Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

Health Care Costs X in America, with 47 million uninsured.

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So we’re all agreed that health care costs are going up too fast. We have problems. But just exactly what should be done about that is a matter of debate. Some are arguing that we throw the entire free market system out and institute single payer health coverage. And lets not kid ourselves. Obama has said it. Thats his goal. Everyone in the same collective.

Of course, there is the little matter of paying for it. The true believers tout that once everyone is covered, then prices will stabilize because everyone will have coverage and all those losses from bankruptcy and debt that are a shared burden on society will all go away. On top of that, we can manage the care people get. Unfortunately, these types of programs only lead to rationing, waiting lists and lousy medical care like what they have in England that Tommy Daschle wanted to foist on America over the protests of the vox populi.  

There are some real reform ideas out there that can be done that will really REFORM the health care system, without turning a DMV style government run program on your doctors and hospitals…

1. Make your health care individual and portable. Did you know that there is a law in EVERY STATE in the country that says a company cannot buy individual personal portable health insurance for their employees? There’s already laws mandating you have to be part of a group plan. But when you leave the group, you no longer have the health insurance. Insurance that travels with you through the labor market would make sure millions more would keep their health insurance.

2. If you get insurance through your employer, its pre-tax dollars. If you get insurance on your own, you have to pay for it with after tax dollars. That can double the price of insurance for a middle income family. People who buy their own insurance should get the same benefit. Better yet, your employer can give up its health insurance costs and pay you a higher wage, and you can go out and shop for yourself! That is another way to drive down costs. The free market works every time.

3. This is key: We pay too much in health care because everyone has perverse incentives. We’re not careful about what we buy and where we buy it. The doctors have perverse incentives to over provide and they have no incentives to cut costs either. The insurance companies have incentives to manage their costs, but the only way to do that is with something crude: like managed care (i.e. telling people what they can and cant have). So…

Wherever patients are controlling the money and spending their own money, prices are going down. Cosmetic surgery and lasik procedures? Those procedures cost less each year. There is no insurance in those areas. Over the last decade, there’s been a HUGE increase in the number of procedures done, all kinds of technological devices created, all the things we are TOLD increases cost everywhere else. But in these fields, it reduces cost.

There’s a health care proof. If you can shop for a lower price, someone will offer it.  If you dont care what it costs and you go to any doctor to get it, then you know why you’re paying more! Walk in clinics, those clinics in shopping malls, their prices are posted, they operate outside the insurance system, their prices are low, their records are electronic, their service is good. Thats because a patient walks in and is paying for the procedure themselves!

4. I want to mention the famous canard of Medicare spending 3 to 4% in operating costs, whereas your insurance company spends 25 to 30%. When anyone bounces that lie around, its because they are counting the costs of the insurer collecting premiums and selling their policies, but they arent including the costs the government spends collecting taxes. The social cost of taxation is 25 cents on the dollar, before they ever do a thing for you. Not only that but doctors spend a vastly inordinate amount of time completing and complying with complex Medicare paperwork, costs not attributed to Medicare but costs all the same. MEDICARE COSTS MORE. GOVERNMENT ALWAYS DOES.

That is not to say that operating costs arent too high. They are. We are running too many bills through third parties. Individuals should be handling the small bills on their own and then we wouldnt have nearly the administrative costs.

5. A health savings account. Go from a $500 deductible to a, say, $2000 deductible. Lower rates right there. Then you, or your employer, puts $2000 in a health savings account. When you start buying health care, the money comes out. You dont spend it, you keep it. The next $500 is out of pocket, and everything above that is covered.

You dont want people not to go the doctor because they dont have the money saved up, so we have to get on the bandwagon and start up a national responsibility movement. Everyone has to start saving money in an account. Make it a social responsibility, like recycling. Am I speaking “Progressive” now? Sorry.

6. One more thing a friend told me the other day. He has a buddy who just came back from Iraq. He’s done triage on soldiers in the battlefield. Dressed wounds, made splints, saw buddies die. This medic cant perform medicine, cant get a license, cant offer his services even if all I needed was a bandaid. They cant treat low income people who need the most help. There are many things wrong.

They just dont require a GOVERNMENT SOLUTION. The President and progressives on the left and the right wont talk about other solutions, because they want the government in control. YOU CAN CONTROL YOUR HEALTH CARE. DO NOT GIVE IT UP TO GOVERNMENT.