What would be worse in the US healthcare system if we outlawed, by law health insurance products. It’s what I thought when I read about Target today. We’re beginning to understand why Obamacare includes a mandate, a tax you’ll pay if you don’t buy health insurance. High costs, less coverage and a new way for employers to exploit workers (more jobs created that can’t support an individual or family, yea!)
Today I read that Target is giving part-time workers $500 (not monthly, a one-time payment) INSTEAD of offering them health insurance, (Search for Target Terminates health insurance for part timers).
Tongue in cheek (not TOO seriously) I think we are fast approaching a need to do away with the health insurance industry. That’s right. Get rid of it. All of it.
Imagine a world without the financial product of health insurance, a prohibition to sell, distribute, create or conduct any business whereby an insurance product is or could be accepted or used to pay for ANY medical services, treatments or medications in the United States.
This would be perceived as catastrophic and would require adjustment for several years, (much as Obamacare is.) Ordinary people would not be able to afford needed medical care when they got sick, (much as it is now.) Rich people only would be able to afford needed medical care and treatment, (much as it is now.) Those in the midst of treatment or taking medications would accumulate massive medical bills and likely declare bankruptcy, or obtain reverse mortgages on their homes to pay for medical care, (much as it is now).
In short, it would be sudden death, cold-turkey, instead of death by a thousand cuts, which is one way to understand Obamacare and the trends unfolding in the healthcare industry.
Ultimately, prices will come down or prices will remain high and bankruptcies would increase for those who need specialty services or products who couldn’t get them elsewhere. Ultimately, states would implement and expand immunization requirements for students. Ultimately, consumers would be in charge of their own healthcare without being punished for getting old (higher premiums in Obamacare), or without the complication of having to worry about getting permission from their insurance company to obtain the financial help they thought they’d paid for in paying their premiums for their insurance policies.
We wouldn’t have to be threatened by doctors that they wouldn’t participate in health insurance unless they get paid more or unless the paperwork requirements are lessened, or unless the patient has a specific type of insurance. (Doctors typically love insurance because it’s a guarantee of payment, but when insurance leaves more and more expenses uncovered, they look for other ways to collect like running your credit, or demanding a credit card in your file.)
Because the truth is that philosophically, logically, there should be no need for the health insurance product, a financial product by which a company guarantees payment IN THE EVENT OF a specific illness in EXCHANGE for payment of a premium IF YOU ARE WELL.
That’s why insurance companies love finite, non-contingent costs of checkups and preventive care rather than covering illness. Unfortunately, now covered by insurance dollars, the cost of these ordinary checkups will likely also go up. So, for today, imagine the world without health insurance.
