Is This Really the Healthcare We Want? There Are Simpler
Solutions Available, by Tom Stark, 7/14/17, Politichicks
A
recent article
in the Daily Signal, relating to the imminent demise of
a 10 month old child in England at the hands of the British government very
accurately points out the danger inherent in allowing government to place
itself between a parent and their ability to control the welfare of their
children. Abuse, neglect, or violence being the only justification for
interference.
What
came to mind as I read was the current controversy over our
healthcare/insurance issues currently raging in Washington, and who should be
making our health-related decisions. If
you are not immediately seeing the connections, let me explain several:
That
having been said, why would we ever want our representatives to trap us in a
nationalized healthcare system that ensures that the ultimate decisions
regarding our children’s healthcare will be made by bureaucrats instead of
medical doctors. Make no mistake, the
Affordable Care Act [ACA] and the new ones are still variations on this theme.
We already have a world class healthcare delivery system the likes of which no
other country can match?
Here’s
another fact that you had best not overlook. We are only one step away from
seeing the system in America look identical to that currently attempting to
kill that 10-month-old child in England when there is at least one option left
to save that child – the American system.
So,
what do we do about it? There have been two market-based solutions to the ACA
debacle debated over the past seven years, but it appears from what has been
made public that neither of those good ideas have made it into either the House
or Senate versions of the “repeal and replace” bills.
The
worst part of the debate has been the fact that it is not about healthcare, it
is about health
insurance. This argument has clearly become nothing more than a
bill to regulate two things – the insurance companies and Medicaid. Your health
is, as the farmers used to say, “Left sucking the hind teat.”
Meanwhile
the states are making the entire problem 50 times worse by setting different
operating requirements and coverage requirements. This results in a serious
reduction to the number of companies who choose to tailor their policies to 50
different regulations and coverages. Instead, the big companies wind up as the
players and the smaller companies select a very few choice states in which to
sell their policies. No meaningful competition results.
The
Commerce Clause of our constitution was intended to prevent just such a
situation. Instead, it has been used as a vehicle to interfere in private
decisions that only have cursory relation to interstate commerce. Rightfully,
with a minimal regulatory footprint, the law should only provide for a minimum
requirement as to financial liquidity on the part of the company – the ability
to pay claims timely. Otherwise, what business is it which conditions are a
necessary part of a health insurance policy?
Mandating
coverages when they are neither desired or needed equals higher premiums.
Coverage should be determined based on the person and the insurance carrier.
This change would open all states to all qualified companies. Maximum
competition.
Pre-existing
conditions appear to be one of two major hot buttons. If – and only if – you
believe that an insurance company should assume all the risk regardless of
circumstances, you are very likely a socialist.
Newsflash!
Insurance companies offer a service to the public by offering to assume some of
the risk to save the patient the cost of the entire bill. They gamble that
enough healthy people will buy policies to off-set those who file claims at a
higher than normal rate.
Pre-existing
conditions were typically treated in the past by the insurance company
requiring between six months and a year before paying any claim relating to a
condition that was treated in the six months or a year prior to purchase of the
policy.
After
that restricted period, the condition would be covered just as if it had not
existed before the policy purchase. This off-sets the extremely high risk to
the company while setting a defined limit on how long they could have a ‘free
ride” from coverage. To most rational minds, this would seem reasonable, and it
has been the norm for decades past.
If,
however, we want to err on the side of caution, we could include a provision in
the law that limits the waiting period to a shorter period (90-180 days?) before
coverage for the pre-existing condition starts being covered. You could also
approach it by setting a higher premium for the first six months or one year
and then the premium would revert to a lower rate offered to others who do not
have a pre-existing condition.
With
these two approaches – controlled protection for pre-existing conditions – and
opening markets across state lines, the issue is solved by reducing
regulations, while at the same time removing the government from the coverage
issues but limiting it to setting a financial safeguard to prevent insolvent,
fly-by-night companies from operating in the market.
Believe
me, folks, the rest is nothing more than cronyism and socialistic government
interference in a free-market problem on one side, and the failure of our
education system to educate the average adult citizen on the purpose and reason
for the existence of insurance. It is not meant to solve all your problems,
just make life a little easier.
Note
that these changes (after ACA’s actual repeal) do nothing to interfere with
your healthcare at all. It would be a simple matter to completely repeal the
ACA with an effective date 12 months into the future. During those 12 months,
the changes outlined above could be refined and implemented giving the
insurance companies a date certain at which point the market could be
stabilized with premiums returning to rational levels based solely on risk and
not politics.
I
will only touch on the Medicaid portion of the problem by suggesting that the
purpose of it was to take care of those below the arbitrarily produced “poverty
line.” It should never have been expanded. Ask yourself how easy it is to
remove a federal benefit once enacted and then ask yourself why it was done.
http://politichicks.com/2017/07/really-healthcare-want-simpler-solutions-available/
If we care about medical care for the poor, we care about lowering costs by going back to a cash-based system. At least young minimum-wage workers could pay for tests and treatment up into the 1980s, before the insurance companies added that whole layer of unnecessary expense to the system. I'm sitting out of the debates about what kind of national insurance gamble people want, but I want to remind everybody that poor people (and, in my experience, also rich people) are better off with no insurance, paying only the actual cost of treatment.
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