>>>Points up a serious issue that clouds and muddles the whole debate
>>>- conflating insurance with a medical care plan.
>>>- most people don't understand the difference.
>>>- I am sure that you are not most people.
>>>
>>>Real insurance is a hedge against extraordinary and unlikely expenses - like a house fire or catastrophic illness.
>>>Using insurance to cover day to day expenses like a normal doctor visit guarantees high and rising costs.
>>>
>>>Imagine filling out insurance forms at the grocery store for "food insurance" .... "Ok, dill pickles are covered, but only generics. I don't see a listing for sweet pickles"
>>>"Call my insurance company please, I am sure it is covered."
>>>
>>>Ridiculous example but not that different than a doctor visit - ordinary day to day expenses.
>>>Piling bureaucracy on to ordinary transactions cannot possibly lower costs. Obviously.
>>>And if "food insurance" bought the food - the grocery carts would have a lot more steak and lot less mac and cheese. Obviously.
>>>
>>>>In the good old days, if you got seriously sick you'd lose your job, then your work health insurance... then your house.
>>>Exactly correct.
>>>What you lost wasn't really insurance - it was an employer medical care plan.
>>>
>>>It would turn out a lot better if you had real insurance that covered calamities.
>>>Much like fire insurance on your house - insurance against unlikely but very expensive problems.
>>
>>Exactly the point I already tried to inject into discussion ;-)
>>Although there are some medical costs (mostly inoculation) which clearly lower total medical cost for population and highten overall well-being which I would argue should be socialised. Where to draw the line (new-born care, early screening, "preventive" measures for those currently indulging in clearly unhealthy habits) should be handled via statistical analysis - even if politics and industries will always fudge the numbers to suit there agenda ;-)
>
>
>What I like best is the efficiency of government run programs. Not to worry though, I’m sure the 1.45% of my gross wages and my employer’s 1.45% (what a joke) is safely tucked away with my SS contributions in a government “Lock Box”. Someone tried to tell me that the government had already spent that money and there were just IOU’s in the lockbox. The government wouldn’t do that, would they?
>
>May 31st 2014 the Economist
>No one knows for sure how much of that is embezzled, but in 2012 Donald Berwick, a former head of the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and Andrew Hackbarth of the RAND Corporation, estimated that fraud (and the extra rules and inspections required to fight it) added as much as $98 billion, or roughly 10%, to annual Medicare and Medicaid spending—and up to $272 billion across the entire health system.
...
The same article quotes 2.7 trillion as the total healthcare spending. If the numbers are correct, then $272 billion is roughly 10% of all healthcare spending, which means that, in general, health insurance fraud affects all (including private) health insurers equally.
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