Healthcare in the US (and UK) by Larry Sanders (Bernie's brother)

I know that when I asked my son about moving back to the US, one reason he said no was the cost of healthcare in this country compared to the UK. I'm fortunate that my wife and I can stay on my former employer's high quality insurance plan, (I however pay the full cost) until Medicare kicks in, but it's a huge premium every month. My son was amazed at the cost. In 2013 I read this very scary and enlightening article in Time Magazine about the cost of healthcare. It's long, but so worth your time if you've not read it yet. Will make you angry.
 
My son wants me to move back to the US but all I had to do was mention how much we'd have to pay for health care and he stopped asking. In Scotland and Wales we pay nothing for prescriptions and for all other medical care it's free at the point of service.
 

The biggest issue with cost is that a third party ie the insurance industry is involved. Third party reimbursement in any business or with any product or service will enable and perpetuate inflation. Throw in some greedy providers and/or recipients of third party money it reinforces perpetual inflation.

The cheapest way to lower cost fairly quickly is offer catastrophic insurance coverage only which is actually what "insurance" was ment for, a single event and not routine maintenance, allow insurance to be sold across state lines and offer a straight forward simple government option call it single payer or clinic style medicine-what ever you want.

The problem is now the US has grown so used to the private insurance based system that going to something different, not worse is like getting a junky off crack. So what you have to sit in a waiting room for an hour, things like appointments are a luxury, not a necessity in many cases. The urgent care concept/format is growing fast around here. I heard you can go in for about 1/3 of what a private office doctor billing insurance would get. Priorities which will take some work from the patients and providers.
 
WhatInThe said:
The biggest issue with cost is that a third party ie the insurance industry is involved. Third party reimbursement in any business or with any product or service will enable and perpetuate inflation. Throw in some greedy providers and/or recipients of third party money it reinforces perpetual inflation.
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A lot of truth here. About 3 decades ago I heard a very fiscally conservative Senator say something to the effect that, "if you are paying for my groceries both me and my dog will eat much better." The concept being that the consumer has zero incentive to be concerned with cost. Aside from altruistic motives that is true.

The American system isn't sustainable and hasn't been for quite some time. Something needed to be done about Healthcare affordability and availability in the US for many years. Unfortunately Obamacare was a very poor, unstustainable compromise that really only benefits a couple of narrow groups of consumers, the working poor who make between 100% and 200% of poverty level and those who have pre-existing conditions especially if they make between 100% and 399% of poverty level. Most everyone who had insurance thru an employer before the ACA has much worse coverage at higher cost today, and the working poor making under poverty level are SOL in states that didn't expand Medicaid.

As someone who would be labeled a moderate conservative ( think Marco Rubio pre-POTUS campaign nonsense) it is hard to admit this, but I think the obvious answer is cradle to grave Medicare. The infrastructure is in place and the people added to the system would be much cheaper to treat and care for than traditional Medicare patients. At least that could be the social safety net and default. Employer provided health coverage can go back to being a market discriminator where employers try to attract and retain talent rather than and ingrained cost of doing business that is not shared by foreign competition. In that way universal government Healthcare is pro-business because it removes the burden from US corporations and other US businesses.

In spite of what some labeled it early on Obamacabre was not a Socialist solution. It has far more in common with corporatism and economic fascism where government does not own but exerts control over the means of production, supply, and demand. All three constituencies getting some benefit but none (in a macro sense) are really happy with it. In some cases that can be the definition of a good compromise, but in this case the compromise is so poorly constructed that the next POTUS, regardless of party affiliation must do something significant to keep the whole thing from collapsing under its own weight.
 
WhatInThe said:
The biggest issue with cost is that a third party ie the insurance industry is involved. Third party reimbursement in any business or with any product or service will enable and perpetuate inflation. Throw in some greedy providers and/or recipients of third party money it reinforces perpetual inflation.

The cheapest way to lower cost fairly quickly is offer catastrophic insurance coverage only which is actually what "insurance" was ment for, a single event and not routine maintenance, allow insurance to be sold across state lines and offer a straight forward simple government option call it single payer or clinic style medicine-what ever you want.

The problem is now the US has grown so used to the private insurance based system that going to something different, not worse is like getting a junky off crack. So what you have to sit in a waiting room for an hour, things like appointments are a luxury, not a necessity in many cases. The urgent care concept/format is growing fast around here. I heard you can go in for about 1/3 of what a private office doctor billing insurance would get. Priorities which will take some work from the patients and providers.
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Here, it costs at least twice as much to go to an urgent care as to your regular health care provider. I am not talking about emergency rooms, which are hugely expensive, but the urgent care clinics. I never wait very long at an appointment at my regular provider's office, but it takes forever to get an appointment.
 
Ed B said:
>>As someone who would be labeled a moderate conservative ( think Marco Rubio pre-POTUS campaign nonsense) it is hard to admit this, but I think the obvious answer is cradle to grave Medicare. The infrastructure is in place and the people added to the system would be much cheaper to treat and care for than traditional Medicare patients. At least that could be the social safety net and default.>>
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Yes, it's one of the great ironies that it was Richard Nixon who was first convinced that America needed a consistent, inclusive, cradle-to-grave healthcare system. But he couldn't get most voters, nor Congress, interested.
 

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