Solving the healthcare mess, part 1gothaminsereniaSeptember 3 2009, 00:34:38 UTC
3. What exactly you think is the solution, considering how many people currently do not have even the option of having health care either due to preexisting conditions or employment situation?
An excellent question. Unfortunately, there are no public figures today offering a solution that will work. By "work", I mean improving healthcare with better quality and lower prices. But I can offer a solution that would work ...
Let's start by looking at what already works. Lasik eye surgery and plastic surgery are both considered "cosmetic" and so are not covered by most health insurance plans. Both of these were very expensive when they first became available. Only the wealthy could afford lasik, and only high-paid movie stars could afford plastic surgery. But providers don't make much money when services are priced so high that few can afford them ... so they are impelled to innovate, develop better technologies, become more efficient, and lower costs ... while improving quality at the same time. The result is that the price of lasik has gone down from thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars, at the same time the technology has improved (the first lasiks were done with a scalpel, now it's done by laser). The same is true for plastic surgery; today, you don't have to be a movie star, any middle-aged person can get fairly inexpensive botox.
Meanwhile, all other medicines, treatments, and surgeries which are covered by insurance have continued to escalate in price.
Let's look at something else that works. I bought my laptop computer back in 2000 for $2200. But today, you can get a top-of-the-line new laptop for $300! And these laptops have bigger harddrives, more memory, more USB ports, built-in DVD recorders, and wireless internet capability. Computers cost 10% of what they did 10 years ago, and they're also better, faster, & have more features! Today, even the poor can afford a computer ... and if they still can't pay the $300, they can get a used machine only a few years old that's almost as good for around $75. That's 3% of what the price was 10 years ago!
Wouldn't it be nice if healthcare worked like that too? So ... what do lasik surgery & computers have in common? They're both paid for by people out-of-pocket, not through insurance. Insurance is part of the problem. We don't need health insurance, we need health care. Instead of trying to shift rising costs onto someone else, which is what health insurance does, we need a system where health care itself can drop in price, so people can afford it out-of-pocket. Other examples of this are aspirin & pepto bismol, which have been around for decades, pre-dating the government's creation of the FDA, which is why they're so inexpensive.
In addition, the improvement in computers has been so dramatic because the computer industry is totally unregulated by the government. There are no mandates by the government telling people they must own a computer. There are no government requirements for size or speed or features or cost of a computer. This is left to the computer manufacturers, who decide what to produce. Their decisions are directed by one thing: what consumers want. Even safety is not regulated by the government. There is no government agency which sets safety standards for computers or any other type of electrical equipment. I'll bet you didn't know that! Safety standards for electrical equipment are set by the UL, a private company. UL creates the standards & performs testing of equipment, and computer manufacturers pay the UL so they can affix a UL label on their equipment. Check underneath your computer, it will have a UL label on it. Retailers refuse to sell electrical equipment without a UL label, because liability insurance companies would refuse to cover them if they did. The system works so well, you've probably never heard UL mentioned on the evening news. Compare that to government safety agencies like the FDA & SEC, which are in the news every month with some new story about how they failed, and how they promise to "reform" (but never do).
An excellent question. Unfortunately, there are no public figures today offering a solution that will work. By "work", I mean improving healthcare with better quality and lower prices. But I can offer a solution that would work ...
Let's start by looking at what already works. Lasik eye surgery and plastic surgery are both considered "cosmetic" and so are not covered by most health insurance plans. Both of these were very expensive when they first became available. Only the wealthy could afford lasik, and only high-paid movie stars could afford plastic surgery. But providers don't make much money when services are priced so high that few can afford them ... so they are impelled to innovate, develop better technologies, become more efficient, and lower costs ... while improving quality at the same time. The result is that the price of lasik has gone down from thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars, at the same time the technology has improved (the first lasiks were done with a scalpel, now it's done by laser). The same is true for plastic surgery; today, you don't have to be a movie star, any middle-aged person can get fairly inexpensive botox.
Meanwhile, all other medicines, treatments, and surgeries which are covered by insurance have continued to escalate in price.
Let's look at something else that works. I bought my laptop computer back in 2000 for $2200. But today, you can get a top-of-the-line new laptop for $300! And these laptops have bigger harddrives, more memory, more USB ports, built-in DVD recorders, and wireless internet capability. Computers cost 10% of what they did 10 years ago, and they're also better, faster, & have more features! Today, even the poor can afford a computer ... and if they still can't pay the $300, they can get a used machine only a few years old that's almost as good for around $75. That's 3% of what the price was 10 years ago!
Wouldn't it be nice if healthcare worked like that too? So ... what do lasik surgery & computers have in common? They're both paid for by people out-of-pocket, not through insurance. Insurance is part of the problem. We don't need health insurance, we need health care. Instead of trying to shift rising costs onto someone else, which is what health insurance does, we need a system where health care itself can drop in price, so people can afford it out-of-pocket. Other examples of this are aspirin & pepto bismol, which have been around for decades, pre-dating the government's creation of the FDA, which is why they're so inexpensive.
In addition, the improvement in computers has been so dramatic because the computer industry is totally unregulated by the government. There are no mandates by the government telling people they must own a computer. There are no government requirements for size or speed or features or cost of a computer. This is left to the computer manufacturers, who decide what to produce. Their decisions are directed by one thing: what consumers want. Even safety is not regulated by the government. There is no government agency which sets safety standards for computers or any other type of electrical equipment. I'll bet you didn't know that! Safety standards for electrical equipment are set by the UL, a private company. UL creates the standards & performs testing of equipment, and computer manufacturers pay the UL so they can affix a UL label on their equipment. Check underneath your computer, it will have a UL label on it. Retailers refuse to sell electrical equipment without a UL label, because liability insurance companies would refuse to cover them if they did. The system works so well, you've probably never heard UL mentioned on the evening news. Compare that to government safety agencies like the FDA & SEC, which are in the news every month with some new story about how they failed, and how they promise to "reform" (but never do).
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