Thanks for actually reading the piece and giving your opinion.
No problem. I enjoy commenting on well thought-out articles (and the founder & CEO of Whole Foods, whether one agrees with him or not, is known for those kinds of pieces).
Maybe some others will chime in and not to pick on you but I'm afraid that,
1) The right some feel to healthcare includes the right to expect someone else to pay for it.
2) Some will continue to confuse healthcare with healthcare insurance.
3) Some will ignore the economics of markets and instead trust in government to set prices and dictate choices.
4) Some will ignore the tens of trillions in debt and unfunded liabilities in Medicaid and Medicare and think we should enlarge the role of government in the healthcare system even further.
Under normal circumstances, I'm all for an expansion of free markets and coming up with ideas that do not involve more government. Generally speaking, I tend to agree that government does not make many things more efficient.
On the other hand, after weighing all the options here and looking at the facts on the ground, rather than the solution that best fits my ideological leanings, I think we have only three quite extreme options:
1) National health care, with all costs highly regulated to prevent the unequal relationship between the patient and the health care industry. As it currently stands, the private sector is wholly broken, because we have developed a situation where health care is subject to inelastic demand (i.e., if you have an infection that requires antibiotics, you have two choices: treatment at whatever the doctor and pharmaceutical companies want to charge or death), and, as such, unchecked supply costs allowing for a limitless ability to charge whatever they want.
2) Private health insurance, with all practices and costs regulated to guarantee access to health care for everyone (so that the sick aren't weeded out of the system like is done currently) and to prevent costs from spiralling into infinity. I would also mandate that all health care insurance and hospitals be required to register as non-profit corporations to again remove the incentive to overcharge.
3) Ban health insurance entirely for everyone--rich, poor, young, old, sick and healthy--and force the entire system into a free market scenario, where health care supply would be forced into being priced into only what people can afford. Hence, no more $500 doctor visits just to be prescribed an antibiotic, because the market may only accept a doctor fee of $40. In this scenario, obviously, all excess and the high lifestyle that many in the health care industry feel entitled to are decimated.
That's pure speculation on your part.
Not at all. Have you tried researching private health insurance? My family has. It's very expensive, with high deductibles, and the coverage is poor.
The sheer purpose is that you purchase routine care yourself and rely on insurance for truly expensive procedures. Like the analogy with car insurance. You buy the gas, wax, tune-ups and new tires, your insurance covers expensive accidents. Why is healthcare any different really?
"Routine care"--which I'm not sure how you'd define it--is still billed in the hundreds of dollars or more by the medical industry. If you need car repairs and can't afford them, you end up not driving you car for a while or fixing it yourself. If you need health care and can't afford it, you end up dead. They are not morally equivalent scenarios.
Expensive because of state mandates that all policies sold must include X,Y & Z. whether you want or need them. Insurance prices differ greatly from state to state for this very reason.
They must not mandate very much, because, again, researching private insurance costs, a crappy plan with a high deductible that only covers in emergencies--much like what you advocate--is still very expensive.
Wrong, they will offer all types of policies with à la carte options. You want high-premium, kitchen-sink, nothing out-of-pocket fine, but don't force that on everyone.
If you're in the industry of selling insurance, but not actually paying out, why not, as an insurance company, craft a plan that is barely affordable, but covers very little, while making all other plans that actually do cover anything very expensive? Do you really think that the relationship with the consumer and the insurance company is at all balanced to allow for negotiation? It is--and always is--"take it or leave it." There is always a presumption that people buying insurance buy it with the intention of using it, and "using" your health insurance is not at all what these companies want.
How about starting with loser pays in cases to weed out frivolous lawsuits?
Those kinds of options are already present at the judge's discretion, if the case was truly frivolous and maliciously intended. Chances are, as much as I sympathize with doctors on this front, many of the cases are actually quite legitimate, especially if the judge rules in their favour. If health care costs were reigned in through regulation, so that medical malpractice cases that would normally cost millions to treat over a lifetime in our current system would only cost maybe six figures over a lifetime to treat, I presume that that would do much to limit the impact of tort costs.
Basically, I ask, why enact "tort reform" that limits what victims can recover, but not "health care reform" that limits the costs in the first place, particularly since supply costs are clearly out of control? Why is business guaranteed limitless profit, while wronged individuals must suffer statutory limitation?
We have healthcare programs for the poor and no one is talking about ending those.
Again, these programs are only available to the very poor. Health care is still prohibitively expensive even to the middle class, particularly if you look at the kind of individuals who are declaring bankruptcy, due to medical bills.
Guess I have more faith in the American people than you.
Or, more likely, my stances are based on evidence of what's actually happening on the ground, rather than insisting on a doctrinaire, ideologically-based answer to everything. As it is, the private sector has failed in its 40-year, for-profit health care experiment, and I'm not sure why we expect it to ever get better without massive changes.