Listen to how people talk about their
health care plan...what do they usually comment about
:
"I only have a $20 dollar Co-pay for Office visits"
"I get $5 percriptions filled"
"I have a $500/yr deductable or no deductable"
"I have a 80%/20% plan"
The whole mindset for a lot of people (and you saw a little of it earlier in this thread) is just how little out of pocket costs you can get. The less out of pocket costs you had meant that you had "better insurance". Through
work, or through your teacher union, or a policy you bought yourself. The "problem" with this type of yardstick/thinking is that you are no longer
buying a
Health Insurance Policy but rather a
Health Care Policy. There is a Big Difference between the two and this is an important thing to understand, it's not just some abstract political talking point.
One of the worse things that has happened to
health care was it being a benefit and compensation package tied to your Job. [The
history of how that happened is
classic unintended consequences 101 of
Government policy, but that's a story for another thread and day.] Once people stopped paying for their health care and knowing how much things costs, there was no incentive to shop around, why would you when someone else was paying. If I wasn't paying out of pocket for my daughter's braces would I still make the 6hr drive to Mexico for them or would I just do them down the street? Would I care about the $5000 price difference? What incentive would there be to not go with the most expensive option? The providers (what I call the
Medical Industrial Complex...even if My wife is part of it) would realize this and prices would spiral upward, which they have.
The ACA doesn't help of solve this problem, it actually makes it worse. The ACA just put another layer of "someone else paying the bills" between the consumers and providers, rather than just the employer and insurance company now we have sugar daddy
Government. You can call it is susbidy or whatever phrase helps you sleep better at night, but it's a silmple welfare handout. Now our elected leaders get a new campaign issue and cash every 2 and 4 years on who will GIVE the voters more free stuff, who's subsidy will go up and who's will go down. What Cancer treatment will get covered and which one won't. Everyone in
power wins and once again freedom loses.