What happens when people don't feel like they actually pay for their products and you take away any viable competition? You get escalating, out-of-control costs.
You get health care in America. We out-spend everyone. We spent about 16% of our gross domestic product on health care. We spent $2.26 trillion in 2007 at a rate of $7,436 per person. Insurance rates are going up at a rate higher than wages. You don't have to be genius to figure out we can't keep doing this.
The politicians' answer? National health care. Make sure NO-ONE knows/cares how much their health care costs. Have it hidden in taxes and premiums. Does anyone else see this as a bad thing? We need to have people FEEL the costs of health care. They need to understand how much their doctor costs, how much for the anaesthesiologist, how much the hospital charges for the surgical suite, etc.
Now some of you might be saying, "This would be bad because people might decide to not get care that they need." I understand. But the truth of the matter is this, there are a lot of people getting care they DON'T need. For instance, there are people are taking drugs they would choose to not take if they had to pay the $5/pill they really cost.
This whole thing is going to gobble us up. We are worried about gas now, but the truth of the matter is that gas hasn't been causing the financial crisis in America over the past decade like health insurance and health coverage has.
So what's my solution? Increase competition. Bring in the acupuncturists, chiropractors, naturopaths and other holistic practitioners who can treat some of the things currently being treated by the medical system. Include them in the insurance coverage. This brings me to the next issue: how to cover the patient to make them care what the hospital charges them. Give them a health savings account (HSA) that will pay for the first $1500-3000 of health care expenses. The nice part about this is it's do-able for seeing some of the holistic practitioners. But I suggest that we give the patient a big incentive to NOT use their HSA. If they don't touch their HSA, we give them $500 at the end of the year tax free. As it is now, for HSAs, the patients are scrambling at the end of the year trying to spend them because they know they can't carry over the money, and they are trying to not "waste" the coverage they paid for and have coming to them. (Even though they've already bought new eye glasses for the past 4 years.) People may actually pay for a single office visit in cash in hopes of getting the HSA refund. Have a second tier of refund like 15% of whatever is left in there.
Anyway, these are all just suggestions. It's OBVIOUS that what we are doing currently is not working. It's obvious that EVERYONE cannot have access to EVERY PROCEDURE. It's an ethical and economic collision that is inevitable. We cannot go broke giving the poor everything the rich have. Of course, as people die from treatable things, we will have more and more moments of "ethiconomical" confusion.
Throw in your 2 cents. Give me your solution if you disagree with me. My solution may create more problems than it solves, but we need to try something different.