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10月13日 State of US Health CareAfter a long long repeated discussion on Health Care provided by federal government, I finally understand the core issues here. First is the really stereotypical argument, government can not do anything right. I am just going to refute this stereotype right away. Sure someone can bring up tons of evidence, but, this is a totally wrong generalization on existing evidences. However, I do agree Federal Health Care is pretty much destined to fail. Here are my arguments:
1) When operating at lose, will government raise the price like crazy (aka usual private insurance practice)?
Answer is NO because that defeats the purpose.
2) When operating at lose, will government layoff large number of employees (aka usual private company practice)?
Answer is NO.
3) When unable to turn the operation around, will government simply quit (aka usual private company bankruptcy)?
Answer is NO.
The issue is not because government cannot do anything right vs private company. The issue is, when something goes wrong, government cannot resolve it due to inflexibility. A government simply cannot change price, reject candidates, layoff employees, or file chapter11 like a normal private company. Even if you turn a successful insurance to a government agency (no government intervention), the same failure will happen due to the above issues. A government has a lot more responsibility than a private company. When they start something, they can't quit. All they can do is putting more money into it. That's where the problem is. It is not because the government can't do anything right, but, simply because we do not allowed our government to do the same thing as private company.
Now Move On To The Current State of US Health Care.
I am just going to list out some realistic events now.
A) From Doctors
1) they said they are squeezed by insurance because insurance usually don't pay full amount.
2) also they have to pay a lot to malpractice insurance.
B) From Insurance
1) they raise insurance price because the medical bill is so expensive, which is true.
C) From Non-Insured
1) Go to emergency room for treatment that cost 100x more compared to a scheduled treatment.
2) They don't pay at all.
3) Go to emergency room because they will get treated no matter what.
D) From Insured
1) Pay tons of money on insurance because the bill is expensive.
2) Bill is expensive because those frequent emergency user does not pay. Someone has to pay, which is the one with money.
E) From Social Side of Doctors
1) They think they should get paid more.
2) The whole industry is heavily money driven.
3) They expect to get paid more because medical school is expensive.
4) For the people who want to help people and does not have enough money, it is uncommon that they will be a doctor due to higher difficulty to pay for the school.
Conclusion.
You can see a bad cycle here. The whole system is unbalanced to heavy money driven. This is partially caused by expensive education system. The expensive education system encouraged people to focus more on money than helping people. (You can argue about this, but, I believe it is pretty accurate). The industry is so money driving, everything is expensive. Poor choose to not pay at all by going to expensive emergency room. Hospital choose to cover those lose to charge patients even more money. Those charges goes to patients insurance. Those insurance in turn raised the price.
What's left as victim is the people who has some money to pay for the over priced medical bills. They are paying for those expensive emergency room charges indirectly. To say you don't want to pay for the poor (the people didn't pay the bill), you are paying for them in your own bill indirectly. In addition, many of insured are chained to one insurance as they gets older because everywhere else will not accept them or will charge more.
The current medical system is unbalanced. The problems are not solved by private companies. They simply raise the price and pass the problems to the next. Ultimately, the insured are paying more than they should. Certainly US medical is one of the best, but, only if you have the money to pay for it. The system is way too money driven that it becomes inaccessible to less healthy people. It is almost like all bags are LV bags and there is no cheaper alternatives. It is clearly wrong when choices are scarce.
My thoughts:
1) I still believe in Federal Health Care. Sure it will fail like SSN, but, something has to be done. We need a brand new Insurance (not taking away medi-care's money) provided by government. It really helps the people who can't get a decent insurance. And high tax on rich people isn't that bad. People like Bill Gates already donating their money. The tax is just helping them to donate their money instead of doing on their own. And tax raise is only done to rich people, not the poor anyway. And you know the high % of tax rate is only done to the extra amount over the threshold, not the entire income. So, they are still super rich. I believe Federal Health Care is need to give people more choice. If you don't want it, you can subsidize for your own health insurance.
2) We need a cheaper medical education to the citizen of United State. We need more doctors and cheaper doctors. If the school is so expensive, it is harder for less healthy people to join the field. If they don't have to pay so much loan, they wouldn't need higher salaries. Lower the boundary of medical education. Make it more accessible to more candidates. I believe this will make a healthier system and we currently are.
3) Ultimately we want to reduce unnecessary emergency room visitors. They go there because they know they will be treated without paying the bill. This is really wrong and waste of money. I do not know what should be done. But, perhaps giving them health care will reduce these kind of incidents.
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