I wonder how you would do that. Healthcare in the US is the way it is because many powerful people profit from it. They are effectively above the law and can use the judicial branch to protect their interest.
Another idea: make it illegal for anybody but the patient to pay for their healthcare. Insurance pays the patient, who then pays the hospital. If the patient doesn't like the service, or feels they're getting ripped off? They probably won't pay as much.
You seem to forget the power of the purse. Providers would not be free to provide Healthcare in their terms. They would be forced to provide it in methods approved by the government.
Medicade will take your property too so they can recoup costs if you die, so let me be blunt.
the whole US health care system is a mess because government, state and federal, made it one. then they continue to pile on to make it worse all the while fattening their campaign chests at the expense of everyone else.
the only way to fix US health care is to forever remove it from influence by politicians. Yeah it would take a law to do it but the system setup should basically tell the government, pay us and shut up.
In the US you're paying for the clinic's insurance premiums against when you or another customer sues them which is a thing that /will/ happen.
Reforming medical costs means reforming the legal system and that ain't gonna happen. The lawyers make the laws. In the legislature and in the judiciary. I can't think of a politician in the US who has said so since Carter.
If healthcare a business, they should be allowed to operate one. Deregulate, eliminate licensing for healthcare professionals. Eliminate FDA, DEA, medical board, etc. Fuck needing a prescription for antibiotics when I can take a strep test at home. I'm totally good with making healthcare a business so I can finally have accessible affordable healthcare and just straight up import drugs from India or whatever for 1/100th the cost.
Course if government wants to keep their crusty paws in it and decides it actually isn't just a business, they should take some cues from countries with much lower GDP overhead. The half-assed system we have is the worst of both worlds.
As long as this is done via Congress passing laws to cover up loopholes, it's not going to work. It takes too many years to push through legislation, and the health care industry can reorient to bilk their customers some other way too fast. A competently run agency with a ton of authority is required.
Not sure that you could get that past the Supreme Court, or run it competently over the long term given our depressing partisan split on health care, but you know. If this were Canada, that would be the way to make this work.
Ideally though, all private healthcare would be banned.
Aside from ideological concerns about not giving the wealthy an unfair advantage, this has pragmatic benefit in ensuring that the public healthcare system is up to standard.
That is, if the wealthy and powerful are forced to use it too, it means they have skin in the game and won't just use their power to run it into the ground in pursuit of profit or from lack of concern for others.
Healthcare in this country is so broken. This industry should be made as simple efficient and affordable as visiting Walgreens. The regulations, the cartel-like barriers to competition, the behemoth corporate powers. The only way to get adequate care is to become so rich you can escape the whole thing.
IMHO You need to make it legal to open and run a hospital (hospitals are basically local state-granted monopolies like cable companies). You make it legal to offer differential pricing. You decouple healthcare from employment. You allow employers to offer more than one insurer.
Most of what we need to do is just remove the monopoly rules.
It's easy to imagine SCOTUS allowing such a thing, it's just hard to imagine the government doing it, or anything that restrains healthcare costs at the expense of healthcare companies.
There's no free lunch. If the government is paying for it, it's not free of charge. And in this country, there's a long record of exponential price costs when the government is the customer. Our premiums would go up, they'd just be called taxes then. You could maybe nationalize all the hospitals or something and make doctors government employees, but I don't think we'd like the outcome. Just the transition would be a nightmare. And that's ignoring the legal aspects of it.
It's not so easy as just waving your hand and saying "Free Healthcare! Free for everyone!"
I mostly agree with the sentiment and ideas. Since the US Federal government is sooo inefficient I am not sure how it would work.
Using stats from another poster- ~34% are on medicaid/care. Another ~40% are covered by private insurance. Insurance companies have high-paid smart people negotiating prices. Government pays what it wants (pay by law mandate) regardless of costs. ~34% of hospitals patients therefor are losing the hospitals money- 10s of billions per year. They can go out of business and treat nobody, or jack up the costs on the one group available- self-pay uninsured.
The uninsured pay a lot because of government- they basically help subsidize these programs. If everybody moves onto a socialized programs that pays less than it costs hospitals to operate then hospitals close. Or taxes go up a lot to make it "free".
Don't get my wrong- as an uninsured person I don't like the way it is either. The only way I can think of is to make it all personal and private- get rid of employer deductions. Then add deductions/credits to cap medical cost at 10% of income or something. Anything above 10% is covered by taxpayers but individuals are responsible for shopping around and saving to make the market work as well.
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