Want to solve the healthcare crisis? I don't think it is that hard. How about a dramatic increase in the heathcare service sector that goes back to good old fashioned "fee for service". A doctor's office has a set fee for a checkup, sick child, sprained ankle, black eye, stitch up a cut. I have the option to go to whomever I choose, based on their cost and my perception of the quality of their work.
Competition keeps pricing at market rates rather than billing an anonymous third party 50 bucks for a couple of tylenol. Every person has catastrophic coverage for major events and catastrophic can be defined at different levels of cost for different people based on a variety of factors.
There is enough money in the system to make this work today when I look at the money individuals pump into the system, the money employers are paying, as well as government funding. Money is not the problem. The problem is lack of incentive to get the best value for the dollar, lack of competition to keep prices in check, and the money flows for 80%+ of healthcare costs coming from behind the scenes, anonymous insurance companies.
This really isn't that difficult of a problem, to solve. However, it becomes intractable when folks expect healthcare or see it as a right instead of something that they need to provide for themselves, like food, water, and clothes...which are just as critical to sustaining life as health care. The free market can solve the healthcare problem, if we will let a free market work its magic. Unconvinced? Look at the quality of the care and the cost over time for optional, non-covered medical procedures like laser eye surgery. The market has improved the procedure dramatically while decreasing the cost over time. The market works. Why we don't let it solve this problem is a mystery. A lot of problems are hard. This isn't one of them.
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