That op-ed in the OP is basically just a nicely packaged bundle of old talking points that sound reasonable but don't actually map onto reality. American health care is simply too expensive for a large portion of the population to afford without massive financial assistance. Savings accounts and high risk pools don't do much of anything to change that. Either heath care costs need to come down dramatically, or high earners need to foot a huge bill, or tens of millions of people need to not have health care.
American doctors are overpaid. American health care administrators are overpaid. American pharmaceutical companies are massively overpaid. American private insurance companies make a killing doing nothing other than what we could do ourselves. Americans pay more than anyone for health care but our outcomes are terrible because we're getting robbed in every phase of the system.
Free market magic is pretty cool where applicable, but it obviously doesn't apply to a lot of aspects of our health care system and it's ridiculous that people talk about these things like they are the same as electronics or clothes. Basic care in the US might be better if people paid out of pocket for it, if able, since it's the type of thing that's widely available as well as not being very time sensitive. Emergency care choices, on the other hand, are determined almost entirely be geography. If someone accidentally blows their fingers apart on the 4th of July, they're not going to drive to the next town for friendlier service and a 10% discount.
Most aspects of our health care system never have seen much competition driven consumer benefit, which is quite evident by how much things cost. I'm sure there probably are some areas where we could change that, but none of these proposals do anything like that, even though they claim to. No amount of insurance companies added to the market changes the cost of health care and no reorganization of insurance packages qualifies as some sort of product innovation. It's fucking insurance.
Fwiw, I still don't think this plan is going anywhere. It never seemed feasible to begin with, and what little information is coming out now indicates that Republicans might just be trying to fail on this as gracefully as possible. Obviously that shouldn't be taken for granted though.
American doctors are overpaid. American health care administrators are overpaid. American pharmaceutical companies are massively overpaid. American private insurance companies make a killing doing nothing other than what we could do ourselves. Americans pay more than anyone for health care but our outcomes are terrible because we're getting robbed in every phase of the system.
Free market magic is pretty cool where applicable, but it obviously doesn't apply to a lot of aspects of our health care system and it's ridiculous that people talk about these things like they are the same as electronics or clothes. Basic care in the US might be better if people paid out of pocket for it, if able, since it's the type of thing that's widely available as well as not being very time sensitive. Emergency care choices, on the other hand, are determined almost entirely be geography. If someone accidentally blows their fingers apart on the 4th of July, they're not going to drive to the next town for friendlier service and a 10% discount.
Most aspects of our health care system never have seen much competition driven consumer benefit, which is quite evident by how much things cost. I'm sure there probably are some areas where we could change that, but none of these proposals do anything like that, even though they claim to. No amount of insurance companies added to the market changes the cost of health care and no reorganization of insurance packages qualifies as some sort of product innovation. It's fucking insurance.
Fwiw, I still don't think this plan is going anywhere. It never seemed feasible to begin with, and what little information is coming out now indicates that Republicans might just be trying to fail on this as gracefully as possible. Obviously that shouldn't be taken for granted though.
