Ban all health insurance. And Medicare. And Medicaid. Require all healthcare services be transparently and consistently priced in cash. Transform the IRS into an insurer of last resort by providing 100% tax credits for all medical care in excess of 8% of income. Fixed.
throw10920|2 years ago
Health insurance is good, as long as it remains actually insurance - that is, risk pooling. Over the past few decades, "health insurance" transformed into "healthcare subsidization" - which caused costs (and complexity, and fraud, and many other bad things) to skyrocket. Insurance should not be used for routine doctor visits - it should literally be "insurance" against catastrophic events like getting your spine broken.
The combination between pricing that is completely invisible to the buyer (which you mentioned) and "insurance" that is really just spreading costs around (instead of risk pooling) is one of the biggest reasons why healthcare is so expensive. If the price for a CPAP machine was as transparent as that of an iPhone, and you had to pay 100% out-of-pocket (because sleep apnea is not a catastrophic event and your insurance wouldn't cover it), then we'd very quickly see the prices of CPAP machines plummet (as well as every other piece of medical equipment and procedure) because of how price-sensitive consumers are, and because now they'd have the ability to use that price-sensitivity.
candiddevmike|2 years ago
NoblePublius|2 years ago