Free healthcare in UK?

I’m sure austerity and brexit made things worse, but UK had long wait times going back until at least 2011, at least for many critical things. We have had to bring people back who got sick over there for a long time before brexit.

Americans also need to learn from this that austerity measures are either not necessary or minimal when the the government manages itself well. The UK welfare system is a mess.

 

I always felt this graph pretty well sums up our healthcare.

List of countries by total health expenditure per capita - Wikipedia

 

This is false, misleading and off point. The largest group of people that Obamacare is trying to touch is low income people who don’t have insurance. They did not need insurance before Obamacare. “Most people” is a meaningless descriptor. About 50% of the American population has employee provided insurance. About 35% have Obamacare. The rest aren’t insured. In America, for the last 50+ years (including today) low income people have just been walking into ERs to get their medical care and have not paid a penny. The Rich don’t care about medical costs. Only middle class folks care about the points you raise, and Obamacare did nothing for them except drive up the cost of everything health care related.

 

You are a broken record playing the same crappy song. Since it seems you are an expert on being wrong, educate us all on how my last sentence is laughably wrong.

 

Here is just one of many examples how that statement shows your head is firmly implanted in the sand ...

How Medicaid expansion has improved care access, outcomes | American Medical Association (ama-assn.org)

 

sorry to hear about your families health care issues. I have a better solution for your problem (which was real), which does not require you to read the over 10,000 pages of regulations known as the ACA. Here you go. Congress passes this bill instead of the ACA. “All Health Care Insurers who conduct business and/or sell insurance policies in the United States shall be prohibited from inquiring about pre-existing conditions in their applications, shall be prohibited from using an applicant’s or insured’s pre-existing conditions in underwriting or otherwise charge any insured an increase in premium due to a pre-existing condition.” That’s it. You’re welcome. Give me more problems you want me to solve, this is fun.

 

Well, that is flat false. The two studies I saw pegged that number at 11-12 people per 100,000 per year that had their lives saved by Medicaid expansion.

 

This is a problem you can get with fully socialized health care. Similar to the VA. The quality of care can be good and cost cost efficient, but the government running the means of production is not very adaptable or reliable when you either have changes in demand or changing political whims.

This is somewhat different than a single payer model, like Canada, and to an extent Medicare, where the government funds/pays the health care, but the actual health is mostly private providers.

I am pretty sure a full socialized model would fail pretty badly here. There are other alternatives for universal health care.

 

Your solution ignores moral hazard, in which a healthy person just doesn't get insurance until diagnosed with a problem, making the entire pool of insured nothing but risky people and exploding it's cost.

So how do you solve the moral hazard dilemma? Maybe you can ask some economists at MIT.

 

What problem does that solve? Insurance companies want to make money. How is forcing them to take on the highest risk patients, without any compensation from the government for doing so, going to make health care affordable? Seems like it would do the opposite.

My solution is get rid of insurance (they are just a useless middle man getting rich of the system), go with single payer ...but it doesn't kick in until an individual/family has spent some reasonable amount out of pocket ... like $5000/$10000 a year for the typical individual/family. Maybe higher for higher income people, lower for lower income people.

 

While that is certainly progress, the problem that creates if done in a vacuum is that it allows people to stay uninsured until they get sick and then immediately acquire health insurance, which drives up health insurance cost such that the insured mostly are just those that are sick. This was the intent of the individual “mandate” (which in actuality was a tax) to mitigate this which of course has been repealed.

So where do you stand on policies having limited coverage, such as no maternity care, no mental health care, etc? That is another way around pre existing conditions, keep carving out pieces into add on riders/add on such that the riders become unaffordable to anyone that needs them.

 

This is not an example, this is an opinion piece, which is crap. I have spent the last 25 years of my life engaged in insurance coverage litigation, primarily for insurance companies (casualty, not health). (Sometimes I get to sue them, which is much more satisfying). I have written insurance policies, I have helped draft state insurance regulations. I have given dozens of seminars on insurance. I have spoken at great length with Drs and Hospital administrators about the problems they face because my I have a personal interest in Health Coverage, and because of my professional interest. My mother was a hospital administrator for 30 years. We still talk about this subject. I have had 100s of hours of friendly heated discussions with my fellow lawyers, professors, politicians and Dr friends on these very issues, and I have listened to all sides. So if you think I have my head up my ass on this topic I would love to have a sit down with you in person, over a beer, and when we are done talking the person apologizing is buying. Bottom line: if you want to know what’s going on in the medical field, speak to the Frontline people and the people fighting about it for a living.

 

^^^ This post is an opinion piece, which is crap.

But here is what the article I linked says, since you didn't read it...

The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) in March published a similar review of 202 studies examining the impact of Medicaid expansion.

Authors of the Health Affairs review observed that increased coverage led to improved access that was generally associated with improvements in health, work productivity and better quality of life.

And I'm sure I could find you 100 more studies that say the same, no matter what your friends and mother think.

 

For the poor that just walked into the ER and don’t pay ACA created the Medicaid expansion, which the supreme Ct later said states can opt out of.

I’m not exactly clear what your solution is for the poor who can’t afford health insurance. Walking to an ER is the most expensive and least efficient way to get health care and drives up cost for everybody else.

 

Not to mention that ERs are only required to stabilize you and send you on your way. If your stomach pain turns out to be cancer, then what is the ER going to do for you, give you some pain relievers?

 

You have a common misconception on how insurance works. It would take too long to type a response to your risk argument. But it is moot in the solution because Getting rid of health insurance is 100% an integral part on any workable solution. Single payer is not. It does not work anywhere, and is a political no go. People forget that even good ideas get killed by politics. The solution, imo, requires completely new thinking and an approach which tosses everything you know today about healthcare out the window. Multi-faceted approach which fixes everything. I have been working on this for 10 years (with help from many others). It is my side hobby in retirement. LOL

 

Given your background in the area I’d like to hear what you propose. You don’t like Obamacare, but are for banning pre existing conditions. Please expand further.

 

Okay, and what is that solution (it should be noted, that your earlier suggestion was to ban insurance companies from considering pre-existing conditions, which presupposes insurance)? Explain how to pay for healthcare without insurance.

 

You have a good point here. The Republicans do have no interest in fixing things. But you are omitting that democrats are just as beholden (if not more) to insurance/pharma and have zero interest in anything but single payer government managed.

Obama care was never designed to work, it was designed to let the current system kill itself in its own death spiral, leaving single payer as the only option.

There is a lot to unwind and re-build in our healthcare/ health insurance industries. Our politicians can’t even see that borrowing $200K per taxpayer is a bad move. I don’t think they have the brains/balls/desire to do anything beneficial to the public at large.

 

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier ... you sound like a republican from about 2009 to 2016.... "We are going to knock your socks off with all our great ideas that we can't tell you about right now, but it's going to be awesome. You'll love it. Trust us."