Thursday - June 16, 2011

It’s not rocket surgery

The primary reason that the cost of healthcare is going through the roof is because the paradigm of insurance itself has been completely corrupted and bastardized.  This corruption and abuse of the concept of insurance, which is nothing more than risk management and risk pooling, is itself what is artificially inflating healthcare costs. 

A secondary cause of health care price inflation that bears a quick mention is indeed the out-of-control malpractice litigation culture, personified by that walking human compost heap, John Edwards.  The solution there is simple.  Cap malpractice awards and implement a “loser pays” rule to disincentivize frivilous litigation.  It’s not rocket surgery.
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Health insurance is meant to be a protection against catastrophic costs and expenses.  The operative term here, people, is “catastrophic”.
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The reason that the system of health insurance in the U.S. is broken today is because the concept of insurance itself has been bastardized and corrupted such that the expectation of coverage is no longer merely to protect against catastrophic expenses, but to cover absolutely everything: simple office visits, sore throat, chest cold, minor cuts requiring stitches, heck even setting a broken bone or arthroscopically working on a torn ligament in a knee. 
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You are not entitled to an insurance policy which covers every little thing.  In fact, if it is mandated that insurance cover every little thing, including preventative care, then the entire concept of risk pooling collapses in flames.  The more the insurance company has to cover, the higher the odds that any given individual is going to have a claim.  This would be like demanding auto insurance coverage that would pay out for a car wash if an insect hit your windshield – and not just a $7.00 car wash at the gas station, but a $300 full detail job.  If that were the case, the cost of car insurance would become prohibitively expensive.  But guys, my example of auto insurance paying out for a $300 detail job after having an insect hit your windshield is not an unreasonable analogue to today’s health insurance market.  We have health insurance today that covers acupuncture and cosmetic surgery.  If you force insurance to cover PREVENTATIVE care and purely cosmetic or non-medical procedures, then what you are doing is GUARANTEEING that every single participant in the risk pool can potentially have a claim.  If every person in the pool is guaranteed or even mandated to have a claim, then it is no longer a risk pool.  My God, how can it be that no one understands this?
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... a zero competition, zero deductible system, which is the goal of ObamaCare.  If you think that is going to reduce costs, then apparently Barack Obama isn’t the only person currently smoking crack in this country.

This is a MUST READ article, but for those of you who have to multitask, there are also videos. So it can be a MUST LISTEN post if necessary. Go, and partake.

What a wild idea - medical insurance to cover catastrophic or significant accident or illness.

Nearly as wild would be health insurance possibly extended to cover (partially?) minor accidents or illnesses if they cost you more than X% of your annual income. Say you make $30,000 a year, and you policy comes in after 5%. That’s $1500 worth of doctor visits, medicines, eye exams, etc. In the past 10 years I’ve been to the doctor about once or twice a year. So for me, even if I only made $3,000 a year, I’d barely make that 5% line.

And let’s knock off the BS of calling health insurance “health care”. It isn’t.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/16/2011 at 03:00 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • No Shit, Sherlock •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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