we could pay our doctors directly for routine care and then have mandatory catastrophic insurance to cover accident and long term illness available nationwide from any insurance company of our choice which would open up competition between doctors and insurance companies to cut costs? (Similar to how we handle car insurance and paying for our routine care on our cars...)
IF we didn't have business involved in extracting premiums from our paychecks, and paying the lions share of our insurance burden for routine care, our employers could actually pay us much better salaries. Under a system such as this, you would actually only pay for what you use, where now you and your employer pay EVERY MONTH whether you use the service or not. This would give some families up to an additional $ 1000 a month in their own pocket, which they could then use to purchase the catastrophic care insurance. (It would work similar to car insurance...you buy the coverage you want). Also, it would give people an incentive to try to take care of themselves and stay healthy so that they didn't have to pay as much each year in doctor care...(similar to taking care of your car so you don't have to pay for big ticket items if you routinely maintain your vehicle).
Then if we did tort reform so doctors paid less out in malpractice insurance...and made medical schools more affordable more people could afford to become doctors and practitioners, they wouldn't have to charge as much to make up for $ 100,000's of student loans.
There are so many things we could do which would not involve taking on more national debt or raising taxes on everyone...are there people out there who agree we should be discussing these kinds of alternatives instead of raising taxes and raising our deficit? The current healthcare reform bills being discussed would cost ultimately $ 6 trillion for five years in coverage for less than 6% of our nations uninsured and we would be taxed 10 years, or more to pay for that.
Does anyone else have ideas, or agree that some of the solutions I mentioned would fix alot of problems???
To Steve D....our nation cannot afford anymore entitlement programs...we are broke...we should not put this on the government, as we can't bring in enough to cover what everybody needs or wants, we have to drive costs down so people can pay for THEMSELVES...even if we supplemented the VERY POOR...it would still cost less than what the government is proposing.
Kiran C...no I am not describing a high deductible health insurance...if you got routine care out of the insurance realm, the other would be cheaper...whatever the government is spouting so they can takeover the entire system and provide us substandard care for higher costs and fraud and waste which is inherent in any government program, is a lie.
Vanes
I agree 100% and don't forget about allowing people to buy insurance across state lines. That would drive up competition which always lowers costs.
whimsy
I think we should have a single-payer system that covers catastrophic illness/injury ONLY and optional supplemental insurance, by choice, can be free market. In such as system, we can eliminate Medicare and combine VA benefits into one system for all. In any scenario, doctor choice must be protected and in turn, their compensation ought to be based upon the success of their treatments and not the numbers served.
kadiss17
I agree.
Steve D
Just out of curiosity, you do realize your idea is available now - called a Health Savings Account.
As for tort reform, the savings are minimal (less than 1/2 of 1% of the actual medical bill). And cutting costs of med education just means passing off the subsidies to somewhere else in the system (a zero-based game basically speaking).
While HSAs have a good chance to assist in limiting health care cost increases, the problems still arise when you have uninsured people who cannot afford coverage and rely on ERs, etc. for care. Moving to catastrophic insurance does nothing to alleviate this problem (if folks can't affords insurance and live day-to-day, even reducing the costs of catastrophic insurance won't help, they will still have to pay the upfront costs out-of-pocket, which they can't afford now).
Instead of concentrating on health insurance reform, we need to concentrate on health care reform. By developing a system in which more people can afford more and better primary care, we could head off trips to the ER for routine medical maladies and also intervene in health care before these routine maladies become serious enough to warrant a hospital admission (which if you can't afford primary care, is going to get paid for by the general public by tacking the loss onto the cost of care for those that can afford it). It is obviously much cheaper to treat a cold or viral infection when it is relatively new than when it turns into full fledged pneumonia or system-wide infection.
Kiran C
What you are describing is High deductible Health insurance. Such insurance is used with health saving accounts. People can buy such insurance if they want but no one willingly wants it. If health care insurance reform is not passed, prices for comprehensive insurance will be so great that people will only be able to afford high deductible health insurance. If health care insurance reform is passed, people can buy this insurance or a PPO or HMO, either private or public.
No need for additional for tort reform because the price of malpractice insurance is dropping for years. Also, states like Texas has passed tort reform and no improvement in prices occurred.
Also, the Senate bill is less than one trillion and deficit neutral.
namsaev
Watch out girl! You make entirely too much sense for the liberals in here.
mortician
Hey!!! I AGREE!!!!!!!
( I knew I made a good contact friend here on Y!)
I will have some links, a little later for ya.
I VOTE YOU FOR PRES!!!!!!!! :)
Orignal From: Healthcare...does anyone agree that we would save so much money if...?
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