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DesideriScuri -> RE: A question for Canadians, Brits and any other citizen of a country with nationalize health care (10/7/2013 12:00:07 PM)
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ORIGINAL: eulero83
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
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ORIGINAL: eulero83
FR
After reading this thread I came to the conclusion that in the USA you are willingly paying more so that no poor will stole your "health care".
Incorrect conclusion.
Obamacare shifts, by force, the cost of insurance from the poor to "the rich." That is what I'm opposed to.
If the cost of care was lower, which it can be, more people could afford to buy insurance, or pay cash. Lowering the cost of individual procedures and services will lead to a lower cost of insurance. The high cost of services/procedures now almost requires you to be wealthy, or have insurance to afford. But, it's getting to the point where you have to be wealthy to afford to have insurance. Therein lies the problem. Insurance is getting to be so damn expensive that people can't even afford it, let alone the services that insurance is supposed to help pay for.
Shifting the burden of the cost from the poor to the rich isn't going to reduce the cost of insurance. Reducing the cost of insurance should be the goal, but it isn't.
My answer was somehow provocative and I agree with what you wrote here but I see the problem from a different point of view. just to make it clear I'm far from being a socialist or a comunist and I'm seeing it as a free market issue.
I was not talking about obamacare or medicare, I don't know how they work or what they aim and I'm not so interested in it, I'm talking about politically supporting a commercial system of health care where the individual citizen is the customer and not the product.
The Citizen should be the customer, and, generally, is here. Let's see how this plays out below...
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For what I could understand in your system insurance companies are the main customers of healt care professionals and individuals are the customers of the insurance companies, traetments and procedures are the product, some way this created a kind of public cartel as the governament is unable or unwilling to regulate that market, so the individual being the weakest part has no power of negotiation.
A national health system is different as the governament is the customer of health care professionals and negotiate directly the price considering healthy individuals as the product, individuals are customers of insurance companies for services that fall outside the care but focus on side services.
The Citizen is the customer.
The Health care professional is the provider/producer of the services.
Health care facilities (clinics, hospitals, private practices, etc.) are the employers of health care professionals, and the source of the professionals' pay.
Health care services are the products.
For a facility to pay a professional to produce a product, the facility has to be paid for that product. That is where insurance comes in. Health care can be expensive, so to minimize the cost to any one person, groups of individuals would get together to form "risk pools." The risk is the odds of having to get health care (and, thus, pay for health care). The higher the risk, the more expensive a pool is considered to be, and the higher the premiums are (to make sure care is paid for). Risk pools are broad and there are people within one risk pool that are more risky than average of that pool, and there are people within that same risk pool that are less risky than the average of that risk pool. Treating everyone in one pool as having the same risk means that each of those people are paying the same premium. But, if you are the least risky in any given pool, you are paying more than you would individually, according to your personal risk, than the rest. And, if you are the riskiest in any given pool, you are paying less than you would individually.
Insurance is a way to lessen the cost of your health care. Now, imagine you didn't use any health care at all (never went to the Dr., never took any prescription medicines, etc.). What did you spend all that money for? You, essentially, paid your premiums so someone else can get cheaper medical care. Worth it? It was for the person who's care you subsidized. For you? Your call.
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So the question is if health is a basic need of population like mobility (roads, bridges...) or safety (army, police...) or if medical treatments are simple services to trade. In the first case the industry should produce healty persons in the second case you should ask for better antitrust laws.
Individuals are in charge, for the most part, in whether or not they are healthy. If an individual does not take the time and/or doesn't make the effort to be healthy, why is it necessary for people who do take the time and/or make the effort to be healthy to spend more money for that other person?
Medical treatments are services. We do trade them, usually for money.
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