someone asked why the 'free market' hadn't come up with a better solution....

The answer is that it did. It allowed you to pool risks with others and buy the 'average' care... and then it participated in 'wealth redistribution' by charging those without insurance as much as they were willing/able to pay... and using those funds to pay for the care of others.

but then comes in the government... who arbitrarily decides that doctors must do certain things and must do them for a price, regardless of whether or not that price covers the cost. The list goes on and on for 'requirements' to now where we have a situation where people are no longer being discouraged from making bad decisions... from engaging in troubling behavior. In fact, we now penalize doctors for 'patient satisfaction', which includes things like whether or not they did everything they could to control your pain.

Guess what?? People don't like being told to stop smoking, drinking, taking drugs, eating too much and not moving enough. They want a magic pill... and they want it immediately.

So now rather than focusing on 'the best medical advice', physicians are focusing on immediate pain management. As any ER doc will tell you... for a disturbingly large number of people, the moment you make their pain go away, they think they are 'cured' and they don't follow up with the PCP, or take (or even pick up) their maintenance meds.

We can debate the 'right' solution, but the point is that the government is manipulating the free market to accomplish its own goals... primarily to remove the economic incentives... and to absolve people from the consequences of their own decisions.

The free market would let people who make bad choices pay the costs of those choices... which would discourage them from doing it in the future... assuming it didn't kill them, which has the same net effect.

Which is why I have repeatedly suggested that we put penalties for non-compliance into our system.

You have a lower deductible for accidents than for injuries of bad decisions. You have a higher deductible if you didn't take your meds as prescribed or make and keep your follow-up appointment. As it is now, physicians bill you and not your insurance if you are a no-show... but you aren't likely to pay. Change it to having the physician getting paid whether you show or not... and have INSURANCE/the government charge you if you don't.

It would have been easier to expand Medicaid and get reimbursements up to 80% than enact ACA.

(05-05-2016 08:40 AM)vandiver49 Wrote:  It would have been easier to expand Medicaid and get reimbursements up to 80% than enact ACA.

Of course it would... It also would have been 'cleaner' and more honest. But that would have involved 'the left' admitting that this was the single largest tax increase and expansion of Federal power in the history of the country... and instead they wanted to be able to call it something else.

All of the 'mess' is about hiding the truth/lying to the public