@xahnegrey40 You are saying it like it is. Having been in healthcare for over 40 yrs - and having many friends scattered in different parts of it - I finally came to realize that all of our problems are caused by insurance itself.
Without going into all the complex fee systems, middlemen, etc, just close your eyes and imagine this: NO INSURANCE…
Just like everything else, the health market would find its own level. If one store charges $500 for an item, bet your life that there’s another selling the same thing for $400…and another for $300 and so on until they all charge the same lower price. People drive the market and if people are unwilling to pay X, then you have to drop your price. This domino effect would go up the chain from providers to suppliers, labs and hospitals - including exorbitant executive pay packages for those at the top.
If no one can AFFORD to buy your product then you either drop the price or go out of business…no other outcomes are possible!
The very existence of a pot of gold (insurance company $$ or literally someone else’s $$) waiting to be tapped engenders all these side hustlers (middlemen) who drive up the cost of doing business by taking their piece of the action. It’s capitalism gone wrong, twisted into its worst possibility.
And in the US it is basically illegal for a hospital or doctor to refuse to treat a patient who cannot pay; but instead of fixing THAT problem, the insurance companies bang the rest of us who DO pay…totally unfair.
An ER doc told me that a man - recently arrived in NYC and holding a suitcase - showed up in the ER with a letter from his doctor in Guatemala describing what surgical procedures he needed to mend a failing heart.
Of course the man had no $$ and no insurance.
The hospital provided over a Million $$ worth of treatment and received only a pittance from the Emergency Medicaid system…another slush fund funded by the rest of us thru some legislative sleight of hand…
Your statement is not politics - it’s reality - and I certainly offer no solution to the problem, but it seems that common sense has gone out the window.
As I write this I am listening to a congressman arguing with a talking head about the government shut down….every other word is INSURANCE!
It’s like some over arching presence in our lives and our government; everything revolves around it; and now our very legislative system is choked by it.
Our Congress should grow a pair, stop taking PAC $$, and come down hard on this industry. Drive it out of business if need be and reset the true order of things.
Charity is a noble virtue and should be practiced - but reasonably and not to the detriment of the rest of us. Patient dumping on ERs and hospitals - that’s what should be illegal - NOT the act of not treating them. Legislators should get off their butts and FIX the problem, not give insurance company execs seats in Congress…
Best,
Phil