Can Obamacare be fixed?
Editor:
How to fix health care: Ban insurance companies, restructure liability, remove all government systems.
Health insurance companies make huge profits and have dramatically negative effects. By banning them, hospitals could greatly reduce paperwork costs; payments would go directly to the hospitals, improving cash flow; patient cost savings would be realized; and hospital profits would be increased, resulting in better care.
Without insurance companies having a heavy hand in what doctors can and cannot do, the doctor-patient relationship would dramatically improve in both quality time and care results.
People would actually have to be responsible for themselves. Facing sudden costs if they get sick, they would save, which is good for both themselves and the economy. Instead of all payments going to insurance companies, unused savings would remain in the ownership of the saver and stay in the community. Now, having a direct connection between actions and outcomes, people would take better care of themselves, the positive effects of which would ripple widely through relationships and the economy.
As I truly believe in the efficiency and caring charity of communities and family, cause and effect would increase. Those in need would be better cared for through the more socially connected community and families. Charities and more profitable hospitals would more efficiently pick up the needs of the indigent.
A true market-driven pricing structure would evolve. Now, only insurance companies can pay for expensive cures; therefore, without them, costs would come down. They would still be available but their costs restructured to match a realistic direct supply and demand. The higher the cost of a cure, the more insurance companies can charge their collective customer base, the more their profits. The disproportionate motivation for profits is removed to a more realistic patient direct level.
Healing and life-and-death decisions would be more of a direct patient decision, not the function of a negatively motivated business plutocracy.
Without the massively meddling, highly inefficient and politically driven market-warping governmental systems, once again all the above would be multiplied. Our biggest government debt and drain on the economy would be removed and placed back into the hands and responsibility of the people. Restructuring doctor liability would also have a huge cost-lowering effect as well.
Oops. Too late.
Mark Kline
Idaho Springs