The title of this article is a little inflammatory, and probably meant to grab attention, but the content is fascinating.
Oklahoma Doctors vs. Obamacare - Reason.com
Oklahoma Doctors vs. Obamacare - Reason.com
Surprise surprise surprise......
Reason is a libertarian monthly print magazine covering politics, culture, and ideas through a provocative mix of news, analysis, commentary, and reviews.
Readers beware.
It's great, but I'm not sure how replicable their model is. They've carved out a great niche in a fucked-up system, but it is by mostly evading the core problems that make our healthcare so expensive. No, they actually ARE addressing the core issue of high healthcare costs and that is the absence of market competition. They don't accept medicare/medicaid, they aren't technically a hospital, and I would have to assume they don't have an ER. This is all great business positioning by the founder, but they're not really in position to compete against the larger actual hospitals (such as the one he still works at) and retain their low costs. So it's not a fundamental rethinking of the industry--they are just very adept to seeing its flaws and offering a cost-effective workaround.
I'm not a medical insider or anything, this is just all my two cents. But once you operate an ER you run into the problem of how to most efficiently cover the free services provided. Because as a society we have pretty roundly decided that one should not turn away a person with a medical emergency at the doors of an ER. Similarly we have decided that people with already diagnosed illnesses should have some way of obtaining insurance )Yet this defeats the very idea of "insurance" and will result in higher premiums for everyone else.)(though this is more contentious and not as "roundly decided" as the ER thing). When you accept these facts you run into the problem of how insurance companies can exist and still turn a profit, and they both have to basically cover non-paying customers and customers who are not worth the hassle. (Its easy. They make a profit by raising their premiums. This is the problem. Insurance companies do not care how much the cost of healthcare is because they will simply raise their premiums to cover it.)
In reaction to this it would seem like one of three things would have to happen: 1) premiums rise to an almost untenable rate (and perhaps to the point that customer loss is so great that the price hike has done nothing to address the free rider problem (heres the problem. most consumers do not care because most insurance policies are employer provided), 2) insurance companies have to find some way of obtaining a huge and near-guaranteed customer base, or 3) insurance is simply no longer profitable. (As long as they can raise premiums they will always be profiftable. Insurance companies are not the problem!!! The cost of healthcare, past along to insurance companies, which are then past along to consumers through premium hikes, ARE THE PROBLEM. Its healthcare costs. Its $95 advils, and $1200 bed pillows.)
My personal opinion is that at a certain baseline level, private insurance should simply not be in the game. Go single-payer for all "you need this to not die" healthcare (and some degree of preventative care that can be proven to pay for itself in the reduction of future "you need this to not die" care) and keep the margins basically non-existent. Make this level of coverage sufficient but generally unpleasant, opening up the market for private insurance to get in the game with premium packages.(this still will not address the underlying problem.)
I simply don't see, right now, what value private insurance adds to the consumer right now, in our current situation. It's a dying racket filled with people who are jamming the bureaucratic channels in order to preserve their revenue streams, somewhat like the dying record label industry. Certain widespread moral dictates have made this aspect of the industry unprofitable. They should adjust to the market and get in at a level where they have more room to maneuver. (Of course I say this, but obamacare was a big win for them, (yes it was) and dead revenue channels can be clung to for quite some time if you're properly embroiled in legislation, so they'd probably laugh at this suggestion.)
But grats to the guys in the story. I've been wondering a lot lately about what market opportunities might have opened up as the industry changes, and it's cool to see them taking advantage.
Also it's questionable how much obamacare really relates to the article. It reads like something that was plugged in by an editor as linkbait.
Surprise surprise surprise......
Reason is a libertarian monthly print magazine covering politics, culture, and ideas through a provocative mix of news, analysis, commentary, and reviews.Readers beware.
Surprise, Surprise, surprise... Sargon offering nothing of substance to the discussion other than poisoning the well.
The problem with our healthcare system is that the patient does not have an incentive to act like a consumer when it comes to their healthcare choices. If people were forced to shop for healthcare services the same way they shop for TV's and cars, healthcare costs would collapse and insurance premiums would collapse, making it affordible for low income families to purchase insurance on their own. Lobbyists have prevented this kind of reform from happening and Obamacare does ZERO to do this as well.
Why don't you analyze the inflammatory article you linked to, other than saying it's "fascinating"? Your posts in this thread have had no more substance than Sargon's. Private medicine seems like a worthwhile debate since "socialist" Obamacare is going to mandate private health insurance.
Fuzzy didn't reply to you here because it appeared that you were just being antagonistic by claiming that formal free markets didn't exist in the US. Judging by this thread, it appears Fuzzy made a good call.
The main premise of the article, that the primary reason for high healthcare costs is the third-party payer system, is highly arguable. There are many other confounding factors: ever-increasing doctors fees, expensive technology, lab costs, pharmacy costs, ER patients who don't have insurance or money, cost of living increases for staff, more elderly in the population, higher percentage of poor & uninsured people, management fees, lawyer fees, fines, inflation of supplies, etc.
Surprise, Surprise, surprise... Sargon offering nothing of substance to the discussion other than poisoning the well.
What you seem not to get is... We were under the free market systems with health care before Obamacare. When it was under the free market system, Health care companies could cease/cancel health care for any individual, who was diagnosed with cancer, or any other serious disease. Or worse still, increase the deductible on a patient, or not pay the claim in whole or even in parts. That was the privatized system, pre-Obamacare. That's why Mitt Romney, remember him?... developed comprehensive healthcare for all people of Mass., to fight the rising costs of pre-Obamacare, health care. So you don't have anyone over a barrel. Privatized healtch-care is the thing of the past. Even the Supreme Court did not overturn health care, or the ACA, or Obamacare.
Libertarianism is just an excuse for owners rights trumping equality. That's why it's a hot button word for college students who think Ron Paul is a genius. Who is more selfish and whinny that a 19 year old college student?