07-13-2016, 06:43 PM
Pam wrote:
Money. Healthcare costs need to be addressed. Until that is genuinely done, insurance costs are a red herring. And that ain't going to happen.
Taking the private market and publicly traded profiteering out of healthcare would go a long way toward fixing the 'money problem.' There are certain professions that ought not be universally privatized, because they respond to matters of public good, not market wellness or profit. Healthcare is one of these. A private, boutique medical profession will always exist for the super-rich, but it should be a tiny sliver of the overall picture.
In countries where universal care is provided at public expense, and medical education is also paid for, doctors enjoy high social status (if not outrageous, extravagant wealth) and can practice responsibly without constantly navigating conflicts of interest. Compensation can follow measures of effectiveness rather than market pressures. Private (and public!) employers can get out of the business of negotiating healthcare contracts and focus on their core business (or public) concerns. Pharmaceutical companies can negotiate reasonable prices with a central provider, and stop wining and dining individual docs and pressuring patients to demand treatments they know 30-seconds-worth about.
This kind of system (Medicare for All, for lack of a better term) empirically saves money, encourages effective treatments, reduces the problems of under- and non-coverage, and vastly simplifies complicated systems of healthcare delivery. It reduces the need for dozens of systems of regulation, each different by state. This wasn't politically viable in 2009, but it's becoming clearer and clearer over time that it's the only real way forward.