I was watching a video recently where these people were talking about their experiences from their home countries as to how much healthcare costs. One of them was an American expat who lived overseas and when taking the ambulance they were concerned about the cost of it, and then once they checked out of the hospital that night and went to pay, saw that it was a free ride and were stunned.
I assume it's lower in wherever they were from because of subsidized healthcare and higher taxes to cover for it. I know a lot of people here on TD are strongly against it, so how else could we effectively lower the cost of healthcare in America?
Stop foreign aid. Stop funding UN. Stop carrying NATO.
Invest the absolutely stupid amount of money saved from cutting those parasites into subsidizing healthcare & make some solid rules to prevent price gouging like Trump already did with drug prices.
As a bonus, it’ll force Europe & Canada to actually spend on their own defence & stop spending ridiculous amounts on dumb socialist shit. Maybe they’ll wake up & lose their ridiculous superiority complex.
Exactly this, though I disagree with the NATO portion. We'll need NATO later, I can almost promise that (Note: That doesn't mean I think we should foot the bill for everyone. 3% GDP or GTFO).
The bigger issue is that hospitals literally charge whatever they feel like for procedures. The insurance companies are complicit in this as well.
My mother had an MRI after she got into a car accident like 30 years ago (broke her back). The hospital charged her $2200. The insurance company said they would pay $600, because that's what they "found to be the reasonable price". Why? Because some hospital 4 states away only charged $600 for the exact same MRI. They ended up losing the argument with that one and ended up paying the full $2200.
Why bring up that story? It's the perfect example of arbitrary pricing in the healthcare industry.
It's part of why it takes so goddamn long to get anything done with Medicare. Hospitals and Doctors literally avoid taking Medicare patients as long as they possibly can, because the government just goes "This is how much money you're getting, fuck off". So they'd rather take someone they can make profit on, rather than only getting paid what a procedure actually costs.
No more free shit for illegals. That should reduce costs by a third...
Stop giving pre-Karen's scholarships just so they can get a Nursing or Doctors degree and quit after snagging a doctor. They take a spot and resources and deny people who genuinely want to help, thereby making a shortage in labor.
We need just one federal law. One provider (individual or corporate) can only charge one price for each service offered. They can set whatever prices they want, but no different prices for different patients depending on what insurance they have or no insurance, and all prices must be disclosed upon request AND simultaneous with any service being suggested by a provider. Also the same financing and collection charges. Whatever financing and collection charges an uninsured patient is hit with, Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers pay the same (Medicare and Medicaid have a habit of taking forever to pay). Other than that basic nondiscrimination law, (since it's an essential service), absolute free market. Get rid of the insane overregulation. And relieve providers of any liability related to patients choosing some but not all of the suggested services, whether the choice was driven by cost or other factors.
Lose weight and start walking.
Oops!
increased competition , cut out health insurance wherever possible, many meds for example, and plenty of small procedures. maybe make expand HSA for those things.
In addition to competition across state lines, I think we need more preventive care, take away employment based healthcare and offer nonprofit type plans. There are millions of nonprofits in the US that claim to help all these diseases but a lot of them don't because they would be out of business if they found cures (cough Susan b komen cough) and too busy marketing/funneling money into their other nonprofits.
employmer sponsored healthcare was originally a way to give a raise without getting taxed. Of course, commies didnt like that tax evasion, so they proposed a cadillac tax on any good employer sponsored health insurance plan.
Two words: Tort reform.
In other two words: Loser pays.
hmmmm... getting rid of ambulance chasers - good. But, when your up against someone with deeper pockets, you are more likely to lose hard, whihc in turn will dissuade people from even trying to sue a doctor.
Do we want Drs to operate without the slightest fear of a lawsuit? (look how that worked out during COVID)