cost was about $3,000 extra per year and employer-subsized and the care was reasonable, most people didn’t bother to opt out. The time and effort to do so wasn’t worth the trouble. But paying $15,000/yr for care that feels worse than nothing simply seems wrong. At this point, we would opt out. The move to concierge will have its own momentum.
Many frontline physicians — internists, cardiologists, pediatricians — hate the current system and the way it restricts their autonomy. They would happily move to a solo or small group practice fee-for-service model if they thought they could survive without insurance.
For decades, the federal government and the insurers and hospital companies have done everything they can to consolidate care and make it impossible for patients and doctors to opt out. They have succeeded too well. They have created a system that is massively costly and unresponsive. Fixing the system appears impossible, it will be incredibly painful, given the financial and political power behind our current healthcare structure, changing it may seem impossible. But we need to keep talking about its problems, if only to stand up to the monumental gaslighting from tens of billions of dollars in annual hospital, insurance, and drug company ads pretending the system is working. How many more years can these trends continue?
Supplemental Info:
https://freebeacon.com/culture/medicines-descent-into-madness/
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