See how much good it will do to tell the AIDS virus, Cancer, heart disease and your cold virus about a right to health!
First of all there is no such thing as Free! Free is paid for by someone.
This message is encoded in the Semitic roots of language. The word ‘free’ (CHiNam) comes from the root ‘favor’ (CHN). You can’t have a right to a favor. You can’t have a right to ‘free’ anything. That would be a right to steal.
Before Medicare, Medicaid and Government regulation, Doctors understood they had a responsibility to the less fortunate and the Doctor provided free health care for the poor or neighbor paid for neighbor. Fraternal Organizations provided the working poor with what today we call “Boutique Care”. They paid a Doctor’s salary to service their members. Since there were many doctors competing for this arrangement, fees were low. The Fraternal Organizations also provided disability, health and life insurance. At one point in the last Century over a quarter of all Americans belonged to fraternal organizations.
Soon the medical societies, like the AMA, who were cronies of the government and controlled the licensure of Doctors, imposed sanctions to discourage doctors from working for the fraternal organizations in order to raise the fees that Doctors could charge. By making the requirements for licensing stricter, the number of doctors fell, competition dwindled and rates rose. The final blow to fraternal doctors came with government imposed minimum fees.
People were driven into HMO’s who now decide what is “necessary”.
Government Laws forced employers to provide health care insurance, creating a problem for the unemployed and rules that stifle competition among Insurance companies increased insurance costs.
Patients and Doctors spend inordinate amounts of time wrestling with insurance companies.
and the Irony of ironies is that Neither the Patient nor the Doctors have any idea what anything costs.
Health insurance should be inexpensive and for catastrophic illness not routine care.
With the current deductibles it is effectively that way anyway.
Let the Fraternal and other organizations negotiate inexpensive health care for their members as they did before the government took over.
Eliminate Artificial Health Care prices by taking government intervention away (Medicare artificially raises prices for everyone). Remove coverage of normal care and maintenance. Remove price and wage controls and restore the ability of the Doctor to charge the market rate even if that is a LOWER rate for those that are poor.
You don’t take insurance out to cover home maintenance like trimming the bushes or mowing the lawn. You don’t take insurance out to cover automobile oil changes and service visits for normal wear and tear. You don’t take out insurance in case you sprain your finger at work or you don’t get a promotion. In the same fashion, you don’t take out insurance to cover health maintenance and care for your body’s normal wear and tear.
You only take out insurance for unlikely events. As long as the insurance covers unlikely events, the risk of payment by the insurance company can be spread out across a large enough population so that insurance can be offered to the customer at a very low price.
You don’t buy Pension insurance. You create a pension by putting aside some of your earnings. You lend that money out to investors and collect interest or you use it for investment yourself. You can do this yourself or through your employer.
The more risks you attempt to cover and/or the more risks that are probable that you cover, the more expensive the insurance. Covering certainty with insurance is a contradiction in terms. If it’s certain, you can’t insure against it happening. You definitely will have to pay for it and it will be reflected in the price of the insurance. Insurance manages risk. If the risk is 100% the cost is at least 100% and there is no point to insurance.
Today’s Medicare and other health “insurance” that covers normal costs is a forced charity on those who pay combined with the receiver’s vain attempt to pay as little as they can for normal maintenance, and use as much health care as possible, at the expense of some other schmuck.
Covering normal maintenance, Doctor visits, shots and medication encourages unnecessary visits and led directly to the uneccessary and excessive prescribing of antibiotics that spurred today’s, drug resistant bacteria. You can thank Medicare, President Johnson, and all the rest of the Politicians who supported this scheme over the years, for the “unintended consequence” of killing hundreds of thousands of people that could, otherwise, have been saved.
Insurance companies and Medicare negotiate a discount to the suggested retail price for medical care. If a person does not purchase health care insurance, they must pay the higher retail price. Why? Why can’t a provider charge a non-insured person the same lower price as the insured? The insurance company doesn’t pay it, the patient does. The provider can’t because of Crony regulations and a corrupt system. It is a forced incentive to get healthy people to buy insurance. It is anti-competitive. Insurance companies benefit from the healthy and the poor who can’t afford insurance are left without health care other than from voluntary or government-forced charity.
