‘Consumers’ should be the ‘buyers’ whether they pay the doctors/hospitals directly or buy insurance. Today, the cost for hospitals/doctors services is ‘unknown’; why don’t they publish their rates online so that people can compare & shop. If this option is available, I will buy insurance only for what I need…just for emergency/catastrophic coverage and for all the rest I will pay directly. This will cost only a fraction of premium I pay in the current system.

Bottom line is we don’t need insurance for every service.

It means, by forcing the doctors/hospitals (by law) to publish their rates you can expect the healthcare cost drop significantly.

According to US Dept of Health & Human Services http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/proj2007.pdf ), our projected healthcare expenses would be $4.277 TRILLION in 2017 compared to $2.105 trillion in 2006….if the current system continues.

It means, a family of 4 will need to spend $52,400 – in 2017 on healthcare alone. Please wait….actual expense will always be more than projected amounts. AND, more and more people will become uninsured and under-insured. Where is the money?

Simply, the current system is not financially viable. Let us not waste our time analyzing and trying to put band-aids here and there. We must shut down the current system ASAP and come out with a simpler system where medical decisions are made by doctors and patients ONLY.

Let us all understand one thing. Even if the current healthcare system is good, it simply can not survive. Someone wrote in this blog about projected expense of over $13,000 per person per year by 2017. I could not believe it at first. When I checked Health & Human Services Dept website, it is absolutely true.

Surely, more than 90% of the population can not afford this amount. A huge freight train is coming at you…very fast. Act right now. We say college is not affordable even when you go to college only for 4-6 years. Whereas this healthcare expense is for your entire life.

You can not get rid of doctors because they are the ones who provide the service; and patients receive the service. It means, health insurance companies (and allied) are the only ones who should/will become extinct.

Let us have a purely consumer driven healthcare system and not health insurance company driven one.

Auto-insurance is there only for any unexpected accidents. That’s why, the premium is so low. Imagine an auto-insurance system covering every possible expenses including oil-change, tire/battery replacement, other maintenance, etc., there would have been tons of money wasted or misused.

Why not we make healthcare exactly like auto-insurance. Let us have health-insurance only for ‘catastrophic’ coverage and pay directly for all routine services from HSAs. In this case, tons of wastage can be avoided; doctors would prescribe only as necessary, because they want to really ‘treat’ the patients as they want to keep the patients happy.

It would reduce tons of money wasted in administrative expenses, law-suits, etc.

The US is the most over-medicated country in the US. People in this country average three times the amount of medications that people in other countries do. This is likewise atrocious. The insurance carriers do not like it as they know doctors are often prescribing for the wrong reasons and saying “Your insurance company will cover it.” Like, they don’t care wh pays for it, they will prescribe it….

As for not buying home insurance and car insruance through insurance carriers, those are the ONLY places to get it. You may go through a broker or agent, but all ‘insurance’ is provided by insurance companies.

Let’s overhaul the system by starting with the outrageous profit-making machines…. and it isn’t the insurance industry. They are considered “profitable” is they make 4% ! No individual who is self-employed would stay self-employed for 4% ! The pharmaceutical companies have a larger lobby in Washington than the tobacco or firearms lobbies…. and when they tell you that they like to get their R & D costs back and that is why the cost of meds is so high – BULL. If you ask for and read the fiancial statement for any pharmaceutical company, 80% of their ‘overhead’ is for advertising. Advertising! NOT research and developement.

Instead of attacking the insurance companies, with their 4% profit (we are talking health iinsurance, not life – life is very profitable and should not be confused with health insurance), let’s go after the root cause: increase in malpractice insurance, increase in medication cost (I know for a fact that what usually costs you $4 a tablet at the pharmacy leaves the factory for less than 25 cents…..) and, face it, when hospitals are forced to take care of people who are not even in this country legally to start with, knowing they will never get paid, who pays? WE do – so of course the hositals’ costs are going to go up, too!

Healthcare has always been a hot topic in political races – but realize, NOTHING is ever done abut it. Not by any candidate. But they know that – aside from those truly in need – the ignorant, poor and/or milking-the-system types will vote for anyone who says they are going to provide healthcare for everyone. Come on, who is going to pay for it?! WE are – not the government. If the government pays for it, where do they get the money from – from US, from higher taxes!

Think this through, it isn’t free: but it does take away freedom of choice. That is one thing we have, in our country, and it is one thing that it seems the voters will let the government take away from us – freedom of choice.

Once you lose freedom of choice – what’s left?

1) Employers spend tens of thousands of dollars on every employee (& dependents) today. Let them direct 50% (or so)of that money to employee’s Health Savings Account; and the rest to ‘Federal Catastrophic pool’.
2) Limited number of ‘Catastrophic procedures’ (like cancer treatment) will be covered by this ‘Federal Catastrophic pool’ with some copays.
3) Individuals will pay the doctors directly from their HSAs for all other procedures. There is no question of claim forms, out-of-network issues, deductibles, out-of-pocket maximums, etc. It is just like what we do in case of auto-insurance or home insurance.
4) What about low-income people: Catastrophic pool will cover them as well. For all other services, introduce a process something like food-stamps, we may call it ‘medical-stamps’.

Why it will work:
1) Patients and doctors are the only folks involved in making medical decisions; not too many cooks to spoil the broth.
2) Admin costs will be very minimal; 100s of billions in savings.
3) Individuals make payments and so comes responsibility; also encourages a healthy living (diet & exercise). Also, it does not give room for ‘defensive medicine’ where doctors resort to unnecessary tests for fear of law suits; 100s of billions in savings.
4) Does not involve ‘too many cooks’; so less law suits and lower ‘liability insurance’ for doctors.
5) Simplified process; people know up front what they will pay and no surprise bills.
6) Total choice of doctors/hospitals; no need to check if the doctor is in-network or not.
7) More importantly, no more psychological stress due the non-transparent and complex system.

From my experience, I can say for sure that the money what we spend today is absolutely enough.

Jack

Do we need any more reason to get rid of health insurance companies?

Doctors hate health insurance companies.
People hate health insurance companies.
Employers hate health insurance companies.

Then why do we still keep them in business? Put the ‘out of business’ sign in front of health insurance companies immediately.

Here is the fact. A family of 4 will need to spend over $52,400 a year in 2017. This is the projected national healthcare expense. I am not saying this. This is according to US Dept of Health & Human Services. You can check it out at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/proj2007.pdf

According to them, $4.277 trillion is required in 2017 for the population of 326.5 million. Can a family of 4 afford $52,400/- a year on healthcare? Absolutely it is not going to happen. Let us not waste time in trying to analyze or fix the system. It is simply not fixable. Shut it down ASAP.

Jack

We talk so much about our productivity. Yes, we do have higher productivity, but it comes with a price in the form of over weight and poor health.

Re Carolyn’s comment on doctors, the data maintained by healthplans especially provider data is JUNK. Even today, we don’t have something called unique-provider-ID implemented by the healthplans; Dr. Carolyn can be written in dozens of different ways. When you call the healthplan, they would say that your doctor is in network and when the claim goes he/she is NOT. Even if everything is ok, what happens if your doctor goes out of network in January in the middle of your treatment. Is it called CHOICE?

People come to the US for medical care because they have something here and nowhere else: CHOICE.

Do you need any more reason to scrap the current system?