Let’s get rid of the medical insurance industry. They rake in nearly 2 trillion dollars a year! Unnecessary middlemen. They’ve taken over how doctors and hospitals care for patients, they have control over services people can receive, and as stated earlier they bloat the cost of health care by nearly 2 trillion a year.
We need ideas to open up options for consumers, bring down costs and create a competitive marketplace for health care. There is no need for insurance if costs can come down.
One thought I’ve had is paying a membership due directly to hospitals instead of insurance agencies. What would costs look like if 2 trillion were moved into hospitals instead of insurance companies?
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I absolutely agree. The irony of all this is …Health Insurance was invented to make Healthcare more affordable…spreading the risk and bringing healthcare costs down …Post WW2…it was cheaper to give health insurance to employees than money then , today opposite…it had a greater percieved value then to everyone it was value for a brief time relatively speaking. Fast forward to today, the thing that was suppose to make healthcare more affordable has now become unaffordable for the reason you state. The current healthcare system revolves around a for profit industry …a cost plus industry that just passes the increased costs to you…increasing the cost while no longer serving thier original function. Not to mention the system is not Patientcentric…it is an Insurancecentric system where the Insurance Company or its wholly owned affiliate tells the patient who they can see and what they decide they want to pay when.
Truly comical if it were not happening to us.
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Great insights. Thanks! With these old systems in place there will be other problems to solve, but that shouldn’t deter us from at least looking at gutting the bloat. Would love to hear from folks that work in the industry too.
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I have long thought that our healthcare should not be run by an insurance model. Insurance models are made to limit payouts, looking at demographic risks and charging premiums based on likelihood of payout to that group. The insurance model is not good for health care. If there are companies who play middleman, they need to be non-profit. Remove shareholders from healthcare… no hospital or doctors group or pharma should have shareholders deciding what health care a patient gets or how much it should cost. The only caveat I would concede may be elective procedures, some plastic surgeries but not all.