Think about the last time you went to the DMV. Even if the person behind the counter was pleasent and trying to help you, as was my case, you still had to wait in line or make appointments that were not kept, jump through government hurdles that didn’t seem to make any sense, and that was just to get a new driver’s license.
Take a listen to the health care plan being proposed by Ted Kennedy (via Bloomberg)
“Our health-care system is a crisis for American families, and President Obama and members of Congress of both parties recognize the urgency of the problem,” Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Senate health committee, said in a statement today. “Our goal is to strengthen what works and fix what doesn’t.”
The legislation would require all Americans to have health insurance, prohibit insurers from refusing to cover pre-existing conditions and place other restrictions on the industry. It would establish online exchanges where the uninsured and employees of small companies could shop for affordable insurance policies.
…
The effort to overhaul health care would affect an industry that makes up 17 percent of the U.S. economy.
Think about the phrase ‘place other restrictions on the industry’. What this essentially means is that the government will be telling insurance companies, more-so than they do now, the type of insurance they can cover. They will do this by creating a giant beauracracy that will look over health plans, tell companies that they aren’t doing it right and will eventually force those prices to go up until more people are forced onto the public insurance plans. Picture going to the DMV to get your insurance, schedule Drs appointments, and get surgeries taken care of.
Other countries have tried it. Canada for instance, who our friends like to point to as being more enlightened as their American Cousins, have a Health Care plan similar to this. They made it mandatory for everyone to have insurance (in their case it is now all through the government) and what has been the result?
The NCPA says
The median wait time for Canadians seeking surgical or other therapeutic treatment dropped to 17.3 weeks in 2008 from 18.3 weeks in 2007, according to new research published by the Fraser Institute.
- This year’s report shows the main decrease in wait times occurred in the time between a referral from a general practitioner and consultation with a specialist, which decreased to 8.5 weeks from 9.2 weeks.
- The 2008 survey shows the median wait time between seeing a specialist and receiving treatment dropped to 8.7 weeks in 2008 from 9.1 weeks in 2007.
So basically your primary doctor says ‘you need surgery’ and it takes 17 weeks to get it (actually the whole report says in some providences the average was closer to 27 weeks, but we’ll give the enlightened ones a break on this one).
So, what’s an alternative to DMVCare?
One plan that I personally think is worth looking at is the idea of portable health care coverage. Stop making Health Care something that goes from job to job and make it more akin to car insurance. I shop around for my car insurance and buy what I want. Make health insurance similar, eg, if I’m a college student with no defendants and all I want is catastrophic, done. If I’m a small family and I want to cover broken arms and pregnancies with insurance but don’t care about birth control, etc, ok.
Let health care companies sell à la cart plans much in the way that I can get basic coverage, full coverage, etc from my car insurance company. If you lost your job and wanted to take your health insurance with you your company wouldn’t even be involved in the transaction.
Where would you get the extra money? Well, if you were a smart consumer and buying a plan tailored for your needs it would be, hopefully, cheaper than it is now and you would also have the right to demand the money your employer is paying for health insurance now as part of your salary so your gross salary would go up. Since you would be in charge there would be less paperwork involved from a employer<->employee<->insurance standpoint and efficency would go up. All of this would increase your health care dollar’s effectiveness.
One of the things that stands in the way of this idea is that there is too much government regulation now. In many instances a state will mandate that an insurance company will cover silly things like ‘liposuction’ or ‘toupees’ so if I’m a guy comfortable with my weight and hairline I am still paying for those things on my insurance. Another regulation in the way is that many times conflicting regulations make it impossible for one insurance company in one state to offer it in another, or at least they have to offer a different plan.
Removing all of these regulations and returning health care to what it should be, a sell-able commodity, would go a long way to giving people who want health care access to it.
