For consumers the health care crisis simply is NOT that complicated. We want access to affordable, quality health services.
So why the huge disconnect between what consumers want and what's happening?
The key reason is that we're all over the board. Every consumer has his "Christmas" list of what he/she needs at the moment without sitting down and revising that list with the assumption that it's not ALL possible.
Let's take the popular cause of "preventive" care. Why did it catch on?
First, the requirements for inoculations and checkups for jobs should be supplied by Health Departments...tests for contagious diseases like TB and making sure our "shots" are up to date. That is as far as employer interests should go with any potential employee.
Consumers, however, got greedy and in fairness it was partly because our health services providers got greedy and the cost of these "preventives" grew as the number of "preventive" checkup possibilities improved and as the cost for each check up item increased and as health services providers decided to run every test as part of their own "defensive medicine" program.
Insurers LOVE preventive coverage because it's a distraction. At its root, checkups work in favor of insurers if as touted all these tests make people healthier through early diagnosis, so WHY is it sold as something only beneficial to consumers? While we bragged that our insurer covered an annual check up for this or that, we failed to address the fact that insurers LIMITED coverage for real insurance...promises to cover the risk of the expense of treating illness.
Preventive services should NOT be part of insurance promises. A check up for anything is a finite cost and if our country decides such a check up is a right then Health Departments should be offering the service for free and those who don't want to wait should have the option of paying for the checkup out of pocket. Insurance can't succeed as what it's supposed to be, coverage for the expense of treating illness with all the other throwaway items mixed in, that's been proven.
The REALITY is that we don't NEED insurance for checkups and that's why insurers like providing such coverage. If you get a test for anything it has a market price, it's TREATMENT that costs money.
Keep it Simple today and calculate the costs of the checkups you want. These costs will still be counted towards medical expenses. Instead of expecting insurers to cover the easy finite costs instead of the unknown costs of treatment, we have shot ourselves in the foot because we've traded coverage for distraction. Today demand that INSURANCE COMPANIES INSURE, that's what they're charging us for.
