Let’s imagine a personal freedom – personal responsibility health-care system. Many argue against the “health-care mandate” as if they’ve thought it through; it’s not the mandate that’s the problem, it’s Obamacare. Fundamentally, taking care of one’s responsibilities in matters of education, food, clothing and shelter, employment, tax-paying and child-rearing, should not disappear when it comes to our MOST PERSONAL responsibility: health. Your health isn’t a shared responsibility, nor is the health of a welfare recipient.
The choices we make that have impacts, potentially, on our health, are choices the consequences of which are OUR OWN responsibility. This is not to inhibit charity or ASSISTANCE, when needed. The point is, we are believing in something that is not true if we think responsibility for our own health and well-being can successfully be transferred to another person (after about age 10 or so), group or government entity. It is equally wrong for insurance companies and the government to sell bigger government on the premise of taking responsibility for us.
Most people know more about the car they are going to buy than they do about the multiple products and services that will comprise their next contact with the health-care industry. We live in a dreamy fog of hope and trust that everyone who is about to have control over us for a while, is on our side, our friend, our advocate. The trouble is, with some unknown entity actually paying for your imminent care, everyone you are about to entrust with your life is actually NOT working for you, the patient/customer; they all “work for” the people who pay them – the people who set the rules for payment and therefore of engagement with you.
You, the lowly patient have become simply a means for effecting some lucrative billing.
It really isn’t radical to expect every adult to establish the means to pay for medical services he or she may need… whenever. This is a smart step psychologically as it will restore a sense of responsibility for how one treats his or her body. Personal responsibility increases when we choose to own firearms, cars, power tools, tobacco, pot or alcohol. It increases more when we choose to scuba-dive, sky-dive or prostitute-dive… and a hundred other activities.
What we need is flexibility in FINANCING the purchase of health-care products and services. Health savings accounts should be the basis, starting at birth being the best advice. As we grow up, adding forms of insurance from whatever source that pleases the customer – you and me and everyone else – and which fulfills minimum requirements to establish one’s “health responsibility,” freeing him or her to take the risks he or she chooses. That’s a card worth carrying.
Imagine we could hire a “health care agent” (HCA) who did NOT work for either providers or insurers, but for the patient-customer individual, family or group. Insurers will sell insurance based on actual risks and, when a claim is processed, send the check TO THE PATIENT and his or her agent. That means that care invoices will be understandable to the patient, and that the business it represents will have been COMPETED FOR by the provider!
Your HCA can negotiate for its over-arching group of, say 10,000 clients. He or she will be required, by license, to know where the best source is for various kinds of care or surgery or therapy, and what their history AND PRICES are! Everyone involved in delivering care will be concerned that the PATIENT, you and me, who is, in fact, the CUSTOMER who will PAY THE BILL (virtually guaranteed by the HCA under agreements that include significant limitations on why and when malpractice suits could happen). Collection costs will be minimal.
Individuals, with pertinent knowledge from their HCA, will make the care purchases they choose and providers will sell them the care they want! What a country.
Why is so much of what is described above, illegal now? To improve care? No, it’s so that government has control.
Imagine that catastrophic care, care not covered by most insurances, could be financed with very low cost LOANS through a “national extensive care fund” (NECF). That is, individuals, families, groups (like HCA groups) or extended fraternal or charitable “groups” could sign on to repay someone’s or some family’s NECF loan at so much per month, each. The “nation” could help finance extensive care when those affected decide to buy it! Even if repayment takes a lifetime, the NECF would be solvent because expenditures would be repaid without much administrative cost or case management. Sources of income would add a withholding and other assets would add a lien. Everyone pays his or her way. The numbers work. Both responsibility and freedom are restored.
The solution for those on welfare is even more interesting. Let’s talk about how they will benefit, too.