Dear Friends,
It seems to me, if car insurance was done like health insurance, no one could afford a car. Imagine if your car insurance covered oil changes, tire rotations and headlight replacements, but if you got in a collision it only covered 80%? Would that make any sense? The cost would be astronomical and the utility would be minuscule. Car insurance would cost far more per month than the car itself perhaps exceeding the cost of the car by more than double. This is because the insurance company would have to cover all their potential claims and expenses plus make a profit. The economic incentives would mutate so that the cost of an oil change would skyrocket from under $100.00 today to $200.00-$500.00 or maybe more. That extra cost would feed back into the system raising the cost of insurance sufficient to cover the added cost. The cost of body repair would also skyrocket because there would be no incentive to cut costs, only to raise them, and so that would again feed back into the system again, raising the cost of insurance. Add into the mix a government law that forced everyone to get the most expensive form of car insurance, for our own good of course, and the insurance companies would be given carte blanch to gouge the public as they saw fit, even as a bureaucrat decided how many oil changes you could get a year. Eventually the cost of insurance would be so high even a millionaire couldn’t afford it!
I recently had occasion to visit the veterinarian and a doctor in the same week. The difference was shocking. At the Vet I made an appointment and saw the vet that same day, there was no wait in a waiting room, filled with flu germs and MERSA, for close to an hour after the appointed time, the cost was half and I got to talk to the vet about my dog’s condition, getting useful answers!!! Even as a veterinarian has to undergo equal schooling as a doctor, and they probably make as much if not more, the quality of care my dog gets at the vet in all ways far exceeds that which I get, for double or triple the money at the doctor! That is because the market system has been allowed to work in the field of veterinary medicine and the government hasn’t shoved it’s way between my dog and his Vet.
I would far prefer to pay for my own wellness visits, prescription drugs and medical supplies and have catastrophic coverage 100%. If, God forbid, I had to get a stent put in my heart, that procedure could cost as much as $41,000.00, per stent! If I have to cover 1 stent at 20% of $41,000.00, that is $8,200.00, not counting my $5000.00 deductible! Imagine how many office visits I could get for that money! Not only would that expense be crushing during a time of intense stress, but that extra stress would hinder mine or anyone else’s recovery, increasing the cost even more. The cost for other catastrophic procedures is even higher. In short, we are insured for that which is no burden to pay for, but not covered for that which we cannot.
Anyone can see how ludicrous such a system for car insurance would be but most fail to see the absurdity of our healthcare system. Perhaps that is because we are like the proverbial boiled frog, year after year, regulation after regulation, our health insurance system has become ever more bizarre, until the Affordable Care act highlighted for all to see, just how utterly ridiculous it has become… and it has become ridiculous. Today a man in his 50s has to buy insurance that covers abortions and birth control but only covers 80% for catastrophic care! How many men in their 50’s need birth control to prevent pregnancy, zero… before gender fluidity, yet how many will need a stent put in their hearts? That is only one of the absurdities we have to deal with in our government mandated insurance schemes. We and our employers pay insurance for stuff we will never use, stuff we physically cannot use, but only partially for those things we will probably need.
The failed European systems are no model to follow regardless of the spurious arguments about longevity. The argument that people in Europe live longer appears logical at the outset but even a little thinking shows it is meant in fact to deceive. In Europe the populations were, up until the invasion, fairly homogeneous. French people lived in France and Italians lived in Italy. Although each nation had government monopoly healthcare, they all have different rates of longevity. That is due to cultural and demographic considerations, not the healthcare system. Moreover, the demographics in the US is extremely varied. People of European descent, Latinos, Asians, native Americans, African descent, and every other race, creed on our planet… live in the US. The culture varies from state to state as well, from the Creole diet of Louisiana to the comfort food based diet of the Northeast the diet of Americans is every bit as varied as our demographics, confounding any attempt to quantify our longevity against another nation’s. The real way to decide the merit of the US system against that of Europe, is where to rich people who can go anywhere for their healthcare, go? Does George Soros go to Britain for his healthcare? No, of course not, he uses US doctors. What about Canadians who are wealthy? They also use the US system paying for it out of their own pockets. So we see that the real test of the utility is not some arcane statistic, but where do people who can, go.
It’s time to rethink healthcare in the US. The absurd system of insurance that has been built has to be changed. Of that there is no debate. Yet what system are we as a people to embrace? I would argue that the best system we could hope to attain is a lassaize faire one, where we pay for our own prescription drugs, which in the end would drive down their cost, and our own doctor visits, but have catastrophic coverage 100%. What parent with a child with cancer wouldn’t want such a system? That system would be the end to those cans, covered with a picture of some child suffering with cancer, looking for change to help pay for that innocent’s cancer treatments, it would stop the bankrupting of people because they have a heart attack at a young age, and would create incentives, like those of veterinarians, to control costs while improving quality, as is done in every other sector of our economy when government is kept at bay. Get the government out of our health care system once and for all and use the car insurance model. Sadly, bureaucrats will never allow that to happen…
Sincerely,
John Pepin
